Needing More

As always – enjoy the story, and do not try this sort of trash play at home.

Stella’s biggest fantasy was to be treated like trash. Now, most girls, when they say that, they probably mean they want to be humiliated or talked down to… but she meant it literally. Her favorite thing in the world, especially after a long, exhausting session in bed with her boyfriend Ethan, was to have him tie her up, gag her, and then wrap her in a trash bag and treat her like literal trash. Like after he’d had his way with her, she was just some worthless thing to be disposed of. She couldn’t explain why it turned her on so much, but she couldn’t deny that getting “trashed” was one of the most pleasurable sensations she could feel.

For the first year of their relationship, as she slowly introduced Ethan to the concept, he was a bit hesitant. It all seemed to weird to him. But eventually, she began to win him over, and before long, he was the one taking control and initiating the trashing. It became their go-to punishment. If she ever disobeyed him—if she refused to give him a blowjob, or forgot to do the dishes or the laundry—into the trash she went. It was a perfect relationship. She loved being trashed, and the more he did it, the more he loved trashing her. In fact, it even started to turn him on. They could have a full session of lovemaking, and then he’d be there masturbating to the thought of her being trash—his trash, a worthless thing he no longer had any use for.

Of course, he always let her out before long. At least at first…

One day, on collection day, Stella forgot to take out the trash. This was an eventuality Ethan had planned for, and to punish her, he did more than just bind and bag her… he then finished the task she had forgotten, taking the apartment’s trash downstairs to the dumpster used by the whole apartment complex. First he took the bag of real trash, and then he took the bag containing Stella, and he dumped her into the dumpster right alongside the rest of the trash, muttering something about how his stupid girlfriend never cleaned up around the house anymore. He then watched from the window as the day went on, slowly stroking his cock as he saw people bring out their trash and the dumpster began to fill.

Under the cover of darkness, he went back outside, dug her out, and brought her inside for a shower and some very sexy times. She was hornier than he’d ever seen her, and so this sort of real dumpster play became a new norm for them, eventually a weekly occurrence. Every Tuesday, the trash would get collected, and soon after that Ethan would hide Stella in the nearly-empty dumpster and let her sit there until the evening came.

“I want more,” she said one day. “I need more.”

“More what?”

“More trash. To be buried by more trash, for more time.”

He smiled. He already had an idea of what to do next.

After he got home from work that following Friday, he arrived in an irritable mood – or, so he pretended. Every little thing Stella did, he grumbled and complained about, chastising her for even the smallest mistake. She guessed at where it all was going, and she was right. Not long after sunset, Ethan snapped (or pretended to), shouting at her, calling her worthless, useless… saying that she was nothing, just nothing, and before long, he had her bound up in a trash bag and carried her once more to the dumpster. Since pickup was on Tuesdays, and it was Friday evening, the dumpster was halfway full, and he was able to drop her bag in roughly, letting the trash cushion her fall. Then Stella, being heavier than the trash around her, sank in a little bit, and Ethan rearranged a few of the bags to make sure hers was well and fully covered.

“Goodbye, trash,” he said aloud. “Enjoy your life in your new home.”

And then he walked away.

He left her there for two long days, not returning until Sunday evening, when the dumpster was close to full and she was truly buried. “Well, trash,” he said after digging her out, but before he released her. “I’ve had a change of heart. I think I’ll set you free… this time.”

After she got washed up, she was eager to show him how thankful she was. And soon, this longer, more deeply buried routine became their norm. At first, he would stay home all weekend and supervise the trash, to make sure nothing went wrong, but after a few such sessions he figured that the whole process was pretty reliable and safe, so he started to make the weekends his own. He’d spend longer and longer amounts of time away, not that Stella knew anything about that from her prison of trash. Not that she cared. Her weekends spent in the trash were weekends spent in boundless pleasure, and it was always almost a disappointment when Sunday evening came and Ethan came to rescue her. Just a little longer, she would think, I just want to be trash for a little longer.

