Kragg cleared one nostril, then the other, straightened his back with a satisfying clack, and shoveled another load of books, bullets, toys, and a wedding ring or two into the empty heart of existence. The objects glittered briefly in the blackness like stray ashes and were gone,. He grabbed the push-broom with knotty hands and began to sweep in the remnants that had escaped the shovel: mateless socks, family photos, trading cards, pencil nubs, a damp pile of Pogs–dancing for a second like dandelion seeds before winking out in the void. Kragg grunted in something like approval at the momentary emptiness, wiped the cold sweat off his forehead, then turned back to the big machine standing silent before the Himalayan expanse of things unremembered, uncared for, unneeded, unwanted. He jumped in the cab and began to lower the front loader to push the next pile forward.
Then he saw the boy.
Kragg’s hand froze on the controls. The vein on his temple throbbed. Everyone’s got their own way of making it through life. Kragg’s was routine, predictability, stability. And never—with the brief and periodic exception of the Inspectors—having to interact with another person.
“Whadd’you think you’re doing here?” he asked, in a voice hoarse with disuse.
The boy looked up at him from below the cab.
“Just ended up here,” he said. There was a sullen thrust to his chin, a hardness about him.
“Whadd’you mean, ‘ended up here’?” coughed Kragg. “There’s rules to this place. Nobody ‘ends up’ here.”
“Well, I’m here,” said the boy.
Kragg’s eyes bugged. This statement was evidently true, and whatever Kragg’s other foibles, self-delusion was not among them. It was one reason he was right for the job.
“Not s’posed to be,” he managed. “This is where the unwanted things go. Things. Understand? Things, not people.” He took a glance backward to the mountains of junk, which had grown perilously in the seconds they’d been talking. This, paradoxically, calmed him a little. “Got a schedule to keep,” he grunted. “Stay out of the way.” He lowered the loader and shoved another pile forward. He went faster than usual–inasmuch as it was possible for someone who had perfected his art over the millennia, and, contrary to his usual practice, he allowed some dross to accumulate before sweeping it clean.
He kept a quarter of an eye on the boy, who had sat down sullenly on an old refrigerator. Everything else was focused irately on his work.
At last he jumped down from the cab and took up a shovel.
“Well, if you’re here, make yourself useful,” he said. He tossed the shovel in the boy’s direction. It fell at his feet. The boy regarded him petulantly.
“It’s a shovel,” Kragg explained.
“Yeah.” said the boy.
“Like this,” the other said, throwing a spadeful of dolls, phones, and wills into the void.
The boy didn’t move to pick up the shovel. Kragg’s vein throbbed. He set to it and tossed in more shovelfuls.
Then he spun on the boy, explosive. “Well?” he asked.
“What?” asked the boy.
“If you’re going to be here, you should help.”
“Why?”
“Why?” spluttered Kragg. “Because that’s the job. Because there are exactly two things in this place. One: everything that no one wants. And two: the guy getting rid of it. That’s it. And if you’re not one, you’re the other.”
The boy stared at him. Those eyes were hard, but Kragg thought of glass, of chalk, of quartz, of brittle things. Something stirred uncomfortably in his throat, and he swallowed it down.
He advanced on the boy. “There’s rules to the universe. Rules. You’re not supposed to be here, because one of the rules of the universe is that everyone is wanted by someone.”
The boy stared back at him through those hard and brittle eyes. He said a curse word that Kragg didn’t know, but whose sense was obvious.
“Yeah, OK,” said Kragg, chewing on his lip as the mountain of unwanted things grew behind him. “OK. Want to play it like that? OK. Fine. There’s rules.”
He advanced and then with a sudden rush leapt and grabbed the boy around the waist and threw him over his shoulder. The boy screamed and started to punch and kick, but Kragg was strong, strong as mountains, titans, tectonic drift. The boy yelled and cursed as Kragg went inexorably toward the void.
“I got a job,” he gasped. “If you’re here, rules say you’re not wanted, so off you go.”
The boy suddenly went slack. “OK,” he said.
Kragg paused. Then he shrugged and kept walking, carrying the boy like so much dead weight. Rules, he told himself, over and over, were rules.
He got to the edge of the void and held the boy out. He didn’t resist. Kragg swung him once, twice, to heave him over into the all-consuming nothingness, and then something happened.
