It's So Easy

"Dammit, Jimmy, did you leave your soda can in the car?"

Jimmy froze halfway from the car to the front door, halfway between his father glaring at him while locking up and his mother unlocking the house. She was still now as well. Jimmy looked over his shoulder at his father, his soft brown hair and eyes lost in the glare of the motion-sensitive light illuminating the path, late as it was after the dinner out.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'll get it."

"No," Dan snapped. "I'll do it. It's so easy to put things where they belong, but you never bother, do you?" He opened the car, and Jimmy hurried inside as his mother beckoned. "It's not like we have a bin just for recycling or anything," Dan said to himself. He slammed the car door and walked around the corner to the bins, away from the light. He waved, but this motion-sensing light didn't come on.

On this cloudless, moonless night, the faint and distant stars provided all the light he needed to make out the third of the four silhouettes against the wall, for compost, trash, and recycling. Dan casually tossed the can in only for it to bounce off the rim.

"Fuck." He got on his knees, crawling between bins to reach where it had fallen. When he put his hand on it, the light clicked on. A red bin towered over him, previously hidden behind the blue and green bins he was now crouched between. He stood, slow and cramped between the bins, until he could see the writing on the front. Where the green read "Yard Waste" and the blue "Recycling," this read only "Dan." The lid was open.

As he stared, the fourth silhouette unfolded into something more limbs than body and more fingers than limbs. It grabbed Dan's legs and toppled him into the bin, the lid clapping shut over him. He yelled, but no one could hear him. At least, no one came. Before the thing wheeled him away, he heard the faint clink of a can dropping into the recycling bin.