Chapter 16 – Vanish Into You
Eddy's massive figure had just crashed through the window, and I followed, leaping out and landing with a wet thud, avoiding the jagged glass sticking up.
As I check my shoes for glass shards, I feel my heart race.
I snap around and listen out, trying to hear him through the pouring rain and clapping thunder.
I was now in a part of the alley I hadn't seen before, further back and next to the building, behind Graves I don’t want to startle him, not when I am so close to breaking my curse.
Slowing down even further to a silent creep like I was a burglar from the Sims, the cold, wet night air pooled around me. Nearby, I catch a whiff of the smell of the big garbage bins, my brain almost short circuiting but I shake my head and do my best to keep my focus on finding Eddy.
The Bin-Monster Eddy recoils back as he sees me.
I pull out my phone and ignite the backlight, slowly shining it along the ground towards his feet.
Mouldy shadows ooze from his joints. Dripping gunk pools beneath his claws.
I drag the light up and see that the skin and musculature of his limbs are elongated, twisted, patchwork from a hundred different unloved, untouched things.
His torso is now covered in what appears to be some sort of warped wheelie bin.
Discarded objects cling to his body: banana peels, cartons of milk, newspapers from over forty-six years ago, and more.
On his head, a crown made from coffee cup lids.
In full view, I can now see his transformation had completed, and he hunched like a crumpled aluminium can.
He had sharp fangs, and black ooze spewed out.
Through his teeth, he shot a globule of ooze and then hissed.
It was a warning not to approach. But I didn’t care.
I see through this form. I see him. Eddy.
The man I have fallen for in ways I cannot describe in words, but my cock did it’s very best to translate them when I am around him.
I am aroused emotionally and physically.
Spiritually as well. He is still a ghost made of trash, after all. My perfect man.
“Eddy…” I whisper gently.
He lets out a low, wet, defensive snarl. It was painful to listen to and he backs further into the shadows, trying to shield away from me, but he knocks over a precariously placed wooden pallet that had not yet made its way into the recycling. The noise echoes through the back alley.
I then just had a thought. If this is the same building, then the original bin Eddy died in… It’s now long gone. Replaced. It’s been so long since the 70’s. Which means… Eddy doesn’t have a true place to call home. His death site is gone.
Even though I know the owners would not have known about Eddy, I want nothing but to find the owners and punch them. Make them hurt for stranding Eddy, leaving him feeling discarded and abandoned once again. But I know this isn’t the answer.
Eddy doesn’t need more violence. He needs love. Connection. Safety. He needs… me.
“I’m not afraid of you.” I say to him, reaching out a hand.
He hisses once more, but it is softer this time. One clawed hand curls over his chest as if he is trying to hold himself together. ‘Goo’ drips from his fingertips.
I shuffle my feet closer. One step. Another.
The closer I get to him, the more I can see what’s hiding behind his eyes. Behind the sludge. The gnarly fangs. The wheelie bin outer shell, harbouring his inner spirit and keeping it protected within. His broken soul begging for someone to love him.
But there, underneath it all, is Eddy. The tenderness. His cheek. His hurt. And the most important thing about him—his hope.
As I speak, my voice is shaking. I wasn’t scared.
But I was worried he wouldn’t come out of this form, that he couldn’t see me anymore.
That he can’t feel the connection between us.
“You’re not trash. You never were.” He shifts like a disgruntled teen.
“You were just… lost. Looking for someone to connect with. To be with. For someone to actually see you for you. To hold you safe in a world that didn’t give a damn. ”
He trembles.
“I see you now, and all I know is, I want to be that someone for you.”
The Grouch's monstrous form quivers, spasms—like it doesn’t know whether to collapse or run.
I step into a puddle, but I don’t care. I approach slowly, carefully. Like coaxing a wounded animal to be rescued.
“I could be that for you,” I say, my voice barely above a mutter. “I could be the one who keeps you safe. Who doesn’t run from you. Who doesn’t dispose of you like trash.”
Eddy stares at me. His eyes shift. They return to their normal amber colour.
I smile at him. He was still in there.