The boy started to laugh. It was a giggle, like that of a child playing a game. The vein on Kragg’s temple started to bulge again, but for some reason he kept swinging the boy over the edge of the universe, never letting go, as his laugh grew bigger and wilder, and then, unaccountably, Kragg was laughing too.
The boy and Kragg sat on the edge, staring out into nothing.
“Benji,” repeated Kragg. “So you got a name. Someone wanted you far enough to give you a name. To teach you to talk.”
Benji bit his lip and his face said clearly, even to Kragg who had no practice at all reading faces, that he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well,” said Kragg, uneasily. “You’re here, I guess. So you gotta work. Don’t know who’s messin’ up all the other rules, but that rule’s gonna stick.” He stood up, and Benji followed. “We’re behind now,” he said, holding out the shovel. “Just shove everything in fast as you can and we’ll catch up.”
“Everything?” Benji asked.
Kragg nodded. “Everything.”
There was a long pause. Then Benji took the shovel, and Kragg nodded with something very nearly approaching satisfaction.
Benji, in Kragg’s estimation, was perhaps the worst worker in the universe. He asked endless questions, argued constantly about what Kragg considered to be the simplest job conceivable, made little piles and then scattered them again, sat down frequently for no evident reason, hummed tunelessly, got in the way of every possible operation, and occasionally, just as Kragg was rethinking the whole situation, swept a small amount of detritus over the edge.
“When do we stop for lunch?”
“Lunch?” asked Kragg, wonderingly.
“Or, you know, sleep?”
Kragg shook his head. “This ain’t an office job, boy. We don’t sleep.”
“Well, I have to sleep. And eat, too.”
Kragg blew out his cheeks.
“Alright, well. When you’re hungry, eat.”
“Eat what?”
“Find something,” said Kragg, eyeing a half-empty yogurt container balanced on the rim of his shovel. The boy shrugged and turned away, dropping his shovel.
“You’re just going to leave it there?” he asked after him.
Benji shrugged and started climbing one of the mountains of unwanted things.
Kragg started to shout after him, considered that this might be his chance to make up for lost time, and redoubled his efforts.
A little while later, Benji came sliding down with a bottom-soaked bag lunch. He sat down on the refrigerator and began to eat a jelly-stained sandwich.
“Want an apple?” he asked Kragg.
Kragg scarcely looked up. “Nope.”
The crunching and smacking of Benji’s lips drove the vein out on Kragg’s forehead, but his shovel had never moved so fast.
After lunch, Benji got back to work, and Kragg had to admit that he was doing a little better now. At least, it seemed to him that the balance was shifting ever so slightly away from hindering and toward helping. And with time, even punctuated by the boy’s meal breaks and sleep breaks and all manner of such extravagances, the balance shifted further, so much in fact that Kragg almost felt that Benji was, in fact, helping.
They were even making some small progress toward the deficit they’d accumulated. But any delay was costly. There were more and more things all the time. Kragg didn’t know details or reasons. He just knew results. With time, there was more and more stuff unwanted. He didn’t think of this as good or bad. His job was his job.
Suddenly a terrible thought gripped him. What if Benji were only the first of many? What if…but Kragg was not one to speculate. Speculation—on the faces in discarded photos, on the ever-changing nature of what was loved, on the relentless tide of unwanting—would have slowed him down, and if he held to one point of pride, it was his relentless efficiency. When the Inspectors came, no matter how the pile had grown, there was absolutely no question that no being in the universe could have sent it over the edge as quickly and ruthlessly as Kragg.
He had the odd notion that this was something he should communicate to Benji. That it was important that he instruct the boy in the proper disposition to this job. He cleared his throat, and staring fixedly at his quick-moving shovel, said, “If you’re gonna be here, we should talk about the job. It’s…well, I think it’s a good job. Think it matters. They don’t tell me much about the details, but I sorta think what we do is give all this stuff another chance. You know, send it back into the universe. Kinda the raw material, you know what I mean? What I mean is…well, I may sound like I’m givin’ you heck, but it’s just…well, you got a job, oughta do it, you know? Do it well.”
There was no response. Kragg bit his lip and took a deep breath. It was by far the widest he had bared his soul in his entire existence, and he found himself hoping, in spite of himself, that Benji understood, at least a little, what he meant.
