I started dumpster diving about 6 months ago. It started as a hobby, and I picked up some cool shit, but the cooler the shit I picked up the more obsessed I got, and after a while it became an impulse I couldn’t ignore.
I haven’t worked in a while, and my first big find all those months ago was around the back of a pizza place. I didn’t have money for groceries and someone told me that undelivered pizzas were just tossed away, and that night my stomach made me check the theory out.
The person who had imparted this information hadn’t been wrong, and I scored 3 perfect pizzas that night, untouched and still in the box, that I took home and gorged myself on till I felt sick.
After that, I kind of made it a habit between job searches to check out the dumpsters behind restaurants and grocery stores. Before long, I had a pretty steady routine set up that meant I didn’t need to go to food banks anymore, and if I found more than I needed I’d distribute it amongst the homeless shelters and food banks in my town.
It made sense that after finding necessities, I would begin looking for luxuries. There is so much waste out there, I can’t even begin to describe it.
I started checking the backs of pharmacies and clothing stores, and I found makeup, home decor, and fashion items that might not be in perfect condition but were still usable. I managed to pick up decorations for my niece’s birthday party, find gifts for Christmas, and even furnish my house with throws and cushions and curtains.
It isn’t all candles and party plates though. You can find the best and worst of humanity whilst dumpster diving.
I quickly learned which places were sympathetic, and which places weren’t: Some employees would carefully place undamaged items and food aside from the rest of the waste, just so people like me could find it. Other places poured bleach over food, or slashed clothing so it couldn’t be worn. I got manhandled by some pretty unpleasant security guards a couple of times, ones specifically hired to deter fortune hunters.
I’ve made some pretty unusual discoveries too. The most heartbreaking ones still haunt me.
I found a homeless man sleeping in one once. I didn’t see him at first: He’d pulled piles of garbage sacks over him to keep warm, and I woke him with my rummaging. Scared the shit out of me when he sat up. But I’d had a good haul that night and once I’d calmed down I got some food and blankets from my car for him. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do.
Another time I ripped open a plastic sack and found a pile of newborn kittens inside. Five of them. One was still alive but its siblings had died, and I took it home to try and nurse it back to health. It didn’t survive the night. That fucked me up for a while, and I didn’t go scavenging for a couple of weeks. I buried all five kittens in my back garden, even made a little headstone for them. I couldn’t just leave them there to rot.
After a while, I got an accomplice: An older niece of mine who liked to hang out with me. She loved looking over my hauls every day and begged to be allowed to accompany me, and after a while I let her.
She was with me when I found the baby.
It was such a normal night, looking back. I’d found a huge batch of carefully wrapped bread behind a sympathetic bakery, and some discarded perfume samples that were pretty much full behind a department store. So there were no omens, no warnings, that my life was about to change.
We heard a strange noise coming from a dumpster behind a supermarket. A mewling sound that spurred me into action. I was thinking of the kittens, all five of them lined up beneath the grass of my back garden, and I threw the lid of the dumpster up with such force it rebounded and closed again.
With my niece holding the lid up, I abandoned any caution and climbed inside.
It was mostly empty. Meaning it had probably been emptied that day, so anything inside had to be recent. That comforted me somewhat.
The noise I’d heard at first was accompanied by a frantic rustling, and it took me mere seconds to find out where it was coming from: A plastic bag bound into a tight cylinder with duct tape, only the top and the bottom left untaped.
I had started to carry a flashlight with me for my nighttime expeditions, and shone the beam to illuminate the thrashing parcel. The top was wiggling from side to side, the bottom flexing in twin staccato bursts.
The kittens had been bad, but this was much worse. I knew what was in there, and for a second I couldn’t move for the horror I felt.
I had a box cutter with me, but I didn’t even get it out of my pocket. I was too scared I might cut what was inside. So I tucked my flashlight under my chin and used my bare hands, focusing on the top of the bag first. The plastic parted easily under my nails, and as I exposed the skin of the bag’s prisoner, the flashlight slipped from where I had clenched it and fell, narrowly missing what I was trying to save.
