Trust Machines: Taking Out the Trash

By grapehyacinth



When Lorie Manton’s friend Bayla called the day before Lorie’s wedding anniversary, she knew it was bad news.  The only time Bayla made an actual phone call was when Lorie’s husband was up to no good.  Otherwise, she would text.

And Lorie’s suspicions were confirmed.

“Jake was with that Venn-obsessed slut Kasha Lyons,” Bayla explained.  “That night you said he was meeting Sam, he did.  When Sam left, Jake went off and met Kasha at a hotel.  You know, the one by the mall that has the Venn Machine.”

“Sam followed him again?”

“Yup.”

Lorie sighed.  Just like any good affair story, when doing the laundry, she had found the requisite lipstick stain on her husband Jake’s shirt, and an unfamiliar perfume still wafted from it faintly.  She knew it was time to divorce her husband, but she first wanted to get back at him somehow.  Just once, to let him know she was onto him, and to show that she was sick and tired of his antics.

“I know you want to punish him, and I know how to do it.  He called the other day.  He wanted me to Venn him into a bouquet of flowers and then give you him for your anniversary.”

“Him and those damn machines.  He’s obsessed with that transformation crap.  But this is why I still haven’t divorced him.  When he does things like this, it’s like he still cares for me.  He’s just incapable of monogamy.”

“It’s time to dump him, Lorie. “

“I know.  But you’ll help me first.”

“Of course.  I’m sure what you Venn him into will be much more creative than a simple bunch of roses.”

Chuckling evilly, Lorie replied, “Oh, you can’t begin to imagine.”

***

Jake was quite happily situated inside the local Venn Machine.  He was turned away from the display screen.  “Okay, now like I asked, pick whatever flower you think Lorie will like.  Surprise me.  I love when I don’t know what I’m changing into.”

“You always say that,” Bayla answered, setting her preferences for Jake’s change.  “I think I’d rather know.”

“That takes out half of the fun.  Okay, go for it, Bayla.  This ought to feel awesome…being twelve different flowers.  Make sure Lorie puts me in a vase with lots of water.  I hear you get really thirsty being a cut flower.”

Bayla snickered.  “Oh, you’ll get lots of water alright. See you in three years! ”

“Three years?” Jake shrieked, but his words were swallowed up as his body instantaneously shrank and rounded out.  'I’m not turning into flowers,' he realized confusedly, but his metamorphosis was complete.   The door opened, and he heard Bayla’s voice.

 “Well, we’re finally in our proper form.  About time.”

***

Bayla could not stop grinning as she hauled the plastic garbage can from the Venn Machine.  She would have given anything to hear Jake’s thoughts.  He was a large, non-descript bin, like one could purchase at any number of stores.

“You’re such garbage, Jake, that we’ve decided to make you a receptacle for it,” she explained, hoisting him into the trunk of her car and shutting it.

'They tricked me…She found me out…' thought the newly-minted garbage can.  He was doomed, and he knew it.

***

“I’m bringing in the trash!” Bayla announced from outside Lorie’s front door.  

Lorie had been waiting for this moment.  The Venn Machines scared her, and her husband’s obsession with them was especially unsettling.  She opened the door to reveal Bayla, happily displaying a brand-new garbage can beside her.

“Wow,” Lorie exclaimed, venturing out on the porch.  “I can’t believe that’s really him!” She ran her finger across Jake’s rim, but Bayla pulled it away.

“Don’t do that.  It probably feels good to him.”

“Wouldn’t want that now, would we, Jake?” Lorie studied her inanimate husband.  “All your other girlfriends would be so jealous of me ‘touching’ you like this.  Yes, I know all about you, and I’ve known all along.  I’m not stupid, and I don’t deserve this.  So, before our divorce, you’ll spend time in the park.  A lot of it.”

***

Where Jake sat in the state park seemed pleasant enough.  He heard the shouts of the children on the swings, and he felt the rush of a jogger speeding past.  He wished he could see, but unfortunately, Venn Machines did not seem to work that way.

He would never admit this to Bayla or Lorie, but he was enjoying his new form very much.  It was a transformation he would never have considered, let alone thought of.  The change itself had been quite nice, despite the surprise of the three-year sentence.  Of course, he knew Lorie probably would not let things go that long.  

The sun felt warm against his surface, lulling him into a near-doze.  Who would have thought being made of flexible, supple plastic would feel so nice?  It was almost like being on vacation!

“Mommy, I don’t want this anymore,” came a child’s voice beside him.

“Throw it in the garbage,” responded the parent.

The child’s ice cream cone fell into Jake with a splash and a ‘clunk’.   He gasped inwardly as the cold substance began to run across his bottom.  The child and the parent were soon gone, yet the ice cream remained, melting, sending uncomfortable shivers through his plastic.  'Oh, God, please get that out of me,' he pleaded in his thoughts, but there was no help to be had.  He was a garbage can, not a human being, and the next few hours only confirmed that.

