The struggle, they say, is real, and on this one topic, they were completely right. Lincoln and his brother Johnny were always looking for ways of making money. They ran a bike repair shop out of their garage, took Dad's metal detector out in search of lost change, and checked every vending machine coin tray they came across. Lincoln heard that there's a little strip on twenty dollar bills so that vending machines can read them. If you peel those off and put them on a one, you can put it in a coin machine and get nineteen bucks free. He tried on one of his Dad's twenties once but he didn't see a strip. It was probably a lie.
One way he and Johnny made extra was by doing odd jobs for the Loud family, mainly the girls. Occasionally, Rita or Lynn Sr. would give them a task out of pity and then pay them in dimes and pennies, but their daughters were always throwing them extra work. See, like Lincoln and Johnny, they had chores, and sometimes, they didn't want to do said chores, which is where Lincoln and Johnny came in. They offered to cover any chore the Loud girls could throw at them for two or three bucks a pop. It was actually a sweet gig since Lincoln had the idea to count every step of a single chore as a chore in of itself. Take laundry. Need it washed? Two bucks. Want it dried? Two bucks. Folded too? You know the drill. They did the same thing with raking leaves. Two to rake, two to put it all in the bag, two to carry it to the curb. Sometimes the Louds only paid for one or two steps, but most of the time, they said eh and paid them to do it all.
Lincoln and Johnny split their take evenly. It was never very much but it was something, and combined with their other revenue streams, they always had a little bit of spending money on hand for small purchases, like soda and snack cakes, both items their mother refused to buy. Those aren't good for you, she said loftily, have kale juice and carrots instead.
Ew. Lincoln would rather have some of Dad's WWE cereal. That stuff was awful. It tasted like straight up cardboard, but they sold it for 10.99 a box because it had a picture of Joey Styles on it. Lincoln hated looking at that guy's ugly mug during breakfast.
The Loud girls' least favorite chore, understably, was taking out the trash. Lincoln didn't like it either. See, each bedroom had two cans, the bathroom had one, the kitchen, and even the living room. There were thirteen people in that house and they produced a lot of garbage. The kitchen trash went out every night and the other cans once a week on Saturdays. Sometimes Lincoln and Johnny came over in the afternoon, grabbed the bag from the back porch (where whoever was on trash duty at the Loud house that night stuck it) and take it to the bin on the side of the house. Usually, though, they only handled Saturday's haul.
That arrangement worked for a while...then the girls started getting really stingy with money. They called Lincoln and Johnny over less frequently, and didn't assign them any chores with multiple steps. If they had Lincoln sweep, Lori mopped; if Johnny raked, Luan shoved the load into a bag.
On a sunny Saturday in May, Lincoln and Johnny got up bright and early to go across the street and help the Loud girls with their spring cleaning. Lori specifically said that Lincoln and Johnny were getting a flat fee of eight dollars and not a red cent more. Lincoln wasn't exactly thrilled with that, but beggars can't be choosers, and he and Johnny really needed the money.
In the kitchen, Mom brewed a pot of coffee and Dad sat at the head of the table in a leopard print Stetson, a glittery jacket with tassles, and nothing else...except for a pair of crusty whitie tighties. "Ooooh, yeah," he said to himself as he flipped to the sports section.
Lincoln rolled his eyes. Dad had been on a Randy Savage kick lately. It was, like, the fifteenth anniversary of his death or something and Dad got really weird around dates where his favorite wrestlers died. And there were a lot of those dates because pro wrestling is barbaric and kills its talent as surely as cigarette companies kill its customers. Lincoln was as sick of hearing about dead wrestlers as he was living ones, maybe even more, since any wrestler who died instantly earned Dad's unwavering love and respect. Like...he used to hate Jim Neidhart but the moment he heard the news that he'd died, he completely changed his tune. A great man...one of the greatest technical performers to ever live.