His body jerks once, like he just hiccuped. The storm’s even subsiding–the hard rain simmering to a gentle pitter-patter.
And then, along with a guttural sound like a sob torn from a drainpipe, he steps forward, the wood pallet crunching under his claw feet and falls into my arms.
Black sludge smears across my singlet, some dripping onto my half-worn janitor outfit. His form is still radiating heat, rot and grief. But his hands—claws—cling to me like I am the first loving thing he’s felt in years.
I hold him tighter.
“You don’t scare me,” I murmur. “Not even like this.”
The Grouch whimpers… “Oscar.”
The sludge pooling beneath Eddy’s monstrous form evaporates, curling upward like steam. His jagged silhouette trembles, then softens, as if the truth of my words were reshaping him from the inside out. I stroke his face and push his hair out of his eyes.
“You are beautiful.”
“No,” Eddy murmurs, voice garbled. “No…don’t.”
But he’s already changing.
The twisted claws recede. His gnarly limbs shrink back into something human. The bin-rot stink fades into warm petrichor and ozone. And then… light blinds me as I hold him.
Bright, chartreuse, and strange. Eddy’s body gleams. Translucent, fracturing into stardust at the edges.
His time was ending. With me, fleeting.
I clutch his fading hand. “Don’t go. I need you.”
He looks at me with tears in his eyes, but they weren’t sad. He was happy. “I wasn’t supposed to find peace.
“But you did.”
Eddy’s lip quivers. “Because of you.”
I don’t know what to say. So, I say nothing. I just lean forward, breathing him in, holding on to every second I have left with him.
“Thank you for seeing my truth,” he breathes.
And then he kisses me.
Not with hunger, or haunt.
Not to enter my mind or stir buried memories.
Just to kiss me. Person to person. Man to Spirit.
And I kiss him back.
The shimmer brightens. He’s blinding, beautiful—and then the surrounding light dims.
He’s still here. Still him.
Just… real now. Solid. Warm. Human.
And then I understand. The curse broke.
His and mine.
He holds up his hands and twists them. “I am solid!” he lets out a laugh.
And I pull him closer to me, helping his stand and holding him in my arms, jumping ecstatically on the spot. “You’re alive again!” We both laughed and looked like saturated fools dancing behind a bin in the rain.
Eddy pulls back and looks at me. “Oscar, there is something I have wanted to do with you since we met.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“Sleep with me.”
My stomach flips. We’re hidden, out of sight, so it’s not exactly out of the question. And right now, all I want is to hold every inch of him, anyway. But… “We can go back inside and—”
“No!” His voice is urgent, and it catches me off guard. “Let’s do it here.” He turns and looks at the pallet on the ground and the cardboard poking out of the nearby bin.
Our eyes meet, and we both have the same idea.
Beneath the moon and now completely calm sky, with trembling hands and hearts too full to speak, we undress one another, not with urgency, but admiration. Skin against skin. One man’s trash is now my treasure.
His skin no longer flickers with bin-static or clings to shadows.
His eyes are wide and alive, a kaleidoscope of memory and hope.
I cup his cheek. It’s the first time I’ve touched him without slime, without grime, without the stench of death between us.
And he leans into it like he’s been waiting his whole afterlife for something that simple.
“I think your curse is broken,” I breathe.
Eddy nod. “Yours too.”
He looks down at our hands, our interlaced fingers. “Do you still want me?”
I don’t answer in words. I kiss him again. Slower this time to get to know the shape of him. The taste of what had once been grief that had now been rewritten as grace.
He gasps against my mouth in what I figure is a surprise. From what I know about him, I don’t think anyone has ever kissed him like that.
I guide him gently to the cardboard we laid on the pallet behind the bin; the ground is still sticky with phantom residue, but we don’t care. This isn’t about the setting. It’s about the feeling. The trust. The way his body arches into mine, seeking contact with devotion, not desperation.
My fingers trace him like a map.
I start at his ribs. Then, the curve of his hip, then up to a small scar beneath his collarbone. He flinches when I find it.
“You, ok?” I ask, pulling back my hand.