Page 16 of Can't Refuse Him
I laughed. I shouldn’t have. He never liked it when I laughed at him.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
I couldn’t control it anymore. All the years of being used and abused. Laughed and spat at, discarded. I had enough. I didn’t care anymore.
“The fact that you are running away with your fake fiancée, when you are nothing but a closeted fag who loves to use weaker guys as your personal cumdumps.” I couldn’t stop myself. It was word vomit. “Come out already, Mark, maybe you’ll finally be happy for once in your life.” I make to turn, and I am pulled backwards and spun back around. My heart fluttered. He was choosing me. Then it sunk in a crushing defeat.
The first hit was an open-handed slap. It was a warning, but I couldn’t register it. Mark was strong, and he liked it rough. He didn’t know his own strength, which made him dangerous.I knew this in getting with him but never thought he would actually be this level of dangerous.
Violent.
I was seeing stars. Dazed, I stumbled back and fell over into the dirt. I don’t know how long I lay there. But it didn’t matter.
The second hit was a rage kick to my stomach. The steel cap made the blow hurt so much more. Then another and another round of more. I tasted blood as I tried to fold in half and protect myself.
I don’t even remember the last hit. I just know it was enough to have the lights turn out.
When I woke up, I was in a bin.
Not metaphorically. It was a literal dumpster behind the service station. I lived nearby. I must have been thrown in - my body had crumbled between milk crates and split rubbish bags. There was rotting, soaked cardboard on top of me.
I don’t know how long I lay there. Maybe hours. Potentially days. I remembered seeing the sky change colour a few times between the gaps in the cardboard. I tried to call out. Tried to scream. He must have also stepped on my throat, because nothing came out but a muffled, unintelligible cry.
So, I lay there. Probably bleeding internally, aching beyond belief. Praying that if this was how I was to die, someone would at least find me and pull me out before my body rotted away.
Then I slipped away.
Deep into the abyss as my brain and other organs finally gave up. As did my soul.Theyhad won.Theyhad defeated me.
Trashwas taken out. Mark finally got what he wanted out of me and left me there in the bin, discarded.
Dying was also the weirdest experience I have had.
There was no bright light. No voice from above. No montage of childhood memories. Just stillness as my lungs collapsed from the weight of the rubbish. As the final breath escaped my lips, all I could remember was… I wish I had loved myself more. Found my mother and forgave her. Then… I rotted away. I becameonewith the rot and trash. I guess trash is what I deserved to become.
Chapter 9–Reborn
When I awoke again, I wasn’t me anymore. There was no pulse. I did not need to breathe. And my body was transparent. I held a hand up and could see the trash underneath it.
Somehow, I was still here but now sitting upright in the same bin. My knees to my chest, surrounded by trash that whispered in my ears.
All the discards of life spoke to me, and their voices were loud. A banana peel told me about its missing innards. A receipt sobbed about being torn in half. And a cigarette butt begged me to suck on it with my sweet lips.
The bin itself? My last resting spot?
It was a casket that cradled my spirit–and all these other spirits–in the living world.
Humans would pass by and offload more trash into the dumpster. I recognised them, but they could not see me or even hear me.
At first, I thought I had gone mad. Maybe I had. The first time the rubbish truck came, I was picked up and collected. Buta few hours after, I would fall asleep and would wake back up in the bin. I was trapped here. And it felt like forever.
Over time, days, weeks, months I managed to hold on to things within the bin and not allow them to be emptied with the rest of the trash. More discarded souls joined us along the way and told me all about how wondrous it was living in the afterlife.
“You weren’t discarded!” a Q-tip said. It was covered in earwax and some red liquid…probably blood. “You were merely transformed. This was a metamorphosis! A spiritual transition.”
“What am I? A ghostly butterfly?” I looked at it and was reminded of the newly added message on Q-tip packaging about not inserting them into the ear canal. Had this one been used and gone too far into someone's ear?
Another voice spoke, and I turned. “No, he’s a Grouch! A Bin-Spirit!” A mouldy ham baguette inside of a takeaway coffee cup said.
