Note from the editor (Tony):

The following is a submission that I received early this summer, June 2019. I was neglectful, dear readers, in reviewing it because I tend to over-extend myself and commit to way too many projects, and then kill myself with stress while I try to get anything accomplished. Some projects slip through the cracks. This was one of those projects.

We received this in an email and on our facebook page at roughly the same time. It was submitted under a fake name, with no description or explanation, just a pdf. I originally wanted to drag through the article with a fine-toothed comb and see about investigating into it, but these last few months, I have been distracted. I am very sorry for this, I intend to be more active in seeking out that good trashcontent, but that hasn’t been happening.

The following is the pdf, the only changes made were in formatting.

Where Do Our Demons Lie?

By: Anonymous

There are two types of anger: the blind, aimless animosity that boils your blood and seems to raise your body temperature a few degrees, that is directly related to the perceived injustices committed by a person or group. The scarier anger, though, is the cold, mute anger that resonates in your heart almost like a dying ember in a furnace, that you dare not stoke because it will only illuminate one fact: you are the source of your own misery.

+++

Everyone warns you not to work with friends because that’s how friendships can be ruined. Well, whoever says that is a damn liar: jobs don’t ruin friendships, friends ruin friendships. (Author’s Note: Despite the fact that this website’s name is “Trash Collective,” I won’t air my dirty laundry here.)

Anyway, I had a job that I really hated. The thing is that before I really hated the gig, I liked it. Working in the virtual reality industry is a really cool gig, especially if you work in a shitty store that never gets any customers because we employees got to goof off with the gear whenever it was slow. (A/N: So, all the time). Aside from the game being shitty, it was fun to narrate the storyline and make the experience more immersive for customers. Besides, I was always down to roleplay Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the front, there were even iPads that we used to “book customers.” (A/N: Read as: “hack the restrictive business iOS on the device and replace it with Apple’s regular iOS, then proceed to scare each other with articles from
r/NoSleep and record awful parodies of popular Vines).

Although I’m making this job sound absolutely amazing, I can assure you that it was not at all that. Remember when I said I wasn’t going to air my dirty laundry? Well, its Saturday morning and I can already hear “Lloraras” so you tell me what time it is. Basically, when the store opened, everyone was paid the same amount of money to do the same amount of work as
an hourly wage earner. A few months passed, and an hourly worker was promoted to shift leader. However, instead of being paid more money to do more work and take greater responsibility, she did the opposite of that. AKA, I wish I had a gig where I was paid $18/hr to sit on my ass, play PokemonGo and masturbate. A few weeks later, another shift leader was promoted to mitigate the chaos that was slowly becoming more and more prevalent in the workplace. The dilemma was simple: the workplace had split itself down the middle, with each side pledging to follow one of the shift leaders. I don’t really know where the line is when discussing this stuff, so I’m going to stop with that there. There is something I have to tell you though, dear reader. This fact is not essential to the story, but should be mentioned: we all blamed the workplace’s slow decline into social chaos on Jim.

Jim did not work with us, but he was an employee. Emphasis on was. The rumor I was told is that Jim was an old construction worker who had died during the store’s transition from Red Robin to virtual reality. He was an easy scapegoat for the frequent equipment malfunctions that happened too frequently around the store. We particularly blamed him for such malfunctions that would necessitate more construction (theoretically guaranteeing him more hours if he were still alive). Because most of the construction had to be done in the abandoned kitchen that used to belong to Red Robin, something in there was believed to be his tether to our dimension. It made perfect sense too, considering the kitchen was absolutely terrifying. The kitchen was kind
of like a one-room apartment; that is, if all the furniture made out of metal and, instead of planting grass outside, you planted rotting flesh. (A/N: The scariest part of the kitchen was that my boss snorted coke in there every morning before opening and never offered me any).

+++

Anyway, dear reader, time travel with me back to Circa 2019. It’s been a regular day on the job– I have encountered a few entitled mothers, on or two over-apologetic millennials, and even this one rich kid who wears Yeezys and regularly makes his tutor buy him games from our store.

I am allergic to little bitch so I usually try and stay from the one shift leader that objectively sucks. (A/N: I would love to get much more creative with the language I use to describe her, but I’m being held to a certain word count). However, today was not my lucky day. Most Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays were not. But today was super unlucky because not only did I have to put up with said shift lead, but my ride had flaked. So, I had no way to get home.

This circumstance was particularly shitty because my county was not set up for public transit. Example: the simplest bus route involved 3 transfers and a twenty-five-minute walk. No thank you, I said to myself. My friends will come in clutch, right? Wrong, you cranberry fucknugget. They will not come in clutch, they will not come at all because they have their own lives and their own responsibilities and you are a grown human being who should be able to fend for herself. Except, dear reader, I was a dumb bitch back then. (A/N: Spoiler: I am still a dumb bitch).

