Chapter 77: Bin There, Done That, Didn't Get the T- Shirt

by John Dent

The tableaux in the Matsumoto kitchen was eventually broken when a nervous Uri finally plucked up enough courage to ask her mother a question. "What... what did father mean by that? He meant these forms and that letter... didn't he?"

Uri's heart sank as her mother simply shook her head and opened the back door. Two large men, each dressed in immaculate white coveralls sporting the logo 'Human Refuse Disposal Inc' stepped in carrying a brand new galvanised metal dustbin between them. As they set the container down, one of the men turned to Mrs Matsumoto and said, "That's fine, ma'am... just leave everything to us. Give us a few moments and, when you return, it'll be like you never had a child." Still sniffling a little, the older woman turned and shuffled out of the kitchen as her daughter called out pitifully after her.

By now Uri understood what was happening to her - her father had disowned her, turning her into a hostless female... a non-entity. Shaking her head in disbelief, she grappled with the enormity of what was happening... even being sold into slavery wasn't this bad! At least a slave still had an existence, they remained in the real world as a piece of property, if not as people with rights. But hostless females didn't even have that - they were... well, nothing. Unwanted, unnoticed, uncared for. True, it was rare to see one but all children were taught from an early age to simply ignore the hostless... and they were easy to spot as they all smelled foul, something that a young and curious Uri had put down to the fact the hostless lived rough on the streets, scavenging for whatever food and accommodation they could find. Rumour had it, she recalled, that most of the hostless eventually ended up drifting out to Poor Town.

Uri was wrenched out of her thoughts as the two garbagemen grabbed hold of her and bound her ankles together with cheap rope before repeating the procedure with her wrists, neatly securing them behind her back. One of the men smiled coldly at her before removing the pin from her right nipple and tossing it casually into the kitchen's rubbish disposal system. "You won't be needing that anymore," he told Uri flatly, "since you no longer even exist and have no records with the authorities..."

The two men then picked Uri up before folding her at the middle and sliding her into the bin that they had brought with them, leaving only her head and shoulders along with her legs below her knees showing over the edge. Rousing herself from the torpor that had settled upon her, Uri experimentally struggled a little, only to discover that she was firmly wedged in the container and, without her hands to help, she was effectively stuck. One of the men then grabbed a handle of the bin and, with a grunt, hoisted it up onto his shoulder before marching out of the apartment.

It wasn't long before Uri found herself back outside, still being carried along, this time towards a small pick-up truck with an open back. Suddenly a bright flash went off by her side, momentarily blinding her. "Smile for the camera, slut!" ordered a male voice and, ridiculous though her situation was, Uri found herself doing just that. A second flash followed. "Thanks. Okay, fellas, you wantta take a break?"

A grateful garbageman unceremoniously dumped the bin before placing his hands on his back and stretching. "I'm getting too old for this, Charlie," he commented to the man with the camera.

"So, what's this one called?" asked Charlie, fishing out a battered old notebook and handing round a cigarette packet to the two men.

"Family name's Mat... Mat something or other. Just a sec." The refuge collector pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and carelessly unfolded it. "Matsumoto. First name, Uri."

After scribbling a few notes into his pad, Charlie turned towards Uri. "I'm from the local paper... you wanna tell me what you did to get into this mess?"

"It's none of your damned business!" snarled back Uri to which the reporter snorted.

"Doesn't really matter. Folks just want to look at the pictures and see if they know the name." He turned back to the other men before slipping a small envelope over to one of them and thanking them for the tip off. "Back to the office now, write this all up. Then I gotta dig up a photo for the editor - seems I once took a snap of some nigger bitch called Adoga or something. Turns out she's been a witness in the trial of that Fielding boy. Boss reckons it'll add a splash of colour to the story if I can find it again... if you like your flesh coloured, I suppose! Ha-ha!" Charlie laughed at his own weak joke.

"My wife happens to be black..." declared one of the garbagemen rather menacingly. Charlie coughed, muttered an apology and hurried away while he could. The men then loaded the bin into the back of their truck and set off towards their destination...

Half-an-hour later the hover-truck gently lowered itself to the ground in a fenced-off area of the town's dump. The garbagemen pulled Uri and the bin off the rear platform of their vehicle before leaving lowering it to the ground. One of the men swept his arm around the scene, "Behold," he told Uri rather theatrically, "your new home!"

Uri looked about her to discover that they were currently occupying a small area of flat ground totally surrounded by large piles of rather smelly garbage that were being picked over by flocks of birds and the occasional scavenging dog. But it was the smaller section that she was in that grabbed Uri's attentions for scattered about were dozens of bins much like her own. Most were laying on their sides and empty but a few were still upright, and all of those were occupied by corpses in various states of decay from the almost totally skeletal to the mostly normal and only showing few signs of rotting. "As you can see, bitch, your first challenge is to get out of the bin before you die of thirst. Now, just before we go, there's one last thing we have to do..."

"No... no, wait! Look... why don't you just let me go, eh? I... I'd be most grateful, know what I mean? You know I'm a graded nympho... and I'm really very good, honest. The best screw you ever had, I promise!"

One of the men turned towards the other and smiled. "Why do they always do this?"

"I don't know," the second replied, "I guess they just don't want to accept the fate that they're brought upon themselves." With that, he turned towards Uri and addressed her directly. "Look, girly, trying to tempt us with your body just isn't going to work. Not everyone can do this job, you know... you gotta have special qualifications... both me and Jake here have those qualifications. We're both eunuchs... Jake was a slave once, a guard on a baby farm while I... well, let's it was a particularly gruesome industrial accident. So, you see, sex is no inducement to us at all."

"Money?" Uri hastily offered. "Money - I've got lots! I had a good job... and some quite wealthy admirers who showered me with gifts. I could... give you my money, if you'd let me go..."

"Hidden away cash or bank account?" quizzed Jake instantly.

"Er... both," Uri admitted.

"Well, what was in the bank has gone - that'll have been confiscated by now. But the cash... that might do it. You tell us where it is, we'll check to make sure that you're telling the truth then come back and let you go..."

"No... no, that's not how we'll do it," countered Uri. "If I do that, you'll never return to free me once you've got the money. I've got a better idea, you let get me out of here and then I take you to where it's hidden; you take the cash and let me go."

"Not a chance, love - the perimeter of this place is hemmed by close-circuit television cameras. A tad old fashioned, but they work. If you're seen leaving with us, we'll be up in court quicker than you can say bribery. Tell us where the cash is and we'll be back later, promise. There's no cameras here... we let you go, you give us an hour's start and then you leave..."

"I don't trust you... no."

"Right - it's you call. Okay, Jake, into the truck and off we go..."

"No! Wait... I've changed my mind!" Uri called out desperately, worried that she'd be trapped in the bin until she was too weak to do anything more to free herself. "The money... the money's hidden away where I used to work..."