One day, she got her wish. Ethan had gotten so used to the idea that she was trash, he was starting to spend his free time on weekends going out to bars, staying up late with friends both new and old. One Sunday night, it was all he could do to stumble home and get into his own bed before falling asleep, leaving Stella out in the trash, hardly even remembering she was there. In fact, he didn’t remember until he got home from work the following day, to find Stella nowhere to be seen, but the apartment dumpster practically overflowing in anticipation of collection the following morning.

He was suddenly quite thankful that collection wasn’t on Mondays!

He retrieved her from the trash, where she was even more excited than ever before. “You know, one day I’m just not going to come get you,” he told her as he looked at her, her whole body covered with trash and sweat and filth. “One day, I’m going to put you in a dumpster, and I’m going to leave you there.”

Her eyes widened. Was that fear? No. That was excitement. She knew just as well as he did that his words were just a fun bit of roleplay, not a serious threat.

But a few times, he made her kind of think otherwise. He would, on occasion, leave her in the trash until Monday… sometimes intentionally, sometimes not… and a few times, he even waited until Tuesday morning. The first time he did that, the night before, he set his alarm and muttered. “I hope the truck doesn’t come by too early,” and then he went to sleep, dreaming of waking up and finding that the dumpster had been emptied, and all the trash taken away. It wasn’t a nightmare, though… it was a pleasant dream, one from which he’d always wake up with a hard-on. It was a good dream, to think she had been taken away with the trash… the natural culmination of their shared fantasy. But, it was also one he knew would have to remain firmly in his (and her) dreams.

One Summer, he left her in the trash through into Monday, until, partway through his workday, he realized… it was July 3rd, meaning that the next day was a holiday… meaning that the trash collection was probably moved to a different day! He didn’t know what schedule the apartment ran on in such cases, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He raced home just as fast as he could, fearing he would be too late, inexplicably horny hoping that maybe he was. He wanted it… he really almost wanted it, to arrive home and find the dumpster empty and the trash all gone.

As luck would have it, he arrived just in time. No sooner did he arrive and get out of his car, than the truck pulled into the apartment complex and started making its way toward the dumpster. Ethan raced over to it, getting in the truck’s way, and started digging through the trash.

“What’s going on here?” the truck driver asked, annoyed by the delay.

“I think I threw out something important by mistake,” Ethan scrambled, trying to find an explanation that wouldn’t get him in trouble. “I just need to find it real quick…”

“Real quick” turned out to be not as fast as he had hoped. The truck driver waited, impatiently, for five minutes, then he stomped over and grumbled to Ethan, who by now had climbed all the way into the dumpster pushing bags aside trying to find with the one containing Stella. “I haven’t got all day,” the truck driver said. “The fuck did you throw out that’s so important?”

“It’s… uh…” Ethan stammered. “Tax papers! We were clearing out my desk, I think the wrong folder got tossed… it’s got to be in here somewhere…”

“Look, your mistake really isn’t my responsibility. Now, I was running a little ahead of schedule, but now you’ve got me running behind. I’m going to have to ask you to exit the dumpster. All trash is government property anyway, so I shouldn’t have been letting you look through it at all. Privacy concerns, and all.”

“Just… just one moment!” Ethan said frantically as he continued to dig, eventually going deep enough that he was almost entirely covered by trash bags himself. The truck driver smirked, equal parts annoyed and amused by Ethan’s situation, and he idly considered that he could—could—just empty the dumpster and call it an accident that some man had wound up inside. But he pushed the idea from his mind, knowing it was impossible.

… or, not impossible. Just wrong. But not impossible.

He was about to call the police, to have them arrest Ethan for trespassing, when Ethan extracted himself from the dumpster carrying a very full bag of trash. “Found it!” he said, trying to carry the bag. The driver was confused, it was just one bag of trash—containing some simple tax papers—but the way Ethan was carrying it with two hands it must have been rather heavy. Still, none of his business.

