Dumpster Baby?

I've been working at Accent for five months now. Now that I look back on it, Hunts seems ages away. I worked there for three years, yet the memories are so few and so distant even though I know I had tons while I was there. In memory, I want to post some of the memories that I do have. I'm not sure if these are so much for you or for me, but I want to write them out before I lose them for good. Obviously, they're not all going to come to me at once, so I will share them as I remember them.

The first memory I will share is this:
The Mystery in the Dumpster

I arrived at Hunts at 3:15, the same time as I did everyday. I always showed up 15 minutes before my shift started so that I could smoke a cigarette and get my apron on and my hair up in a ponytail. This particular day, I got out of the car and suddenly a putrid stench hit my nose as soon as I stepped out of the car at the end of the parking lot. I had never smelled anything so terrible.

As I got closer the building, the stench only grew worse and worse. When I got to the back door where the employees came in, the smell was unbearable. Since I came in at 3:30, I was the second shift. As I opened the door into the employee section, I was curious to hear if anyone had anything else to say about the stench coming from our dumpster. As it turns out, it was all anyone was talking about.

Apparently the owner had pulled out a black trash bag out of the grease pit that morning with something obviously dead inside of it. It was all bloated when he found it. He poked it with something or another and popped it, but also found that inside the trash bag was yet another trash bag.

Before he left, his orders were that no one was to call the police or dig the bag out of the dumpster because he didn't want the media attention if it was what we all believed it was: a dead child. 

All throughout work, we couldn't stop talking about it. What if it was a dead baby? Someone should be punished. Why would someone bother putting anything else in two bags and throwing it in our dumpster and not their own or one of some random apartment complex? It was all very fishy.

We were convinced that there was a dead child in that dumpster. None of us had ever smelled such a stench, and we had all been around that animal death smell before. We asked the manager multiple times throughout the day to let us find out what was in that dumpster after work, but she told us no each time. Those were the orders of the owner and she wasn't getting her ass busted for not listening to him.

The other two girls and I devised a plot. We all took plastic gloves that we generally used to make the banana splits and created a plan to solve this mystery once and for all. We were going to wait until everyone left and get the bag out of the dumpster. We were going to put the bag in the bed of her truck and take it over to the park to open and up and see what it was. The only problem with our plan was that if it were the dead child we believed that we would be moving evidence from the crime scene. We were prepared to do it none the less. We needed to know.

By the end of the work day, we were prepared to carry out our plan. Instead, our manager finally spoke up. She wanted to know about the mystery being in the dumpster and much as we did; she was just better at hiding it. She agreed to let us pull the bag out of the dumpster and check for ourselves.

We all did our end of the night business quicker than usual that night. Curiosity had consumed us all day and we wanted to get down to the answer. We finally finished mopping and headed outside.

Our manager came outside with us. Since I was the one who had the terrible sense of smell, (because of my septum piercing) I was put in charge of getting the bag and finding out what was inside. The dumpster was too tall. We found two crates: one for me to stand on and one to place the bag inside. I stood on the crate and pulled the bag out the dumpster. It was heavier than I had imagined it would be. More than likely this was because it had been soaking it grease all night from being mistakenly thrown into the grease pit.

I opened the first bag and the stench grew ten times stronger. Everyone winced and asked me what I saw. I saw nothing because there was still yet another bag. I was terrified of what I would see upon opening the second bag. I tore it just as I did the first.

The stench grew even more unbearable. Everyone was done and standing outside by this point. They wanted to know, too.

Inside the bag was not a child. It seemed to have fur, but not hair. I made sure to look well. Make sure that this was definitely an animal and not a child.

To this day, I am not sure what was in the bag, but I know it was not a child.

My Unfinished Story

This is something I wrote back in 2009. I considered adding more to it a few times, but I never seemed to have the motivation. If you, as my readers, will give me some sort of motivation. I will finish this, for you.

I truly believed my life was coming to an end. something was pulling me down under the waters. I had already tried to escape it, but all my strength was next to nothing when i attempted to fight the hold. I thought "Oh god, I'm drowing. I always said that I thought drowing was the worst way to go, and this is how i'm going to die." I shouted for help when my head broke surface, but it was obvious that no one would hear me. I was in the middle of the woods. No one could save me. I was left to die. As I let myself be pulled under, the silence became eerily comforting. I didn't know what was to come next, but I was suddenly less scared. Just as I opened my mouth to inhale my first dose of death underwater, my eyes shot open. 

I couldn't believe it. My mind was working on assesing what was really going on. Could it be true? I was really alive? I was still alive? It didn't seem possible. I kept repeating it to myself. "It was only a dream. It was only a dream. You are fine. You are alive. It was only a dream." My whispered words did not seem as comforting as they should have been. I decided to get up and walk outside. "The cool morning air of Fall should calm me down." When i walked outside, I finally understood that it was not just a dream and things were not going to be fine.

