A light blue hue reflected off close metal walls. You’d imagine the smell inside the empty dumpster would have kept me awake, or the plodding of my vibrating cell phone as it wiggled around the pool of vomit in front of my face… But it was the light from my caller ID that stirred me. Then the smell overtook me. I vomited on my cell phone for, apparently, the second time.

I stood and lifted the lid, sitting my soupy phone on the other lid as I lifted myself out of the dumpster. I couldn’t tell what parts of the stink were from the few remnants left in the can, and what was me, after a long night of drinking… Drinking.

I went out to celebrate last night. I closed a case. So, why was I in a dumpster? My foul phone began jittering again, leaving traces of a a brown mixture as it dances across the dumpster lid. I answered.

“I don’t know how you evaded my men, detective,” a sultry voice said. “But this just means I’ll get to see them kill you.” I hung up, looking in the dumpster for my wallet. Nope.