9
Garbage In, Monsters Out
Irene Radford
Detritus scurried behind her older sister Aphrodite across the manicured lawns of Mt. Olympus. Aphrodite discarded an orange peel without looking at the “No Littering” sign Zeus had placed deliberately along the path his divine daughters and immortal sons usually walked, neatly circumventing the sacred fountain at the center. When that didn’t keep the lovely children from dropping food, used handkerchiefs, decorative shawls, and feathers from their headdresses, Zeus assigned his youngest children, the half-mortal twins Detritus and Debris, to pick up after their older siblings.
“Spoiled brat,” Debris whispered to his sister, younger by two minutes and therefore inferior to his superior knowledge of their world.
Aphrodite had to have heard his comment. Instead of acknowledging the insult, she waved joyfully at Apollo, just coming off his chariot ride across the skies. He slapped his driving gloves and gauntlets together and tossed them vaguely in the direction of the twins.
“That’s debris,” Detritus told her brother. “They need to be saved, cleaned, and put where he can find them again.”
Debris shrugged. “Here comes Herakles and his apple core. That’s yours.” He ducked the flying bit of garbage so his sister could catch it in her drawstring bag and not have to touch it. Aphrodite wasn’t so polite. She dropped the rest of her orange peel off to the far side of the path, sending Detritus scurrying to pick it up.
“How come we get stuck with the suckiest job Pops could think up?” Debris grumbled.
“Because by the time we were born, he’d run out of beauty to bestow upon us. We’re the youngest and the ugliest, therefore we are garbage and thrown away,” Detritus replied.
“We never had garbage before the Romans drove us out of Greece to this refuge,” Aphrodite said. “We had mortal servants happy to pick up after us. It was getting pretty ripe around here before you two came along to help us out.”
“At least now we have a job instead of drifting about doing nothing. Pops can’t deny us a fair share of ambrosia anymore,” Debris said, looking toward the athletic field where Herakles showed Hades the fine points of a discus throw. The ghost of Xena looked on, tut-tutting at every mistake.
“We get a servant’s portion, not a family-sized bowl.” Detritus stared at Aphrodite’s handkerchief. The goddess of love, the epitome of beauty, had blown her nose on the fragile piece of woven cotton with a needle lace trim.
Detritus wondered if the immortals ever had to blow their noses in the before times or if her sister did this just to make more work for the unappreciated twins.
“Hey, sis, you dropped something,” Detritus called after Aphrodite.
“Go trip over it,” Aphrodite sneered. Then she smiled up at Apollo, and the entire world stopped breathing in awe. The sun, Helios, froze in place at the horizon, lingering to limn her in glorious light.
Sure enough, a compulsion to obey washed through Detritus, and she politely tripped over the fragile scrap of cloth. Mud and grass stained her chiton, her knees, and her chin before she could right herself.
Debris laughed raucously, pointing a finger at her supine figure. Their divine siblings tittered as well.
“I’m going to get you for that. All of you,” Detritus snarled.
“Shshsh,” Debris hissed at his twin. “This is a good gig. We don’t want to get Pops angry. He’ll give this job to someone else!” He delicately retrieved the soiled hankie and put in his recycling bag. He’d wash, dry, and press it along with other debris cast off by his siblings.
“Who else would take this lousy job?” Detritus snarled. She brushed off grass blades from her short draperies. She’d scraped her knees, and her jaw ached from having bumped her chin, and she’d bit the inside of her cheek, and it bled onto her teeth. Now she was truly the ugliest of them all. She grabbed her collection bag and stomped toward the edge of the warm pocket of paradise Zeus had created for their playground. Playground, humph! Everyone else did as they pleased. Detritus and Debris had to work day in, day out.
At the edge of the green, lush growth, she paused and braced herself for the worst part of her job. All she had to do was close her eyes and think about a door leading outward. A portal would appear in mid-air. Easy for the other immortals, if they thought of a need to exit Paradise. So far, no one else had thought up a reason. Detritus was always exhausted when she did this. She waited until the end of the day so she only had to do it once.
Then, when she had an opening into the rest of the world, she must thrust her arm out into the frigid air of the mountaintop and upend her collection bag. Two minutes’ work.
Two minutes of bone-numbing cold. On top of bone-numbing exhaustion.
