Short Story — You Can Tell A Person By Their Waste

You can tell a person by their waste. I’ve been doing this for near twenty years now and I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learnt; it’s that you can tell a person by what they throw away or shite out. I’m not joking you, I can tell you all kinds of things about a person from their waste. People think I’m crazy sometimes but swear down to the almighty it’s true. I’ll prove it to you, all you need is someone’s black binbag and I can psychoanalyze their character down to their political views and their bloody relationship with their mother, swear to god.
It’s a real art form too, not everyone can do it; but I have the special sight — the third eye I call it. It’s no mean feat but I have this special sight and it’s a real gift, swear to god. It’s something I’ve always kind of had though, this eye for people’s character — whether shit’s coming out their mouth when they’re speaking or the shit they throw away, I can get a handle on it real quick. A bullshit specialist. And you need to be a bullshit specialist in this world, “got to catch out the liars, got to catch out the cheats. Separate the waste and keep it off the streets”. That’s something I say to myself sometimes when I’m working, that little rhyme there, I probably say it to myself about twenty times in one day shift, I really do. I come up with all kinds of rhymes, I come up with them all myself too. Nobody knows I’m saying them in my head but I am, especially when I see one of those people who think they’re doing you a massive favour smiling at you or some shite when they’re putting out their bins just as we come by but in my head I look at them right in their stupid milky eyes and I think in my head something like “gotta catch the liars, gotta catch the cheats, separate the waste and keep it off the streets” or something even cleverer like “burn your waste, burn your dead, it’s all the same outside your head”. That’s only for when I’m properly feeling the power coursing in me though proper burning in my gut.
But it doesn’t matter anyway because I keep them in my head but they can tell when I look at them and I’m thinking it and their eyes grow and shrink in their head like a cartoon deer in a hunter’s sights. Then I laugh to myself as the van drives off but they don’t laugh back. Never seen one laugh back yet. They just look at me down the street.
People are always saying stuff like “I don’t get you, Harry” or sometimes when I tell a funny joke people just keep on talking like they haven’t heard me and sometimes I see one or two of their eyes flicker over in my direction but they still stay stock-still staring ahead at eachother and then they smile a few bits later because someone else has told a funny joke. I don’t mind though because I’ll tell them what I think and I’ll still them my funny jokes and maybe one day they’ll listen. But most of them won’t. Because they better do so too before the day comes when we’re all sorted out and it’s all over for good. We’ll see who’s laughing then. I won’t be laughing though I’ll just be feeling sorry for them as they get sorted away and I might give them a little sing-song “I told you so” but that will be all and then I’ll fold my arms and purse my lips and maybe raise an eyebrow or two while they get carted off to firey hell for all eternity. Amen.
But that will be all, I would never sin in such a way as to laugh at another’s misery — I will, of course, know inside my head that they deserve it but I will not make a big show of it and I will accept my salvation with open arms, open eyes and open mouth. Once that’s been granted me I will immediately forget about all the earth-demons and immediately begin to focus on the light and sounds and tastes engulfing my new rebirth into the eternal glory of heaven.
I’m a very religious person, extremely religious actually. I understand it better than anybody I’ve ever met. Better than anybody. You probably don’t believe me. But you should, for your own sake, because you’ll be sorry when the day comes if you didn’t. I say to a lot of people that it’s for their own sake but they don’t listen no matter how many times I repeat it to them. Eventually they just get all shifty-fingered and stop giving me the old straight-up gaze in the eye but I don’t care it won’t stop me because people only do that when they know that they’re wrong. When they’re scared of the truth that you’re telling them they try and scare me away with the whole shifty-look-oh-so-uncomfortable dance but I say no, not scaring me! And I push and I say to them I’m not scared of you, not today! And I push and I push and I say to them I’m not scared of you because I’m the bravest out of the two of us! I’m the only one not scared of the truth. I tell them that and I tell them that a good few times to hammer it into their stupid fucking skulls. But they are always too afraid of what I have to tell them. They think they’re scared of me but they’re scared of the truth behind what I say really. The day is coming, that is the truth, but they’re scared of it, and it’s so sad it saddens me so much that they’re scared. Scared of me. But I am the truth. People don’t understand that.