Dude, if you're going to seethe over someone for years, don't backtrack when they die. Lincoln would respect Dad more if he literally peed on the guy's grave.
"Good morning," Mom chirped, "are you hungry?"
"Can't," Johnny answered for both of them, "we gotta help the Louds with spring cleaning."
Mom bristled. "Oh," she said through her teeth, "that's nice. Maybe you can help around here sometime."
But Lincoln and Johnny were already gone.
Outside, the day was bright and mild with a warm, westerly breeze that smelled of honeysuckle and fresh cut crash. The whine of a lawnmower in the distance found Lincoln's ears and the laughter of children a few streets over scented the air. A man in shorts and a polo shirt washed his car a few houses down, and a group of girls skipped rope in front of Mr. Grouse's house. The old man himself stood in the front window glaring at them. His shoulders were tensed, his brow lowered; at the slightest sign of them even thinking about stepping onto his yard, he'd dive through the window in a shower of breaking glass and..well, Lincoln didn't know what Mr. G. would do once he got his hands on them. Probably hit them with a tombstone piledriver.
Shiver.
Since Lincoln and Johnny basically lived at the Loud house these days, they went in without knocking.
The first thing you notice about Casa Loud is the smell. With ten girls - many of them sweaty, reeking teenagers - you'd expect it to smell like a pig pen, but you'd be surprised. The spicy aroma of cinnamon pervaded the air and everything was neat and tidy to the point of obsession. Lincoln didn't understand it. Every time he was over here, he scoured the place for a mess but never found one. He was convinced that if he opened the right door or peered under the right bed, he'd find it, but nope, the entire house was completely sterile.
Leni and Lucy sat on the couch watching cartoons and Lynn boisterously kicked a hacky-sack up into the air. She saw them, shouted a "Think fast," and kicked it at them.
It hit Johnny in the face and he winced. "Ouch."
"Ten points for Loud," Lynn said happily.
Lucy glanced up, registered Johnny's presence, and gasped. Like a cartoon character being literally pulled along by a cloud of sweet smells, she got to her feet and drifted over. Johnny heaved a deep sigh and shot Lincoln a long suffering look. Lincoln grinned ear-to-ear. Fate is a cruel mistress and by sheer chance, girls whom Johnny had no interest in were always developing crushes on him, while the ones he liked rejected him time and again. Meanwhile, there was only one girl Lincoln liked, and here she was now, coming down the stairs with her older sister Lori. Luan Loud wasn't 'fashion-magazine' beautiful, but she was cute and her upbeat personality really did it for him. She was always happy and smiling, and for some reason he couldn't name, he liked that.
"Good, you're here," Lori said, "grab the trash, it's starting to stink."
Alright, Lincoln thought, here goes.
Here goes indeed, Lori was right, the trash was ripe. Okay, remember how he said the Loud house was always neat and free of a mess? He forgot to mention the trash. See, the Loud girls each had two cans in their room, one for every occupant of said room. For whatever godforsaken reason, they waited until their cans were overflowing before taking them out. Lincoln would say they did it because they knew he and Johnny were going to come behind them and clean up, but they were doing it before. And we're not talking about papers and empty cans here. We're talking food, female hygiene products, dirty diapers, basically the stinkiest stuff on the face of the earth.
Before he and Johnny got started, Lincoln fetched a 56 gallon barrel from outside and lugged it up the stairs. He hit Lola and Lana's room first because he knew it would be the hardest. Lana filled her can to the brim, then filled it a little more. When she was out of space, she filled Lola's. The can was wedged between Lana's bed and the nightstand, trash stacked two feet high. Once he got it into the barrel, he got on his stomach and swept beneath the bed with his arm, finding even more. Next, he did Lynn and Lucy's room. Lucy knelt in the middle of her bed and read from a big, leatherbound book.
"Uh...what are you doing?" Lincoln asked nervously. "Summoning Satan?"
"No," she deadpanned, "I'm casting a love spell on Johnny."