“Good,” the driver said, and as Ethan walked off, he revved up the truck and got back to work.

During the whole ordeal, from hearing the truck arrive to being rescued, Stella had cum not once, but twice, and hearing the dumpster being emptied brought on #3, leaving her, a quivering trash bag in her boyfriend’s hands, softly moaning and gasping through her gag.

Once he got her inside and unbound, she didn’t even bother washing up first. She gave him a blowjob right then and there. “That was amazing,” she said, once he had finished in her mouth. “I really thought that I was trash! You planned it all so perfectly. Was the driver in on it?”

Ethan had to think for a moment, deciding which answer she would be more turned on by, and he opted for the truth, at least on one part of it.

“Thanks, babe. I tried my best to make it a special day for you”—as if it hadn’t all been a very real close call!—”but no, the driver had no idea what was going on. He was really ready to empty the dumpster, and all—all—of the trash inside it.”

Stella flopped back against the floor, staring up at the ceiling, happy and exhausted. “We HAVE to do this all again.”

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t think I can get away with the tax papers excuse twice, babe.”

The look of disappointment on her face was too much to bear, and he resolved then and there to find more, equally exciting ways for her to experience her fantasy. First, he started taking her to other dumpsters (though only after checking their schedule, of course, to make sure she would not be collected!) Then, he went even a step further… he rented out a garbage truck, and (with himself at the wheel) went and actually collected the dumpster she was tucked away in! Of course, he didn’t run the truck’s compactor, and after driving around for a while he let her out. The first time, he found her in the back exhausted, her whole body tired from excitement and orgasms, and every time after the first he would find her in the exact same state.

Once this became a pattern, he started to take things even further. She no longer had to ask; he just knew what he had to do. Right when they got home after a several-day remote trashing, he got her tied up right away and put her back out with the trash. He didn’t even give her a chance to shower first. After all, trash has no reason to clean itself.

And so began Stella’s permanent residency in the trash.

He would take her to three dumpsters each week… the one at their apartment, and then two others close by. At first, he would just dig her out of the dumpster, take her to the next one, and dump her in. Sometimes, he would unbag her for a brief moment, exposing one or more of her holes so he could use her for his pleasure, cumming inside her and then putting her in the trash like a used condom. She loved it. It was everything she had ever dreamed of, spending her life as a piece of trash… or so she thought. Little did she know how much more he could do to satisfy her needs.

He used some of his new spare time, now that he didn’t have her around the apartment constantly, to get licensed with the city to be a garbage truck driver, and he negotiated with the owners of several local dumpsters to be their exclusive collector.

One time, when he came to “rescue” Stella, he pulled up next to her dumpster in his rented trash truck, then got out and spoke down into the full container of trash.

“Well, dear, I have a bit of an announcement. I’m a licensed garbage collector now! That means that once I’m done collecting trash for the day, I get to take it all to the local resource recovery facility so that it can be properly disposed of. So… here’s what I need to know. Do you agree to be my trash… permanently?”

In theory, any other time when he came to free her, she could have indicated to him that she wanted out. Now, her opportunities might not be so frequent.

There was a slight rustle from somewhere in the trash. Was that a “yes” or a “no”? He couldn’t tell for sure, not through the gag and the pile of trash which separated her from him, but he also didn’t really care. It was already a “yes” in his mind. He had spent too much time and effort to stop just when things were finally getting good.

And so, from that day on, he would take his truck around on his route. Her dumpster would be the first he would collect, and he’d then drive to a nearly-empty dumpster he had collected the night before. He’d back his truck up to it and empty out the whole load into the dumpster, sending Stella’s bag along with all the others tumbling down, and then he would drive off without giving her a second glance. And that’s really what turned him on the most about it anymore… the fact that he just didn’t have to care about her. That she had been so thoroughly turned into trash, that she effectively was trash, readily forgotten except when it needs to be moved from place to place…

Mostly to dumpsters, in the case of her particular bag of trash.

…mostly.

