Flashes of electrical energy slammed around me. Rain partnered with wind, rolled the glass enclosure along a horizontal path. I halted inches from a garbage can. Even as a child I despised thunderstorms. It appeared as if that fear remained even now.

The alley was filled with tilting shadows as natures beast forced trash about. There was a dumpster mid block with the upper door missing. Garbage took flight, newspapers fanned in all directions resembling a large deck of cards exploding from a deck.

I would have never chosen to land in such a place. A scurrying type of creature with a long tail hobbled past. It remained tucked in darkness, following the pattern of leaves bending in and out from the city lights.

I felt like a ship abandoned at sea. In a gust, the bottle rolled and tossed as the world around me spun about. The flickers of lightning transformed my surroundings into an abstract world.

I tried to think of something else, anything else. My mind traveled back in time to the embrace my father would give as I’d hop into bed between he and mom.

"A storm is nothing to be frightened of Elizabeth." He had said.

"It’s coming for me!" I stammered between sobs.

"There are larger things that lightning will strike, not a scrawny little child such as yourself."

"How do you know this father?"

"I just do, now let me tuck you back into bed. Tomorrow you need to be awake for your tutor will arrive early."

"Yes sir." I had said following him back down the hallway.

A few minutes after his departure, my mother appeared taking a seat near my feet.

"Liz." She whispered. "When I was a child I was scared of storms too." She took my hand and placed it to her lips. "As you mature, storms will bother you less and less. Trust me on this."

An earth rattling tear of thunder caused my mother to jump and I flew up from the covers into her embrace.

"There, there my child." She said with uneasiness in her tone.

The storm passed then just as it had in the present. The day began with the sky the color of a ripe peach except more pastel. The alley resembled a war torn country. Garbage cans were blown everywhere, rain soaked trash was glued to the pavement.

A woman in a housecoat balancing a cup of coffee peered out from her back yard. I didn’t notice the man behind until she began speaking to him.

"That was some storm Emmett."

"Yes, can you believe this mess back here?"

"The garbage man is due sometime today. Jerry down the street is unlikely to clean up. You think we ought to do it for him?"

"Yeah, that or look at his mess for the next few months. Eventually the wind will kick it into our yards."

"What do you think his problem is anyway?"

"I don’t know. That type finds fault in everyone....angry at the world, he is."

"Well I’d better get dressed."

The woman disappeared along the small sidewalk. About ten minutes later, she arrived back with a broom and a shovel.

I watched from my place behind a patch of wild grass. Emmett and she worked from end to end lifting garbage receptacles and prying up the mess.

By midday, the alley was meticulous and the garbage truck was edging it's way near. At first I was uncertain what the squeaky noise was, but every time the large machine stopped it would squeal like a pack of rodents.

It paused in front of Emmett's garage as the worker swung off the back. Silver trash bins overflowing were lifted as if the weight were feather light.

To my horror, I was grabbed from the weeds and heaved onto the truck.

"NO!" I screamed terrified.

The truck drove onward. Disgusting things, unthinkable crud was mixed in with my image. This has got to be a cruel joke I thought, as I was shoved downward by a huge mechanical arm.
Rotten food became forced into the mouth of the beer bottle. Hints of the odor flooded my senses. My stomach (or the remembrance of what used to be my stomach) turned in disgust.

I was trapped, buried within the bottom of a garbage truck. Panic. Instinctively I realized that my future looked bleak. The truck was vibrating now, a massive stomach stuffed beyond its limit.

When we stopped rolling, I could hear things around me. There were other truck engines sputtering as a team, but there was an unbelievable racket that I could not discern.

It wasn’t until everything shifted within the gut that I realized it was some sort of motor that controlled the dumping mechanism.

For a brief second, I could see the beautiful sky above. Then my doom was certain as garbage meshed in all around me. It was a true miracle that the bottle was not broken.

At the day’s end, the trucks drove off, leaving the waste in a forgotten hole within the mouth of the earth. Such a sadness fell as I was left to rot in a heap.

I had been buried before, even that was pleasant in comparison to this.

I had to concentrate, to put my raging emotions aside and work to disentangle myself from the bottle.

Oh to leap, to find a new port among people. That’s all I wanted, to find a new assignment, to locate a human in need.

"Think of something light, like a feather." I said to myself recalling Adam’s sureness.

I concentrated on a feather, but nothing happened. "Think light..." I said fighting off the frustration. If I had tears within me, they would have now been flooding the bottle. I was overwhelmed from the odor and filth around me.

It was then a memory flooded my brain.

My Aunt Denita was spending the summer with us. She normally resided in London, but would visit with us one month annually. We were having afternoon tea in the garden when the cottonwood seeds cascaded about resembling a summertime snow.

"You know Elizabeth, if you catch a seed before it kisses the ground, you’re given one wish. You must blow it back to the trees and if it never lands on earth again, your wish is granted!"

"Really Aunt Denita?" I had asked.

"Sure. How do you think your father made his millions?"

I noticed a glimpse of mischief exchanged between Denita and mother.

"Try it sometime if you can think of something to wish for."

I had believed my Aunt Denita a romantic and never actually tried as she suggested. Perhaps it had more to do with having too much and not needing a wish until this very moment.

I closed my eyes and images of the cottonwood overtook my surroundings. I felt a hint of movement from the bottle. Unfortunately, I could touch the mass of rotting food and disgusting objects of refuse. I knew then that I would have to pass through the layers of grime resting around me.

"Oh dear Lord!" I said in horror.

What were my options? Remain buried in garbage or pass through the unthinkable and seek a new dock.

"Okay cottonwood." I said trying to regain my composure.

I shut the world away and concentrated. My face popped through the glass first. The slime of a rotten banana fell across my lips. Don’t scream, I thought as I contoured myself opposite from the bottle. There was an extreme amount of gravity pulling me backward. The bottle had a force like a vacuum and I was uncertain I had the physical strength for escape.

My left foot became wedged within the glass itself and it felt as if a tight fitting shackle were restraining me.

"Cottonwood." I said over and over again.

Finally, I slid from the bottle and my entire being crossed through the banana. I melded and contorted, weaving around cans, papers and an animal carcass. That was the worst feel of it. If I wasn’t all ready dead, I would have expired from the experience.

I reached a layer of ground and zoomed upwards into the great expanse. My gaze fell below. An old bicycle tire was bent upward. The spindles were snapped resembling a broken ferris wheel. Finally, I escaped the top layer of earth that had been bulldozed over. That was the only indication the mountain was not a mountain at all. This was a wasteland, our nightmare of yesterday’ accumulation. How long would I have been stuck in that bottle? A hundred years? A thousand years?

I cringed as I headed for the horizon. The rim of the bottle was just ahead. I could only hope for a better dock on this trip, but then again, anything was better than ending up as yesterday’s garbage.