I clocked out and sat down in the break room to decide how I was going to get home. Just then, my good friend Jenny called me. For modesty’s sake, I will not disclose our discourse. But it went something along these lines:

Phone vibrating (I hadn’t taken it off vibrate since I lost my dildo 😦 )

 Her: Hey, when are you going to be home? I wanna come over and watch anime tonight.

 Me: I’m down! But I’m not home, and my ride flaked, so I don’t really know how I’m going to get home now, haha.

 awkward pause

 Me: Is there any way you could pick me up?

 another awkward pause

 Her: Well, I’m pretty far away, I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get to you. I totally would if I was working closer though…Me: 😦 Okay. Thanks for trying.

 Click, dial tone

Needless to say, I was devastated. But I had faith. I still had one hope left: my best friend, Thalia. She was the only living representation, aside from my wrists, that knows the searing agony that love and hatred have put me though. She was the only person who has told me I am beautiful while fully knowing that I look like a prepubescent teenager, inside and out.

I’ll save you guys the dialogue this time: she said no.

This time, I was even more devastated. Uber was too expensive. My previous ride had bailed on me. My two best friends in the state flaked. I was truly alone in the world. After a hot minute of intense disassociation from my situation, I decided to numb the pain of abandonment by locking myself in the bathroom and smoking myself out.

After a therapeutic meltdown precipitated by “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt, I had made up my mind: I was not going home: I was going to have to spend the night in the store. A new sense of resolve straightened my spine, and I went to work on the plan. I can grab food soon, I thought, then camp out in the bathrooms until the store closes- suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted when I realized a deadly flaw that was surfacing in my plan. I was going to have to sleep in the kitchen. With Jim.

Despite the fact that I had lost all faith in the male species and wanted absolutely nothing to do with them anymore, sleeping in the kitchen with Jim was extra scary because, if you remember, he’s a ghost. And, as an American child exposed to horror movies at a young age, I mostly believe in that spooky shit. I mean, think about it: there is no way that only one dimension exists in our universe. There is no way that our reality is the only reality.

But I had no other choice. The kitchen was the most secluded place in the store. It was also the messiest, meaning that it had the most hiding spots (A/N: Anyone with narcissistic parents knows that the best place to hide something is in plain sight). So I scoped out the kitchen, decided on my hiding spot, and then temporarily abandoned my nook in search of food. On my way out, I tried to make it obvious to my coworkers that I was leaving and did not plan on coming back.

Flash forward thirty minutes, and I’m walking back from Corner Bakery, club paninis in hand. I could just Uber home, I thought to myself. It’s only thirty-five bucks. But then the devil on my shoulder spoke: No, you can’t afford that. Plus, if your roommates wanted you home, wouldn’t they have come to get you? You don’t deserve to sleep in a bed tonight. At that precise moment, my phone buzzed, indicating that I had received a Facebook message.

It was from Thalia. Are you coming home tonight? The message seemed innocent and curious, but I could sense the animosity hidden in such sweet words. I decided not to respond. She wouldn’t care anyway. If anything, it would just make me more vulnerable to the psychological warfare likely to play out in the coming hours.

I slipped through the doors of our store, mumbling something about a forgotten water bottle. Shivering slightly, I planted myself on the break room’s couch which was deep in the kitchen’s steel jungle. Brrr. I forgot how cold it is back here, I said to myself, wrapping my arms around my torso and creating a little friction with my hands, trying to kindle warmth. Suddenly, I felt an odd wave of uneasiness wash over me. The metallic taste of doubt lingered in my mouth before I quickly swallowed it away. I was being stupid. My watch read 9:24, meaning 36 minutes until closing. And about 13 hours left until my shift the next day started.

Then, I got a text from the (objectively) bitchy shift lead. “Rena, have you left yet? We’re closing early.” A wave of adrenaline shot to my head, and I slowly typed out a response. I hate to lie, but why play fair when others always play dirty?

“Yeah, I’m almost home,” I slowly typed into Messenger. Then, I hit send.

A few moments later, the lights flickered off, leaving me in darkness. The deed was done. I was locked in.

In a desperate attempt to disassociate from my situation, I fantasized about Lock-Ins that some high schools allegedly had. And by some high schools, I mean one I read about in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, where all the kids get locked in the gym for the night for team-building activities (A/N: read “the school’s preparation for a real-life Lost situation”).

This should be fun, I thought. An entire night to myself. Doing whatever the hell I wanted to, as long as it didn’t trigger the alarm or indicate that I had been there at all. But, as evidenced by my flawless Marco-Polo and Hide-and-Seek records, I was pretty good at being invisible. So, I felt confident.

The thing is, Marco-Polo and Hide-and-Seek are usually played with other humans. But Jim isn’t wasn’t human. So, I was peacefully lulled into a false sense of security.

You know that feeling you get when nobody’s around, but you feel like someone’s watching you? That’s the feeling I had for the first hour after closing. I was hiding in my nook, completely out of sight, but I felt like I was being watched. Logically, I felt liberated. But deep down, I was terrified.

