In the Dumpster King's Zip Code

by Catherine J Gardner

Copyright © 2008 / May not be reproduced without permission

The Dumpster King’s home was a foul-smelling alleyway named The Woods. A place where he felt his hobo soul belonged. Perched on his pal Freckles’ shoulders, he applied a fresh dab of green paint to faded trees. The mural was his attempt at recreating the magical woods of the past – woods long paved over and built upon.

From above them, the shrill wail of a banshee cried out. It unsteadied his hand. With the familiar scrape of a window opening, the pair dived for cover. They mistimed their escape and a bowl of hot water showered over them. It spattered against the wall. Green paint ran down the mural. The Dumpster King and Freckles sat in the snow, looked up at the apartment window, and then down at their drenched skin. Freckles shivered. They were officially one hundred and three percent hatchet swinging, axe wielding mad. The window closed, and the banshee disappeared inside.

The three angry sisters had moved into the apartment block a fortnight earlier. Slamming van doors and sniping at each other from the start, an alternative way to begin 1984. They kept the Dumpster King awake at night. They were the reason his big bruiser of a buddy, Freckles, had hefted his cardboard boxes up town. He was going to have to do something about them.

Freckles slammed his fist into the snow. If they had been up hill, or if the alley had slanted to any degree, then it would have caused an avalanche.

When you have decided you are going to do something about someone then it is best to do it without delaying, while your temper is white hot.

Freckles pulled the Dumpster King up. Water dripped from them and melted the snow. Thudding through the white thickness, the Dumpster King reached into his home and pulled out a discarded can of out-of-date peas. The three angry sisters also used his home as a dumpster for their trash. Rather than the typical stone thrown up at a window to gain attention, he hurled the can at and through. Glass shattered and imploded inward.

Red hair and a blanched face looked out through the gaping hole.

“Hey missus,” the Dumpster King called up. “This your diamond ring?”

“Did you break my window?” she spat.

“Well, um, yeah, but is this yours? I mean it fell with the water; least I think it did. Do you have a diamond ring?”

“Of course,” she replied looking at fingers weighted down with cheap costume jewellery. The Dumpster King imagined her hands lying severed in the snow. Too quickly, she added. “Yes, it’s mine and I will have it back. Wait there.”

The Dumpster King and Freckles were not going anywhere. Oh, well maybe just back to the dumpster to find something to smash in her not so-delicate brains. Freckles mimicked a lethal punch and the Dumpster King patted his friend on the elbow.

The redhead stomped through the snow barefoot, and seemed not to notice that her toes were turning blue. She held out her hand, and her fingers curled back and forth in a gimme-gimme gesture. The Dumpster King looked down at his empty hands and then up at Freckles. Freckles looked down at the woman and then, SPLAT… A jar of pickles exploded over her forehead and imbedded in her scalp. Blood ran down her cheek as a jagged shard poked out of her left eyeball. A pickle wobbled, skewered on the edge of the glass. The right eye blinked. With a kick to the back of her knees from Freckles, the woman fell down to the snow. The arm that reached out to save her contorted and snapped beneath her weight. Bone poked through skin. As the first drop of blood hit the surface and began to crystallize outwards, the glass shot through the eyeball to her brain. Her right eye popped out of its socket.

“Did you hear it squelch?” The Dumpster King asked Freckles, who nodded in reply. “Sounded like biting into a cherry tomato.”

The Dumpster King and Freckles would probably never eat a cherry tomato or a hobo’s balls or anything that popped in the mouth ever again.

Freckles pulled the dead girl towards the mural and placed her against a painted tree. She flopped forward. Freckles smiled. The Dumpster King didn’t; he knew it wasn't over.

Blue eyes haloed by orange skin and a short crop of white hair poked out of the broken window. “Did you just break my window?”

“No,” the Dumpster King lied. “Some redhead just fell through it. If your name’s Cynthia, she’s asking for you.”

“Why that bi…” She smiled. “I’ll be right down.”

Cynthia was the brunette and the blonde hated, hated, despised her in a hatchet way. After all, Cynthia had taken shears to her head as she slept, shorn off all her hair and nipped her ear ever so intentionally. Meaning pressed down hard on the shears, pulled and cut through the lobe taking a slice of her cheek with it. It’s amazing what you hear when lying in a dumpster with only cardboard for a blanket.