Lincoln flashed a terse smile. "Oh. Carry on then."
He grabbed hers and Lynn's trash. Something dropped out of Lynn's can as he emptied it into the barrell and he stared down at it for a moment before realizing what it was.
A jockstrap.
Lincoln jumped back with a cry of disgust and balled his fists to his chest like a little girl confronted with something icky. Gross!
Wait, do girls even need jockstraps? As far as Lincoln knew, jocks were meant to, ahem, protect your boys from injury during sportsball. Girls don't have boys so…
Unless…
Whatever. That wasn't his business. Needless to say, he wasn't touching that nasty thing. Lynn could deal with it herself.
He dragged the barrel into the hall and met up with Johnny at the head of the stairs. "You know," Johnny panted, "if we charged them by volume, we'd make a killing."
"That's an idea," Lincoln said.
Holding tight to the barrel, he started down the steps, pulling a little at a time to avoid falling. Behind him, Johnny did the same. Only being a big dumb oaf, he didn't do it right and something happened. He let out a sharp yelp and pitched forward. He crashed into Lincoln, and together they tumbled head over heels down the stairs. Their barrels overturned and spewed their contents onto them, the carpet, and the walls. The world spun and reeled, and Lincoln hit the bottom with a thud. His barrel landed on his back, bounced off, and rolled away. Johnny's hit one of the treads, went airborne, and crashed into the wall.
Before Lincoln could recover, Lori wailed. He woozily lifted his head, and she gaped at him like he just did the unthinkable. He looked behind him and realized he had. Garbage littered the floor, leading up the stairs like a trail of breadcrumbs. A plastic container of ketchup from a to go order had exploded and now soaked into the carpet, one of Lily's diapers came open and spilled its, uh, offerings.
It wasn't pretty.
Johnny sat dazedly up and rubbed his head.
"Look at this mess!" Lori cried. She peeled her lips back from her teeth and balled her hands into fists. "I'm literally going to turn you both into human garlic knots, hold the garlic."
Lincoln and Johnny screamed and held each other, but before Lori could make good on her threat, Lisa cleared her throat. Standing on the fifth to last step, she looked down at them like a lofty royal from her palace balcony. Yellow tinted goggles shielded her eyes and her customary skirt was replaced by heavy work pants. "Before you physically assault Lincoln and Johnny, you might wish to consider the following."
She stepped aside, and a terrible green mass with eyes and a mouth rounded the corner and surged down the stairs like sludge. Lori, Johnny, and Lincoln screeched in terror and scrambled out of the way, Lincoln shoving Johnny, Johnny pushing Lori, Lori crashing into the end table. A smug smile played at the corners of Lisa's mouth and she made no move to get out of the way as the thing approached.
Lincoln watched as it grew and swelled, an obscene slurping sound rising from its quivering form. In moments, it had finished whatever morbid task Lisa had asked of it and withdrew like a polluted tide. All of the other Loud girls had gathered around and gaped at what they had just seen.
"What was that thing?" Lori asked.
"A sentient, bioengineered macroorganism dedicated to the efficient and environmentally sound consumption of waste products," Lisa said proudly.
Everyone looked at each other.
Lisa sighed. "It eats trash. Look."
Everyone tentatively went to the bottom of the stairs, ready to bolt if the thing came back.
The garbage was gone. Even the stains. It was like Lincoln and Johnny's accident had never happened.
"Whoa," Lynn marveled.
"It's all gone," Lola said, puzzled.
Lisa smiled. "I call him Trashy. With him around, we will be freed from the burden of having to take out the trash."
Everyone cheered. Except for Lincoln and Johnny.
'Cause now, they were out of a job.