When I was a kid, I was able to sense things, predict the future almost. I would be able to guess what my grandmother was making for dinner hours before she brought the food over. I could guess what nights my dad would come home flat-out wasted (spoiler, it was all of them). I could even guess which boys had fucked my little sister over before she confided in me about
them. All of this, logically, meant nothing aside from the fact that I was good at guessing. But that night, it meant a little more. It meant that I could guess where Jim was, and who he was
after.

Tonight, I guessed, it was me.

So, after the hair on my neck pricked up a few too many times, I decided to move to the men’s bathroom to smoke. When I’m high, I feel less susceptible to the supernatural. Or, I suppose, less susceptible to my inner demons.

I got so high, that I passed out, cheek pressed to the dirty tile floor, clinging to the base of a urinal like it was the Holy Bible.

+++

I jerked awake to the sound of my name being yelled. I jumped to all fours, and crawled into the main stall, crouching on the toilet as to not be seen. My mind ran a million miles an
hour. Who was that? Who would be in the store at– I looked at my watch– 2:30 am? How did they know my name? How did they know I was here? I was hyperventilating. How, Where, What, Why me? I ran a hand through my tangled hair and tried to take a few calming breaths. No, this can’t be happening. There’s nobody here but me. Then a terrifying thought, a terrifyingly right thought, ran through my mind. I have to see who, if anyone, is out there.
So I took a few 4-7-3 breaths, then planted my feet on the cold tile. I’ve got this. What’s the worst that can happen, they’ll arrest me? Big deal, fuck cops.

I unlocked the bathroom stall, opened the door, and peeked my head out. But there was nothing but darkness. Very slowly, I set one foot in front of the other until I reached the ramp to the kitchen. I spun a semi-circle, demanding my near-sighted eyes to see better.

BOOM!

I staggered back, pressing myself against a wall. The sound, it seemed, was coming from the kitchen. I clutched my pipe and stash in between my fingers. Shit, I thought. This is bullshit. But I continued to move toward the sound. Damn white-people genes, I thought. This is exactly how people get haunted. But my adrenaline-junkie ass kept moving forward. Moving toward the sound.

I stepped cautiously, toe-heel. If avoiding my drunk dad had taught me anything, it was how to avoid the creaky parts of the floor and how to stalk without being heard. I heard another BOOM! Now I was scared as fuck. Well, I reeled, if I die now, at least it’ll be interesting.

I was nearly at the kitchen door now. Despite being non-religious, I quickly drew a cross, from my forehead to my chest, then from shoulder to shoulder. If there’s a god, prove yourself now, I half-heartedly fantasized.

In one swift motion, I flung the wooden door to the kitchen open, my eyes darting from side to side, begging my cat-eyes (A/N: read as “nocturnal vision”) to activate.

But there was nothing.

As fast as my shaky knees could carry me, I darted to my hiding spot, which was a rolled up carpet underneath a piece of plywood leaning against the wall. I burrowed into the musty carpet, praying both that I wouldn’t get mold in my lungs, and that I wouldn’t be ghost bait. Spoiler, one of those happened.

And I waited. My knuckles were white from clasping my hands together in a prayer-like grip. If I didn’t believe in a god, did that mean I logically shouldn’t believe in demons? Could you have one without the other? I didn’t want to find out.

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the hum of electricity flowing through the wires above me, and the rough fabric underneath me.

Then, I passed out.

+++

I awoke to the sound of my alarm. It was 8 am– had I truly survived the night? I silenced the ringing coming from my cell phone, then hesitantly squirmed out of my carpeted chrysalis. I quickly gathered my belongings, took a brief look around, then scampered out the back door, into the forgiving sunlight of the mall. No alarm, no ghosts, no nothing.

I sat down on a nearby bench and took a hit from my vape.

What happened last night? I groggily pondered. Was I tripping that hard? Or was it really Jim causing all that ruckus? I took another hit of sweet, sweet cannabis, and closed my eyes, surrendering to the warm daylight.

Or, was it me who had tormented myself?

+++

The next few days, the latter question was stuck on my mind. I think I get it now though. There was no Jim, just faulty electronics. There was no Jim, just shitty construction work. There was no Jim, just my inner demons manifesting in a self-destructive way. There were no demons in the store: they were inside my head. They had polluted my thoughts and worldly outlook. My friends loved me, and what I had perceived as negligence was really them believing in my ability to be responsible for myself as a functioning adult.

Even though something seemed paranormal that night, there’s no way to prove it. But I did survive a night at the store, and that alone proves that I am a brave, courageous individual. I was faced with a staggering, seemingly life-ending problem, and I’m here to tell the tale of how I solved it.

In the end, there was no Jim. just my inner demons. And although they’re still inside me, I know they exist. And that in itself is a step to purging them once and for all.

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