The Binman Cometh
In which John leaves his door open when he takes the bins out. You never know what might pop its head in to say hello.
‘Can you let go of my hand? I wanna turn over,’ Helena asked.
John, facing away from his wife, wrinkled in confusion. Half-asleep, awash in the thick blackness of night, he drummed his fingers—all ten—on the pillow he hugged.
‘Let go of what? Fuck sake I was almost asleep, babe.’
Helena’s hand crunched as her fingers concertinaed to the music of hellish screams.
John had felt the force. He had exerted it. This was a nightmare—fiction wrought in the spaces between. But he still had his headache he went to bed with and he could smell the drool-stained pillowcase that he had been too lazy to change.
He sat bolt upright and clumsily turned the bedside lamp on. All the while Helena kept screaming.
Drenched in panic, John ripped the duvet away to see the mangled debris of splayed fingers that looked as if they had all received separate instruction on how to exist. Impossible angles and multiple protrusions of bone that defied belief.
Yet there they were.
‘What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?’
A question in triplicate received an answer most singular.
‘You fucking crushed my hand, psycho.’
John offered both his forward, stopping just short of jazz hands to illustrate their innocence.
But then there came a tap on the headboard. Varnished wood with a plush inlay, all very technical, John just let Helena do whatever in the bedroom. Not like that—furnishing and such.
There was a lump in his back and the tapping continued.
‘John, what the hell is that on your back?’
His eyes went as wide as his wife’s hand had gone narrow; reaching behind, it was a peculiar experience to shake your own hand. A third hand. One that emerged at the wrist from the fatty deposits of his back, central, flanked either side by his love-handles.
John jumped up out of bed. Helena’s screaming had stopped momentarily but as John whirled on the carpet, it returned. The hand was making clawing gestures, trying to snap onto anything it could. John kept trying to slap at it like a forgotten secret handshake.
In the corner of the room a figure cloaked in bin bags slow-clapped. That such a being wasn’t the most disconcerting element of the evening was testament to how fucking weird it is to have a hand emerging from your lumbar.
A plastic jaw stretched into a bottle-cap grin, sticky eyes unpeeled with strands of gloop hanging from each lid. It brought a bony hand to its chin—chicken wing and wishbone fingers caressing its face. Then it spoke.
‘John, we need to talk about your beliefs. Good evening, Helena. Terribly sorry about the hand. There’s some ibuprofen on your bedside table. Would you like me to administer some?’
They both looked at the figure, mouths open, heads cocked.
It nodded and made for the bedside table. Helena recoiled but the figure cooed at her in the way one would with a cat. He popped two tablets into his carcass hand and offered them to her.
‘I don’t have any water, but I could provide some of the juice that floats around me?’
She said nothing. John still hadn’t moved. He found some words, though.
‘What are you?’
‘The Binman.’
‘Right, no. I don’t care. Why have I got a third hand growing out of my back?’
‘Because you don’t care where things go, John.’
Helena, clutching her ex-hand, gave the slightest nod at that.
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Glass, food waste, cardboard and bottles. You plonk them all in the same bin.’
‘Are you talking about recycling?’
‘Your hand.’ He pointed to Helena. ‘I’ve recycled it. It now juts its way out of your husband’s fat back.’
‘How are you doing this?’
‘Because you let me in. You asked for help.’
John found himself taking a seat on the bed now. The recycled hand was prodding him every so often.
‘John, yesterday you took the bins out, did you not?’
‘I did.’
‘You left the door open, yes?’
‘Two for two.’
‘And you muttered something most foul, well to me anyway, under your breath as you slopped your refuse into any old bin. Do you remember?’
‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘What did you say, John?’ Helena threw a pillow at him with her one good hand.
The Binman gestured for John to spit it out as he himself spat out a wad of old toilet tissue. It squelched onto the carpet, yellow and phlegmy.
John pinched his nose as his back-hand did similar on an inch of fat.
‘That recycling is a myth propagated by the new world order to keep us subservient and guilty about our existence. That it all ends up on the same scrap heap and why should I do it when billionaires fly around in private planes willy-nilly and big corporations choke our seas with oil and filth. That I wanted someone to sit me down and explain—no, show me why it’s so fucking vital that I get all my plastics and cardboards and condoms and soup cans in the right containers. Oh and that I’m pretty certain my wife is having an affair with Trevor down the road.’
When the Binman spoke again the undercurrent of malevolence was stronger.
‘Well, I aim to please. Helena learns a lesson about straying. And I hope you see the impact if people just started discarding things any old place.’
‘Trevor?’ Helena said.
‘Quite. John had no idea it was actually Gary,’ the Binman laughed.
‘Fuck me, you recycling the whole street?’ John was incredulous.
‘I’m not the wanker with the hand coming out of his back. Why’d you leave the fucking door open anyway? I always say any old prick can walk in off the street.’
‘I’m out there for like thirty seconds. What old prick is going to walk in? Gary?’
‘That’s unfair he’s only a few years older than you. And you spend thirty seconds because you don’t do the recycling properly.’
‘Longer than other things, isn’t it, Helena?’ The Binman offered her chicken-boned high-five.
‘I can’t believe this,’ John said to himself.
‘That’s why you’ve got the reminder on your back. To pinch yourself! Right then, I’m off. Best of luck with everything.’
The Binman disappeared in a miasma of funk and decay, leaving nothing but puddles of garbage juice and husks of corn on the cob where he had stood.
Helena got up, presumably to get dressed to go to hospital.
‘Shame, he should have recycled your dick onto your forehead.’
John’s third hand gave her the middle finger behind his back.