I’ve stopped trying to tell people direct to their face anymore. I’ve started hinting at it by other means, I use symbols now you see. Like when I was saying earlier about giving people that look with my eyes it gets the message across but in a way that they’ll listen to. People don’t care about anything you say if you don’t say it in the right way. People don’t hear you even if you’re telling the truth to them, especially if it’s the truth. Everything is in symbols, everything people do, symbols with their hands and faces and words, of course, are symbols too. Even the most basic forms of communication are symbols — and then people forget what it’s symbolizing. What you feel inside that the symbol is just an abstraction one-step removed from. So no wonder people don’t feel anything — no faith! They need to go back when they were a baby and feel the world, back to the sucking tasting world before there was sin. People need to taste the world and taste the truth not dance around in distracting symbols and gestures. Innocently tasting nothing but shitting out everything they use. That’s the biggest mistake everybody makes.
This morning I woke up and there was something different in the air, I could taste it. My eyelids were crusty and shut from sleep but the light crept through the window like long spindly fingers, God reaching down and saying “Wake up, Harry, breakfast is ready!” So I got up and shuffled down to the pan in the kitchen and fried some canned mackerel. I always fry my mackerel or whatever meat I’m eating and then I go stand by the kitchen window with my dish balanced on the tips of my fingers then with the other finger tips of the other hand I flick up the pieces into my mouth and see if I can bite though them with one go. I fry them a lot to make them extra crispy so when I bite through them it’s a satisfying crrrrrrunch. I do all this flicking, chomping and mashing while I watch the first commuters going to work. I live on the fourth floor of a flat block and from outside you might just be able to see my silhouette in my dark window but mainly the glare of the sun covers me. I can see everybody busy-buzzing below me. I chomp on my canned mackerel. I taste all the salty juices and oils and watch the hordes of people move like dark water toward the centre of the city. I feel a sense of tremendous calm in the morning, it’s my favourite time of day. If more people could see me there biting mackerel in two watching the crowds with oil all over my happy chin they wouldn’t say I’m uptight or say I need to relax. I’m happy up there, I really am.
We began the day and the truck came and picked me up from my front door. Something was different today, I could feel it. The truck whisked through the streets and I felt the wind across the hairs on the back of my hands. It was electric today and I didn’t know why, I felt my body blue and powerful in the cold morning sun. Bright white light pulsed from the orb beating in the sky — big ball of energy. I felt my heart beating with it too and I felt in sync like the noises of the street scene (rattling bin lids, wet footsteps, wind gusts around alley corners) all fell into a pattern like a steady drum beat from God’s pulsing white sun he gave us in the bright blue sky.
I always feel this way in the morning when I’m clutching white-knuckled onto the side of the van, when I don’t have to touch the street and mix with them. I just sail by like a ship through sirens. Can’t entice me with their crap; sugar-free-fully-lubricated-omega-3-for-his-and-her-pleasure-coca-cola-flavoured-protein-shaking-incontinence-inducing-panoramic-sound-brain-liquifier. It’s all around me and I look at all the people’s faces as they walk by and swivel back and forth between the forward position and the facing-the-shop position of their heads. They never turn to look into the street at me hanging like a sloth staring right at them with my third eye truth look .They’d be so shocked, I’d love to see the look on their little plastercine faces with their mouths in the shapes of little Os. I gotcha there didn’t I? Lord knows I did. He’s the only one who seems to know. ‘and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the lord Jesus will be revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution’.