The light went out then, the bulb smashing, but I continued ripping the bag apart in the dim light of a nearby security light.
The sounds I’d heard initially continued, slightly louder, but still somehow muffled. I couldn’t process that right then, so I didn’t. I just carried on shredding the plastic.
My niece was peering over the edge of the dumpster, and once the head was free I lifted the little plastic bundle up. It was a solid weight, heavier than I’d expected, but I hadn’t held a baby in a long time.
“It’s a baby,” I told my niece, and heard her answering gasp.
“Oh my god! No fucking way! Who would do that?”
I didn’t bother to answer. People could be shit. The kittens had already shown me. Instead, I held the baby up for my niece to take.
“Grab it,” I told her. “I need both hands to climb out.”
Now that the initial panic was over, the smell of the dumpster filtered into my senses. It smelled like rotting vegetables and sour milk, and I gagged as I extended my arms. Sour spit filled my mouth and I knew if I didn’t get out soon I would puke.
My niece started to take the baby from me, as I retched, my eyes watering, but just as I was about to let go I felt the whole weight sag back into my hands.
“No….” she moaned. “I can’t…”
“Take it!” I spluttered, gagging. “I need to get out!”
“No, it’s… it’s…”
I spat over my shoulder, a thin drool I couldn’t have swallowed under any circumstances. I was pissed off - at my niece, at whoever had dumped the baby, at the whole of humanity.
“Fucking take it!” I shrieked.
My voice was hoarse but it must have had enough authority to convince my niece to do as she was told, and I felt my burden leave my hands.
The lid of the dumpster slammed down then - came down onto the crown of my head with a force that made me see stars, and when I ducked my head the edge of the lid continued its downward trajectory, catching my fingers against the rim.
I nearly fell, and if I had I don’t know what would have happened. My niece would have been no help, I know that now. I might have puked myself into unconsciousness, rolling round in the filth of rotten food. But somehow, the reek propelled me up and out. Dizzy and disgusted, I launched myself over the edge of the foul dumpster, the lid scraping my already sore head, then my back, and I fell headfirst onto the concrete below, gulping in fresh air even as I passed out.
When I came to, it was dark, but that was because my niece was blocking out the light with her head. Her hair was falling in my face, tickling it maddeningly, and she was sobbing.
For a split second I wondered why she was in my bedroom, but the cool night air and my throbbing head brought me up to speed.
“Where is the baby?”
The first words out of my mouth.
My niece continued to cry.
“I thought you were dead!” she said.
And you didn’t call an ambulance? I thought, but didn’t say.
Using my bruised hands, I pushed her away and forced myself to sit up.
“Stop snivelling. Where is it?” I demanded.
She didn’t answer with words, just pointed with a shaking hand before putting both hands over her face.
“Don’t touch it!” she said. “It’s all fucked up!”
I had no patience for her. Of course it was fucked up, it had been thrown into a dumpster in a makeshift plastic shroud by someone who deserved to be crucified.
I managed to stand, my legs wobbling and my knees sagging. The little parcel I had fought for was lying on the bare concrete some feet away, still taped up, and those weird little muffled sounds were still being emitted.
I staggered over, falling onto my knees next to it, and for the first time I saw what my niece meant.
The baby was all fucked up. But not by being thrown away like so much garbage.
Its head was huge, bulbous, the skin a mottled grey and threaded all over with blue veins. I could see them pulsing in the meagre light. But that wasn’t the worst thing.
It had no face.
Where a face should be was just a blank mask of skin, with indents and swells where eyes, nose and mouth would have been. Face shaped, but not a face.
I could have been repulsed, I suppose. Could have felt the same disgust as my niece apparently felt. But I couldn’t feel that. It was a baby, not responsible for its appearance, brought into this world only to be rejected.
I picked it up,supporting the sagging weight of its oversized head in the crook of my arm. My niece was moaning behind me, but I couldn’t feel much sympathy. I remembered holding her as a baby, cradling her squirming little body against me. Her face had been bright pink, her scalp flakey, and her ears too big. That hadn’t deterred me then, and this baby didn’t deter me now.
