Chapter 2 – The Garbage Man Cometh
Istare at the glowing man, this thing, as he crawls out of the bin. His hands are on the floor, and his legs slink out from the bin. He stands up only to sit back down on the bin lid; one leg crossed over the other.
I brandish the mop and hold my ground. The man looks between me and it. His eyes then fall on me, and he gives me a look as if I’m the weird one in this situation.
“Alright,” I say, heart thundering through my ears. “I’m going to repeat my last question. What the actual fuck?”
He tilts his head, and he has a look on his face like he’s thinking. He’s considering something, but what?
“Would you like the short answer or the long one?”
“Short.” I respond way too fast without even considering what the short could be.
“I live here.” He gestures at the bin under him and smirks. “Next question.”
I blink.
“You live–OK, no, that’s not–” I push up my glasses and pinch the bridge of my nose, exhaling through my teeth. “What are you?”
Another smirk. “What do I look like?”
A homeless contortionist… I wanted to say. But I know not to judge someone based on their looks. Even if he is a ghost in a bin from god only knows what decade.
So instead of looking him dead in the eyes, I offer him the only thing I can think to say. “A fucking problem.”
He lets out a low, amused hum, and then a chuckle. “That’s unfair.”
I look to him, and the emergency exit off to the side. I should leave.
This is obviously an overworked, exhaustion-induced hallucination. Maybe I had slipped in a puddle and bumped my head, and knowing my luck it was cleaning fluid and I’m currently unconsciously inhaling the fumes. Decaying. My brain finally melted. Maybe all of this is a dream.
It’s the only plausible explanation. But dream-me would not be this aware of the fact that he is shirtless under that ragged coat. I bet his arms are lean, strong, smeared with faint streaks of grime, like he’s been digging through the city itself.
I feel a bead of sweat run down my neck. God. Even now, my curse is trying to sabotage me.
He notices me staring. Then he flashes a big, toothy grin. “You’re looking at me like I’m the filthiest thing you’ve ever seen.” And I can tell he’s saying filthy as if it’s synonymous with sexy.
I don’t play into it. “That’s because you literally crawled out of a bin.
” I point to the bin under him, which he responds by uncrossing his legs.
As they uncross, his quads and calves tense and flex–I do my best to ignore it.
Maybe it is just a trick of the light? Nope.
The sheen of bin juice shimmered over them and caught every ripple of muscle.
I breathe slowly, trying to maintain composure.
He hums again, smiling to himself like it isn’t an insult. “And yet, you can’t seem to look away.”
I scowl. Heat creeps up my neck, and I adjust my collar. “That’s…got nothing to do with you. It’s a–” I clamp my mouth shut. Nope. I am not explaining my humiliating personal hell to a bin ghost.
But his grin stretches; it’s wicked and all-knowing. I gulp, wanting to wipe the sweat from my brow.
“Oh!” he says, eyes glinting with realisation and something else–delight, maybe? “You’re that guy!”
I take a step back, mop still in my hand but now by my side. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? What guy?”
He stands now, half of his body phasing through the top of the bin.
I hadn’t realised how much of his torso had been hidden while he sat hunched over with a flannel shirt–now that he’s vertical, I can see more of him.
So much more of him. I avert my eyes–the last thing I need is my dick to get hard right now, and given there’s a gorgeous man covered in trash in front of me? I’m struggling.
“You’re that guy who gets hard over garbage.” He says garbage long and seductively and then leans forward to inspect me. “I thought you were a rumour, a myth. The janitor who gets turned on by trash.”
My stomach drops, and my blood runs ice cold. This is so humiliating. Who is talking about me? Why? Surely the entire non-human community has other, stranger, better things to gossip about. The idea that my name being thrown around in this manner now makes me feel sick.
He laughs. It’s a friendly laugh. Which somehow makes this worse. “Relax. I don’t judge. I mean, we all have our weird little habits.”
Habit. The word pricks up my ears, and something intense runs in my blood. Anger, and maybe a little indignation.
“This isn’t a habit. You think I willingly want to jerk it to food scraps and empty coffee cups?” I’m conflicted.
As far as he knows, how I feel about trash is my choice. A kink. It’s not. I am fighting the urge not to blurt it out, but I am losing the battle between my arousal and the truth.
“I’m cursed–” The words fall out of my mouth faster than I can stop myself. I snap my mouth shut.
But it’s too late. His expression sharpens, intrigued. “Oh?” he goes to continue, but whatever words he had formed die on his tongue as his eyes land down at my waist.
I follow his line of sight and can see, and feel, that I am rock hard. The tension pulses against the material of my janitor overalls. As if one flex would rip a hole through it.