Rotten fruit was deposited into him next, attracting its share of flies.  An odd slithery feeling confirmed that the fruit contained its own guests- lots of maggots, which quickly exited the fruit and began to explore their new environment.   'No, no… It’s…awful… They’re all over me…'  The inability to brush them off was extremely disturbing to him, and he desperately tried to ignore these upsetting new sensations.  But it was not working.

A newspaper and two soda cans brought some small relief before the highlight of the day – a warm plastic bag which exploded open on impact, bathing his insides in dog feces.

Night brought on a general reprieve, although near dawn a homeless man decided to relieve himself inside of Jake.  Jake was thankful he did not have a gag reflex as a garbage can.

***

The next few days were pretty much the same as the first, although some were worse than others.  Torrential rains hit at the end of the week, leaving several inches of water to fester inside him.  'Great.  Soon I’ll be a perfect mosquito breeding ground,' he thought.  But Saturday morning brought him a sound he never before thought of as welcoming.  A garbage truck was nearby!

He felt strong hands pick him up and carry him a short ways.  “Hey, Ralph!  When did they put this can here?  I almost didn’t see it!” yelled his carrier.

“Who cares!  Just dump it and let’s go!  I have a date with my girlfriend.  I’m going to become her bra tonight!”

“That’s so unoriginal, dude.  Everyone does that clothes crap.  We do cool stuff.  The other night, Ellie turned into a beer and I drank her.  When she changed back, I turned into a box of truffles for her.  That was damned  awesome.”

“That’s too freaky for me.  No one’s gonna eat me.”

“Dude, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Jake felt his contents empty as he was held upside down, then he was tossed unceremoniously to the pavement and the truck drove off.  'They left me in the street,' he realized with a start.  And it was only a matter of time until a carful of teenagers deliberately smashed into him, sending him crashing to his side in the grass.

'Ah, Lorie, you’ve had your revenge,' he said sadly to himself.  'And I deserve even worse.'

***

Weeks became months, and Jake grew accustomed to his meager life.  He was resigned to his fate for the next few years, and he only hoped Lorie would see reason before that.   He was no longer shiny and new; now he was plastered with decaying refuse, and he was dented from his encounter with the car.

Winter came, and snow piled onto him.  As it buried him deeper and deeper, it made him happy.  It was hiding his sorry form from the world around him.  With this consolation, he slept.

He could not have slumbered all winter, yet at the same time, he could feel warmth, and the calming blanket of snow was melting, forming a puddle inside of him.  Spring was indeed here, and more and more people began to frequent the area, which meant more refuse to be deposited into him.  And at this point, he really did not care.

Then one day, a couple stood chattering beside him.  Their conversation was just like any couple’s in this age of Trust Machines, and Jake wanted to caution the young man never to trust his girlfriend or his girlfriend’s friends…

“I want to be your cigarette,” the boy was saying.

“Right.  You want to be burned?”

“Smoked.  Can you even imagine how that would feel?”

“You’re insane.  Although, this is my last one, and it’s done.” Something small landed on the pile of newspapers already inside Jake, and, realizing what it was, he grew fearful.

“Patty, let’s try it.  Venn me into a cigarette.  I can’t die when I’m transformed.  Let’s go.”

“Fine.  My own boyfriend can give me lung cancer.”

The two walked off, but Jake’s anxiety only mounted as he felt a strange warmth.

The heat was nice, like the sun felt when it touched his surface.  But it was growing, encompassing him...

'I’m on fire!' Jake screamed in his mind.  Helplessly, he tried to comfort himself with the fact that he could not die when transformed, as the boy had mentioned, but at the same time, he felt himself melting, shrinking, losing form…

He was an amorphous mass on the pavement when someone finally came by and put out the flames.  “We’re going to have to scrape that crap off the sidewalk,” muttered his savior.  Suddenly he was being pried from the cement in one semi-hardened piece, and was tossed into something which could only be another garbage can.  'First the garbage was inside me, now I’m inside the garbage,' he thought defeatedly.  'And now I’ll live out my next two years buried in trash at the dump.'

***

Unbeknownst to Jake, Lorie had often driven by to check on him.  First she did it as an act of victory; she had taught this cheating bastard a richly-deserved lesson!  But as she saw him deteriorate from weather and use, she began to feel sorry for him, which irked her to no end.  She watched the snow bury him in the winter, which hid him from her sight for a while, but she knew he was still there, helpless and unable to move.

Then one spring day he was gone.  There was an awful smell in the park air, and a wet, blackened area where Jake had stood.  Lorie burst out of the car, looking around frantically for her transformed husband, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She ran to the park office, where one ranger sat with his head down on a desk. He was snoozing perilously close to a cup of coffee.  “Excuse me?” Lorie poked his shoulder.

The ranger woke with a start, knocking over his beverage.  Blinking at the mess, he started to laugh uproariously.

“I’m so sorry…” Lorie grabbed at a towel. “But…why are you laughing?”  She tried to help him wipe up the spill, but he pushed her away.

