Trash

 I live in a 16-storey new building. I moved in there about two years ago after handing over the keys and repairs. We lived with my sister, but she got married and moved to Canada, ceremonially giving me her part of the apartment. As a result, I was left alone in a small town near Moscow, with a good job, a two-room apartment, a cat, and periodic bouts of acute loneliness. There are few residents, prices are rising, although our area is not the most convenient, so there are no people willing to move in. Only half of the 75 apartments are occupied by tenants. The house was built in 2008, all the people who moved in are no older than 40-50 years old, we don't have any old women or old people, and this is important. I'll explain why now.

One spring morning, I rode the elevator down to the front entrance of my building. An ordinary working day. But there was a bedside table in the corner of the small front room. It's an old one, from the Brezhnev era, plywood, covered with dark, even black lacquer, with a chipped corner of the bedside table. I smiled: someone has finally decided to throw out the old rare trash. But throughout the day, something inside me reminded me of that bedside table over and over again. By the end of the working hours, I was literally shaking from the visual image of this bedside table. I was really scared and worried. I even squinted as I opened the door. The bedside table was still there. I carefully walked across the room and called the elevator. It wasn't until I closed my eyes that I heard a screeching sound. He started up - of course it was the bedside table grating on the tiles of the front door. There's nothing else. I collapsed violently and literally ran into the elevator. Don't get me wrong: I understand how stupid it is to be afraid of old furniture, but the fear was deeper. He tormented me all day. It wasn't the bedside table I was afraid of, but something I didn't know yet. Instinctively.

The night passed in nightmares, and in the morning there was more than one bedside table in the entrance: an old bicycle, not rusty, but without tires on wheels, was standing next to it, skis leaned against the side of the bedside table. And there was a dirty rag under the bedside table. At first, I thought that someone was putting things away. Then he collapsed again and quickly went outside. On the way to work, I reasoned: who throws out this garbage, where does it come from? There are no old people, maybe one of the families started the renovation?

As I approached the entrance, I took a few minutes to gather my courage. Something was pushing me away, an inner voice was screaming: "Run!" But reason reasonably noticed that it was abnormal to be afraid of garbage, and I entered the entrance.

I wasn't alone. The husband and wife were standing in a corner and waiting for the elevator. When they heard me, they twitched, and then looked at me with relief. I stood next to him. We understood each other without words. The elevator didn't arrive for two minutes, and we stood there in silence. After entering the elevator and driving away, the man finally said: "I do not know whose things these are." And he said it as if you can only talk when you're not with them. I said I didn't know either. His wife promised to find out. Then, after exchanging fearful glances, they left. I went home.

I decided to spend the weekend at home. I ordered food and seemed to calm down, but the nightmares still happened again...

Monday morning was bad: I was twitching at work from any sound. Because in the morning there were rows of old things in the front room, almost half of the room was littered with cabinets, TV boxes, a refrigerator door with some cans, an old bathroom... I screamed when I saw this junk. Now I began to understand what I was afraid of: my mind had given out the theory that something was weaving a nest in our house. And I was afraid of the master.

In the evening, a crowd stood at the entrance to the entrance, cursing and blaming everything on each other. I just watched and listened as several residents of the house looked for someone who was littering and someone who would clean up. Everyone agreed that it was necessary to remove the garbage. But no one dared to volunteer and at least take out the skis. And not because of principle. I would personally throw it all away if I wasn't afraid.

A week later, our front room looked like a jungle: chairs, tables, boxes, some rags, rusty basins and buckets, lamps, racks for clothes, a sideways sofa without pillows, rolled-up blankets... Trash. Everything was cluttered. The elevator seemed to be mocking: sometimes you had to stand for eight minutes to wait for it. I waited, pressing my back against the doors. The senseless fear and stupid mania disappeared. I was afraid of the junk and what was inside it. What's in these dark corners of things? Behind these rags, in these cupboards, under the bathtub or in the sofa? Everything was moving. Everything was grinding. One of the tenants called the housing department, who, having sent someone to look, refused to clean up, saying that the tenants themselves should clean it up. One of the neighbors, a forty-year-old architect, tried to take everything out and throw it away. He plucked up the courage and tried to pull a chair out of the trash, but everything was locked tightly, one on one. Pulling a chair, you pull the whole pile of garbage. Finally, spitting, he decided to smash it with an axe and throw it out piece by piece. I volunteered to help take out the trash, but not to chop. I was afraid that the one who carefully stored all this- and there was no doubt about his cunning in intertwining things-would take revenge on me for the destruction. I was well aware of how absurd and comical my fear was. But I was afraid. My bell, my gut, no matter what anyone calls it, at least a sixth sense - it screamed in me when I was next to the trash.

So, Sergey, a neighbor architect, was already raising an axe to strike when the closet door broke off and flew off, falling right on his foot. Dust fell from the cracks on the cabinet. Rags came out of the closet. The basins rattled. There was no fracture, but he got a bruise, but the scariest thing was that he jumped back to me, clutching the axe, and stammered: "You see, you see, it's there, it's crawling! See? Let's run!" And he flew out the door. Anyway, he left and went to live with a friend.

