“A séance, yes,” she repeats calmly and casually, like she had suggested after-work drinks, or a cheeky tarot pull, not a psychic-led ceremony with the undead. “Or something like one. Bin-based, obviously.”
Right.Obviously. She rummages around her desk, clearly avoiding my eyes as I stare at her with betrayal.
“I thought you meant, like… journaling. Or breathwork,” I mutter, shifting my mop bucket behind me like it could shieldme from spiritual responsibility. I really need to stop using it to hide myself–it’s never worked out well for me.
“Please. Breathworks' for people whose curses don’t involve orgasmic trash.”
I blink. “You’ve said that out loud before, haven’t you?”
“More than once.”
She finally looks at me, expression softening. “You don’thaveto do it. But if you’re still hoping for closure, this might be the way to… lift the bin lid, so to speak.”
I don’t answer. Don’t nod. I just stand there in the foyer, feeling the weight of another week without bin whispers, or amber eyes, or ghostly limbs curling in the recycling bin.
Eventually, she hands me a paper bag. Inside is a bundle of wax-sealed herbs, a candle that is shaped like a traffic cone, and a piece of cloth that smells like burnt cinnamon and mildew.
“Tonight,” she says, voice low. “Be mentally prepared.”
The rest of the day passes in a fog.
I mopped a hallway I had already mopped. I had stared at a bin for ten minutes before realizing it isn’t full—it is just me who is empty. Someone in IT asked if I am OK, and I responded by refilling the hand sanitizers in their break rooms and backing out like I had been caught crying in a supply closet.
“You alright, Oscar?” asks Jeff from Audit, as we cross paths by the elevators.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
“You look… dimmer, somehow.”
I want to say, “Fuck off, Jeff!” but I say, without thinking, “Ha, yeah, you’d be dim too if your bin-spirit boyfriend evaporated right before your eyes.”
“Wait, sorry?” He pulls back and looks at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, nothing,” I brush him off.
He shrugs and offers me half a donut, which I had pocketed and then promptly forgotten about. It is that kind of day.
When the building had emptied and it was time to go, I stood for a moment by the janitor’s closet—our old haunt. The bin is still there. But now it is just a bin.
It doesn’t purr. Don’t moan. Doesn’t ask to be held.
I left the office without speaking to anyone else.
Claudia meets me outside the building and comes home with me that night. I agreed to her idea as I need closure. I’m keeping the metaphorical bin lid open just in case Eddy comes back, but I feel he won’t and I need to find a way to move on.
Along with the original stuff Claudia showed me earlier today, she reveals some candles shaped like little frogs, salt she says is from some coastal witch commune, and a Ouija board made from an old pizza box.
“Recycled mysticism,” she says with a wink, lighting the candles and placing them in a wonky circle around the living room rug. “Bin-Spirits love a DIY project.”
I don’t ask if this is real.
I don’t need real.
I needpossible. I need to do something about the ache in my chest that still hasn’t faded. Maybe it never will.
Claudia has me sit cross-legged in the centre of the candle circle. She mutters something under her breath—half Latin, half gibberish—and pours the salt in a sloppy ring around me.
“I call on the trash that lingers. I summon the soul that haunts the drainpipes and dumpsters,” she says, eyes closed,arms raised dramatically. “Come forth, Grouch of the Bin. Your janitor misses you.”
