The Dustbin

Slowly it falls.

In slow motion, the dustbin falls, a graceful arc in the air, gathering speed as the reality of gravity takes its hold. It bounces, once, twice, settling with the contents, spilling over the gritty concrete floor, strewn with the calculated precision of utter chaos. Colours mixing, overlapping, creating a pattern in chaos, beauty in disorder.

A sense of timelessness.

Eradicated. Patterns coming into contact with the ground mutate into ugly, desolate shells of their former selves. Patterns are lost, replaced by repulsiveness, overpowering the earlier beauty with potent disregard. Time catches up, sending the mad tumble to the ground rolling and blossoming like some deformed flower. Tranquility takes to the air, a deathlike stillness giving form to the random assortment on the ground. As the final items roll to a stop, an almost tangible smell lifts as a haze in the air, seeping into cracks, giving the dustbin power and force. The haunting aroma, a pungent stink, hangs in the air, fermented milk and rotten vegetables a relative flavouring to the true, festering fragrance of rotting meat and eggs.

Paper dominates the floor.

Food, drink, a still smoking cigarette and a general greenish-grey mold cling to the paper, giving the mass a sense of unity, a single purpose. A seemingly empty coke can lets forth a splutter of coca-cola, tainting the paper even further while the creeping black liquid mixes with other items of food and liquid, creating a further destruction of the previous gracefully arcing fall.

The smell turns to taste.

A taste so vile it leaves behind queasiness mixed with repulsion as the tongue tries to dig itself into one's throat, desperate to get away from the pressing taint intoxicating the air. A half-eaten hamburger leaks rotting lettuce and tomato and the festering meat hangs out as if trying to escape the prison of the stale bun. A sausage, bent in three, still has tomato sauce stuck to it at one end. Dirt contaminates the side of the sausage, giving it an earthy look. Fermented milk spots the floor, an ethereal, formless pool of water turning paper to soggy plains of white, black rivulets in snaking lines across the now transparent expanse of grey. There is no sycophancy in this seething blob, an almost living, breathing life form of paraphernalia.

The rivulets highlight the scene.

Making the lines apparent, giving form and definition to the seemingly random but oddly patterned horde of junk. The sausage, its bends highlighted, the pinkish colour stark against the black streams of ink. The tomato sauce eroded away, dirt and grime rubbing off revealing the fingernail beneath.

But sausages don't have fingernails.
Not tomato sauce, but blood hangs at one end, dirt and grime making it hard to tell which finger.
But, more importantly, just whose is it?