Isyra: The Last Outpost

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge."

Said The Garbage Man as he approached my immaculately maintained farmer's porch, bag of dripping tampons and Q-Tips in hand. His face was lost in a sea of stubble and the impenetrable shade of his dingy union baseball cap.

I tried to ignore him, as I typically do. I began to slowly rock back and forth, the chair's restored crescents barely squeaking the hardwood at all. It was a futile attempt to try to read the latest issue of Vain and Skeptical, so I didn't try. I stared very hard at the image of Elizabeth Courtly, Atheisms cute little superstar.

He was still talking, I realized.

"It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life, reputation and reason."

He mused, sitting down on my front step as he rummaged through my bathroom's sanitary bag like the absolute pro he was. It was his occupation to pick through the waste of society. Why it had to be on my porch on my only day off was far beyond me. But his elaborate holographic ID key said just that, in it's annoying, chipper voice that hurt my ears.

There was a time when I felt sorry for what this human being must have once been before it had died inside.

"It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories."

The garbage truck, an elaborate hovering beast of teeth and highly corrosive excretions guttered and died. The cushion of air dissolved beneath it with a whommmf, causing it to fall to the earth in a single deafening crash.

As it bled on the street curb in whimpered: "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

The Garbage Man looked at his dying friend, the no longer idling truck-beast with presumed apathy. The sun still could not penetrate the dense thicket of shade and stubble that was his face. There was a solemn whizzing and a sharp tang of o-zone from The Garbage Man.

I didn't know what that meant. I didn't care. I wanted to enjoy my Saturday afternoon.

"...from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

He stood briskly and marched back from whence he came, leaving my walkway littered with my dripping unmentionables.

Why not Robert Frost? I thought to myself as he began to mop up the mess.