Trashcan Man

More fan-fiction from Stephen King books: 

 

Hey Trash, whyd'ja want to burn up the school?  Why didn'tcha burn up the CHURCH?  

Trashcan Man looked out into the cornfield after stepping out of a wicked fog.  He could no longer hear the cops shouting from behind.  Fittingly, a trashcan started to rattle and shake to his left.  The voices in his head continued- the ones he'd heard when he was 12, after he lit his brother on fire and nearly killed him- the voices of kids he'd known and hated. 

Hey, Trashcan! 

Hey Trashcan Man, digging you, Trash!  Lit any good fires this week? 

What'd old lady Semple say when you lit up her pension check, Trash? 

Hey Trash-baby, wanna buy some kerosene? 

Hey, Trashcan Man, don't you know that playin' with fire makes you wet the bed? 

Burn your fingers, Trash? 

Hey Trash, ya burned your DICK off yet? 

Look out girls, here comes the Trashcan Man the firestarter; he'll burn ya dresses! 

Eeeeek!  A freeeeeak! 

Hey fire freak! 

Trashy, take me home- the voice of his brother- or daddy will smack the skin off us! 

Trash, let me see your homework, son.  This voice is louder, the voice of his father.  Meanwhile the others echo in the background like days flying by. 

What do you mean you didn't do your homework, BRAT?  Why can't you be more like your brother, SCUM!  Ya see this belt?  I'll whip your skin til' it's fallen off, you CROAK.  Haven't taken the garbage out either?  Haven't made yer pappy dinner yet?  Strait F's?  Oooooh, Trash, I outta teach you somethin', CREETIN.  Teach you to disobey your father, FIRESTARTER! 

"N-n-n-n-noooo!", he cried as the voices recycled through his mind, loud and furious, 

 (Hey fire freak) 

he remembered when he blew up the Cherry Oil Tanks, the gateway to the Waste Lands when he was 13 

(You burned me Trash, why big brother?) 

He remembered the forest fire south of town 20 years ago, for which he was found guilty and sentenced to Juvenile prison. 

(ASS-LICKING FIRE FUCKER!) 

"PLEASE STOP!", he cried.   

The voices were gone.  He found himself standing in the outfield of the Derry baseball field, with a thick mist stretching to all sides of the park.  He started to weep.  Looking down he saw mud, but it looked more like blood, like it had been raining murder in Derry Park. The urge to flee throttled him into focus. 

"Firestarter!"  Looking toward home plate he could see the dark devil Flagg with a bat and ball in each hand.  It did not look like the Flagg he'd seen from the castle, but a different Flagg, a more familiar Flagg.  His eyes were glowing red.  He was wearing cowboy boots, a black t-shirt, and a sombrero over his long black hair.  Trashcan remembered him from the nightmares he'd been having for several weeks, about a dark man walking down a lost desert highway.  "Catch!", he yelled. 

Flagg threw up the baseball... WHACK!  

The ball went up into the night sky and out toward center field, where Trashcan was standing.  Just beyond him the ball came down and disappeared.  Where it landed, there was the body of Andrew, his late brother, just standing there.  He looked like a seven year old demon, burnt to a crisp, like he had the day Trash set him on fire.  He was wearing a jacket, worn-out jeans, and his hair was on fire.  It looked like black wax was oozing down his head.  Oddly, a bird was nesting on his shoulder just below the wax. 

Trash, why did you burn me?  Why big brother?  I thought you loved me.  The dark man on the highway is down here with us.  We all float down here, Trash- his jaw fell off- we all fl-  The booming voice of his father fell over his brother's, and a rush of horror flushed over him. 

Trashcan!  You get over here Trash and let's see that homework. 

He saw his father's face in the mist and saw the devil in him.  Where you going, flamethrower?  Get back to Juvey before I take more skin off your ass.  You know how I love to do that. 

The ground shook.  Trash looked down as his face began to shake.  Out of the ground a hand popped up, clutching Trashcan's jeans.  He let out a cry of terror as a face appeared out of the ground, the face of a boy he remembered from when he was 11, after burning down a fort in The Barrens.  It was the face of Billy Sherman, aged 10, with cheeks glowing green, tar drooping from his mouth, and stony bloody eyes. 