It was snowing out there in the world of mortals. Snow blowing nearly sideways and piling up into huge drifts. She could barely see the outlines of stunted trees only a few yards away from the portal.
“Just this once, I’ll wait. Maybe it will be warmer tomorrow.” Determinedly she looked around to make sure she was alone and unobserved. Some of the cold leaked through the barrier. None of the beautiful children of Zeus would come this close to reality to notice. Detritus upended the bag behind a laurel tree. “We’ll see how long that takes to smell up the old place.”
Whistling a jaunty tune of defiance, she returned to the open meadow, where daisies bloomed eternally and butterflies flitted about to the delight of the immortals.
“Detritus,” Debris said on a relieved sigh. “Apollo’s gloves are hopelessly stained. You know how he is, always demanding the most pristine accoutrements. There is no way even Pops could get out these stains. They look like he dipped them into a tar pit,” he wailed.
“Does he have other white gloves and gauntlets?” the younger twin asked.
“Of course he does. Dozens of pairs. I don’t even know if he knows how many pairs he has, only that it’s supposed to be my job to retrieve them, clean them, and place them back in the temple where they belong.”
“Well, if he won’t miss them, then throw them away,” Detritus replied, quite annoyed at her brother’s inability to think beyond the narrow dictates of their father’s instructions.
“Where? Do you know what they’ll do to us if anyone finds them? We’ll lose our jobs. We won’t get any ambrosia. We’ll become—” he gulped and his throat apple bobbed in his skinny teenage neck “—we’ll become mortals.” He blanched with dread.
“I’ll show you.” She led him toward the barrier but didn’t stop at the portal. A dozen yards to the right, still close to the invisible wall, she found the laurel tree with its thick and spreading branches. She lifted one of them to where she’d earlier dumped the garbage. The sweet smell of fresh oranges wafted upward. The spiral peel rested on top of other bits and pieces of discarded food. Had it been so big and substantial a few moments ago? Or smelled so strongly? Sweet it might be, but not this overwhelming. Apollo’s white kidskin gloves should cover it and mask the perfume. Apollo had big hands.
Still, the gloves barely obscured the peel and the apple core and other garbage.
Over the next several years, the autumnal and winter storms outside raged with increasing intensity. Spring and summer passed without comment.
The cycle of life continued inside as it always had, with little or no change anywhere. Who knew what happened beyond the barrier. Were the dreaded Romans still in power over Greece?
Detritus continued to dump her garbage beneath the laurel tree. Debris added more and more of the discards of the immortal children of Zeus. The pile grew. And so did the tree, while all the others remained the same size. Even the grass failed to grow and need mowing.
The fountain continued to gush upward and flow downward. The overflow channeled off into a stunted copse, where it pooled and Debris washed the soiled artifacts of his siblings.
The sweet perfume of fresh oranges grew sour. The twins had to hold their noses whenever they approached the dump. But a few feet away, beyond the protective branches of the laurel, they smelled only the usual mix of flowers and trees that never died, never withered, never discarded their leaves. Never grew. Only the laurel tree changed. And the fountain flowed.
“Pops wants to see you,” Apollo said, one evening, staring down at the unwanted twins.
Detritus bobbed a curtsey to her older brother.
“Did he say why?” Debris asked. He didn’t dip his head or salute or anything. Unheard of! The compulsion of respect hadn’t compelled Detritus’s curtsey. Only long habit.
Detritus cringed behind Debris, not willing to be caught in Apollo’s wrath at this lack of respect. She didn’t think he deserved anything more than what one immortal owed another, but he thought all of the Olympians should grovel at his feet.
“How am I supposed to know?” He tossed another pair of soiled gloves at Debris, expecting the boy to catch them and deal with the filth that might infect all of Mt. Olympus if left untended. “He spoke, I heard, I passed on the message, though someone else should have that lowly job.” He moved away to perform whatever duties he had. Did he even know why he drove his bright chariot across the skies every day?
“Whatever he wants, it won’t be good for you two. You were born to do all the dirty work, including be the brunt of his temper. He’s been throwing tantrums a lot lately,” Herakles said coming up behind the bright and shining Apollo.
