Trash Night, Pt. 2

 

He didn’t care how it got here…but there has to be some logical explanation. The raccoon moved its investigation to the suckers. It poked and pawed at them.

 

Charley vaguely remembered reading stories of odd weather phenomenon brought on by storms. Frogs or fish raining down on obscure villages in South America or Australia, sucked up from the water’s surface by turbulent wind tunnels and flung miles and miles inland to the surprise or fear or delight of the townsfolk. Strange things happen. Although no one would know the full scope of damage for a few more days, Hurricane Daniel was a cataclysm. If there was going to be odd, fish flinging weather, it would be after a Category 5 hurricane. 

 

The image of an unholy atmospheric vortex piercing a storm-ravaged Atlantic became vivid in Charley’s mind. Not so much a weather anomaly, but a summoning. Something intentional. A call-to-arms of the most inhuman, squelching, sickening abominations from the bowels of deep-sea trenches and underwater volcanoes to be unleashed upon the surface. Beachheads erected, cities overrun by clicking, screaming crabs, smothering sea-slugs, impaling urchins, and…squids. Ship-wreckers. Man-draggers. Invaders. The unknown unearthed, un-oceaned. 

 

“It’s dead.” Charley said aloud again. His voice cracked. The raccoon had no such fear. What was a strange tentacle to a raccoon? It’s no different than a chicken bone or tossed cat food. Charley focused his attention on the little bandit. Its deft little paws, its thorough investigation. It hadn’t taken a bite out of the tentacle, not yet anyway, it was still deciding, curious. Its confidence was slowly transferring to Charley himself. What could, surely in life, wrestle your very sanity from the depths of your mind, laid passively, submissively, in a flesh heap in front of him. It was being foraged for carrion by a creature ubiquitous with trash and roadkill. The tentacle, and its owner if there still was one, was trapped on land, in a laughing-stock state, in a laughing-stock country, in a low-end apartment complex, in a goddamn trash compactor. The layers of irony were heavier than the tons of pressure this thing experienced on the ocean floor. It was overkill. Charley’s smile was back. Lonely as he was, at least he wasn’t in the trash compactor. He wasn’t a slimy mollusk entombed in garbage.

 

It must have done something to deserve it.

 

Charley laughed again, louder this time. The raccoon took notice, staring back at him, curious, one paw against the suckers. 

 

With the effort of a man snapping a toothpick, so did the tentacle wrap around the raccoon and destroy its spine. A short yelp was all the bandit could muster as the life was squeezed out of it. The tentacle, very much alive, lifted the raccoon off the ground by its midsection and held it steady several feet in the air, about eye level with Charley. His smile vanished. The tentacle swayed languidly back and forth.

 

Had he any rational thought left in that moment, Charley would have assumed that the tentacle, or more accurately, the tentacle’s owner, was holding the raccoon in the air because it wasn’t sure what to make of the furball it had captured. Charley’s lizard brain, however, interpreted this as a pure power display. Birds will fan out their feathers, frogs expand throat sacs, but this creature displayed intimidation merely through the fact that its heart still beat, that the brain inside its horrid head still rattled with thought and hunger and calculation.

 

Blood, dark as motor oil in the poor light, spilled from the raccoon’s mouth, pattering the concrete. Blood also dripped around the edges of the tentacle, wrapped so cruelly, so tightly, around the midsection of the raccoon. It was a macabre bowtie. A rational, removed Charley may have noted that this must mean the tentacles were serrated or otherwise had some sort of teeth, fangs, or spears to better grip and rip prey. Lizard Charley’s pupils merely dilated at the sight. 

 

The tentacle, having adequately displayed its dominance, began retracting towards the opening of the compactor. Back to its master. Back to the blind one. Submerged in rank and rot and refuse: the raccoon its dinner guest. Besides the light shuffle and shifting of garbage bags, cardboard boxes, and other detritus, the tentacle’s retreat was quiet. It was in no great haste, it seemed. Was this slowness due to the creature’s confidence or was it the frail delicateness of one on the verge of death? Charley couldn’t care less. There were rumblings within the compactor. Lights raps against the sides within. Tentacles acting as a conveyor belt towards a mouth. A gnashing beak. Then silence.

 

Once again, the trash compactor was just a trash compactor. The fishy rot of twenty-thousand leagues lingered, but one just arriving at the scene wouldn’t think anything of it, wouldn’t attribute it to a specific source. 

 

He instead stared at the opening of the compactor. No matter how much he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing within. Just the dark. A void. The weight of the trash bag in Charley’s hand returned. It tugged at the ligaments in his arm. It reminded him that this was supposed to be a simple chore. Even if one got as close as possible to the opening of the compactor, they still had to toss their trash the length of the opening’s perpetually open tray in order to get it fully in. The old, weak, and lazy usually just left their trash on the concrete in front of the compactor. It was bare now. No one had left their apartments in two days, like Charley. He didn’t think he could make the shot if he threw his bag from where he was standing. The opening was too small, his bag too heavy. 

