Trash bags
There was a bus stop post just across the street. Abandoned now. Whenever I raised my head from my desk looking out of my window, I could see that rustic post with a faded crimson board on top. No bus lines ever used it though. If any use has been left assigned to this post, it was now the home of three pile of trash bags.
Three big, black trash bags fully bloated with I didn’t know what. Tied on top of one of them was a denim-colored rug. It flexed itself proudly like a banner with occasional breezes, but spinelessly rested on the bag otherwise.
As far back as me moving in the summer, the bags were there. I frowned upon it because it was not a good sight. If I walked outside my building getting ready for a day of tired work, I would want to see a bustling and energetic city to buff me up. Anything but those abandoned, unwanted trash bags. If I became exhausted from my work at home and wanted to glance outside for a moment of relaxation, I would want to see the tranquilizing scenery of a clear sky and wavy terrains of this corner of the nation. Not three pile of trash bags whose smell I could imagine from up here in my room.
Weird thing was, nobody seemed to care about them. Even they blocked almost the entire sidewalk, nobody ever bothered to get rid of them. I even saw the landlord’s car parked right next to it. Several times. No, they were still there. An even weirder thing was, I forgot about them since…when?
Gradually I just got used to seeing them. I didn’t know when did that happen. The bags now felt natural to be lying around under the abandoned bus stop post. They seemed fit with each other. They seemed blended into this lane, this neighborhood.
Sometimes I couldn’t help but hold back my curiosity. What could possibly be inside of those bags, if even the landlord allowed them? The bags honestly didn’t give out much smell, which was strange. The trash bin, emptied every week, smelled like hell. What was contained in those three bags must’ve been rotten for decades, but no, it didn’t smell.
Sometimes I would get so invested into this intellectual endeavor so much that I would think about this while walking past multiple crossroads. As usual, there was a man begging for work there. He looked like a broken doll with cotton brutally stripped away from within. He would rest his back against a bus stop post, curl his body to get warmer, and feel safer I guess, and drop his head between his legs. His legs would bent for his thighs to support the dead-still chest. He would fully cover his head with a hood, and I couldn’t even see his face. Between the tip of his hood and his toes were a wide cardboard covering the entire front of his body like a shield. Not many letters were written on it: “Willing to work. ANY.”
He sheltered himself behind that board so well that I never knew what he looked like or how tall he was. Nobody took interest in him. I had at the first a couple of weeks, but then lost it and simply treated him as part of it. Part of the crossroad, part of this neighborhood, part of this city. Just like the three trash bags. They were simply there. They had to be placed somewhere, because they were existing, and they happened to choose to reside themselves there. The trash bags, under the abandoned bus post, and the man, the active bus post.
He had a cart loaded with rugs and whatnot. When he was at the bus post, he would left the cart behind a WWII memorial on the side of the crossroad. I would assume he brought the cart with him to some proper shelter at nights, because when I came home late, he was not on the streets. Last night I heard scratching and rustling noises. I thought it might be roaches or other pests in the wall. I looked outside and saw the first snow of this year was hitting my windows. Wind was blowing heavy outside, which would explain the noises. It was cold in the room, so I retreated to the warmth of darkness under my bed sheets back again.
Next morning when I walked outside for work, there was a trash truck parked under the abandoned post. A guy was loading stuff into it. He was getting rid of the trash bags, I happily thought, until I observed that revealed under the pitch-dark plastic veil was that cart and its owner, as ice cold as the cart itself.
*Note: All characters, including the main voice ‘I’, appeared in this fictional story, as well as their names, personal views, experiences, and everything about them, were purely made up.