FRESH GARBAGE

FRESH  GARBAGE

On Halloween, bullies aren’t the only monsters lurking in the shadows of Morely’s Dump

“No, Claire, I don't want to go to any damn Halloween party.”

“Come on. Why not?”

 “I lost my kid brother on Halloween.” 

 “Lost, like, in a crowd?” 

“No. Lost…as in dead.”

Claire’s eyes widened.

Ok, it’s out. Now just tell her.  She will still like you.  You'll see.

“Joey, honey, you can tell me what happened”

“I don’t know how you’ll take it.”

“Try me, Joe. I’m here for you.” She stroked my arm.

 Maggots writhed in the back of my throat.

 

“God Claire…I was only sixteen. Mikey was ten. My parents stuck me with him on Halloween. I

 was mad. The guys and I were going to mess around, get some treats, maybe play some tricks,

 and I’m stuck with Mikey. We’re hanging at the corner, when Eddie gets this big idea to drive

 out to Morely’s Garbage Dump and mess with the Devil Dogs.”

“Devil Dogs?”

“Yeah, that’s what we called them.”

“Ok…wha....never mind…go on.”

 “Well, everybody jumped on the idea, so we took off in Eddie’s pick-up. Morely’s property was

 originally an old government testing ground. People whispered about mutant animals or’

 something, so they gave him a hundred year lease, cheap, with a non-disclosure agreement to

 turn it into a dump. He thought he’d struck gold. Everything was kosher for twenty years, then

 ol’ Morely suddenly let his junkyard dogs off their  chains and locked the place up tight. Nobody knew why. He never let a soul back in and nobody ever saw him again. I know now it was because of the pit.” 

 

“The pit?”  Claire asked.

“Smack in the middle of that dump. All sorts of wild tales about it, because over years of

dumping, it never filled up. We figured chemicals were just disintegrating stuff, but with those

 Devil Dogs guarding it, nobody could get close…stories spread like crazy.”

 “Come on, Stephen, Devil Dogs? Really?” 

“Morely’s dogs were black as pitch and mean as the devil’s midnight. Their eyes glowed gold

 under the right moon. We’d tried breaching that gate before, to get to the pit, but we’d always

 chickened out. That night, we were daring each other again to go for it, when Eddie noticed a

 hole…small enough for a kid to squeeze through.  Eddie’d been goading me to tackle the razor

 wire up top, but when he saw that hole, he started in on Mikey.

  

'Mikey was scared, hell, everybody was, but he wanted to prove he wasn’t a weenie, so he gave

 in. I could have stopped it there. Silent tears were sliding down his cheeks…but I was a bully,

 just like the rest.

 “The plan was, we’d distract the dogs with beef sticks from our treat bags, while Mikey slipped

 through and made for the pit. Mikey’s lip quivered as he climbed out of the truck. Eddie must

 have seen it too, because suddenly, he rummaged in his glove box for the walkie-talkies he kept

for off-roading, and tossed one to Mikey. 

‘Here kid,’ he said. ‘If you get into trouble…call.’ 

Mikey shoved it into his pocket, then with a last pleading look, trudged off.  He looked so pitiful

 I almost gave in….almost.”

“What then, Joey?” Claire asked, sliding a tumbler of Scotch into my hand.

“Well, Mikey slips through, and those dogs come crashing out of the blackness, their eyes all lit

 like-jack-o-lanterns, and the boys just freeze, forgetting the beef sticks, forgetting everything,

 because those dogs aren’t barking at us…they’re hunkered down facing the pit, growling real

 low, like they got something cornered. I yell for my brother, as the radio crackles to life and

 Mikey’s crying, calling my name through the static, and I run to the gate, screaming for

 him….but it’s not the dogs he’s afraid of….”

“Oh God!...Morely?”  Claire gasps.

“Not Morely…and I swear this is true! Something dark rises up out of the pit. First shadow, then

 shape, rearing up, a behemoth in the moonlight…with grotesque mounds of roiling, rotting filth,

dripping and foul, the putrid smell of decomposition, corrupting the breeze. I can see carcasses

 and moldy sofas, end tables and car parts, and they’re rearranging themselves as if lost in a

 gigantic carnivorous jig-saw puzzle made of generations of festering garbage, alive, and

silhouetted by the moon…. and its eyes…they’re burning.”

“Burning?”

“Burning…like on fire with some kind of savage hunger. Parts are falling from it as it rises, a

 refrigerator…an old tire… a dead deer…a lawnmower, blades gnashing…and all the time my

 little brother is screaming…screaming for me…looking frantically for somewhere to hide.

 There’s an old panel truck…the radio’s still crackling…he scrambles up onto the hood hoping

he’ll be safe there…

and that’s when the Devil Dogs charge, vicious and snapping at the repulsive

 edges of this abomination, with its burning eyes and falling debris…then suddenly, with no

 warning, that Garbage Monster spreads out its great perverted arms and descends on Mikey,

'The radio goes dead and we run for our lives. Back to the truck, back to the city…we leave him behind.”

“You LEFT him?” Claire whispers, recoiling like I’m diseased.

“They found Mikey at sun-up…said we’d pushed him. Said he’d fallen off the truck and broken

his neck…and if that’s the truth, thank you, Jesus, because those burning eyes, they wanted him,

and something deep inside me knew they wanted him alive, or we’d never have found his body.”

I sat back realizing I was sweating, head lowered, afraid to meet Claire’s eyes. 

  

“Well, that’s quite a story, Stephen.” 

I looked up sharply. I’d spent twenty years forgetting those exact words. Claire’s face became

my mother’s, one month before I’d gone to prison, and one month before she’d cut up grandma’s

quilt and hung herself in the stairwell.

Right then, I knew there’d be no second chances, and no more ‘Claire and me’, just as surely as I

knew those Devil Dogs never lived inside Morely’s Dump to keep anything out….they lived

instead, to keep something, with its carnivorous, burning eyes, in.


 
~by taree Belardes

NYC FLASH FICTION COMP 2014