THE NIGHT THE TRASH COMPACTOR BROKE
a small ironic piece I made about the selfish, self absorbed nature of the modern world
They held the world on their fingertips, the pale men. The continents observed, flattened and stretched across a sheet, all bloody with red ink.
“Deal is finalized, people. Tomorrow the arms leave for Oman. Farook transfers the funds to the Hong Kong account on Thursday and we proceed as discussed. I’ll see to it personally.”
The wrinkly hand choked the cigarette atop the silver ash tray and it died a slow, agonizing death, its last sight the figures of the five giants that cast their shadows on the rounded table, sipping coffee.
“From this day, gentleman, no one utters a word. The guns don’t exist, the money doesn’t exist. Hell, deny the existence of that shitty country if you need to.” the old man’s raspy voice coasted along softly. “Anyone squeals, he too will have never existed.”
Davey scrubbed a desk as he whistled the Macarena.
Nights like this are always the worst. Fridays, that is. Every ID card scanned at the checkpoints is just a bit more anxious, careless and addicted to instant coffee. The plastic cups leave brown rings on the white surfaces of the fiberboard desks. They are fossilized by the hours and preserved like the hardest of ambers.
He scrubbed and he scrubbed and he scrubbed and he scrubbed. He pushed so hard his face bulged and the veins on his forearm burned under the skin. For fifteen minutes he was at it. No use trying farther, there was a new battle scar in that office.
How disrespectful, he thought, the languid hum of the vacuum cleaner following him like a lazy wasp. It carefully scanned the ground, avoiding blades and clips and other careless stray bullets that could chew through the mechanism. Up the hallway and into the courtyard he carried the big black garbage bags, but not before opening them and sorting them out with his bare hands. Doesn’t anyone around here know you have to wash the yoghurt cup before recycling it?
The bathroom mirrors need a small amount of spray -one part vinegar, four parts water- on a cotton rug, then a soft sheet of paper to dry. Apply the ambient scent for eight seconds. Less wont make a difference, more is just a waste.
Davey wondered how unnecessary his very existence would be should every worker in this expansive cluster of cubes and cubicles was just a tiny bit more attentive, less caught up in their own little worlds, walking these spaces instead of floating just above them in acoustic, soundproof bubbles, leaving behind them the black trash bags, which he had to carefully stack up. Solid bags below, flimsy bags above, all bags working through compression. Can this bag support that bag? Does a small bag fit in that space between those two others bags? If a bag is added on top of that one, the whole pile of bags may collapse, but maybe a wider base may ensure stability if that other bag is placed on that other corner besides that one big bag. Damnit, the trash compactor was working just fine yesterday!
As Davey roamed amongst the desolate walls, still whistling the Macarena, a light shone at the end of the hallway, luring him ashore. It came from the conference room. Step by step, he wondered who would have the nerve to leave the light on.
-
Of the five, now two remain, dwarfed by the office buildings of downtown whose lit rooms paint white squares on the nightly canvas.
“What is everyone doing so late.” Stone wonders.
“Probably the same as us.” the old man answers, and he takes a drag off his cigarette.
“Listen, I want out. I don’t want the money. I’ll keep my mouth shut, just don’t make me a part of this.”
The old man turns around, puzzled and incredulous.
“Little too late for that. You were already a part of this.”
“I don’t care! I… I don’t want it. It’s just not right!” He twitches nervously around the table, staring through the window in fright, as if the lit rooms in the distance knew what he has done.
“I get it.” the old man strolls slowly towards him. “I understand you’re nervous. But there’s no way we’ll be caught. I wouldn’t have carried this whole operation out if there was.”
“It’s not… It’s not that. What we just did… it’s wrong, Furlough.”
“And you’re realizing that just now?” he chuckles, choking on the smoke.
“I guess I didn’t stop to think about it.”
“You knew all along what you were doing. Trust me, you’re getting cold feet, that’s it.”
Stone stares at the wooden boards on the floor, then at the ceiling tiles, then at the window frame, looking for some place that will swallow him, a crack in which to hide forever. The shivers that run through his spine itch ever more painfully.
“We may have just helped start a war, Furlough, don’t you realize?!”
“So what? Let them have their war, we can be anywhere we damn please.”
The silence. The world standing still, but the air noticeably heavier. From this day onwards, life becomes an eternal wait for punishment, a violent reflux burning on his throat every time a dead body drops to the ground in a faraway corner of the globe.
“How can you…?!” the man tries to push words through his hyperventilated breath. “How can you be fine with watching the world burn and knowing you contributed to the cause?”
“Bullshit, there is no world!” the old man groans. “That’s just some marketing ploy they feed you. There’s a ton of worlds, more than seven billion of them, and they only find out about each other when they collide.”
The old man stares at the skyline, isolated windows lit up on downtown’s facades like glimmering bubbles floating in the dark, separated with a chasm of nothingness. They appear and disappear, the bubbles, tiptoeing around but never quite aware of each other. Below them, smaller, more diffuse lights dash across the ground. They lit up the void around them, those meteors, coming from nowhere, heading to where they came from.
“You have a wife, Furlough. Two kids. Right now they are in danger. We all are. And you just endangered their lives even more for a quick buck.”