“Oh, don’t worry.  That’s just my wife.  She’s probably enjoying this to no end.  Have you ever been a liquid yet?”

Lorie gulped, staring at the brown rivulets that were…actually human.  “Nope, not really.”

“Oh, damn, you should try it.  She’ll be back to herself in a sec, unfortunately…”

And suddenly the coffee was gone, and a relatively attractive middle-age woman stood before them.  “Oh, God, I wish I hadn’t changed back quite yet.  Spilling was just…amazing!  And I wasn’t expecting it, just sitting there in the cup, and then suddenly I was splashing all over… Tom, tonight I’m going to spill you on the kitchen floor.”  She turned to Lorie.  “I’m sorry, do you need help, ma’am?”

It was amazing how everyone seemed to have such fun with something that seemed so…scary.  The idea of changing one’s actual body was frightening to Lorie.  Studying the woman in awe, she remembered to close her mouth, and she turned back to the ranger.  “That plastic garbage can…”

“Oh, the one that went on fire?”

“Fire!  Is it…okay?”

The ranger looked at her oddly.  “Okay?  Uh, well, it’s…” he stopped, realization dawning on him.

“Yes,” Lorie nodded.  “It’s my husband.”

The woman began to laugh, and apparently couldn’t stop.  “Damn, you taught him some lesson!”

“Where is he?” cried Lorie.  He deserved this, all of this, but…well, she needed to locate him nonetheless.

“He’s a lump of burned plastic now,” Tom chuckled.  “How long did you do it for?”

“Three years?”  Lorie phrased this as a question, making the woman cackle even more.

The ranger shook his head.  “You women… Listen, I tossed him into one of the trash cans on my truck.  Don’t know which one.  You’re going to have to do a little garbage-picking to find him.”  He pointed through the window at a parked truck, and Lorie ran outside.  “Have a little pity on him,” the ranger called after her.  “That little trash can had a real tough day!”

***

Holding her breath and cursing, Lorie sifted through can after can.  She donned a pair of dirty work gloves she had located in the back of the truck, but they were wet, which did not help much with some of the soaked mess she was poking through.

Newspapers, cans, half-eaten popsicles…the bounty grew worse and worse, and Lorie’s guilt rose exponentially.  He had all this and probably much worse inside of him, and he could do nothing about it.

But he still deserved every bit of it, she decided, although not as forcefully as before.

And there he was, a large, deformed lump of plastic.  He was wet with a yellowish liquid that thankfully smelled like beer.  She fished him out and tossed him to the ground.  “The things I do for you, you bastard!” she yelled down at him.  “I know you hear me, and I’m glad you can’t answer me.  You’re a lying, cheating, piece of… junk.  Even when you’re human.  I hope you had a horrible time, you deserve more…” She was crying, and she sank down beside her inanimate husband.  “Why did you do this to me?  I knew all along, and you were so nice, I really thought you loved me, but you needed the extras on the side…”  She needed him to talk, and, grudgingly, she took him back to the Venn Machine.

***

Jake was human once again, and as he walked out of the machine, he could not bring himself to make eye contact with his wife.  She stood there, eyes moist, hands on her hips.  “I should have let them take you to the dumps,” she uttered.

“I know,” he murmured.  He had nothing else to say.  She was right, and he knew it.

“We’re done, Jake.  I’m finished.”

He sighed deeply.  He still truly loved her, and he had thought that she knew it.  But he wanted more than her, he wanted change.  That was why he loved the Venn Machines.  He could change, she could change…but Lorie refused to be Venned.  Ever.  And that was the biggest reason he had strayed.  He loved the feeling of transforming, of experiencing life as something else.  He had constantly entreated Lorie to become the female to his male as any number of animals, or perhaps to swap sexes, but she would have none of it.  Her answer was usually, “Any machine can malfunction.  This is our actual body we’re dealing with.  Something happens, we could die, or live the rest of our life as a…wheelbarrow or something!”

“Lorie, just let me tell you why I did what I did.”

“You’re a horny bastard, that’s why.”

“No, Lorie.”  And he poured out his wishes and woes to her, and she stared at him.  

“You went off with other women because I won’t turn into a cow or a tree or a—”

“Sometimes I turned them into you first, so then it was like I was changing you into stuff.  It was like you were finally joining me.”

As creepy as this sounded to Lorie, it softened her somewhat.   She did not want to take him back, but his flawed reasoning was definitely thought-provoking.

“If I changed with you, you’ll stop?” she whispered.  “It’s really the changes?  You really are obsessed…I can’t imagine…”

He put his arm around her, and for the first time in a while, she did not cringe.  “My God, if you’ll change with me, you’ll make my life truly wonderful.  If I ever even thought of cheating  again, you can turn me into an ant, pull off my legs, and smash my broken body.”

“Jake,” Lorie smiled weakly.  “You’re such a sicko, you’d probably enjoy that.”

***

Epilogue: Lorie and Jake Manton did not rejoin the human race very often for quite a while.