When they had both passed out of sight and earshot, Detritus smoothed her freshly washed chiton. It looked grey rather than white, no matter what she did to cleanse it. The washing pool had grown colder and didn’t clean as well as it should. Her face also had a permanent streak of dirt across her nose and down her cheek.
Debris smoothed his hair. A cowlick stuck up at the crown of his head, despite repeated attempts to tame his mane. He, too, had developed the dark stains across his nose and on the opposite cheek as his twin.
Inside the largest marble temple on the mountain, Zeus looked as he always looked, tall, broad-shouldered, strong, and imposing with jet black curly hair and full beard. He sat forward on his golden throne, bracing a golden spear against the ground as if ready to leap into action.
Was that grey salting his hair and beard? Detritus thought her father looked older. No, never that. More mature. He was immortal, after all. As were they all. But his long white and gold robes looked a bit tarnished.
Everything within Mt. Olympus had faded from pristine and glowing white to dustier shades. But the change had been so gradual, Detritus didn’t think anyone had noticed.
She gave her father a full and respectful bow. So did Debris.
“You two are doing a marvelous job at keeping our home and refuge clean. I award you an extra portion of ambrosia tonight and every night. You may return to your duties with the full knowledge that your loyalty and good service are appreciated.” The elder god dipped his spear tip in dismissal.
The twins backed out of the temple, never turning their backs on Zeus the almighty.
“He never noticed our good work when we dumped stuff outside the barrier,” Detritus mumbled once they were free of their father’s exclusive enclave.
“Maybe because we aren’t opening the portal, even when it’s summer outside, and therefore keeping all the warmth and beauty inside,” Debris said.
“Maybe. I’m going to enjoy my ambrosia as long as it lasts.” She had an awful feeling, like a vast emptiness in the pit of her tummy that something awful, or very exciting, was about to disrupt the same old same old routine of immortality.
Years passed. The trees and grass and flowers lost some luster. The temples began to sag.
Detritus noticed a haze in the air.
“Yeah, it’s there,” Debris admitted to her. “Sort of like an orange mist in the distance. But up close, everything looks the same.”
But it didn’t.
Later, while Mt. Olympus slept and the moon hung motionless in the sky, Detritus crept out of her little bed—she was always a young teen, never aging—to see what about Mt. Olympus was different, damaged. Dangerous.
The night air chilled Detritus more than she thought necessary. Part of living in Paradise was the comfort of constant temperatures. It was always sunny in Paradise. If it ever rained, that happened at night, replenishing the plants without disturbing the immortals. The difference between night and day should only be enough to require the comfort of a light blanket for sleeping. She wished she had something warm to cover her toes within her sandals.
“I’ll make this quick and be back inside before anyone discovers I’m gone.”
“Wrong,” Debris said from right behind her. “I heard you leave. Where are we going?”
Detritus shrugged. “Something is not right. I figured now would be a better time to discover it than during the day, when everyone watches us.”
“No one watches us. We are beneath their notice unless something goes wrong, and then they blame us, even if it isn’t our fault.”
“True. But I think something is really, really, really wrong. If we don’t find out what and fix it, then everyone will find out and maybe kick us off Mt. Olympus.” That had happened before. Long, long ago. She couldn’t remember who. But her siblings only spoke of it in fearful whispers. She thought it had something to do with a Roman spy, but she could be wrong.
“Well what is different?” Debris asked. He looked taller in the moonlight, with broader shoulders and the hint of a dark beard. He was growing up. Immortals didn’t do that. Zeus needed his youngest children to be teenagers forever. They should stay teenagers forever.
A quick glance at her own silhouetted shadow and she saw the willowy curves of a young woman. An illusion of moonlight and shadow, she told herself.
She wasn’t convinced. Now was not the time to discuss that change. Better to show her brother though he wouldn’t see anything but the most obvious.
“The luster is gone.”
He scratched his head. “Now that you point it out . . . yeah. How come white clothing, white marble temples, even white leather doesn’t glow anymore?”
“The only thing that we’ve done differently is to not open a portal when we dump the garbage. Have you noticed the pile lately? Have you seen how big it is growing? Could it be draining Mt. Olympus of whatever makes things glow?”
“I haven’t lingered or looked. It smells bad. I get in and out as fast as I can.”
“Same here. That’s why I think we need to really check it.”
