Haunt

Nurse Mary Takes Out the Trash (An Autumn Story) - Part 1 of 2

Weekend One - Saturday Night

September 17, 2022

POV: Seven Wonders Park

Each night when the park closed to the public, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" played over the amps around the grounds, interspersed with the Overlord's pre-recorded message, "Friends from around the world – Seven Wonders is closing its doors. Get out while you still can! We hope you've had a de-frightful evening at Haunt..." Evil laughter, and so on and so on.

As the exhausted, strung-out screamsters slowly scattered and regrouped to return to makeup and wardrobe, peeling off their latex scars and turning in their costumes, the yellowshirts followed behind, cleaning up and putting the park back together again. Since she was new, part of Autumn's duties was to check the trash cans to ensure that the night crew had emptied them and that the trash bags were clean.

"Glamorous work," she said as she lifted the umpteenth lid and shone her flashlight inside. "Mother would be proud."

A few remaining patrons still drifted toward the exits, moving slowly on their aching feet. They'd probably walked five miles and waited in lines for hours in the humid September night. Autumn smiled and waved at them. "Thank you. Have a great night, folks! Drive carefully on your way home!"

She stopped in front of Rick Rickshaw's Imported Gifts and Souvenirs – a tacky, Asian-themed gift shop that apparently had been closed for years but sat untouched. Orientation had suggested strongly that no one mess with the place. Don't try to open the doors. Don't try to peer through the heavily boarded windows. Don't take your break anywhere near it. We don't go to Rick Rickshaws anymore. If anyone dared to ask why, they got the obviously incomplete answer, "It's infested with skunks." Meaning ghosts or something, Autumn presumed. Nevertheless, there was a dumpster behind the place, and Autumn had already deposited two bags there, and nothing had jumped out and grabbed her yet.

On the pathway in front of Rick Rickshaw's, Autumn lifted a nearby trashcan lid; shone her light. Thank goodness – this bag was clean and empty.

"Oh hey, great," said a very drunk young man in cargo shorts, arm in arm with his equally drunk buddy in a John Deere baseball cap. They stumbled toward her down the thoroughfare, going the wrong way. "I need your trashcan!" The cargo shorts rattled suspiciously as their wearer lurched across the walkway, pulling beer cans out of his pockets. Autumn watched in dismay. The odor of beer hung off him, that bready smell of hops and testosterone. "You work here!" he said, pointing at her yellow shirt like it was the headdress that denoted her as the queen. "This place is awesome! Shit I about shit myself!"

Somehow, he pulled five nearly empty beer cans from his cargo shorts' pockets, and into the trash they went, sloshing their contents all over the clean bag. A splatter of beer smacked across Autumn's yellow shirt.

He shouted at her, unaware of his volume. "I was in that cowboy thing; this guy went like yeeehaw and went flying right by me! Dude was on fire! That shit was crazy! You know those guys?"

"Wow, I'm glad you had fun," murmured Autumn. This sucked – this was her territory for the night, and she couldn't leave a trash bag with trash inside. When the park opened for maintenance in the morning, a bag with trash would mean a write-up for her.

"Dude, you're making an ass of yourself," said Baseball Cap, who followed his buddy's lead and began depositing empties in Autumn's open bin. As if Autumn hadn't the wits to figure it out, Baseball Cap confided, "He's had too much to drink."

"I was so scared I had to have more beer!" cried Cargo Shorts. "Do you work in a haunted house? I will give you fifty dollars for that yellow shirt."

"If we have yellow shirts, we can get in all the fast lines," agreed Baseball Cap.