Garbage Man by Joseph D'Lacey

she’s there? She prays it will see her with its one good eye; acknowledge her at the very least. Then she knows the baby won’t be lonely any more. But the baby doesn’t see her. It isn’t looking for her. It’s looking for other toys to play with. The baby smiles through its broken mouth, dribbling cherry saliva. It turns to crawl out of the bathroom pushing the razorblades deeper with every shuffle. One lodges in its knee, opening up the leathery pad there to bring a fresh welling. The blood lubricates its progress towards the kitchen.
    There’s something in there it wants. She sees it first, precariously positioned at the edge of a work surface. The baby crawls right to it. It looks up and sees the knife-block but it cannot reach.
    Don’t do this, she pleads. Why are you doing this to yourself? No words are allowed to come forth.
    The baby begins to bang on the cupboard doors below the surface. Its broken arm has knitted but at an unnatural angle. The tiny sharp-edged bones still protrude from a wound which will never completely heal. With the second ‘elbow’ of its broken arm and the other hand variously pierced by razorblades, it beats the cupboards hard. The vibration affects the knife block, bringing it nearer to the edge.
    No, baby, don’t do that. Her scream is cave-silent.
    The inevitable happens. The knife-block tumbles spilling its seven blades out as it falls. The block hits the baby’s head and bounces away heavily. The knives enter the baby’s body easily, as though it were made of fresh cake. They slide in deep. Deep enough to stay. The baby pauses, turns. Some of the longer knives have passed right through it. She sees the points poking downward from its chest as it screams. She can’t hear the screaming. She only feels it, deep inside, her spirit being murdered by the baby’s pain. She wants to weep and cannot.
    The baby is crawling again. Back out through the open door. Back into the corridor where it resumes its wounded seeking.
    She is with the baby at the top of the stairs. The stairs descend a square shaft in flights, with landings on each floor. They lead down into darkness. They look eternal but this is only because she loses sight of them somewhere very far below. There is a railing but the baby could easily slip through. It has stopped bleeding now but that barely seems a mercy considering the many impalings which are now part of its existence.
    It hesitates at the top step. It is clear the baby does not understand stairs. She notices the baby isn’t as chubby as it was before. She can see its ribs when it breathes and there’s a squeezebox wheezing coming from the places where it was penetrated by knives. It tries to crawl down anyway and topples forward, smashing its nose on the corner of the second step before it gathers momentum and begins to roll with real force. Each bounce hammers steel or glass deeper into the baby’s body. It hits the wall at the bottom of the first flight which slows it but does not stop it from rolling down the next flight.
    And the next, and the next.
    The entity compels her to follow.
    Down into the darkness where, for a long time she is aware only of her own descent and the vibration of flesh and bone and glass and metal being resisted by man-made stone. She is blind for a time and then the entity forces her to see in night vision - grainy black and white and only directly ahead of her eyes. All the rest is a tunnel of darkness or shadow.
    The baby has been falling for hours. It is thinner and every part of it has been smashed ragged. It retains its piercings almost possessively but its once-angelic roundness is now all broken corners and snapped edges.
    They reach the ground floor. She is right behind, unable to weep with relief for the infant. She would cry a dead sea if the entity allowed her but it won’t. There’s not much flesh left on the baby now. Mostly it is a crawling pile of broken