Together they walked as fast as they could, without making any noise, to the far reaches of the meadow, toward the now enormous laurel tree. A light rapping noise made them freeze in place. A light came on in Aphrodite’s temple. Then they heard their sister sigh contentedly and giggle as she blew out her little lamp.
Detritus wondered who graced her bed this night. It didn’t matter. Her sister’s job was to spread love to all.
The laurel tree loomed ahead of them, dark and menacingly.
“What are you afraid of?” Debris asked as he urged his sister forward. “Pops would never create anything dangerous, and the barrier keeps everything else out.”
“There are stories left over from when before we were born and Zeus and his children roamed the Earth. People worshipped them. The stories speak of monsters and demons, and . . . humans trying to kill us so they wouldn’t have to worship us. Romans ruling the world instead of gods.”
Debris blew a raspberry. “They’re just stories.” He marched ahead of her and brazenly lifted the lowest branch of the laurel on the far side of the tree. “Ewww.” He held his nose and dropped the branch.
Detritus spotted something that didn’t look right. She lifted a different branch.
A long white foot wearing one of Apollo’s sandals laced high on a shapely calf stuck out from the shadows.
Detritus jumped back, gasping for air. Then she leaned forward to examine the foot. It glowed with the lustre of an immortal.
“Debris?” she asked hesitating to move, even to drop the laurel branch back into place. “Who . . . who is this?”
“Who? Where?” He looked all around, over his shoulder through the barrier—the rocky landscape showed hints of blurry green, must be spring out there—back toward the temples and the vast moonlit meadow.
“Down here,” Detritus said, with more courage now that she had to direct her stupid brother.
“That looks like a foot and a lower leg.” He shrugged it off, then stilled as the implications set in. His sister could almost see his mind working.
“It’s big. Bigger than Herakles. Maybe even the size of a Titan,” Detritus whispered.
“Who does that foot belong to?” Debris asked. “And . . . is the rest of the body there too?”
“Only one way to find out.” She pushed aside a higher branch, holding it away from the foot with her body. “I see the rest of the leg and another foot. It’s still gray and doesn’t have a sandal.”
“Is anything moving? Like breathing?”
“I can’t tell. Hold back some more branches.”
Debris sidled closer, careful not to get too near the foot. When he backed away, taking three levels of branches with him, they could see all the way to the tree trunk. Propped up against it, sat a man. Sort of. A rotting melon formed his head, without features. Bits of tattered cloth, discarded handkerchiefs, and torn robes covered his mushy torso. His arms appeared to be handless sticks, pruned branches from the apple tree—more evidence of unplanned growth.
“He hasn’t finished forming yet,” Detritus whispered, almost afraid to wake up the man made up from the garbage and cast offs by the immortals.
“What’s going to happen when he does finish?” Debris asked. “Will he be alive? Will he hurt us?”
“I don’t know. Pops created this place for himself and his children. It stays lush and green, growing food profusely all year long. Everything grows here except us. We are supposed to stay the same.”
“So, like the apples, and oranges, and olives that grow and ripen all year long, the remains of our food keep growing too.”
“And we’ve added soiled clothing to define the shape of what keeps growing.”
“What should we do?” Debris kept staring at the vague and unfinished body.
Detritus thought the wisest thing to do would be to break the thing apart and chuck all of it out the portal. If it continued to grow and eventually animate into a . . . very large person, then it could find its way down Mt. Olympus to where people lived and let them deal with the giant.
Then she remembered how her older siblings treated her. At first, they’d shunned her, ignored her, and insulted her. And then when she and her twin had duties to benefit them all, the beautiful ones treated the youngest of them all as if they were the same as the garbage they collected.
Would the humans who lived in the real world reject this giant? She didn’t think anyone deserved that.
“Let’s leave him for a bit to see what happens.”
“If you say so. How much more garbage do you think he needs to finish . . . finish whatever he’s doing?”
Detritus shrugged and eased out of the tree, though the branches and trees tried to ensnare her clothing and hair. “Behave,” she admonished the tree, as if it could hear her. “I will not be treated as garbage by you or anyone else.”
She marched back to her sleeping quarters with her head held high and shoulders back, presuming her twin followed her lead like he always did.