Those last words find the crimson, furious gaze of Furlough. Soles creaking on the wood, the old man’s bloodshot eyes shoot straight at his peer, the palm of his frozen hand pressing down on his shoulder like packed dirt on a coffin.
“And you just happened to stumble upon us, right? And where I take MY wife and MY kids is my business. You wanna make the world a better place? I suggest you go home to yours.”
Furlough opens his suitcase and begins cramming papers into it. The hours have eaten into his limbs, his body dragging the weight of somnolence, coffee staining his teeth. Only for a second do Stone’s resentful eyes unglue from Furlough’s figure, his body still shaking, to catch the glimpse of a stack of papers stranded on the oak table, before being rescued by the old man’s shaky hand.
“What’s with all the nuclear protocols?” a beaten voice inquires.
Furlough zips his suitcase and marches towards the door.
“You know, Uncle Sam pays far less attention to these than they should. Some of them we have just sitting around, collecting dust, everyone who was aware of their location is now dead or in a retirement home.” he grins. “They are not my problem now.”
Stone’s face contorts into disgust as his body is ejected from a chair. The shaking, he can’t stand it anymore. ‘What have you done?!’ ‘Look at that line you just crossed, there’s no turning back.’ yells the wood when pressed by his soles. He catches the old man just as he is engulfed by the darkness behind the threshold.
“Did you sell these guys a fucking nuke?!” he asks, trembling voice emphasizing each syllable, every vein bulging with fear, a collapsing nervous system sending earthquakes everywhere.
Only silence responds.
“We never discussed this, ever!”
“That’s a personal matter between me and Farook.” Furlough turns around, his large frame blocking the passage, sober eyes towering above Stone. “And if it hadn’t been me, someone else would have. You see, Stone, things find a way to happen and there is nothing you can do about it. You can only relish in that chaos, or perish in it. So go get some sleep, Stone, tomorrow will be a new day for you.” his presidential tone breaks into a hoarse grunt. “And remember, if you or any of the others say one word-“
And then the punch lands on his nose. The shaky hand tries to keep the fist in place before an arm of stone sends its owner flying back into a window. Snapping bones scream. Blood cascades down the old man’s lips, droplets tainting the ground with each step. The suitcase falls to the floor.
-
Davey now prances around the empty, mysteriously lit room, armed to the teeth.
A regular household cleaner, even a wood one, will leave behind a layer of oil and may completely spoil the oak. A proper moisturizer needs to be applied with a soft cotton cloth. So glistening, the oak! Davey could almost practice speeches on its surface.
The chairs need to be laid on the table. Three on each side, one in each head, and the remaining four against the wall, on the upper left corner so they don’t interrupt the circulation. How much extra effort could it be for everyone to push their own chairs back into place?
A window cleaner will sweep through the glass and those pesky stains will vanish. The filthy coffee mugs that stand on the minibar counter will be caressed back to whiteness, bathed in the baby pink Palmolive, which works best and always leaves the hands sensually soft. The cereal bar wrappers go in the green trashcan, the styrofoam salad trays go in the blue one, but not before the leftover Caesar dressing is washed away. Once again, the vacuum hums. Where the magic tornado touches down, the land becomes spotless. It shines like the crystalline windows and the immaculate oak table, the perfectly set chairs and the sparkly minibar counter where impeccable white coffee mugs and forks and knives and plastic spoons rest. What a perfectly innocuous land, just like god himself intended!
Then, as the lights are to come down, Davey notices the grisly scene, the most traumatizing event a man can witness! The blood gushes out of a semi-unconscious body, pounded by an irate beast, devoid of all sense. Good lord, please stop! Stop, now!
“Ey man what the fuck?!” Davey yells in disgust.
Stone, kneeling over Furlough’s bloody, slumbering figure, raises his head alarmed, shaking to the core. Both men face each other. Again, only silence dares utter an accusation over both of their rising heartbeats.
“I…. I…. I wa…wa-“
“I just cleaned this whole room, and look at all the mess you’re making! All the blood, good fucking lord!” Davey grumbles, stomping on the wooden floor.
“Ho…How long have you been inside here?” Stone mutters in shock.
“Twenty minutes, man, and now I have to do it all over again. Do you care about anything other than yourself?!”
The mop comes down on the red floor. The window cleaner sprays on the glass. The cotton rug dashes across the sky, ungluing the crimson rain. They work in tandem, vowing to rid the world of the acts of the mad men, the selfish men, those who live their days sunk in a delirium that deceives them into thinking they can stomp on everyone else, that their will trounces all others across the universe.
A whistling version of the Macarena fills the room.
Stone stares at Furlough drifting in and out of consciousness, clinging to the light, paced by a sputtering cough. He then stares at the rug, circling the heavens, revealing once again the lit rooms of downtown, floating alone, just like this one room floats. The sun has began to bleach the sky a grayish dark blue, and with it rising over the solar system, all of the nights come to an end. The night men bled and bones snapped, the night money unleashed the blackest swirls of the soul, the night a war was born and the night the sky promised ten thousand radioactive tombstones would rain soon, the night hands were shaken and promises broken, the night the trash compactor broke.