If he was honest with himself, Lincoln kind of hated Trashy's guts. True, taking out the Louds' trash wasn't the most profitable venture he and Johnny had ever undertaken, but it was something, and now, thanks to that green heap of goop, they were out in the cold. For three days, he and Johnny plotted ways to get rid of him. Neither could afford a hitman, so that was out. They could build a nail bomb and blow him to smithereens, but neither was brave enough to type HOW TO BUILD A BOMB into Google; this was 2020, the FBI takes that kind of thing seriously. They'd wind up on a terror watch list at best and in prison at worst.
On Tuesday, Lisa invited them over for a demonstration of her new "waste management system." She did it just to gloat: Lisa Loud's ego was legendary, and once she got tired of rubbing her family's faces in her accomplishments, she moved onto the neighbors, Lincoln and Johnny being her most consistent targets. Also, she liked Johnny and would make up any excuse to get him to come over that she could.
Following Saturday's miracle on the stairs, Lisa had Lana build Trashy a pen in the backyard, and that's where they found him. He had grown a little since Lincoln last saw him, and while they were there, he saw why: Every so often, one of the girls would open her bedroom window and throw a bag of trash at the pen. Trashy leapt excitedly into the air to catch it, then devoured it like a dog with treat. Okay, Lincoln was fair; Trashy was kind of cute. But he was still a job-stealing bozo. "Does he eat anything?" Johnny asked apprehensively.
"If you're asking whether or not he consumes living matter," Lisa said, "I assure you he does not. He eats only inorganic materials such as compost, foodstuffs, and lumber. Things of that nature.
"So he doesn't eat people?" Johnny asked.
Lisa favored him with a blank expression. "No. He does not eat people."
"That thing's actually pretty cool," Johnny said later. He reclined on his bed with his hands laced behind his head and his legs propped up in a rough M. Lincoln sat at their shared desk underneath the window and worked on a sketch of Luan Loud. She winked up and him and his heart fluttered. So beautiful.
Sergio sat in the open window and nodded his head to hip hop only he could hear. Cinnamon perched on Lincoln's shoulder and nibbled on a cracker he found somewhere.
Lincoln shrugged. "Eh, it's alright, I guess."
Across the street, Lynn's voice rang out. "Got another diaper for ya, Trashy."
"They're going overboard with it, though," Lincoln said.
He hadn't been back to the Loud house since Lisa's self-aggrandizing demonstration, but he was certain there wasn't a speck of trash in there. Every time something was thrown away, one of the girls grabbed it and rushed it to Trashy like they were feeding a favorite pet. He bet they made trash on purpose just to have an excuse. Hey, if they found tossing empty boxes and cans at a living mound of trash fun, more power to them.
On Wednesday afternoon, while Johnny was experimenting in the kitchen, Lynn came over and asked them to take over painting the back fence for her. She offered three bucks a piece. Not a kingly sum but three bucks is three bucks. When they got there, Lincoln was a little surprised to see that Trashy's pen was bigger...along with Trashy himself. Have you ever seen Star Wars? There's this bad guy in one of them named Jabba the Hutt. He's basically this big, fat slug. Trashy reminded him of that only bigger. He towered ten feet above his enclosure and rippled liked wind-swept jelly. Lisa walked around the parameter of his cage with a clipboard. "I'm putting you on a diet," she mumbled to herself.
Trashy rumbled.
"Look at him," Lincoln groused, "getting fat on our misfortune. Eating up our work and our money." He shook his head bitterly.
"Dude, relax," Johnny said, "you heard Lisa. She's putting him on a diet. That means we're still in the game."
After painting the fence, they went home for dinner. Dad was dressed in jeans and a wife-beater. Guess he's not dressing up like a wrestler today. Thank God for small favors. As soon as Dad was done, he got up and went into the living room to watch AEW Dynamite. Or rather, to switch back and forth between that and NXT. I haven't been able to do this since the Monday Night Wars, he said giddily one day.
Oh, you lucky dog.