Time passed, as it always did, days of endless summer followed by moonlit nights. Outside the barrier, Detritus watched the seasons progress from gentle spring to hot and sere summer to colorful autumn and back to stormy winter. The man made from garbage continued to coalesce and refine. His nose grew straight, his mouth gentle, his stick arms filled out and grew hands and stubby fingers. Indentations for eyes remained closed, devoid of lashes or brows or even eyelids. Nothing to indicate he was anywhere near to waking.
“Pops, you have to do something!” Aphrodite wailed, kneeling at the feet of Zeus the father of them all. “My gowns are tattered and grey. They make me—” sob “—look ugly.”
She did indeed look faded and tattered. The hemline was frayed. Her once glorious mane of blonde curls had become lank and dull, even worse than the drabness of her gown.
Detritus slunk back into the shadows of the exterior Ionic columns, watching her older sister become more and more like the youngest siblings.
“Pops, you have to do something,” Aphrodite pleaded. “Whatever you do to create new clothing and endless portions of ambrosia isn’t working anymore. If only you’d allow me to bathe in the fountain.”
“You dare criticize me! No one may use the fountain except me!” Zeus shouted, the words reverberating around Paradise. His angry words became a roar of thunder inside the barrier and outside, all the way down the mountain to the humans living below.
Detritus cringed and clapped her hands over her ears. She slammed her eyes shut, knowing that when Zeus pounded the butt of his spear on the marble floor that lightning would launch outward like a volley of arrows.
No one deliberately angered Zeus.
“Well, someone has to bring this to your attention, Father,” Aphrodite sneered. She alone among the immortals dared speak to him so. She was his favorite and the most beautiful of the beautiful.
And then, Detritus watched her father rise from his golden throne, not as tall or imposing as she imagined, and stomp toward the fountain at the center of their home. He stepped into the pool and let the water cascade over his head. It didn’t shoot as high as it used to, or flow with as much water. Layer after layer of accumulated dust and grey discoloration sloughed off Zeus. An ugly layer of scum collected on the water’s surface.
But mighty Zeus himself had regained some of his luster. And he didn’t look down at the dirty water he used to create new things.
“Is that all we have to do to regain what has faded?” Aphrodite giggled, her laughter sounding closer to tinkling bells than it had for some time.
“It usually works for me,” Zeus said.
“So why have you forbidden your children to partake of these waters or even splash and play in the fountain? We could take care of ourselves.”
“Because this is the water of life. This is what keeps our home a paradise, lush, green, full of warmth and love. For anyone but me to stand here and bathe in this water would give you the power of creation. Only I have the wisdom to know how and when to create.” And if you had access to the fountain, you would not need me anymore. As mortal people have no need for us anymore.
Detritus almost heard his unspoken words and knew the truth.
Zeus stepped out of the fountain, still dripping water. He cast off his wet garment.
Debris appeared as if summoned. He placed his collection bag beneath the sodden garment before it could touch the ground. His duty complete, he retreated to the shadow of the same column that sheltered his twin.
“You know what we need to do with that,” Detritus whispered.
Debris nodded solemnly in reply.
As they scuttled away, Aphrodite dipped a toe in the fountain. Then she jerked it out, looked around guiltily. Her gaze landed on the twins. “You two, you did not see anything. And why haven’t you cleaned my clothes adequately of late?” She marched toward them, anger creasing her face into a fearsome mask, making her uglier than her discolored and fraying clothes could ever do.
Detritus nodded her head and bent her knees in curtsy out of long habit. Strangely, the compulsion to obey did not wash through her. Nor did she forget what she had seen, as her older sister commanded.
“We clean your cast-offs as we have always cleaned them, in the runoff pool below the fountain.” Debris pointed to the north.
The laurel tree and their garbage dump lay to the south.
“Well you aren’t doing a very good job,” Aphrodite pouted. “I will report your slackard ways to Zeus.”
“It isn’t that I don’t try, sis. The water is missing whatever special energy Zeus gives it to clean and repair things, and restore the natural luster given it at the moment of creation.”
“Impossible. Zeus has lost nothing of his power since we retreated here after the Romans deprived us of worshippers. He protects us.” She turned abruptly and followed the path to her own temple, not that of Zeus beside the fountain.
“So, are we going to do this?” Debris held up his collection bag with the sodden robe Zeus had cast off. It shone through the bag, nearly as bright as the waning moon.
