Janet and Michael were rudely awoken that Saturday morning by the sound of a huge truck backing into their driveway. They bickered for a few moments about who would go outside to find out what was happening, but decided to both go when the sound suddenly, eerily, stopped.
Outside was the largest garbage truck they had ever seen, twice as wide as the driveway and almost as tall as their two story house. Janet and Michael looked at each other, stunned. One of the wheels of the garbage truck had plowed under Janet's azaleas!
A short man with long sideburns got out of the passenger's side of the garbage truck and walked up to them. He consulted a clipboard, then cheerily asked, "Mister and Misses O'Pigglet?" Janet and Michael nodded numbly. "So good of you to meet me out here. Of course, the grind of the truck is hard to ignore." The man turned to the truck and shouted, "Let 'er rip!"
The garbage truck groaned into action. The back went up, opened and buried the house in trash.
"W...what the hell is this?" Michael sputtered indignantly.
"Your garbage," the short man with the long sideburns told him. "You didn't think you could duck responsibility for it forever, did you?"
"What do you mean, our garbage?" Janet asked, indignant but not sputtering.
"Mmm," the short man with the long sideburns said. He had obviously experienced this reaction before. "You see that bunch of silver?" he asked them, pointing to something on the side of the huge mound that glittered in the morning sun. Janet and Michael nodded. "Those are beer cans that Mister O'Pigglet threw out of his car on various trips. Remember Niagara Falls a couple of years ago? Seventeen cans - a record."
"But -"
The short man with the long sideburns nonchalently stuck his hand into the greying, smelly, oozing mass and pulled out a green garbage bag. "See this?" he rhetorically asked. "This contains cigarette butts that you've dropped on public streets. There are 16 more bags just like it in there...somewhere..." He tossed the garbage bag back onto the pile; it slid down the incline of garbage until it was on the ground.
"I've been meaning to quit..." Janet lamely stated.
"Mmm," the short man with long sideburns cryptically replied. He slapped the side of the truck with his palm, and the back returned to its resting position.
"I'm not signing for this!" Michael, who had obviously gotten his voice back, stated.
"I'm not asking you to," the short man with the long sideburns replied. Michael blinked a couple of times - this was clearly not the protocol of professionalism with which he was most familiar.
"Take it back!" Michael insisted.
The short man with long sideburns almost sighed. "That's what I'm doing," he claimed, the slightest hint of irritation in his voice.
"Look," Michael's voice hardened. "If we threw those things away, we obviously didn't want them then. What makes you think we want them now?"
"It's not a matter of what you want," the short man with the long sideburns replied, more than a hint of irritation in his voice, now. "You've given all of this...crap to the Earth. Well, guess what? SHE DOESN'T WANT IT ANY MORE! So, she's giving it back to you. I mean, really, what were you thinking dumping those old computers in a ravine? Those bags of potato chips in the park? Those bubble gum wrappers in your neighbours' backyard?"
"We didn't -" Janet began to protest, but the short man with the long sideburns cut her off before the rationalization could be uttered.
"You ask me," he continued, "you got off lightly. If you had done this t'me, I would have charged you for hauling this stuff halfway around the city to get it all to you."
With that, the short man with the long sideburns turned and walked back to the door of the garbage truck.
"What are we supposed to do with this?" Michael shouted as his tormentor got into the passenger's side of the cab.
The short man with the long sideburns grinned. "Not my problem, is it?" he answered. He slammed the door shut, consulted his clipboard for a moment, then stuck his head out the window.
"You wouldn't happen to know where Edna and Vincent Compare live, do you?" he asked.
Michael and Janet looked at each other, then slowly started to grin. They knew where Edna and Vincent Compare lived. Sure, they did.