Friday, Lincoln and Johnny met up with Stella and Sid after school. Stella needed her bike's front tire replaced and Sid wanted her Razor scooter painted. At fifteen dollars each, this was the biggest job they'd had in weeks, and Lincoln was stoked. When they got home, they went directly to the garage and got started. Sid sat on the workbench with her hands planted on either side of her and swung her legs back and forth and Stella poked nosily around. "Hey, what's this?" she asked and held something up.
Lincoln rolled his eyes. "One of Dad's old calendars."
Still wearing the shrink wrap it came in, it boasted a picture of Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off, the year emblazoned above his head in white. 1990.
"He didn't even use it?" Stella asked, confused.
"Nope."
"So he's collecting it?"
Johnny snickered. "It's in a garage, full of dust, and covered in water damage. It's not collecting at that point, it's hoarding."
"You know how normal people clip a comic they like out of the newspaper and pin it to their fridge?" Lincoln asked. "He doesn't do that. He saves the whole paper."
Johnny nodded. "Umhm. He also tapes commercials he likes in case he wants to go back and watch them again twenty years later."
That made Lincoln laugh because it was true. "He literally said I've lost too many of my favorite ads to the sands of time. By golly, it won't happen again."
Stella and Sid exchanged a bemused glance.
"Oh, and -"
A loud rumble went through the earth, and the floor shifted like the deck of a boat at sail. Lincoln and Johnny trailed off, and everyone looked at the open garage door. "What was -?" Sid started, then screamed when Trashy, fifty feet tall and an eighth of a mile wide, squeezed through the gap between the Louds' house and Mr. Grouse's. The creature's yawning maw was open in silent roar and its eyes seethed with unnatural life. Its body bubbled and spat like a witch's deadly brew and its arms flailed madly around in mindless hysteria. Lisa, Luan, and Leni ran from him, screaming in terror, and Mr. Grouse, on his way to his mailbox, dove out of the way with surprising agility.
Lincoln's heart dropped into his stomach and the air left Johnny's lungs in a rush.
"Oh my God!" Stella cried.
"What is that thing?" Sid asked.
"Trashy," Lincoln said.
He and Johnny got to their feet and ran out of the garage just as Trashy started down the street, setting off car alarms and sucking up garbage cans as he went. Lisa, Leni, and Luan collapsed onto their hands and knees, panting for air, and Lincoln and Johnny hurried to their side, Sid and Stella close behind.
"What happened?" Johnny asked Lisa.
Lincoln knelt next to Luan and worriedly checked her for injuries.
She was unhurt.
"You okay?" he asked and helped her to her feet.
"Fine," she panted, "instead of me taking the trash out, the trash almost took me out."
She laughed and Lincoln's heart soared. This was exactly why he liked her. She almost literally died at the hands of a fifty foot monster and she still didn't lose her sense of humor.
"He's gotten too big," Lisa said and dusted herself off. "I tried to restrict his diet but he's ravenous. If my suppositions are correct - and I know intrinsically that they are - he's heading for the dump."
A shadow of uncertainty flickered across Johnny's face. "What happens when he reaches the dump?"
Lisa looked away. "He'll grow exponentially and move onto consuming other things. Such as buildings and, eventually, entire cities."
"What about people?" Johnny asked.
Lisa didn't reply.
"What about people?" he pressed.
"He won't seek them out specifically," she said, "but if they get in his way…"
Lincoln's stomach turned at the implications. "What do we do?"
"I've been working on a contingency plan for just such an emergency," she said.
Her "contingency plan" was a bazooka she dubbed The Detrashinator 3000 as 'an homage' to her fictional idol Dr. Doofenshmirtz. It was loaded with shells packing, among other things Lincoln couldn't understand, plastic eating microbes that would, according to Lisa, dissolve Trashy into nothing. "So...we're gonna kill him?" Sid asked.
"No," Lisa said, "we will simply be returning his matter to its original state. We must hurry, though. If he gets to the dump and consumes the refuse therein, we may never be able to stop him."