“Hey,” he said, angrily. “I’m talking to you. You hear what I’m saying?” He felt the vein bulging again, and at last he looked up from his work. Benji was stretched out on the refrigerator, fast asleep. Kragg shook his head, rolled his eyes, then got back to work.
A little later, grumbling under his breath, he walked over with a not-too-soiled pillow he’d plucked from the edge of oblivion and put it under Benji’s head.
As he walked back to work, he muttered, by way of explanation, “Maybe if the fool sleeps a little better, he’ll work a little better.”
When he woke, Benji did not work better. In fact, Kragg had to consider, through narrowed eyes, the possibility that he was intentionally going slowly and getting in the way. This was so foreign to Kragg’s approach to life and work that it took him quite some time to even allow the idea to percolate to the surface, but as he watched Benji leaning on a shovel, he snarled at him, “What are you doing?”
“Taking a break,” said Benji calmly.
“A break!” shouted Kragg. “Half the time you’re asleep, and then half your waking day you’re eating or peeing or some such foolishness. What do you need a break for?”
“Actually,” said Benji, “I was thinking maybe you should take a break.”
“What would I need a break for?”
“You know–to rest. To think.”
“Don’t need to rest and definitely don’t need to think. It’s not a hard job.” He frowned pointedly at Benji. “Shouldn’t be, anyway.”
Benji shrugged, but the pace of his work did not pick up before his next meal-scavenging break. Kragg looked up at the growing mountains of stuff. “Hey,” he called after Benji. “How about you skip this one? We’re falling behind, and the Inspector’ll be due any time.”
But Benji was gone. Kragg snorted and kept shoveling.
Later, jumping down from the machine, he saw Benji and his mouth fell open. The boy had spread a tablecloth over his old refrigerator. Two thirds of a rotisserie chicken and a bowl of slightly past-due grapes sat between two soiled plates and two dusty plastic bottles of blue stuff that appeared to have faces on them.
“Dinner,” said Benji simply. But his eyes were wide open, and something seemed to have changed about his whole face. In spite of himself, Kragg paused in his work and walked over to the refrigerator table and picked up one of the plastic bottles. He regarded it skeptically, then looked at Benji. Kragg was not accustomed to living in any time but the present, but he was suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of the boy sleeping on the refrigerator, his breathing slow and regular. “That’s…er, it’s kind of you. Uh, thank you. But I don’t need to eat.”
Benji’s face gave the impression that he had never heard the words thank you directed toward him before. “Well, uh…can you?”
“’Spose I could. But who’s going to be shoveling if I sit down to eat? You?”
Benji shrugged. “I could. But why bother?”
“Why bother? Look – that pile gets bigger and bigger.”
“Yeah, it does,” said Benji. “But does that really matter?”
“Matter? Of course it matters! It’ll just keep piling up!”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s not really your problem.”
“It’s not a problem, young man. It’s my job.”
“Yeah, well, take a vacation. Or quit.”
“Quit!” Kragg’s roar echoed through the mountains of refuse.
But Benji kept on. “Maybe if you weren’t here, people would just have to figure it out. Maybe it’d clog up the universe a bit and they’d have to fix it. Make less stuff. Or care about it more. I don’t know. Point is, you ever think if what you’re doing is even good?”
Kragg spluttered. “You’re telling me my job is no good? You telling me my business? You? Listen. I’ve been at this since the pile was yay high.” He put his knobbly hand down to his knobbly knee. “I’ve been at it since it was broken sticks and spent flint cores. I know my job. You don’t. You come in here, laze around, get in the way, take lunch breaks, make me drive the dozer around you sleeping, break all the rules, and tell me my job’s no good? Tell me it doesn’t matter? What I’ve been doing forever is wrong?”
Benji said, “Just cause it’s how things are doesn’t mean it’s the right way.”
Kragg roared. “Oh, I know. Because here you are and nothing has gone right since you got here. I’m behind on work, Inspector’s due any time now, and I’m standing here arguing over a table full of junk that nobody wants with a stupid kid that nobody wants around, least of all me!”
The doors slammed shut behind the boy’s eyes again, and they were as flat and hard as they’d been when Kragg first saw him. Kragg felt all the fire in his body smothered at once. “Just,” he said, with the last soggy embers of self-righteousness going out. “Just stay out of the way.”