 

His eyes wandered to the compactor’s control panel. The bright green one was particularly attractive.

 

Kill the beast.

 

It was only three steps away.

 

Toss your trash, hit the button, back away. You win.

 

Win what?

 

Another voice in his head, a smaller one, told him to just walk away. He would get nothing from this. He recalled reading or hearing somewhere that the tentacles of octopus and squid “have minds of their own”, whatever that meant. What if this tentacle, this alien appendage, wasn’t attached to anything? What if it merely wanted to kill? What if that was its only prerogative while it awaited its own motor death? He didn’t know for how much longer this thing would live. 

 

Kill it. Now’s your chance. Crush it. It’s too deep in there, too dehydrated, too encumbered to climb out before the compactor could get it. 

 

Whatever it really was, it had to fit entirely in the compactor. Charley highly doubted that it could escape having its entire body collapsed in on itself, no matter how slippery. Charley also originally doubted that it was even alive.

 

Just leave your trash on the ground. Fuck it. Just hit the button and get out of here. Just hit the button and you’ll be -

 

The spade of the tentacle appeared in the opening. It hovered there like a candle flame. The tentacle began slithering back out of the opening. This thing could have a mind of its own, for how gracefully and precisely it moved. It extended upward first a few feet, taking the stance of a charmed snake. Charley had a good look at the suckers at this angle. Dozens of militant, organized lampreys, eager to capture the enemy and bring it to the host. An obsidian beak, embedded deep within layers of wet tissue. Blind, saucer eyes rolling in ecstasy at the taste of man-flesh.

 

The tentacle laxed itself once about ten to fifteen feet of tentacle had spilled forth from the opening. The end of the tentacle coiled against the ground. 

 

It’s fishing.

 

It has to die.

 

Charley took a few seconds to collect his courage. The tentacle allowed him this grace. He took one comically-cautious tip-toe forward. No reaction from the tentacle. Another step. Not a budge.

 

He took his last step. The spade of the tentacle was inches from his foot. He stared at it. It did seem unassuming, all things considered. He knew to fear it now, but - 

 

Hit the fucking button, Charley!

 

He reached his hand up towards the green button. And pressed it! 

 

The compactor whirred to life. The mechanical drone of a goliath machine. Though he could not see it, he imagined the ramming wall inside sliding effortlessly towards the other end of the compactor. He imagined those blind, saucer eyes dilating in fear. The hunter was cornered!

 

Perhaps it was because the hunter knew something was wrong that the tentacle flailed, the spade grazing across Charley’s shin. Charley took a half-step back, but five more feet of tentacle was ejected from the opening. The spade reached Charley’s calf and within a second the tentacle had an unflinching grip on him. It yanked back hard, tripping Charley. His head hit the concrete sending a bolt of dull-red pain through his temple. This pain was immediately overshadowed by something far more horrible. Iced needles. The suckers. Serrated seemed an understatement. They shredded through the fabric of Charley’s sweatpants, through skin and muscle. Charlie let out a yelp, but that was all his lungs permitted. The yelp was the same as the raccoon’s. He was caught. Sentenced. Game, set, match. 

 

The compactor grinded along dutifully. The rusted grinding of metal on metal rang out along with the stretch and gasp and crinkle of the constellation of trash within coming to a breaking point. It was powerful. It was inevitable. It was unmercifully slow. 

 

Charley was hoisted into the air, hung upside down by his shredded leg. The tentacle whipped to and fro in a panic but it did not let go. Charley was too far off the ground to grab on to anything and only just too far away to grab onto the fence or the sides of the opening. Not that he would have had time to do either. In a final agonal tug, Charley was sucked in towards the compactor’s opening. His forehead smashed against the base of the opening knocking him unconscious. The tentacle slipped him through the opening as the ram wall grew closer and closer.

 

The rotting, amorphous horror within, its final prize in tow, was becoming flatter and flatter. There was only just enough room to fit Charley’s body in the compactor, but not enough to successfully maneuver him towards its mouth. It had only even managed to rip a few hairy, unappetizing chunks off the raccoon anyway. The creature's lack of bones only drew out the fear and agony of the moment. 

 

The compactor powered through, unsympathetic. Charley and the raccoon’s skeleton cracked and fragmented. The creature’s beak shattered and its eyes popped as the wall finished its duty. Man, raccoon, and creature were pressed together into a pulp. 

 

Charley’s trash bag remained sitting on the concrete. The sounds of the compactor and the annihilation of the three withing fell on no ears that night.