Sid, Stella, Luan, and Leni stayed behind at Lisa's insistence. "You'll be under our feet and cause the ultimate destruction of the human race through your ineptitude," Lisa said.
Lisa rode on the back of Johnny's bike (hugging him from behind and staring up at him with lovestruck eyes) and the bazooka rode on Lincoln's. Pedalling with fifty pounds of metal strapped to your back isn't easy, and unless he concentrated, he would start to wobble and veer off the track.
The Royal County Dump was north of town on US10, its rear fence backed up against a steep hillside dotted with pine trees. They followed a trail of trash the whole way. "He came through already," Lisa worried.
They got there just in time to see Trashy surging through the main gate. Lisa cried out for Johnny to go faster, and leaning over the handlebars, he pumped as hard as his legs would allow. Lincoln did likewise, and they reached the main gate two minutes later. Lincoln jumped off his bike and presented his back to Lisa. She unstrapped the bazooka and stumbled backwards, dropping it to the ground. The trigger depressed and blue fire leapt from the muzzle. The round struck a heap of scrap metal, and it instantly melted.
"Darn it," she said, "there goes one shell."
"How many are there?" Johnny asked.
"Now? One."
Oh. Just one.
"I can't aim it," Lisa said, "one of you will have to."
Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other. Neither wanted to make a mistake and be the reason life on earth came to an end. "You do it," Johnny said.
"Nah, I'm good, you do it."
"No, bro, I insist."
"Dude, I -"
"There's no time for this," Lisa said, "come on."
Johnny sighed, picked the bazooka up, and followed her into the heart of the dump. They found Trashy in a clearing where Steve, the owner, lived in an Airstream trailer. The man himself, tall with long black hair held back in a ponytail and three days' worth of stubble on his chin, stood before the monstrosity and waved a shotgun back and forth like David before the epic bulk of Goliath. "You feeling froggy? Leap!" he cried.
Trashy bobbed and weaved back and forth like a giant pugilist. "Shoot him!" Lisa yelled. "For the love of God, now!"
Johnny hefted the gun onto his shoulder and took aim. "He keeps moving!"
Letting out a hungry bellow, Trash surged at Steve. Steve jumped out of the way, and Trashy sucked up his trailer, truck, and patio furniture.
"NOW!" Lisa screamed.
Johnny took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves. He had one shot and if he missed, Trashy would eat everything in the entire world.
Including Mom, Dad, and Lincoln.
That spurred him to action. He squeezed one eye closed, took a deep breath, and centered himself. He lined up the shot and, praying to God, he jerked the trigger.
The shell left the breech with a hollow thunk. It hurtled through the air, whistling as it went, and at the very last minute, Trashy turned. A flicker of intelligent understanding went through his eyes, then the round tore into his massive gut. Instantly, he began to sizzle and quake. He threw back his head and tried to scream, but he was already melting, his face lumpy, misshapen, like green candle wax.
In seconds, he was reduced to a little puddle of goo. Johnny lowered the bazooka and blinked his eyes. He'd seen some wild stuff in his day, but this took the cake.
He, Lincoln, and Lisa walked over and looked down. Lisa sighed heavily and Lincoln looked sad. Johnny took his paperbag off and held it to his chest. "Would someone like to explain what that was all about?" Steve asked as he stood next to Lincoln.
"Nothing," Lisa said, "just one girl's hubris getting the best of her and leading her to play God. Again."
Steve's brow furrowed.
"I got too big for my britches," Lisa said.
"Oh," he said and laughed, "for a second there I thought you was saying you was God."
As they walked through the main gate, Lisa said, "I can safely say that my days tinkering with bioengineering are over."
"You know what that means?" Johnny asked Lincoln.
"That we get to be garbage men again?" Lincoln asked hopefully.
Johnny winked and shot him a finger gun.
From that point forward, Lincoln and Johnny took the Loud family's trash out and were never replaced again.
THE END.