Benji glared at him for an instant, then wordlessly turned and walked away, until he was lost in the narrow canyons of things rejected.
Kragg clenched his fists, crushing the bottle until blue sugary liquid ran between his fingers. Then, his vein throbbing, he walked back toward the machine.
A little bell rang high above. Kragg said one of the curse words he’d learned from Benji.
“Inspector!” He looked around for Benji. “Hide!” he yelled. But there was no sign of the boy at any rate. He cursed again. Say one thing for him, he’d taught him some useful new language.
The Inspector walked briskly forward through the door in the world and made rapid notes on his clipboard. He frowned.
“Behind projections, Mr. Kragg.”
This was a new experience for Kragg, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.
“Yeah, well….” He did not quite feel an apology was in order, but the Inspector seemed to be waiting for an explanation. “Piling up faster these days,” he said.
“Mm,” said the Inspector. “That’s accounted for.”
They looked at each other for a while.
“Well,” said the Inspector. “We’ll be back on track next time?”
“I reckon,” said Kragg. He could not resist adding, “If you’ll let me get back to work and stop distracting me.” He turned on the Inspector and began pointedly shoveling some debris.
“Ah, yes,” said the Inspector. “About distraction. It seems a…person arrived here. Records show it has not yet been returned to the void.”
Kragg froze, then turned back slowly. The Inspector was looking at Benji’s uneaten feast.
“Yeah, well…”
“The rules are quite clear, Mr. Kragg. The person indicated was unwanted, and should have been given to the void.”
“Bull,” said Kragg. “Everybody’s wanted by somebody. That’s a rule too, isn’t it? Seem to remember that.”
“The universe is wide, Mr. Kragg, and maybe it just so happens that there’s someone wholly unwanted by anyone.”
“What, even themselves? What kinda idiot talk is that?”
“Nevertheless,” said the Inspector. “The record is clear. The individual is unwanted and unneeded and should be sent to the void.”
Kragg shook his head. “He ain’t unwanted.”
The Inspector said calmly, “I’m afraid he is, Kragg, whatever you may think the rules are. We have the full record of his time in the world. He was unwanted, so he ended up here. See for yourself.”
He held the clipboard out for Kragg to see. His face reddened further, his vein stood out more. He snatched the sheet off the clipboard, crumbled it in his strong and trembling hand, and threw it over the edge of the universe.
“Beg you’re flippin’ pardon,” said Kragg. “But he didn’t end up anywhere. He’s here now, but he ain’t ended up.” he said.
“Well…” began the Inspector.
Kragg banged the shovel again. “He. Ain’t. Unwanted.”
The Inspector looked at him, then at his clipboard. He frowned, stared at Kragg for just a moment, then nodded once, briskly. “Understood,” he said. He spun on his heel and the door in the world opened. As he left, the Inspector turned and said, “I trust we’ll be back on schedule next time?”
“Yep,” said Kragg. “Just let me mind my own business.”
Kragg resisted swearing until the door in the world was closed again.
Benji emerged from behind a pile of clothes, plastic dinosaurs, and mp3 players.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked. “You lied to them.”
Kragg frowned. “I don’t lie.”
“But…” his face was open again. “He was right. I wasn’t wanted. Not even…Anyway, they’re right that’s how I’m here.”
Kragg’s face reddened even further. He said, “I don’t care how you got here. You ain’t over the edge yet, right? And rules is rules, I don’t care what the suit says. That lunch of yours. All that stuff made it here, but then you wanted it, right? And did it go over the edge?”
“Not yet,” said Benji.
“Yeah,” said Kragg. “That’s right.” He sat down behind one of the plates and took a piece of chicken.
“Fact is,” he mumbled, staring at his plate, “If I’m going to be taking breaks now and again, I’m going to want some help around here. I’m going…” He cleared his throat and forced himself to lift his face. “I’m going to be wanting you around.”
S.L. Harris is a writer, educator, and sometime archaeologist who can be found digging in gardens, libraries, tea cabinets, and ancient houses. His fiction has appeared in venues like Strange Horizons, Apex, and Lightspeed. Originally from Appalachia, he currently lives in the Midwest with his wife, two children, and many books. You can find him online at ifchanceyoucallit.wordpress.com and @slharris.bsky.social.
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