It was their third anniversary, not that Stella would have any way to track such a thing from her home in the trash. She had been a full-time trash bag for almost half a year, and to celebrate the occasion, Ethan decided it was time to do something special. Something he’d been waiting to do ever since they had first begun to escalate their trash play.

This time, instead of moving her around as his first stop of the day, he saved her dumpster for last, dumping her and the trash around her in on top of the rest of his load for the day. This was certainly new, but if she wanted to ask what was going on, she couldn’t. She would just have to hope for the best.

And it was certainly the best so far.

He drove along a route which was, by then, familiar enough to him. His destination today was not another dumpster. Today, he was taking her to where the trash really went. She was finally on her way to the local resource recovery facility.

She could tell something was different, not just because of the extra trash which cushioned her in the truck, but also because the drive was much longer than usual. Not that there was anything out of the ordinary about it to Ethan.

He pulled in to the facility, the same as he would any other day. This was her fantasy, and it was time he took it as far as he could, to make her greatest dreams finally come true.

He backed up to one of the several large hoppers stationed outside for just such a use. These were large, metal bins, big enough to hold a full load of trash. Near the bottom of each one was an opening which dropped down onto a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt then lead into the unknown (to Stella) machinery within the facility…

Ethan only had one job to do. He was a truck driver; and since he had emptied his truck out into the hopper, there was nothing left for him in the area except to drive off and leave the trash to its fate…

Stella, for her part, had no idea where she had been dropped off! Her trash bag was too dark to see out of, and so, she figured, perhaps this was just some new dumpster that was large enough to hold a full truck’s worth of trash. What fun! She wriggled a hand down to her pussy, as much as she could given her bindings, and began to rub herself. There she stayed… waiting… excited… so thankful to have such a kind and caring boyfriend who indulged her in such a way…

A kind and caring boyfriend, indeed. Once again, he had planned everything out. Their third anniversary had conveniently fallen on a Sunday, the one day of the week when the facility wasn’t operational. Nobody but Stella and Ethan were even around. Ethan, after driving the truck away, parked it just outside the facility and then walked back in, approaching the hopper which Stella was buried in.

After letting her enjoy herself for a couple hours, Ethan was done with waiting. He pulled himself up and into the hopper and began digging through the trash until he found her.

After all her months in the trash, he hardly recognized her as his girlfriend. Her whole body was filthy, her hair a mess, every inch of her stained by trash. She was a disaster… but his attraction to her still won out. “Happy anniversary, dear,” he said. “This is where I bring the trash.”

There were not many more words… there was only sex. Trashy, dirty sex, the two lovers buried in the hopper as they explored each others’ bodies for the first time in ages.

“They could turn it on,” he whispered to her. “They could turn it on at any time… start emptying this hopper… start moving all the trash inside…”

“What happens to it there?” she asked.

“What do you think? It gets”—he savored the word—”disposed of.”

It didn’t take long for her to cum after that announcement, and after several hours of play, they both lay there… happy, exhausted, and covered by trash and each others’ juices.

“I need more,” she said, as the silence grew long.

“I know,” he answered.

He’d already planned for just such a thing.

They then went back to their usual routine, him moving her from dumpster to dumpster, and occasionally stopping in at the resource recovery facility. He did not fuck her again, not there in the hopper, but after dumping her and leaving her to her own devices for a time he would begin to taunt her. He talked about how the trash was all ready to be disposed of, about how it looked like it belonged there, about how nobody wanted it anymore…

Of course, that last bit was a lie. He did want her, even still. But he wanted to help her enjoy her fantasy even more. And in the meantime, as they went past that third anniversary and she continued to live full-time in the trash, his needs began to grow. A mere piece of trash could not satisfy him, sexually, the way his girlfriend used to, and eventually he began to see other girls…

It was just for fun, he told himself. Just a little fling, that she’ll never know about… she was having such a good time in the trash, she couldn’t begrudge him wanting to live a little as well… whatever he had to tell himself to justify it, he did.