Detritus looked up at the silvery orb. “The moon is always full. Why does it wane now, after all these years?”
“Because Paradise is waning,” Debris replied. This was the first wise thing Detritus had ever heard from him.
“Come. The time has come to do what we are destined to do.”
“Why us?”
“Because . . . I don’t know why. I just know that this is something we must do.”
Resolutely, she led the way to the laurel tree that had now grown almost as tall as the sky. Outside the barrier, spring flowers dotted the rocky landscape.
Spring, the time of rebirth and new growth.
As she drew closer to the tree, the foot protruding from the shaded shelter twitched. She jumped backward, nearly knocking over her brother. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah. It recognizes us.”
“Do you really think it is alive?”
“I think it’s coming alive. Do you want to do the honors?” He shoved the glowing bag toward her.
Detritus cradled it against her no longer skinny chest and walked the final six steps to the foot that now was clearly visible outside the circle of leafy branches. She drew in a deep breath and held it as she went through the familiar routine of holding branches back with her body and upending the bag on the almost human figure—if one overlooked the collage of discarded food and grass clippings and such that made up the garbage man’s skin. The still-dripping robe landed in his lap.
Instantly, he opened his eyes and stared at her in wonder. His mouth opened and closed, but no sounds emerged. He reached for the robe, spreading it out to cover himself and absorbed the water dripping from the cloth.
A clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning split the skies.
Cold air rushed down, sending chills up and down Detritus’s body. She wrapped her arms around herself in a useless effort to warm herself.
The roofs on the distant temples cracked and their foundations groaned. Immortals erupted from them, streaming outward, screaming and wailing in bewilderment and despair. The beautiful, immortal people looked old and haggard.
The garbage man stood up, donning the robe as he stretched his limbs and twisted his head right and left.
Another earsplitting crack and the air grew colder.
“What is happening?” Zeus demanded. His voice could not compete with the cracks and claps of different airs clashing in an all-out war.
In that moment, Detritus realized the barrier had split open, revealing the cloudy night sky with only a glimmer of the waning moon above them.
“Paradise is dying!” Aphrodite wailed. Her voice creaked and she bent double in a long racking cough. When she righted herself, all the beauty of the ages had collapsed into an ancient crone with more wrinkles than hair, her back slumped as it twisted into a hump. Apollo, Adonis, and Dionysus withered as well. Herakles lasted a little longer, being only half immortal. He wasn’t robbed of all his heritage all at once, as were the others. The ghost of Xena, beside Hades, laughed silently, until she faded to mist and vanished.
Before their eyes, Zeus aged and failed. His thick mane of dark curls thinned and fell off. His rippling muscles sagged into flab. His hands twisted with arthritis. His spear turned to dust, the gold flaking in to the fountain.
Seeing the destruction of all the people she knew, Detritus look a hasty look at her hands before putting them to her face to check for wrinkles. Smooth skin. Her brother, too, had matured but not aged like their siblings.
The fountain stopped flowing, the marble foundations cracked and spilled the collected water. Another booming crack, and Zeus’s temple collapsed. One by one, all of the others finished falling apart as well.
The air grew colder yet.
“Paradise is dead,” Detritus said.
“Paradise might die, but we are still alive,” Debris said on an awestruck whisper.
“But why?” Detritus asked the universe. “Why did it have to end? They were happy here.”
“You weren’t,” a deep voice said from behind her.
She whirled to face the garbage man. He stood as tall as Zeus used to, not as handsome perhaps, but just as imposing.
“I’m Detritus, the youngest of Zeus’s children, I’m not supposed to be happy.” That sounded all wrong to her own ears. She repeated them in her mind. The same words she’d been telling herself all her life. The same words Zeus and his children had been telling her and her twin.
They were still wrong.
“Their time has passed. Long ago. All this is but an illusion,” she sighed.
“I was created to carry you and Debris out of here,” the strange man, made of detritus and debris, said. He punched the barrier and watched it crumble, leaving a rough doorway shape open to the rest of the world.
“Why us?” Debris asked.
“Because deities come and go, but garbage lives forever.”
About the Story
When the anthology theme was first presented to me, the characters popped into my head and asked, “What took you so long to find us?”
Irene Radford