The blonde did not come barefoot. Black boots stomped across the snow and took no heed of the smeared blood. Seeing the mess of her sister, she stopped and placed an unfortunate hand to her mouth. Unfortunate because as the discarded homemade tinsel (wire with bits of foil taped to it) looped over her head, and Freckles pulled back, instead of strangling, he severed her hand. It fell to the snow with a clean cut. The marrow looked good enough to chew on. The Dumpster King’s first thought was ‘it’s packed in ice’, as if he meant to call 911 and have it re-attached.

Of course, he did not intend to do that. The moral of this could be – careful what you throw in the dumpster outside your home as it may come back to bite you or worse.

This was mid-worse. As the blonde fell forward, her bloody stump smearing the already crimson snow, Freckles moved in. Severing the hand proved useful for it left the second angry sister with only one hand to tug at the wire with. It bit at her fingers and sliced off her fingertips. With no fight left, her fingers dropped to the snow, quite literally in the case of the little finger for it bounced towards the dumpster where a passing cat mistook it for dinner. The tinsel tore through her throat and severed her windpipe. The blonde croaked for a second, let out a terrible death wheeze, and then, quite literally croaked it.

Now it would be too much to hope that the third angriest sister would just pop her head out of the window and come on down. That was never going to happen. However, the Dumpster King knew something very important about the third sister. After the scalding water poured down from the window, like slops in the Middle Ages, she was never far behind. This sister was a creature of routine and always appeared carrying a bag of potato peelings, vegetable cuttings and mashed up unwanted food – of which there was a lot, because the third sister was anorexic. This also meant that the bag often contained just-spewed vomit.

Swinging the plastic bag back and forth, its rotting contents visible, the third sister entered The Woods unaware two wolves waited. She took no note of the Dumpster King or Freckles or even her mutilated sisters. They were on the periphery, mere specks that needed washing from her eyeballs. If he had any bleach to hand, the Dumpster King would oblige.

Sometimes luck is with the just. The luck went like this: Bag splits open, contents include a banana skin. Blue stilettos slip on the skin and the brunette swan dives into the lap of the redhead.

Freckles moved quicker than his six foot seven frame should be able to. His bear paw of a hand slammed the head of the brunette into the redhead and cracked her skull. This one down and dazed, but not out. A thump from Freckles fist and the noses of both sisters splintered. Bone poked through meat. Thump, thump, THUMP.

With a final splintering of bone, the brunette fell back, the fire in her eyes extinguished. Nothing but specks to the glaze now as blood pooled and veins burst.

The Dumpster King at last had a part. He turned the brunette over and cut through her jumper with the jagged edge of the smashed pickle jar. Skin exposed, he cut through the pale surface and created a bloody pocket of flesh. He grinned, Freckle grinned, and between them, they hauled the brunette onto the redhead’s knee and placed the redhead’s hand inside the pocket of flesh. The broken jaw of the brunette flopped down creating the perfect ventriloquist’s dummy. Her throat looked raw, as if she had been screaming.

Standing back to admire their work, the Dumpster King realised victory was bittersweet. He would have to leave The Woods and perhaps move uptown where the alleys where all back this and back that. The stench secured behind electronic gates. He looked at his dumpster, he looked at the three mutilated corpses, he looked up…

“Always wondered what the view would be like from up there,” the Dumpster King said and held up the arm of the blonde. “Do you want leg, breast or rump for supper?”

* * *

A checked tablecloth covered the scratched kitchen table. The Dumpster King and Freckles sat opposite each other. Freckles stabbed a fork into the table as they waited for the oven timer to click down to the ping. They seemed to have been waiting a long time and were close to starving.

Now, it may have come to a point where Freckles needed to eat the Dumpster King and vice versa, only it turned out there was a fourth angry sister. This sister was not just angry. She was knife wielding, rabid-werewolf bashing crazy and she hated her sisters even more than the Dumpster King did.

The fourth sister had connected an explosive device to the oven timer. Freckles rapped his knuckles on the table as the time clicked into the final minute and Dumpster half-turned when… PING!

The Dumpster King and Freckles were back in The Woods, well part of them anyway. Dumpster’s left hand and exploded lungs sizzled on the snow, while Freckles freckle’s and empty eye sockets looked down at his skinned skeleton.

Bio:

Over sixty of Catherine J Gardner's stories have been published, and she has work forthcoming in the Northern Haunts, Malpractice, WolfSongs and Bloody October anthologies.