Munin grunted softly as he awoke, before stretching and trying to remember who he was and what he’d spent the last night doing. Idly he brushed his wife’s shoulder, smiling to himself as he tried to clear his head of sleep and sighing as his wife shivered unpleasantly. Drawing his hand away, he redoubled his efforts to remember the day before and idly fingered the gaping, bloody hole in his chest.

Ah. Right. He thought to himself, suddenly remembering the fatal car wreck of the day before. A small sound drew his attention, and he looked over at his wife.

She was sobbing, softly. She must have just woken up when he had brushed her. Hoping to console her, he tried to hug her, hoping that from beyond the grave he may still offer her comfort, but she only cried harder. With a heavy heart he stepped downstairs, thinking it best that he not interfere.

Munin had just been staring at the fridge, wondering just what the dead eat for breakfast, when a hand tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, and saw a man holding what appeared to be a recycling bin, or what would have been a recycling bin were recycling bins made of obsidian, and had they funny, lop-sided figure-eights on the sides. The man himself looked something like an aging hippy and something more like an angel of death, though these were mostly just feelings the man inspired, as in terms of strict, objective appearance he looked completely normal.

Countless questions tumbled through Munin’s head just then, and he was about to ask one of them when the last, a rather pudgy and slow but still quite sensible one, lumbered across the finish line. What makes you think you’re the one that ought to be asking questions? It asked him. On the one hand he is a strange death-beatnik hauling his recycling bin into your kitchen, but on the other hand you’re the one with the sucking chest-wound.

Point. Munin conceded, and so looking the man in the eye, the only question he asked was “Yes?”

“Hello!” The man said, shaking Munin’s hand gleefully. “I’m Bennu. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Munin said, though he wasn’t entirely sure he meant it. The two stood in silence for a moment.

“I’m surprised, usually people have more questions whenever we come around.” Bennu said.

“Oh, yeah, well, y’know, I guess I thought… well, you know, what with the gigantic, gory pit where my sternum should be…” Munin felt awfully silly.

“Hah! I’ve seen much worse, believe me. I once had to deal with a man who’d been terribly mutated and then shot into the vacuum of space. Er, not a man from anywhere near here, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Munin agreed helpfully. “Well, in that case, are you death?”

“Not last I checked.” Bennu said pleasantly. “You know, I get that question almost every time? I never quite understood it, myself. Death’s not even really a thing, it’s a concept, an event. It’s like asking someone if they’re Explosions or Standing.”

“But people do stand.”

“Not like that, like asking someone if they’re Standing. If they’re what Standing is. And that’s silly. You’ve seen people stand, you know it’s not a person, it’s just something that happens.”

“So you’re not death.”

“Right.”

“Then what are you?”

“The garbage man.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s true. Well, not ‘garbage’, I suppose, but ‘recycling man’ sounds pretty preposterous, if you ask me.” Bennu snorted, as if to say “’Recycling Man’, now really…”

“You can’t be the… the recyclist? The recyclist. You can’t be that because you’re not carrying a normal recycling bin, you’re carrying something decidedly different.”

“That so?”

“That’s damn so. First off, recycling boxes aren’t made of black rock, and they don’t have pairs of bisected Jesus Fish making out on the side, or whatever that funny looking figure-eight is supposed to be.” Said Munin. Bennu laughed. “What’s so funny?”

“I’ve just never heard quite THAT impression before, though someone once told me he thought it was his mom’s knockers. I don’t want to fathom what his libido must’ve looked like. In any case, it’s not a pair of breasts or an drunk, anorexic eight. It’s infinity.”

“Seems awfully small for infinity.”

“Don’t get smart.”

“Maybe I’m not, maybe I just seem smart because you’re just a garbage man.” Munin teased.

“Recyclist!” Bennu insisted. “And it’s not infinity itself, it’s the symbol of infinity. Have you ever been in a math class?”
“Fine, so it’s infinity. Why have you got infinity on the side of your recycling bin? Do you recycle calculus teachers?”

“In a sense… I recycle everyone, really. Their memories, at least. Which is why I’ve come for you.”

A chill blew through Munin’s heart. “My memories? But.., but I need those, don’t I? Unless…”

“No, no!” Bennu said reassuringly, placing a comforting arm around Munin. “Don’t worry about that, I only recycle them if you want me to.”

“Why would I want you to? They’re my memories, they’re who I am.” Munin insisted. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’d rather like to keep them, personally.”

“Let’s not be so hasty there, friend. Just this morning you didn’t remember that you’d died, and I doubt you remember being born as well as you should, and I can’t think of two memories that should be quite as vital as those, personally.”

“Well, yes, but they don’t have anything to do with my identity.”

“Your identity will remain as-is, no changes, no exceptions, no ifs, no ands, and only enough buts for me to point out that if a piece of wisdom isn’t penetrating enough that you can’t still feel the sense of it once its left your head, it really hasn’t got any place determining who you are to begin with.”

“So, if I let you recycle me, I’ll still have an identity? I’ll still exist?”

“You think I’d only recycle memories from the living?” Bennu smirked.

“What will you use them for? Will they go to a good cause?” Munin asked, hesitantly.

Bennu smiled. “Other people will have them. They’ll become events again, happening to others just as they happened to you. The names may change, the specifics of sorrows and joys may be altered, but the feelings and the bits that matter will happen just as they happened to you.”

“Who? What others? Whom will my memories happen to?”

“To someone very similar to you. To someone who is yet to have their first kiss, someone who may not ever exist outside of stories and ideas.”

“Do most people give up their memories?” Munin asked, his fingers inches away from the recycling bin.

“Most. The last time I met you, you did.”

Munin nodded. “What do I do?”

“Grab on to the bin, and then let go.” Bennu said, holding the bin out. Munin closed his eyes and grasped the side of it, and briefly he felt something like burning to death crossed with an orgasm. He let out a gasp, his mind blank, and opened his eyes for what both was and was not the first time.