If You Take Away My Tattoos, You Take Away Part of Me

Let's take a moment here to talk about tattoos. I am a huge fan, but some people aren't. A lot of people get tattoos for no particular reason. These people are the ones who walk into the tattoo shop with no particular idea what they want and just pick out something on the wall. These are the people who tell others that they need more tattoos, constantly and see no reason why everyone shouldn't have a ton.Then there are the people who only get tattoos for things they are really passionate about like their children's names. I'm also putting the people who don't believe in tattooing period in this group. These are the people who generally give the lecture "You're going to regret those when you get older." 

I have a very in between view. I have 10 tattoos, each very carefully selected. My tattoos each represent a point in my life or part of who I am. I'm actually going to take this moment to talk about them and show you a few.

My first ever tattoo was shortly before my 17th birthday. I got autumn maple leaves and wind. I got this to represent that I am ever changing. Autumn is also my favorite season (not my best thought out tattoo, but I still love it).

On my 18th birthday, I got my self-harm tattoo. This one I thought out a good year before getting it. I actually drew this up myself. I let cutting control my entire life for four  years. Getting that tattoo was the promise to myself to not let it control me ever again. For the four years, I put four red dots over each eye. The blood running down the mask represented all the blood lost in those years hurting myself and subsequently, everyone around me. I had been looking for words to put around this for months and one night during a thunderstorm (I was terrified of those), while going through a rough time in life, I received a text saying "The storm will pass, they always do." These words were perfect.

"Hooray for the Madness" These words are the first words from a Motion City Soundtrack (my favorite band) song. I fell in love with the way they said, "Hey, Life is crazy. Go with it. If it weren't crazy and unpredictable, life would be no fun at all."

I have two anchor tattoos on my feet. This...is actually my most pointless tattoo. I've always had this weird thing for anchors. When I was in high school, I saw a girl with anchors drawn on her feet and couldn't get over how...magical they looked. Okay, well maybe magical is the wrong word, but in any case, they stuck with me. It had to be my freshman year when I saw this girl. When the image still stuck with me as a senior, I realized that I really wanted to get them tattooed on me. So I did.

I've been called Bee since I was 13 years old. In fact, there are many people I've met that don't actually know my real name. When my friends knocked on my door, they always asked "Is Bee here?" and my grandpa would get so confused. Eventually he caught on, but it was funny when he didn't. I've considered legally changing my name for awhile, now, but doubt I'll ever actually do it. I'm a procrastinator and my mother might kill me.

I've been best friends with Adam for...6 years now. We knew each other before that, but weren't really close. We've both been huge Invader Zim fans since the show was aired on television. We really wanted matching tattoos, but something that wouldn't be weird and pointless if we ever went our separate ways. So I got Invader Zim and he go GIR.  

Dani, Adam, and I became a terrific treo when I was in 8th grade, shortly after Adam and I became great friends. We separated for a few years and went different ways in life, but we all reunited about 2 years ago. A little over a year ago, we decided to get a tattoo together. Our B.A.D. (Bee, Adam, Dani) friends tattoo with each of our favorite colors. We all have the same matching tattoo on our ankles. This is one of those tattoos people believe I will regret so much. The way I figure it, even if we all split up and go our separate ways, they have been a huge part in my life in sculpting who I am and being a part of so many first experiences that I had. 

This one, I've gone over in my blog before. This was my tattoo for the child that i miscarried. We had Chosen names. Cadence Alexis or Kayden James. Since we never found out the gender, our child simply became "Baby Cay." I lost him on May 28th, 2011. When I initially found out I was pregnant, I found out my due date was December 21, 2011. I told everyone this was going to be my Christmas baby and My little Christmas miracle. This is why the teddy bear has a Christmas hat. Also, the flowers are blue and pink since we never discovered gender and there is a single black flower in the middle representing death.

The last two tattoos I do not have photos of, so I will just tell you about them.

On the inside of my ankle, I have a date...specifically, the date I lost my virginity. I also went through this in a previous post. I was going to save myself for marriage, too afraid to tell the boy no, yada yada. If I hadn't had sex with him, my life would be completely different. I probably wouldn't have felt I had something to hide all of those years. I wouldn't have felt so very fucked up. But hey, it made me who I am today and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Also, I have the words "What was normal in the evening by the morning seems insane." tattooed on the back on my legs in small print in the font I just typed it in. This is from the song Lua by Bright Eyes. I got it just to remind me that the pain of tonight will not last. Things will get better and when they do, the hurt of today will look like nothing.

People tell me all the time "Those are going to look so terrible when you get older and start getting wrinkles." You know what I say to you? BOOO! By time I'm old and wrinkly, I'm not going to look that great anyway. At least I know I'll have my tattoos, my heart, my memory with me forever. No one will ever be able to take these away from me. These are the things that my life is or has been made up of. Each tattoo tells a story about me and I don't want to give them up any more than I want to give up some part of myself.

I think you might also enjoy The Story of Alice