Tina's Trash

Tina always tipped her dustman if she had anything big to take away. They were always willing to oblige for a few pounds. In fact last week, Tina had started to decorate her front room. She had pulled up the 20 foot by 13 foot carpet. She had struggled with it and had eventually got it rolled up and taped. The dustmen took it without any problem.

She had stripped the walls and had lots of bags full of torn wallpaper. As she filled them, she had put them in her front garden to await collection. But she only had the one bag of rubbish as she lived on her own. 

The day before the rubbish was to be collected, she had the new carpet delivered. The men who delivered it put it in her front room for her. She had arranged for it to be fitted the next day. The carpet fitter was coming around at 3 in the afternoon. That gave Tina plenty of time to get the rubbish out and clear the room for the carpet fitter.

She took the rubbish sack out of the bin in her kitchen and tied it up tightly. She put a fresh bag in it's place and put the full bag out into the front garden. The next day she would get up and put everything in the road outside her house. She had told the dustmen there would be quite a few bags extra that week.  

It was a hot summers night that night and Tina went to bed wearing her favourite baby doll nightie. Her ex-boyfriend used to love it. She left the upstairs window open. She slept in the back room as it was quieter.

Tina was woken by a noise from downstairs. She thought that she must be hearing things. She thought it was just her imagination. Any noise would be amplified by the lack of a carpet on the floor. But then she heard it again. Tina quietly got up and crept to the bedroom door. She opened it a bit and heard more noises downstairs. She crept to the top of the stairs. She had to be careful as one of the floorboards creaked. But she got past this one.

She eased her way downstairs by stepping only at the sides of the stairs.  But as she got to the bottom she was seen. There was a man. He was wearing a balaclava helmet that only showed his eyes. He called out and two other men dressed the same ran out to join him.

Tina went to scream, but she was grabbed and one of them put his hands over her mouth. She struggled, but they were too strong for her. One of the men asked what they were going to do with her. A roll of carpet tape was found that the carpet men had conveniently left for the fitter was produced. Her hands were held behind her by the third man and the tape was wound round and round her hands about six times and then it was taken between her hands and pressed tight so it held her hands firmly. The man doing the taping, got down and wrapped the tape around her ankles, fastening them together. This was wrapped around six times as well. Then he got up and wound the tape around her head six times, efficiently enough to make an excellent gag.

Tina stood there while he wrapped some of the tape around her legs. One lot above her kneecaps and one lot below them. Both times tape was wrapped six times.  

Tina now stood there in the kitchen in a baby doll nightie with her hands taped behind her head and her legs and feet taped together. She was not going anywhere.

The three men looked at each other and one suggested it might be fun if they took her with them.  One man said that would be kidnap. The first agreed, "but we could leave her miles away tied to a tree. When daylight came she would give everyone a nice vision to look at. And she would have to get home!" he said. The three men thought about it.

One left the house. He was not gone long when he came back in. He had checked where they parked their large van. They had left it around the corner so that if any police got nosey, they would not find them. He also brought five large rolls of duct tape with him.

They picked Tina up and carried her into the front room. It had been cleared of all the furniture so it would be the perfect place to leave Tina while they emptied the rest of the house. Then they could come back for her. Tina's eyes opened wide. She struggled, but they were too strong and simply walked with her into the front room. 

"I have an idea", said the leader of the gang.  He told the other two to put Tina down. She lay on the floor watching them. The leader went to the carpet and pulled off the carpet tape that held it in a tight roll. Another man helped him to lift the carpet into the right position. The third man picked Tina up under her arms and pulled her back to the wall. He put her down again and went to help the other two.

They dragged the carpet into the middle of the room with the width being longwise to the room. They unrolled the carpet until they managed to reach the side of the room. Then they rolled the carpet back until it reached the other wall. Tina wondered what they were up to.

She did not have to wait long to find out. They came over and picked her up. They carried her to the carpet and laid her about two feet from the edge, by the wall. As Tina was only 5 foot 6 inches, she had about 18 inches of carpet over her head and 18 inches below her feet.

The men left her there and grabbed the edge of the carpet. Two of the men lifted the carpet by the corners and the third man went behind one of them and stood between the wall and the now lifted carpet. They pushed it over Tina and started to roll it. Tina realised she was going to be in the middle of the roll.

Over and over Tina went. They eventually reached the carpet still rolled up on the other side of the room. They pulled the whole thing back to the point where they had started to roll the carpet up around Tina. They still had 7 feet of carpet to roll up. But it did not take them long. Tina was soon surrounded by 20 feet of brand new carpet.

One of the men took a look around the house. He came back with two plastic buckets. The other two men wondered what he was up to. But he got down on the floor and put the bottom of the bucket in the hole of the carpet roll. The men saw what he was up to. They helped to push it into the carpet roll centre. Tina still didn't quite reach the end of the carpet.

The man took the tape and taped it to the bottom of the carpet. He lifted the carpet up and taped the other end down so it stopped the bucket from coming out. He left 18 inches of tape fastened to the carpet on each side. He repeated this so that eventually the tape looked like a spoked wheel. Then he got the others to lift the carpet and he wrapped the tape around the tapes holding the bucket six times. Tina felt her legs being lifted while they taped the bucket in the carpet. The bucket could not be pushed out by Tina.