Shit!
I try to hide it with the broom, but, well… the handle is definitely not adequate. Like a strand of hay blocking a power pole.
His grin stretches wider, staring at my bulging crotch as I stand there blushing. “Now that is interesting.”
I stand frozen, my face in flames. Despite my embarrassment, my dick seems to have a mind of its own; in fact, it seems to only get harder with each passing second.
His grin stretches wider, sharp canine teeth peeking out like he’s just been handed the most interesting piece of gossip.
He phases through the bin entirely, sits back down on the lid and looks me up and down, and the way his eyes trail over me, it’s like he sees me as this fascinating puzzle he needs to put together.
The non-cursed me would be freaked out and already running away.
But my cursed form is pulling me to him like a magnet.
I am in a tug of war between what is right, what is decent, and wanting to fuck the shit out of this trash ghost. Which wouldn’t be decent.
But it would be a good time and exactly what my dick was begging for as it flexed again.
“You weren’t kidding,” he murmurs. I hate how pleased he sounds. “That’s quite the… err, reaction.”
My pulse is fast; it thumps in my ears like a drumbeat. And my dick flexes with desire, begging me to relieve it. I push away the thought, but that seems to make it ache more. The fucking thing has a mind of its own!
He moves closer. I say, “Don’t,” but it’s quieter than I intend.
“Don’t what?” his voice drips with amusement. “I’m just standing here, minding my business. You’re the one getting worked up over a trashcan.” He points between his legs.
I catch myself licking my lips. I stop and let out a heavy breath. He looks back up at me.
“Kinda seems like a you problem.”
I’m sweating. I clench my jaw, gripping the broom tight like it might save me from this train-wreck of a shift. “This–this isn’t–”
His bright amber eyes gleam at me. “You said it was a curse.”
The rest of my body stiffens now. “So what if I did?”
He hums, tilting his head. He’s studying me, and I feel like I’m under a microscope. “Then I have bad news for you, Janitor Boy.”
Before I can tell him not to call me that, my name badge is right there, he walks forward and leans in.
His voice drops to something almost intimate.
“Curses don’t just happen.” He phases his hand through my overalls at the waist and runs his fingers up.
I look down but can’t feel his fingers, but I can feel a sensation like an echo of wet silk dragging along my skin.
Mixed with his pungent yet sweet odour of rotting banana and used tea bags, mixed with a less discernible odour of leather and sweat that fills my nostrils, my balls tighten into my stomach and the head of my cock swells.
“They come with conditions.” He continues. And I wish he wouldn’t. The longer I stand here, smelling him, looking at the bits of his glistening body I can see peeking out under that coat, the more I just want to pull my cock out of my janitor suit and cover the walls in cum.
“There are rules. A trigger. There are loopholes too.” He pauses and watches my face carefully. I perk up at the loophole, and he seems to notice that. He’s testing a theory. “Something tells me you’ve never tried to break it… properly.”
My breath catches. I have tried. Five years of searching. Wasting money on fraud mystics, combing through cursed forums, getting laughed out of bogus magic shops for asking if they could fix me. Every single one told me the same thing: There’s nothing to be done. No cure. No solution.
He watches me, and the realisation hits me; his smirk, the look on his face, it’s not judgement, it’s recognition. Understanding. We both know what the other is thinking. He knows I am cursed, because he must be too. No ghost just dwells in a bin, even in this supernatural-friendly world.
“Yeah,” he says, smug. “That’s what I thought.”
I blink. Just before the curse settles in on me, I come to my senses. This is a freaking ghost, not just something my curse deems as an object of lust manifested. Ghosts are horrifying things, and as that thought fills my brain, my fight–or–flight instinct kicks in.
Fight? Not an option. I have never laid a hand on another man, let alone kissed one or slept with one, since the curse. So that leaves me with the other option.
Flight. Yes. That! AND NOW!
I drop the mop and spin on my heel. I rip the door open behind me and flee down the hallway, turning immediately left, not worrying about the concerned looks on the faces of lawyers as I sprint past them.
“Hey!” his voice is distant, but I can hear him call after me. It’s rich in laughter. “Running won’t fix your trash problem, handsome!”
I just run. My feet take me out of the building through the fire escape; I’m on the street, and everything’s too much. I duck into an alleyway nearby and catch my breath, my chest heaving as I lean against the brick wall, the cool air outside calming my nervous system.
Whatever this bin–haunting bastard had planned, the non-cursed part of me didn’t want to wait around and find out. What would people say next? He’s moved from trash to ghosts. I couldn’t bear the embarrassment.