"Ooooh, Jesus help me", Trash whimpered. 

Well if it ain't the Firestarter from Hell!  Say Trash, when was the last time you've been with a girl... Oh, what girl?... I forgot, you probably set them on fire as well.  The boy's eyes were glowing madly as he licked the tar off his lips. 

A chorus of high, evil screams filled atmosphere at once.  Looking out into the fields, Trashcan Man saw children all ablaze with fire.  These children were all the kids he'd burned after setting his school on fire- about 20 of them- running toward him, screaming deathly curses as their rage flamed the fire surrounding them.  Slowly their body parts were falling off, striking the ground with blood, staining the field maroon.  One kid's eyes were hanging from his sockets.  They were shrieking like phantoms, chanting: 

"Children, children, we are the children!" 

Trash saw the world blowing up behind him, turning it into an atomic red.  He started to run from the children, but where could he go?  Everything was in slow motion.  The children were closing in on him as screams of death filled the background.  Ahead came the cornfield; he had no choice but to run through it.  He was running into a cornfield with the children continuing their chants. 

"Trashcan!  Don't you know how much it hurts?"  He looked back and saw that one of the girls' legs had fallen off, but she kept on running.  He also saw even more terrifying things: one of the boys was now heaving a pitchfork, another a spade, another a gravestone.   

“It hurts!  IT HUUUUUUUURRRRRRR..." 

Darkness and light filled the sky, a paradoxical ambience.  He was running through the corn with the children following.  The children of the corn were after him.  The world seemed to wash away from him as the memories kept flashing through his mind.  He was running through a world of slaughter, a trail of broken images- broken by the screams of death.  Here there was no sun, just the blood-red fire sky shining over the corn stalks that towered above.   

The children faded and so did their screams... 

 

He kept on running, the tall stalks of corn rising a foot above him now, the sky lusty and the ground hot. Where am I?, he said to no one.  Small cracks of orange light were showing through the corn 

He came to an opening and there he was again, the dark man Flagg, this time in a scarecrow outfit.  His eyes were poison and the hay on the ground lay still as death.  Trash could hear Flagg laughing at him, like all the kids at that school.  He whipped out a stick of fire and waved it across his flannel jacket. 

"What's the matter, Trash?", he said.  "Afraid of a little fire?  Don't you want to swim in the DEADLIGHTS?  HA HA HA!", he cackled. 

He dropped the stick on the hay and it spread quickly, in a circle around them.  Flagg brough out his axe, sharp as the horizon.  "Don't ya wanna play, Firestarter?" 

Behind the fire, the children of the corn laughed with him.  The blood inside Trash rushed to his heart, bearing much pain and regret.  He knelt down, pleading: 

"I'm sorry, Jesus I'm so sorry.  Let me go, please."  Sweat trickled down his face as the heads of the pale children started showing through the fire.  Beyond them the corn started to burn.  Scalped bodies went flaying out of the sage, their blood gushing, eyes red, begging:  "It huuuuuurts!"  He saw their mattocks, spades, and pitchforks falling into the corn under the shadows of the flailing children.  The fire burned in the shadows too.  Up and down, up and down the mattocks went, slicing into the corn and as they burned forevermore.  Their blood is mine, he thought.  He now looked at Flagg as he struggled to get up.  Their eyes met and the axe swayed in front of him like a pendulum.  Flagg brought it up to his mouth, gave it a kiss, heaved it back, and sprinted at Trashcan Man, screaming with rage: 

"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!!!!"  The dark man wailed, bringing the axe down as hard as he could.  The devil's face was grinning.  The poison in his eyes turned the red sky black.  The axe came down hard onto Trashcan's stomach.  Fire flew from the blade as it made contact, the dead scream of fire making itself heard, as if nobody had ever known what horrors lay in the crackling.  The children flashed and faded and so did the devil and his judgment.  The last thing he heard was silence.