Beep beep beep...

Piercing, really. Feels like someone's stuck needles in my ears and is turning them slowly, hard against my eardrums.

...this vehicle is reversing. Please stand clear...

Jesus, it stinks too. Rotten food, old beer, dead things; things that should be dead anyway. And I'm not in a bed, though I might wish I was. It's uneven and hard edges are poking into my back, whereas other places the ground feels soft. My left hand is lying against something slimy and cold. I open my eyes and squint into the bright grey above me just as the world begins to move.

It's moving, sliding, carrying me with it. The stink gets worse and seabirds are screaming overhead. I'm rolled over, battered by falling objects, cans, cardboard, glass bottles. They shift with me and over me, dropping like rain.

What am I doing!

I'm just lying and waiting to be buried is what. Is that what I want? Really? My arms and legs don't feel like my own. I'm like a puppet, poor Pinocchio, clumsy and wooden, moving in fits.

My efforts don't accomplish much. Something soft and foul lands with a squelch on my face and I'm retching with the taste of it, truly panicking now, thrashing about like a fish out of water. The slice of sky where the seabirds swoop and shriek is growing narrower second by second.

I struggle and kick, moving through the shifting piles of crap, the everyday leavings, the scraps, the trash. My foot meets something hard enough to give me purchase and I fight my way free, shaking and sick, my nose and my mouth full of the nastiest taste imaginable.

I add a little something extra to the heaps. Can't make the smell any worse, but the birds chatter and cackle at me, scold me for spoiling their lunch. Then I'm wiping my mouth and staring blearily at the landfill and a truck that winds it's way back along the lanes like dirty rivers that curl around the island mountains of garbage.

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Main character starts off thinking he is dead. The question is, is he? He has no memory currently, is gradually becoming aware of sensations, but has no idea on exactly where he is, or how he got there.

updated Oct 1, 2008 by andrew180977