We pushed on through the streets and I peeked out like a bird from my secret nest — can’t see me! It reminded me of climbing trees in Tollymore park and peeking out at joggers and couples walking by. When my mum caught up with me I would shout out ‘look at me!’ at her and she’d look up and give a little smile then keep walking. Then I’d howl like a monkey or do a bird call. It was a real laugh. Feels a little like that on the truck sometimes now.
I’m getting old now. I get this ache in my temple on the side of my head all the time. Especially when I’m looking at all the people in the street. It’s a real pounding. I get aches all the time all over my body but the one in my head is the worst by far. I’m strong enough from lifting the bins all day so my body is fine but it hurts like hell in my head sometimes.
The sun was at the top of its arc in the sky now and we pulled up the van to stop for lunch. The lads piled into Chicken Stop, you’d never catch me in a greasebucket like that though. I walked down the street to Romana’s. I got there every day so they knew me pretty well at that point.
“Harry, brother! The usual?”
Kristoff slapped me on the back, he worked there and always greeted me like that with his big grasp on my shoulder too tight. But I was used to it at this point. I nodded and sat down by the window in my spot. I was at crotch-level with all the passers-by and they shot by me like they were on a conveyor belt. In the corner where I sat there’s a coffee machine between me and the door and it makes this great clunking sound and a hiss and shoots steam everywhere. The steam misses the worker’s arms by inches sometimes. I relaxed into the corner and listened to the hiss and felt the wave of colour fly by the window to my side. I closed my eyes as the hiss filled my ears. I felt the ache in my head fade away with the blackness behind my eyelids. Hissing and gentle rock-a-by baby sleeping way in a little tree top. Sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
“Hey, wake up”
Like the voice of an angel speaking down to me and I thought the time had come what with it being the special day and all. Sorting-time.
“Wake up, mister”
But no not today, I thought it was happening I really did. With a sigh I lurched back into existence out of the darkness of sleep and cracked open my old bat-lid eyes to see a pair of milky eyes staring into mine. Big saucer milky-cow docile eyes drooping and calm.
“You alright?”
I batted my small crusty eyes and the world lurched out of the fuzz into sizzling crispy clarity. It was hotter than before, the sun was higher in the sky now.
“Mister you were out cold there”
Finally I shook myself fully into focus. A woman was standing there with one of those blonde bobs of hair that curls in just under their jaw and is all fine lines of gold with little streaks of brown running under closer to the scalp. She had small wrinkles beside the eyes and would look stern if not for the eyeballs themselves. I looked her up and down see what her game was. Looked like some kind of businesswoman. She had real gentle eyes, real nice eyes, but no it was ruined by the rest of her stupid face. She probably thought I was dead. I can’t tell you how many times I fall asleep and people think I’m dead its not even funny. Always waking up to bloody concerned citizens shaking the life out of me. If I was dead you’d think they would just leave me to be dead because there’s not much you can do about it by shaking me and if I was asleep then all they’re doing by shaking me is waking me goddamn up. At the end of the day, they’re either just nosy about whether the still old sack in the corner is still inhabiting the mortal plane because, if not, I’d be a profanity sitting in the corner there like an old turd stinking up the joint — they would ring the undertaker and get me quickly relocated to the more suitable position of underneath the earth; the categories of living and dead gotta be kept separate, coffee from corpses.
“What do you want?” I said. Staring at her in her stupid face. She didn’t respond with the usual furrowing of the brow and huff-off people give me when I give them that, instead she just looked a little tired.
“You were out cold there I was just checking you were alright”
“Yeah well piss off”
She was unphased and just looked at me wearily and unimpressed with one eyebrow raised.
“I said piss of ya old bitch”
“You don’t have a leg to stand on, I thought you were dead earlier”
“Any day now”
“Look, whatever. I just came over here because I was worried to check if you were alright. If you have a problem with that then deal with it yourself because its got nothing to do with me.”
“Worried my arse”
“Calm down.”