There was just one problem… he could never take the girls he met home with him, instead needing to go to their place, or meet at a hotel. All of Stella’s things were still around the apartment, sure to be seen by anyone who came in, and that just wouldn’t do. At first he thought about hiding them, or putting them in storage, but after considering this for a little, he realized… what would be the point? Stella didn’t seem to have any plans of leaving the trash life. Even if she did, he didn’t really give her any chances to tell him she wanted out. So, if his girlfriend was going to be trash forever, he didn’t even really need to keep her things around.

Some of them, the valuable ones, he sold, since being a trash collector was not as good paying of a job as he wished it was. Most of the rest of her belongings though? There was only one place for it to go. So into the trash it went.

He even told her as much, one time, while she was in the hopper. She squirmed as he explained that since she was trash, that meant all her things were trash as well. About how he had started bagging up her old clothes, her old books… makeup supplies, cell phone… all the girlie trinkets that she had kept around the house as decoration… he even explained how he had taken her credit cards out of her wallet and had run up the balance on them, getting himself some nice treats while “trashing” her accounts and credit score. Even if she ever did leave the trash, there was no life left for her to return to. Her existence as a human had been all but erased.

She squirmed as she heard this, not because she was mad, but because of how it excited her so. She couldn’t be certain of whether or not he was telling the truth… perhaps he was saying these things just to make her feel even more worthless than before… but it didn’t matter. Not to her. She had no intention of ever again leaving the trash.

Once, while he was taking the last load of her belongings to the resource recovery facility one fine Sunday afternoon, he decided to take the next step.

“Well dear,” he said into the trash-filled hopper. He saw a brief rustle from the pile, letting him know that she was there and could hear his every word. “It seems there’s not much left of you now. In that hopper with you is the last of your possessions. I filed a missing persons report for you months ago, and since you’ve not been found, you’ve been legally declared ‘presumed dead’… and you know what that means?”

She wriggled again.

“It means that while I dispose of the last of your belongings, I am also free to go ahead and dispose of you. Goodbye, Stella. Or should I say… so long, trash.”

With that he pulled a lever, and the conveyor beneath the hopper started up, whisking the trash away into the facility for disposal. It took a couple minutes for it to get to her bag. Ethan couldn’t even be certain of which one it was. Her bag, a thick black plastic one, was like so many others that he couldn’t tell hers apart from the rest unless he saw her moving. And she was moving… just not enough for him to see. She was in there, in the trash, listening to the mechanical sound of the conveyor belt in action, rubbing herself more forcefully than she ever had before. This was it… this was the big day, one she had dreamed of a thousand times… and she intended to enjoy every moment of it.

As the last bags from the hopper were moved inside, Ethan entered the double doors to watch their progress through the facility. They got sent, briefly, through a scanner which checked for any problematic materials such as explosives, but it wasn’t designed to check for people. It just moved her along like any other piece of trash, sending her along the conveyor to her final destination: The waiting maw of the facility’s massive incinerator. The chamber was already half full of trash from the night before, and she tumbled down into it, with no knowledge of where exactly she was. For all she could tell with her limited visibility from inside the bag, she had just landed in another hopper. Except, this was a hopper that trash rarely, if ever, left.

Her situation became clear when Ethan walked up to the open incinerator doors and spoke, loud and clear to make sure that she could hear. “Okay, babe, here we are. Welcome to the incinerator. What, you didn’t know trash went to get incinerated? Were you excited to get buried forever in a landfill? Well that’s just a damn shame. This incinerator is where most all the trash around here goes. All those bags you’ve been with in all the various dumpsters… all the things that used to belong to you which I threw out… it all ends up here. This is where it ends, this is where the trash gets destroyed. And now it’s your turn.”

He stepped over to the machine’s control panel, and steeled himself for what he was about to do.

