This is a totallynormalandcompletelynon-haunted shift, surrounded by corporate living human types who will absolutely not appreciate if I scream at a bin.
Or worse. Fuck it.
I shake my head at the thought of the CEO of Graves & Pennington LLP walking in on me getting it on with the bin and looking horrified.
“Morning,” a passing accountant mumbles, barely looking up from their phone and heading towards the lift upstairs.
“Good morning,” I say, attempting to sound cheerful while resisting the urge to knock their phone out their hands and grab them by the shoulders and askIf you could see a trash spirit in a bin, you’d tell me, right?
The lights hum overhead as I push my cart toward the supply closet. The office is pretty quiet, except for the clacking of keyboards and inane office murmur. I eye every bin I pass as if he will pop out from any of them at any moment. Every discarded takeaway coffee cup taunts me. Every crumbled food wrapper. I feel beads of sweat trickle down my back. At least I don’t have to worry about sweat stains-the janitor uniform is dark.
As if to dispel my thoughts and anxieties, I shake my head and push the cart forward, locking my gaze ahead. The squeak of my cart’s rolling wheels scratches through the air of the office, setting me further on edge. Like the countdown theme song from Jaws.
But as I round the corner toward the kitchen, I hear him.
His voice. Low. Smug. Like he is whispering in my ear.
“Miss me, Janitor Boy?”
My breath catches, and I pull the cart to a sharp halt, knocking over some supplies.
I whip around, heart hammering.
Nothing. Nobody was there.
The hallway is empty. The office workers are all at their desks. Nothing’s around me except the small waste bin along the wall between the cabinets. It sits innocently against the wall. But I know it’s not.
I back away slowly, my heart practically pounding through my ribcage.Just ignore it… him. Keep moving.
I tentatively keep walking. The lights above me flicker once… then again. I stop in my tracks. The bin-man is playing with me now, and a chill runs down my spine, making me shudder.
Flight’s kicking in again. Abandoning my cart, I rush past the bin and towards the door marked ‘Janitor’s Office’.
Safety.
My hand flies to the handle, and I grip it. Behind me, I hear a soft, eerie chuckle. I shake my head and shut my eyes. I’m hallucinating again. Or maybe I’m on drugs-I shouldn’t have trusted that donut Claudia gave me this morning. Wait, maybe Claudia’s playing a prank on me…maybe she is behind all of this. She does like to taunt me. It is our friendship love language. And let’s face it, if you don’t gently bully your friends, are they really your friends?
I ignore the voice and twist the handle. I push the door open, and my heart drops. There he is. Sitting there with a smirk, he’s in the only bin in the office. It’s impossibly small, and I don’t know how he fits inside it. He’s resting his elbows on the lip of the bin, his chin in his hands. As he notices me, my heart races and my eyes bulge from the shock of seeing him again.
I hope for footsteps behind me, for someone else to witness what I am witnessing. He leans back, arms behind his head as if he were on a damn beach holiday taking in the warm sun.
He is dressed exactly the same as in our last encounter. The same sheen of bin juice on his chest. The black singlet with a flannel over top.
“’Bout time!” he says, in what I think is a provoking tone. “I was beginning to miss that gorgeous face behind those slutty wire-frame glasses!”
I quickly rush inside and shut the door behind me, careful not to let it slam to disturb everyone in the office. As I turn, I speak in a sharp whisper. “What are you doing here?”
He just shrugs and then grins widely at me. “Soskittish. We had some unfinished business. Thought I would pop on by over to this bin, though it is far more cramped than my favourite in the kitchen.”
He can move between bins! Great! I groan internally. No escape.
He seems to realise I’ve made this discovery, and he grins wider. Were these bins some sort of interconnected portals?
“You can’t just show up wherever you want. There are people here!”
“Oh? Them?” He smirked once more. He needed to stop doing that… I felt a flexing in my pants again.Fuck’s sake!
“None of them can see me, Oscar.” He adds. At first, I had been shocked he knew my name, but then I remembered my name is stitched to the chest of my janitor's overalls.