Then the little Yorkshire girl lost her temper and ran off into a pile of junk. No one came after him, but he didn't come out. Gradually, the pile shrank, and there was no more junk. Torn rags hung from the chair legs, the light bulb above the corner burned out, and no one volunteered to replace it. They even wanted to draw lots until no one realized that he might be the loser. That was the end of the idea of drawing lots. Movers were invited, but one of them, sawing through a piece of pipe, was seriously injured.

Soon the growth stopped. The clutter was a dense dark mass, and the front door had become very tiny. A small lamp above the elevator barely saved the light. The nightmares were rarer, but scarier.: I saw something big, like a dog, but slippery, with teeth like a giant leech. It was crawling all over me and threatening to bite me. I would wake up and know that down in the darkness of the junk, this leech was crawling among the old things. Then the feeling passed. I calmed down until the next night.

And then there was a stink, like someone had died. Everyone said he must have been stuck and finally starved to death. But wouldn't he be whining? That stink was killing me personally. A thick, sweet, penetrating smell... I was spitting, and considering how long I had to wait for the elevator, I was just suffocating. I started taking a small can of air freshener with me and sprayed that piece of freedom next to the elevator with a thick jet.

But one day the passenger elevator broke down, the doors wouldn't open, and I moved into the freight elevator. But he didn't say anything either: the lights were on, the doors opened, but he wasn't driving. Broken or not, the silence was eerie. I stood in it, poking at the buttons, cautiously looking around at the trash. And then something flashed inside. A spot flashed where the barely visible plastic tray was... No, not a spot, but a mass. I automatically pressed myself against the inner wall of the freight elevator. Something rustled, then moved. The sound was like saliva going through your mouth-not a slurping sound, but a wet, sticky sound. Something was crawling. I hit the buttons, but the elevator didn't even move. He was standing in place, the light was on. I was trembling. He felt a piezo lighter in his pocket and automatically held it in his hand. Then something flashed closer - it crawled across the basin, hitting a bunch of fused wrenches due to rust.

It dawned on me that I had to run. I looked at my lighter and, realizing that it wouldn't help, threw it on the elevator floor. I rushed to the exit, but before I could reach it, boxes and pots fell on me, showering me with dust and earth. I fell and a heavy cabinet fell right in front of the door, almost breaking my legs. I screamed. There was something on it. I can't tell if it was sitting or lying down, because the shape was amorphous. The light bulb above the elevator buzzed and burst. I slid across the tile on all fours and ran into the elevator. It took its time. I hit the keys, shouted "help," but nothing happened. No one rushed to rescue me, the elevator was not moving. There was nothing to be seen in the front door. The elevator's weak orange lamp barely illuminated her. I babbled in the corner of the elevator and heard the mass crawling on the tiled floor. To me...

I found the lighter I'd thrown away on the floor, gripped it tightly, and lit it. For some reason, it seemed to me that the fire would save me. The creature did not hiss, growl, or even breathe. All I could hear was the sound of slow crawling, getting louder and clearer and closer by the second. I remembered the can of air freshener. I pulled it out and pointed it at the elevator doorway. He put out his lighter and waited.

It crawled to the door. I was waiting. And then it crawled into the elevator; with one or a hundred movements of its mass, it was inside and distorted me. The bladder immediately gave out everything in it into the jeans. The leech, about the size of an average dog, opened its mouth and prepared to pounce on me. Small teeth of some unknown substance moved in time with the muscles on this part of the creature. I screamed and, turning on the lighter, pressed the canister. A ball of fire flew into the creature's mouth. It silently, without a sound, bounced into the front door and disappeared, and I sat in a puddle of urine and waited.

Ten seconds later, piles of trash and rags began to fly into the elevator. Pieces of wood, dust... I automatically fired at the things. But the critter wasn't there, the trash continued to fly into the elevator, and I kicked out the burning rags...

It jumped on my foot again. I screamed again and pressed the can again. The creature jumped back into the entrance, the rags next to it caught fire, I jumped up and started pushing them out of the elevator with my foot. One of the rags flew into one of the cupboards and, hissing, set fire to the contents. When I saw the start of the fire, I continued to push the burning dust out of the elevator, but now I was still banging on the elevator buttons. Something happened: the elevator shook, the doors began to close. The fire spread through the trash, something burst, hissed and cracked, I let jets of fire into the closing door. The elevator moved. Smoke began to fill the mine. I covered myself with my sleeve and went out a couple of floors later. I went up the stairs to my floor. He locked himself in the apartment and sobbed. Dirty, dusty, in his urine, with burnt hands, crying man...

Firefighters raked through the rubble, cursing us idiotic residents. They found a lot of bones of small animals and even poor people. Who stole so many things remained a mystery, the investigation yielded nothing. The things didn't belong to anyone. The owner could not be identified. My nightmares have disappeared, although a lot has changed: there are almost no clothes and furniture in my apartment now. The clothes are neatly folded in one corner. Just on the parquet floor. The computer is on the floor next to the mattress. There's one chair in the kitchen, and there's a microwave on it. And there are always some semi-finished products in the mini fridge. I'm afraid of landfills, I'm afraid of garbage, I'm afraid of apartments filled with furniture. It makes me nervous if I see a lot of things in someone else's entryway. The few friends I have are trying to help me. I didn't tell anyone what happened. But when someone tells me that I'm paranoid and crazy, I just have to look at my hands. The burns have healed, but the scars from them are perfectly visible.