He pulled a switch, and the incinerator doors slid shut and sealed tight, trapping the trash within. Even if she wasn’t bound and bagged, there would be no way out now for dear Stella. But still, just to be thorough, and to keep with protocol, he returned to the door and slid the manual lock into place as well

Then he pressed a button, turning on the energy-capture system which resided above the incinerator, which would repurpose the heat from the burn into energy which was then returned to the power grid to help keep the lights running in town. The machine filled the air with a hum.

Then, another button press, and he activated the blowers, large fans inside the walls of the incinerator which were designed to help the burn rush through the pile of trash.

There weren’t many other controls. Just a dial to control the temperature, and a lever to “fire it up”…

He turned the dial to the appropriate setting, and then placed his hand upon the lever. He knew that, if he pulled it, there would be no going back. That he would have taken Stella as far as he could in making her dream come true. He hesitated, feeling as though he was about to do something wrong, but knowing, knowing deep down in his heart, that this was right.

He pulled the lever.

The furnace which initiated the incineration process came to life.

He knew that in there, inside the incinerator, Stella was counting her last moments. Probably having the time of her life, too. He was right.

Then, a roar. The viewport into the furnace let Ethan see everything, as flame raged through the machine, casting a brief orange glow as the blowers amplified the power of the fire. It tore through the trash with ease, reducing everything within to ash in a burning, destructive flurry…

…or, that’s what would have happened, if he had set the temperature dial high enough.

Instead, the furnace flashed heat into the room, taking it instantly to 100 degrees Fahrenheit—decidedly hot, but far, far short of what would be required to actually incinerate the trash. It was the furthest he could possibly escalate Stella’s curious fetish, and he gazed lovingly through the viewport at the pile of trash, knowing how hot it was within, knowing that it was likely hotter still for dear Stella, bound up in her black trash bag which would just trap the heat around her body…

He let it run for ten minutes, then switched the lever, blowers, and energy collection system off. He opened the door and looked in at the pile of trash. It was the largest pile he’d ever had to dig through to find her, but it didn’t take long to identify her exhausted, excited breathing. She had cum so many times she could hardly speak. He opened the bag, just enough to let her head out so that she could see him, then he picked up her bag and carried her out of the incinerator. He set her down on the ground, closed the incinerator door, and started up the controls again, this time turning the dial to the highest setting, but he stopped short of pulling the lever.

“Inside there…” he said to her, “Inside that incinerator is the last of your life. Once I pull this lever, all that will be left of you is… you. Nothing else, no belongings you ever cared for, no clothes you ever wore. All your old school projects, even the artwork you did while we were dating… it will all be burnt to nothing. Now I give you a choice. One… last… choice. If you want to, you can call it all off. But if you don’t… if you want to cement your place in the world as trash”—he unbuckled his belt—”then get to work.”

It wasn’t even a question in her mind. She took his cock into her mouth eagerly, without even saying a word, and when he came, and she swallowed, he did pull that lever. The viewport glowed with orange light as the incinerator did what it was built to and destroyed all that was held within it.

“This is your life now,” Ethan told her as the fire burned down. “This is your life, to live as trash, to end in the incinerator, like the trash you are. Every Sunday, I will do this for you. I will bring you here. I will put you in there, and I will run it just as hot as I can to ensure you stick around for another week, to continue your pointless existence as trash. But this… this is the last time we speak. The last time we see each other. From here on, after today, you are… nothing. And if one day, I set the dial wrong, and you burn away, do you know what I will think?”

She shook her head submissively.

“I will think nothing. Because nothing out of the ordinary happened. All it would mean, is that the trash is gone. Converted into energy… made into something useful. This is your last chance. Do you have any final words, before you cease to be human, and begin to be only… only… trash?”

She was smiling. Thankful, happy, and smiling.

“I love you,” she said. “Thank you.”

He cocked his head as he looked at her. Her words really were sweet. But he had a role to play.

“I used to love a girl,” he said. “But now… she’s just trash. And I’m sorry… but nobody loves trash.”