Now he looked at the other bucket. He turned it up side down and thought that Tina would need to breathe and so took it out to the kitchen where he heated a knife until it was red hot on her gas cooker and burned holes into the bottom of the bucket. The air smelt of burning plastic. When he had burned twelve inch diameter holes in the bucket, he was satisfied. He opened the rear door to let the smell out of the house.

He took the bucket back into the front room and got the other to lift the carpet while he secured the bucket, with the top at the end so the bottom of the bucket was nearest to Tina. 

Tina saw the bottom of the plastic bucket coming towards her. Now the man put tape all across the bucket going from one side of the carpet to the other, but he did not put so much on this time. He soon wound the tape around the carpet six times securing the tape holding the bucket that end.

Tina was now bound, gagged and imprisoned in a carpet. She thought of the film "The Carpetbaggers" and laughed silently to herself.

The men decided that it would be best if they put the carpet in the front garden for now while they got the van they were using from around the corner. They shifted all the bags of wallpaper and the bag of rubbish from the front garden. But one of the men thought it would be better if some rubbish sacks were wrapped around the carpet. The men with him agreed and the sacks split at the bottom and slid over the carpet. They taped them together as much as they could. The bags were taped all around the carpet. Two sacks were put over the ends. But they spit the bag open at the bottom and pushed it into the top of the bucket. They taped the bag to the insides of the bucket so the air holes would not get blocked. All that was showing now was about a foot of carpet in the middle.

Tina felt them lift her up and with difficulty got her out into the front garden. They lay her down in the carpet and put all the other sacks back in front of it so the carpet could not be seen from the pavement. Now they got their van and stripped Tina's house. They were just about to go back for Tina when a police car wandered down the road. The men shut the van doors, jumped into the van and roared off with the police in pursuit.

Tina lay there listening to the people walking by. Her next door neighbour stood there talking for ages. But Tina could not get them to hear her. With the noise of the traffic, her talking, Tina's gag and the carpet which made an excellent silencer she could not get herself heard.

The dustmen came along and saw the rubbish in Tina's garden. They thought it was strange that she had not put it out on the pavement, but as she was so good to them they would take it from her garden. They eventually got to the carpet. They saw it was not a perfect roll and thought it must be one she was getting rid of. They would take it now and see her the next time. But one of the men pointed out that the part of the carpet they could see was brand new. It was argued that if she did not want to dump it she would have left it indoors and not put it with the rubbish. Everyone agreed with that argument.

The dustmen decided that as Tina was their last collection on that round, they would take it and drop it off at the drivers house. If it was no good, they could just sling it back into the dustcart!

They did not bother to compact the carpet, they just laid it in the back. They drove off and turned the corner just in time to see the supervisor standing there. If they were to sort through the rubbish and take anything they would be sacked. He asked where they were going with the carpet and they said that they were off to dump it in the landfill site and that they never bothered to compact it to save fuel. As they had no more to pick up they just left it on the back.

Tina lay in the back of the dustcart. The ends had been pushed skywards as the carpet was slightly too wide for the dustcart and the buckets would not let the carpet bend at the ends.

The supervisor looked at the dustmen and climbed in with them. They drove straight to the tip where the dustmen got out of the dustcart. The supervisor got out first. The driver revved the engine up and the dustcart started to tip the back up. The supervisor watched as the carpet fell out of the cart.

Tina felt the carpet suddenly had no support. She looked through the holes in the bucket and saw she was falling through the air. The carpet hit the rubbish tip and Tina was winded. Tina tried to scream for all she was worth, but it was no use. They could not hear her, even if she did not have the gag in. The noise of the revving dustcart engine drowned her out.

The rest of the rubbish followed. The wallpaper filled sacks were light. Then the rest of everyone's household rubbish came down on top of her. Some of them was quite heavy. People had dumped irons, cast iron frying pans and all sorts of things. But the carpet cushioned the blows. It only took a matter of minutes before Tina's window on her new world was covered. She was in darkness and it was eerily silent. All Tina could hear was the blood rushing though her head.

Dustcart after dustcart came and dumped their load on Tina's pile of rubbish which was now her new home. Some of the rubbish was collected from wheelie bins and was not even in sacks. This meant that all the rotting compost would now be squeezed so all the juices was dripped onto her carpet.

Tina felt the pressure of the rubbish building up on top of her. Juices from fruit was being squeezed out some of the bags. Even the water from mouldy cucumbers was being squeezed out. But the carpet kept Tina dry.

She found it harder and harder to breathe. The smell from the rotting fruit and vegetables was awful, and somewhere nearby was a bag of manure. The juices from that being squeezed dropped onto the end of the carpet and ran into the plastic sack covering the bucket that Tina had been looking through. This smell made Tina wretch.

The rubbish kept pouring down.  The carpet had held out for so long but eventually it started to flatten out through the weight of the rubbish above it. Tina felt the carpet slip as something gave way below it. And she drifted deeper into the rubbish pile. She wondered if she would ever get out of this...

At the depot where the dustmen had driven to after unloading, the driver said, "Pity about that carpet!"

 

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10.05.06