This is the first short story I have written since my school days. It was written on a whim after speaking to a friend who reminded me about a short story competition in Wirksworth. I was feeling creative and thought, why not?   I enjoyed writing the story, and although an experienced reader/writer would doubtless think it ghastly, it was fun to do and I never expected any accolades. Here it is; I intend to enter the competition again next year. Enjoy

 

 

The Cautionary Tale of Terry Rash

The birds had just settled down for the night when they were rudely disturbed. They flew up out of the undergrowth, shrieking and squawking, startled by the oncoming truck. Abruptly, it swung right, partially off the road and into the already churned mud that was all that was left of the verge….It had been raining a lot lately, and run-off from the fields mixed with the remnants of last autumn’s leaf fall meant that the balding tyres of the truck squelched and skidded on the mud only momentarily, though, as the vehicle lurched to a wretched standstill as the driver cut the engine with a flick of his hand. He stretched hard in his seat, pushing his short but sturdy legs into the corners of the driver’s footwell. He yawned a wide-mouth yawn, his broad head almost spitting in two as he revealed an assortment of grubby blackened teeth that looked more like tombstones in a cartoon version of “boot hill” than the teeth of a businessman, or “on ta pan err”, as Terry Rash preferred to call himself. He grabbed the half-eaten, cold sausage roll that was on the dashboard and stuffed what was left of it into his mouth, sideways. Flakes of pastry flew down his front and stuck in his stubbly beard. He forced it down almost without chewing and then took two long swigs from a bottle of flat Cola that had been left in the van from previous trips. There was work to do and the pub was calling.  He jumped out of the cab and waddled around to the tailgate, forcing the catches on each corner down with his massive and strong thumbs. The tailgate swung down with a clang…” blast it,” muttered Terry. He was trying to be quiet, but quiet wasn’t really his forté.

He jumped back into the lorry and crunched the gears into reverse, pulling the wheel down hard to the left. The truck arced across the road so that the back end of the tipper was just over the drop-off on the other side, then he flicked a switch. The hydraulics whirred into life, and the flat bed of the lorry started to rise up. The contents of the lorry slid off. It was mostly black bin bags full of household waste, a few garden toys that children had long since discarded a broken TV, all slipped off the trailer tipper and down the bank into the woods. Terry Rash didn’t even stop to see where it landed; he was off.   Accelerating through the gears and speeding off over St Helena’s Lane, then batting it down Scrub Green. 

He thought he’d gotten away with his flytipping actions unseen, but unbeknownst to him, he was being watched. The Wuzzers, had been quietly observing the whole sorry scene and they really weren’t happy.

Morning

Terry Rash came to; he awoke feeling cold. Last night’s session wasn’t even that big a deal. He’d had 8 pints followed by 2 flamin’ Zambukkas, child’s play by his drinking standards, so why did he feel so rough? 

He sat up and blearily looked around; the light was streaming in through the gap in his lounge curtains and it was hurting his eyes. Questions began to form in his tiny mind. What happened last night? Why was he on the couch and why was his sock in a foil tray containing kebab meat, skinny chips and what looked like cat sick?   He stumbled to his feet and went into the kitchen, pulled his blue and white stripy mug from the cupboard, flicked the kettle on, and pulled up a chair while he waited for the kettle. That grog had really done a number on him, and what the hell was that weird dream?  Something about roots, and a weird old man warning him about littering.  He shuddered and tried to put it out of his mind. He stirred three sugars into his tea, slurped it down in one go and left the house.

Two house clearances later and a fat wad of cash in his back pocket, Terry Rash was heading back home to his quiet little town. It was Friday night, but before he could hit the pub, he had one job to do, and that was get rid of today’s load.  

Rash hadn’t always been a fly tipper; at one time, he’d been a legitimate trader who would have never even dreamed of doing such a thing, but money was Terry’s God, and he’d gotten greedy.  He used to make a reasonable living from the clearances, so much so, he’d been able to take Trina, his wife, on three holidays a year, but then it happened, that slap in the face that had sent it spiralling out of control. Terry thought he was cock of the walk, playing the system, until that fateful day last August when the system played him.   

That Letter

He thought he’d pulled the wool over the council’s eyes by alternating between the tips and swapping vehicles.  But he overplayed his hand; there are only so many times you can swap vans, and trucks and only so long before someone recognises that you’ve been there, just a few too many times. Suspicions were raised, staff were on alert for commercial companies dumping waste without paying the proper fees and Terry was “on the list”.   Within weeks, he’d been questioned at Elmbourne Dump and at Deer Leigh Dale Tip.  Then came the letter, a cease and desist order from the council.   