Then he wrapped a gag around her head, closed the trash bag around her, and carried her back out to the truck. He could feel her squirming with excitement, but he pretended to ignore it. He intended to stay true to his word. He would give her her fun each Sunday but aside from that, she was nothing but trash. He had taken her fantasy for her just as far as he could, and all he could do now was repeat it week after week.

Unless...

As time went on, he did begin to experiment. Buried her deeper in the incinerator before turning it on, or turning it up a few extra degrees. He was playing with fire—literally—and he knew it, but still. He had to find ways to heighten her excitement. It really was the least that he could do for her, to satisfy her endless need for more.

Meanwhile, things had started to get serious between Ethan and Charlotte, a girl he had met a few months before. The two of them fell for each other faster and harder than even Ethan and Stella had at first. They were the perfect match, both emotionally and physically. And what’s more, Charlotte had a fair bit of cash thanks to her father being the CEO of a rather well-known company. Ethan would have loved her even without that, but given his dwindling funds since he was merely working as a garbage truck driver, and not even full time, he certainly was not one to complain about her offering to pay for their meals at all sorts of swanky restaurants, nor about the many gifts she began to send his way.

He told Stella about her, while she was in the incinerator. He explained how, since he wasn’t interested in dating trash, he had found someone new. If Stella was angry, she couldn’t communicate as much to Ethan, who simply buried her in trash and ran the incinerator as usual. A few degrees warmer… every week, another degree. He was hesitant at first, but knew that this was the last way he could take her fantasy ever higher. That, and letting it run for longer times while she was inside, and burying her deeper.

Once, he decided to scare her. He put her in the incinerator, then pretended to get a phone call. He spoke loud and clear, so she could hear, saying how “I was just about to burn some trash, but forget that! I’ll get to the airport straight away, I hope he’s okay.” Making it sound like a family emergency or the like. He walked off, making her think he had just abandoned her in the incinerator and left. Like he was leaving her there until the morning, when the facility’s usual employees would return and would fire up the burners for real, without knowing what was inside. Instead, he returned late that evening to “burn” her at a decidedly hot 110 degrees, before digging her out and returning her to the trash.

The next time he pulled a similar prank, it was the day before a holiday, and he left her there all through Monday since the facility was closed. Then, a 125 degree burst, which he let linger even longer than he ever had before, and then he rescued her safe and sound.

But how could he possibly top that?

Once, while she was in there, he turned the temperature dial to its maximum setting and let his hand hover over the button, not meaning to push it… just wondering what it would feel like, just in awe of the sheer power he had over her, of the power she had let him have.

Instead, he realized a different way he could escalate things. A new way to make everything ever more real. Before, when he collected her in his truck, he never ran the truck’s compactor. But after a few promising tests, he took the chance, and let her ride out a round in the compactor, to (from what he could tell) great success. It became a new part of his routine, and even with this he got bolder over time, picking her up earlier and earlier in his route so she would experience more and more compactions inside the truck.

He knew that something could go wrong. Between the compactor, and the incinerator, something could go wrong and their little game would come to an end. But he tried to be careful, tried to make sure she didn’t come to any harm. This time, he felt certain, he had figured out the last thing he could do for her to make her fantasy come ever more alive. The only other step, the truly final one, was one he couldn’t do—no matter how often he dreamed of it, he just couldn’t bring himself to run up the compactor to its maximum pressure or turn up that temperature dial and end the trash once and for all. Even though he had moved on romantically, even as he got more and more serious with Charlotte, he couldn’t help but lovingly remember the times he and Stella had shared, and so that final step remained forever in the future.

But, with nowhere else to escalate their play to, he eventually began to feel bored of it. It was just the same thing each week. Collect the trash, compact it a few times, dump it in the hopper, empty the hopper into the incinerator, run the burner at some hot-but-safe temperature, dig her out, burn the trash for real, and then take her to some dumpster to wait another week. Stella, for her part, was having a great time with it. She felt more like trash than she had ever imagined possible. But as Ethan’s crush on Charlotte grew, his interest in continuing this repetitive play just for Stella’s sake began to wane.

