A quick wash of his hands under warm water with a bit of soap, a bandage that Josef had left behind on a visit that Charlie could now no longer pick a date even to guess at, and the cut was clean and protected.

Then it was back to work, for what felt like forever.

Three bags. Three. Whole. Bags. By the time Charlie was done with three bags, he was worn out. He looked at them all, standing up straight against the wall like soldiers waiting for inspection, the bags as black as a black hole sat ready with their tops open and showing for all the world to see, just how much he’d cleaned up.

Charlie crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave a sharp nod of satisfaction, ‘Josef, I couldn’t have done this without you.’ Charlie thought back to Josef’s advice, the man hadn’t cursed him for a killer, or struck him, just looked a little sad. Like he’d seen a dying puppy trying to survive when it knew it wasn’t going to.

And yet for all that, it was the best advice Charlie could have asked for, and in front of him stood three bags, each one as high as his waist and bigger around.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and took an ambling step over to look down at his handiwork, little yellow tabs on the sides of each bag waited for his hands.

He went to the first. “Got. You.” He said yanked the yellow bands that ran within the stitched lining of the industrial strength garbage bags as tight as he could. The loops pulled out and the mouth snapped ‘partially’ closed. Charlie’s foot went up with difficulty, a grunt later and he was stomping on the refuse. “Ew. Ew. Ew. Nasty. Nasty. Nasty.” He said with every stomp of his foot. “Should. Have bought. Boots!” He exclaimed as he stomped it down just enough to pull the string closed the rest of the way after pulling his foot out of the filth.

The mouth still didn’t close completely, but now it was more like a goldfish’s mouth than that of a great shark’s gaping maw.

He quickly tied the loops in a bow as tightly as he could, then sidestepped to stand in front of the next one. Like a drill sergeant inspecting his soldiers and finding errors to be fixed, he stomped the filth down and repeated the process again.

Finally, with more sweat and filth than he began the process with, he was done.

“Now the ‘other’ hard part. He turned around so that his back was to the three bags and grabbed the trio at the golden bows, leaned forward, and began to pull.

“C’mon! Move, damn it!” Charlie ordered, the bags obeyed enough to lean forward… but they barely inched across the floor. “I don’t remember throwing away neutronium! Move!” Charlie snarled, “I can’t have gotten this damn weak! It’s just trash!”

Then he recalled… ‘Glass. Some bottles are still with liquid… liquid is very dense… what else… broken things, some metal lumps from… yeah that thing…’ He gave up.

Releasing the hand that grasped two of the bags, he turned around, grabbed one bag with both hands and began to pull.

Now it moved, sliding with the noise of shattered glass, old food, and worse, even some thick, soaked towels that were still dense and dried to a disgusted crusty state.

He hauled it on, down a now wider path into the living area where he looked longingly at the window. “Oh gravity,” he said in a sing-song voice, “how I love thee, let me count the ways.” Not a chance of getting it hefted up there, he grunted and groaned while hauling the bag to the door.

He opened it, dragged the bag down the hall, glad for once of his isolation, he hit the stairs.

“One.” Rattle.

“Two.” Rattle.

“Three.” Crackle.

On and on he went, counting the steps as the many ways he loved ‘gravity’ the noise echoing over the empty hall of the building until he found the door leading out to the open world and the bustling sidewalk.

‘At least it isn’t raining right now.’ Charlie had that grateful thought to the sky, there were no clouds to stop his eyes from sweeping over the great and endless blue where a bright sun shone down and warmed his already overly warmed body.

Grunt by grunt, Dr. Charlie Manning hauled the first of three bags over rough and dirty ground around the corner to the side of his building until he reached the dumpster.

A heavy breath of deep relief was all he could manage when he shoved it up against the side of the big green dumpster. “Okay… no way I’m getting this in there but… close enough. One down, two more to go.”

Optimistic and motivational as it was meant to be, and, resolved as Charlie was, it did nothing to strengthen his body.

So it was more of a trudge that carried him back around the corner and into his building again. He stopped just inside the door, ‘Call Josef.’ the thought came to mind right away. That behemoth and his muscles could move the earth if he had somewhere to stand.

But a wave of guilt washed over Charlie the moment the thought occurred to him, he barely noticed when the bar on the inside of the door smacked him in the ass.

“What the hell is wrong with you… Josef has a life, a job, a wife to take care of now, besides…” He stopped the whispered words to turn the last into an unspoken thought, ‘you are responsible for his death.’

The fact that Josef accepted it all so easily was more than awe inspiring, it let Charlie do what he hadn’t done in forever, but the notion of asking his overly forgiving friend for help… it rankled.

A lot.

So Charlie shook the thought off and walked up the echoing stairs to his floor again without entertaining the idea for even one moment more.

He reached his door and found it slightly ajar. Back to the kitchen again, walking through the path he’d made to snag another. Down to two bags that seemed full of neutronium, he hooked his arms through them both and tried to pull like a stubborn mule. His teeth bared and jaw tense, a gritty expression and straining facial muscles matched the rest of his body.

“Gawd, I’m out of shape! If my old running group could see me now I’d never hear the end of it.” He mumbled his admission of disgrace, though the thought again haunted him. ‘It’d be the end when the world ends.’

But it didn’t linger long, ephemeral as a dream, the thought came and went, and though the bags began to move, it was slow going.

“Damn, so it’s faster to do it one at a time after all. Screw it.” Charlie rolled his eyes and grabbed one bag, he drew it behind him the same as the first.

Step by step and foot by foot, until a second bag was in place.

He turned the knob on his door when he returned and entered his home again, took the last bag, and hauled it out without further complaint. Silence was his companion, determination was his motivation, and his ‘soldiers’ stood aligned in front of the green garbage bin outside, reflecting the sunlight as white as snow.

Back to his apartment again, proud, grinning, confident again and feeling at least a little better in general, Charlie reached his door, pushed down on the handle of his door to enter again. He closed the door behind him and looked over at the sea of trash that still remained. “Okay… okay Charlie, it wasn’t much, even if it felt like it was… but it was a start. And there’s a lot more you can do once you get this clear… you’re not dead yet. Nobody but the dead are dead, so don’t act like you’ve already joined them.” He smirked a bit at his sophistry, bemused by his own self motivating half taunt.

He bent his leg back at the knee and kicked the door audibly hard enough that it slammed and rattled the floor. “More vigor left in me than I thought.” He said and stretched his sore arms up over his head, interlocking his fingers and arching his back.

Whether he was lying or not, even he didn’t know.

He was still trying to work that out when he heard the familiar rhythmic noise of ‘buzz…. buzz… buzz…’ begin again, coming from a black alarm clock, half muffled and buried under some trash at the head of his bed.