The Collector shrugged—a strange, multi-jointed gesture—and left. The door clicked shut. The apartment felt lighter, emptier. The sun was starting to rise over the city, and for an hour or two, Leo would feel clean. Forgiven.
Leo swung his legs out of bed and padded barefoot across the cold concrete floor. The closet door in his studio apartment had a faint, sickly green glow seeping from its edges. He could hear it moving in there—a soft, wet shuffling, like a stack of old photographs being stirred by a damp breeze.
For the past three years, Leo had lived by one rule: don’t open the closet after midnight. The Waste wasn’t garbage in the traditional sense—no banana peels or crumpled receipts. The Waste was the sum of everything you regretted, forgot, or deliberately buried. The argument you lost. The apology you never made. The dream you abandoned at nineteen. Every night, while you slept, it coalesced, slithering from the corners of your mind into physical form behind the nearest door. waste pickup
But for now, there was nothing. And nothing, Leo thought, was the most expensive thing he’d ever paid for.
The notification arrived at 6:00 AM sharp, not as a gentle chime but as a low, guttural hum that vibrated through the floorboards of Leo’s apartment. He didn’t need to check his wristband. The hum meant the Waste was ready. The sun was starting to rise over the
“Standard,” Leo said. He always said standard.
He opened it.
The Collector hoisted the bag onto its shoulder. The mass should have been negligible, but the creature’s spine bent slightly under the weight.