Still, he couldn’t take the last step. He just didn’t have it in him. Even if she was just trash now, he had cared for her too much back in the day to do what he knew was the last logical step. He just couldn’t. At least, not directly.

Eventually, he and Charlotte got talking, about their relationship, and about the possibility of marriage. They both agreed they wanted it, and Charlotte pointed out that once they combined their finances, Ethan wouldn’t need to work that crappy job of his anymore. She had enough in savings and investments to last the both of them for life. Ethan hesitated, dragging things out, realizing that marrying Charlotte likely meant leaving his work behind… and although he didn’t much enjoy his work, not after he had taken things as far as he could, he was also hesitant to leave it all behind after so many years. Until, one fine Saturday, the time was right, and he proposed.

She, of course, said yes, and after much celebrating (in bed and otherwise), they both went off to phone their friends and family with the good news.

But Ethan’s first call wasn’t to friends or family (those calls would come later). It was to his boss.

“I’m getting married,” Ethan told his boss. “And this girl, Charlotte… well, we’ve agreed that I should leave the company. And, sorry about not giving two weeks’, but it’s going to have to be effective today. We have a lot of plans to start making for the wedding.”

His boss was disgruntled about the whole thing, but also congratulated Ethan on the marriage and did ultimately except his resignation.

“Will you be able to find someone for my route?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, I’ll find someone,” his boss answered. “Probably start Monday by just adding the stops to other routes ‘til we hire someone. Sure you can’t stay a little to help with the transition?”

Ethan wouldn’t really have minded, if it weren’t for Stella. He knew that if he went out on his route now, he might change his mind, and he couldn’t do anything that might risk his marriage with Charlotte. She expected him to quit, and if he didn’t quit, and started feeling guilty about Stella, he might let something slip that there was, in some small way, another girl in his life.

“I’m afraid not. Though I’m glad you can get some guys to work my route in the meantime. Apologies about the late notice.”

“It’ll be fine. Congrats again on the marriage.”

“Thanks.”

Ethan hung up.

He looked, briefly, over at a corner of the room, remembering how several years back, he had first trashed Stella right over there. Just wrapped her up in a trash bag, neither of them knowing where her fantasy would take her, neither knowing that one day he would make a phone call which would consign her to remain in the trash forever.

He didn’t drive his route on Sunday, the way he normally did. He wondered if Stella was keeping enough track of time to notice the difference. Perhaps, she’d get collected on Monday, by some other employee, and wouldn’t even realize anything was different. Perhaps she’d rub herself as she was compacted, and dumped in the hopper, and conveyed into the incinerator, excitedly thinking it was just another Sunday and that Ethan would be by to rescue her. Not knowing, as the blowers started up, that this time someone else was at the controls, another man who did not know about her and didn’t care about keeping the trash around. Someone who would look through that viewport, and see nothing in it but trash, and with ease would turn that temperature dial to its maximum setting and press the button the same way he had a thousand times before. She would realize, in that last moment, that something was different, that this time it was real, and then…

Then the trash would be gone.

Ethan thought about her that Sunday, and again on Monday, in the evening, once collection time would almost certainly have been done. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to do it himself, but he had taken her fantasy to the next level, to the greatest height that it could reach, and now… now… Stella knew exactly what it meant to be trash.

“What are you thinking about, lover?” Charlotte asked, leaning in to him and placing a kiss on his cheek.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, then looked at her and smiled. She was beautiful, and he loved her. “Just… thinking about work.”

“Really?” she looked surprised. “Don’t tell me you actually miss that crappy job?”

He considered for a moment, thinking about far more than she could ever know. “No,” he said at last. “No, I really don’t miss it at all.”

Not now that he had Charlotte. He returned her kiss, and pushed all thought of his previous girlfriend from his mind. There was no point in dwelling on his past, now that his future was right before him.