Daydreams of a Bored Janitor

Josh McNatt

Joseph checked his watch, then sighed. He'd been there for fifteen minutes, and had only colect
half the trash cans in the place. The office was a maze of cubicles, and there little receptacles hidden all
over the place. Shaking his head as he crawled under a desk to pick up then thirteen little sunflower
seeds scattered about, he wondered if he was actually saving time pulling each from the carpet with his
fingers rather than getting the vacuum cleaner to take care of them that way.
Oh well, halfway done at this point...
He'd had this debate several times that night alone, picking up circular cutouts from a spilled
three hole punch or shredding from an overfilled can in various places. The dental office next in his
queue of contracts to take care of that night would likely see a reprisal of the same with all the candy
wrappers people insisted on scattering about the waiting room. Returning to his feet, he dumped the
load of still-damp shells into the large bin he was pulling around with him.
It wasn't a new line of work, even for him. He even owned the company, but since no contracts
paid anywhere near enough to make hiring employees to do the work for him profitable, he did all of it
himself. Still, I own a commercial cleaning company sounded better than I'm a janitor. Besides, it
was good work. Nothing too complicated, and he liked seeing the results of his effort before he left
each place.
...Be my mirror, my sword and shield/ Missionaries in a foreign field... The poetry fell from
his lips as he sung along. He always listened to music as he worked, using it to pass the time and
counteract the unnerving silence that these places always had at - he looked at his watch again - three in
the morning. At this rate the sun would beat him to his bedroom. With a long sigh, he replaced another
ripped trash can liner and returned the plastic box to its proper place beneath the desk. A quick spritz
with the bottle of glass cleaner and a minute or two with the smooth cloth in his hand and the
fingerprints were off the desk. Another look confirmed this wasn't entirely true, and with the murmur of
a breathless curse he grabbed the spray bottle again and crawled under the glass pane on his back,
reaching up to remove the fingerprints left on the underside. Another string of curses as half the glass

cleaner was pulled by gravity into his eye, then he climbed back to his feet and hung the bottle and rag
on one of the trash can's handles.
Bag's getting full, should take it out or it'll rip. He moved to pull the strings as long as he could,
tying them into a simple knot and compressing the bag down to push air out of it. Wheeling the trash
can to a door, he opened it into the back parking lot and pulled the bag from the trash bin. Using the
latter to keep the door propped open and save him the trouble of unlocking it again, he carried the bag
across the parking lot toward a dumpster.
Apparently it had rained while he was inside, since the asphalt of the dimly lit parking lot was
shiny from the thin coating of water that hadn't yet evaporated into the cool night air. One street lamp
flickered, and a sudden cacophany of sirens as a firetruck left the station across the street made him
jump. A deep breath later, he continued his stroll to the dumpster, the music in his ears drowning out
the fading siren.
As he approached the dumpster, he saw it was closed. A curious thought, he was sure he'd left it
open his last trip out. Deciding one of the cleaning crews for a neighboring business must have closed
it, he reached out to open the lid.
With a scraping sound, two long, spindly legs reached out, one curling behind his torso as the
sharp end on the other pierced his abdomen. Before he had time to even let out a choked sound of
surprise, he was hauled up over the rim of the dumpster, getting only the briefest impression of a
cluster of eyes above a set of spreading mandibles.
Moments later, the panicked smacking against the metal walls stopped, giving way to the
sounds of light traffic as the only sounds around the trash bag that rested in a still puddle.