Taking Out the Trash
Margo growled as her doorbell rang yet again.
She’d turned off her lights — as if those little assholes could get a clue — but every brat was trying their luck.
Like hell I’m missing my Deadpool marathon, leeches.
After six straight night shifts at Mercy Hospital, this was her one goddamn night off, and she’d been planning it for the last week: both Deadpool movies queued up, plus the new Deadpool/Wolverine flick, a bottle of Pinot Grigio chilling, her favorite merc-with-a-mouth pajama top ready for action, and her “special friend” fully charged. Ryan Reynolds’s spandex-clad ass wasn’t going to wait forever.
But first, she had to deal with Shadow’s mess.
Her black cat had developed a nasty habit of leaving special little care packages when her highness’s litter box was not to her liking. She woke up last week to a warm turd rolling down her pillowcase at 3 AM, coming to rest with a squelch against her cheek like a slimy Tootsie Roll.
And the smug bitch had just sat there, purring.
Stepping outside onto her back porch, hefting a bag of Shadow’s special deliveries, another chorus of “TRICK OR TREAT!” erupted from the neighbor’s house from a group of Disney fanatics.
Getting closer.
“What’s even the point?” she muttered to herself. Every Value Mart, Costco, and Walmart has the exact same candy rotting on their shelves. But noooo. Gotta drag the brats door-to-door so Mommy and Daddy can get their precious Instagram moments. Gotta document every gap-toothed smile like it’s something special. How many fucking Elsas does the world need?
Motion lights sputtered on — click-click-buzzzzz — casting wild shadows across her backyard.
“Just wait till tomorrow like I do,” she continued to herself. “Everything’s half-off at Target. But that’s not good enough! Karen and Chad need their precious pics of little Madison’s little costume. God forbid, if she wears the same freaking Disney princess outfit as the other twenty basic little bitches on this block.”
Reaching the bin at the back of her yard, she shifted the bag of cat shit to her other hand and grabbed the bin’s handle. Another wave of children’s screams echoed between the houses. Her fingers tensed against the cold plastic. Something about their shrill voices made her skin prickle.
She opened the lid.
A smell rolled out that made her gag reflex kick into overtime — not the usual sickly sweet stench of discarded chicken parts mixed with the acrid smell of week-old used kitty litter, but something… older. Like meat left to spoil in a tomb, mixed with the copper-penny reek of old blood.
Strange. Didn’t the garbage get picked up this morning?
She tossed in the bag of poop and it hit something solid, up close, where there should have been nothing but empty bin. It made a splatch sound instead of the deep, hollow thump she expected.
That’s when she knew — she knew she wasn’t alone.
What grabbed her arm felt like wet velvet peeling away from something solid beneath, each point of contact leaving pinpricks of ice in her skin. It pulled her into the dark with the confident strength of something that had never once known a prey to escape.
Her cry rang out briefly but sharply, but another wave of “TRICK OR TREAT!” from her front door drowned it out.
The lid slammed shut above her.
Down the street, kids raced from door to door, plastic pumpkins swinging, costumes becoming slowly discarded and forgotten, while their parents filmed every moment on their phones. No one heard the crunching sounds coming from Margo’s trash bin.
They did, however, notice two days later when the neighborhood kids started disappearing, one by one.