“Poor baby,” I said, and it might have been my imagination but I felt the baby’s struggles lessen, and the strangled noises it made grow quiet.
How could it hear? I wondered, and inspected the sides of its head. There were little fleshy nubs there, slightly pointed, but sealed over.
It whimpered, and this time I wondered: How can it breathe? How can it make noises? How can it feed?
There was a pharmacy nearby, and I knew that the dumpster behind it might have things that I needed for a baby, but for that moment I couldn’t figure out exactly how formula and bottles would be any use.
Unsure of what to do, I made my way back to where my niece was crouched.
She was still weeping, in an absentminded kind of way, but watching me closely.
“We need to get to a hospital,” she said, and I nodded. It was the first sensible thing she had said.
“Yes. This baby needs medical care…” I began, but she interrupted me.
“Not for that thing! Your head…”
My eyes has been stinging since I’d regained consciousness, but I had barely noticed, and it was only when she mentioned my head that I realised my head was bleeding. Blood was running into my eyes, dripping down my face. But I didn’t have time for that.
I shook my head, making me giddy, and it was a little more violent than I intended.
“Don’t worry about me!” I said. “This baby…”
I took another step towards her, feeling helpless. She was still on the ground but she leaned back as I approached, crawling like a crab away from me and the pathetic burden I held.
“Don’t…” she said. “I don’t want to…”
The baby made one of its snuffling, strangled mewls again, and my niece shuddered.
“Just kill it…” she moaned. “Kill it…”
I couldn’t speak. I was outraged by her callousness, and stupefied by her ignorance. I shook my head again, and this time I noticed that drops of my blood had fallen on the place where the baby’s face should have been.
I went to wipe it off with my sleeve, but before I could I noticed something very strange: The blood disappeared. Not like it had run off, but more like it was absorbed, and the noise the baby made now was calmer, somehow. Satisfied.
Ignoring my niece, I raised one hand and dipped my fingers onto the blood still dribbling from my head wound. I was curious.
I placed my bloodied fingers where I judged the baby’s mouth should be, and felt an odd sensation. Something like suction, although there was nothing there that could feasibly suck.
When I took my hand away, my fingers were clean. Spotless.
Strange, I thought.
My niece was getting to her feet. I noticed her, at the edge of my vision, something that wasn’t important but was also mildly annoying. She was backing away from me.
“Kill it!” she said again. “It shouldn’t be alive!”
I agreed on that last part. It shouldn’t be alive. But it was. And I would do everything I could to make sure it stayed alive.
“Fuck off,” I told her.
My voice sounded far away, and echoey, as though I was hearing it shouted from the end of a tunnel.
“Fuck off, or I’ll kill you,” I heard myself say.
I paddled my fingers in my head wound again and transferred the blood to the baby’s non-existent mouth. I felt the pull in my fingertips, a sensation that travelled all along my arm, into my shoulder, and into my chest where it seemed to tug at my heart.
My niece said something then, something I didn’t hear, and I said something back that I don’t remember. Whatever it was, she fled. Ran away into the night and left us in peace. It’s a good job she did. I don’t know what I might have done. They might have found her body in the dumpster the next time it was emptied, a replacement for the little sacrifice I held in my arms.
Once she had gone, and once I’d fed the baby till it was sated, I returned to my car and laid my little bundle on the back seat. It was still taped up, swaddled in plastic, and I didn’t like that. I used my pocket knife very carefully, stripping away lengths of tape until it was free, then I wrapped it in a blanket. The way a baby should be swaddled.
It’s worth mentioning that the rest of the baby’s body was pretty much the same as its head: Pale and discoloured, but blank. Whilst it was of a normal size and proportions, there were no indications of any gender. It was smooth like a Barbie doll. Perfect and neat. And that made a twisted kind of sense.
I wouldn’t need anything for this baby apart from clothes to warm its chilly little body. No bottles, no diapers. Just a supply of what it seemed to need. And whilst I have plenty of that, I know I can’t sustain a regular supply without leaving the baby motherless. So I will have to find it elsewhere.
It’s amazing what you can find in dumpsters.