“I’m perfectly calm”
“Right, well I’m going. I’ll leave you to do whatever it was you were doing.”
She turned to walk away and was about to walk out the door past the hissing coffee machine through the murmuring voices inside into the shouting voices in the street outside when I saw she’d left her phone on the table.
“Hey, you left your phone, lady!”
“What?” She looked pissed off with me now she’d had a moment to ponder on the interaction.
“Your phone”
She walked back and snatched it out of my fat papery-skinned hand.
“I’m not such a bad guy am I?” I said to her and gave her one of my big smiles. She looked unimpressed.
“Look, for such an old man you really don’t haven’t learnt how to talk to people, you know that? What are you doing here? Just sitting around falling asleep then hassling anybody who tries to help you out? I am so sick of old creeps like you thinking you’re entitled to treat people however you like.”
“You don’t understand”. I smiled inside my head to myself, I always do that when people start talking to me like that I just smile inside my head and know that God is smiling down on the top of my head too and we have a right old laugh together the two of us knowing the day is coming soon when we’ll be right together chuckling away like nobody’s business about the rest of the people down burning their guts up pushing rocks up hills in hell.
“What are you smirking at?” It seemed like she had been talking for a while while I was picturing myself and God.
“Nothing. Just that the special day is coming soon. Not that you’d understand anything about it.”
“What special day?”
I chuckled to myself. She stared blankly at me, gentle stare and I saw her hair brush her cheek delicately like it was nuzzling against a velvet plane. Soft tones like a peach. Though the rest of it was bad… ‘what a stupid face though hardehar’ I thought to myself. Hardehar indeed.
“When everyone gets sorted out”
“What do you mean sorted out?”
“The day when everyone gets sent up or down. Up to God or down to hell.”
“Is that right?” She said. Most people leave around this time. But she just stood there staring at me with her arms crossed looking down at me. Unimpressed but maybe mildly entertained.
“I’m not religious myself. I’m actually an academic, sociology, so I study religion and that kind of thing a little.”
“You can’t study God and heaven and hell and that” She tilted her head. I continued. “It just is. What’s to study? It just does and all you can do is watch it happen.” I spat into my empty coffee mug.
“Do you feel like you just watch a lot of things happen?” She peered closer at me. I squinted back at her stupid beady eyes and spat again into my coffee mug again.
“Don’t you try and psychoanalyse me. That’s my goddamn job.”
“You’re a psychoanalyst?”
“No I’m a binman. But it’s the same thing.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t want to get into it”
She made to leave again and was checking her phone on the way out. She was inches away from the door and her hand slipped around the handle I exhaled and the hiss of the coffee machine screeched again but then she stopped and time reversed a few steps as she walked back one-two-three still checking her phone.
“I did have somewhere to be. But it would appear they’ve cancelled.”
She stopped and stared at me again.
“What?” I said.
“How is being a binman the same as being a psychologist?”
“None of your business, as I said”
“Go on”
“You wouldn’t understand it. Nobody does but it doesn’t matter anyway because I know I’m right and other people can go fuck themselves.”
“Go on, tell me, I’m interested”
“Well, we all have to consume to survive and then shit out the remnants. We’re just a point through which things pass through… and people always focus on the first bit, the me part is what you consume; what you have, what you eat, what you wear, what you touch taste and see. But all that input eventually becomes output which gets spurted out and then ignored. But that’s the good stuff, because the important part of the machine is what it produces not what you put in — but people forget that and then don’t pay attention what they actually leave in the world.”
“That’s such a sad way of looking at the world”
“It’s just real. Look at both of us now, we’re producing words now and that’s all well and good that’s something that people say is good and that is the essence of me or you. But equally, we’re sweating from our palms onto this table, our bacteria will remain here after us, we’re exhaling carbon dioxide into eachothers’ faces — but nobody cares about any of that — people don’t appreciate all of themselves and just focus on the narrow little bit they’ve decided they like.”
To be continued.