“Dear Mister Rash, it has come to our attention that you have been dumping commercial waste at the municipal recycling centres across the Derbyshire Dales without the proper permits. It is illegal to dump commercial waste without the pre-paid licences. Please cease and desist. 

Should you wish to dispose of business-related refuse, you must register for a paid, commercial permit. utilise our weighbridge for payment, ensuring compliant disposal.

Yours sincerely,

Albert Jobswoth
Senior inspector

The gig was up. He ripped the letter up and stormed out of the house and jumped in the tipper; he’d show them.

He’d already got a full load of refuse on the back of his tipper from a garden clearance; he drove up to Woolgreave and out the other side; there was a quiet lane he knew near the Spar mines. He flicked the tipper switch and chuckled to himself.  “Permit that, ya rotten gits”, and then he sped off into the dusk.  Little did he know then, but Terry Rash had started down a dangerous path that he could never have imagined how it would end up.

St Helena’s Lane one last time

The dawn bristled with life and the dew reflected the steely cold of a day’s new hope. A fox was crossing the road with his fresh catch in his jaws. A sleepy duck taken unawares in the pool on Bannage Brook. The old fox was feeling pretty proud of himself as he headed back to his lair, so much so that he almost ran straight under the wheels of T Rash’s tipper truck as it rattled up St Helena’s Lane.

Rash was a man in a hurry; he had about half an hour before the sun was up and he had to tip his load and get back into town before he seemed out of place.   The town do-gooders had already cleaned the last lot up, so tipping again in the same place should be easy, as it probably wouldn’t be spotted for a few days.  Terry hated the “do-gooders” not because they were bad people but because they made him feel guilty. Whenever their newsletter came through the door, he dashed it into the bin without looking at it.  Mostly because they were documenting local cleanups in the places he’d been flytipping.

He got to his normal tipping place, at the top of the big hill that the locals called the Golkin. When he was a boy, Terry used to like to come sledging on the Golkin in the winters..there were stories told by some of the older boys about strange little people who lived in the woods and that they would grab any boy who dared sledge on his own and he’d never be seen again…” stuff and nonsense”,  Terry said aloud as he reminisced, but that was long ago and he pushed the thought out of his mind, feeling guilty again, he didn’t like to consider that he was now defiling the place he loved to play as a child.

As he reached his destination, he swung the truck forward into the muddy hollow, slammed it into reverse and backed up quickly, a little too quickly, as the back wheel of the truck hit a hidden rock, causing the wheel of the truck to bounce over it and partially drop over the edge.  

“No, no, no”, Terry cursed as he clambered out of the cab and walked round to see the problem, “I don’t have time for this”.   He could see that the problem wasn’t actually too bad. The back of the tipper was actually close to a tree, and with a good heave-to, Terry knew he could jam himself in the gap by bracing his back against the tipper and pushing with his legs against the tree.  He went back to the cab and let the handbrake off, gently; the truck didn’t move. Terry breathed a sigh of relief, then he got right to work, conscious that the sun would soon be up.

As he braced himself between the truck and the tree, he again got a pang of guilt about dumping the litter. Feeling that perhaps he was riding his luck, and for a brief moment, he considered buying the permit for the local recycling centres. 

With a mighty shove, the truck wheel lurched back over the rock, and the vehicle settled with a jolt.   That jolt was what Terry Rash hadn’t expected; the sudden movement left him almost hanging in mid-air, like a tramp whose hammock had suddenly vanished beneath him.  He fell down into the gap, bashed his head on the rock and fell down into the wood where the load should have been tipped.

“Well, well, look what we have here, if it isn’t – Mr Trash”

Said a voice in his ear as Terry came around from his fall.  Mr Trash himself….Trash by name, trash by nature,” it said again in a slightly more sneering tone.  Terry’s head was throbbing, and his vision was blurry… but through the double vision, he could just make out a small man..a very small man, a very small man who appeared to be naked apart from some kind of mossy growth that served as a pair of crude underpants.

“It’s Rash, not Trash”, Terry said as he tried to sit up, but found that he couldn’t

T – Rash said the voice “TRASH –  and that’s what you bring us every week, Stinking Trash and lots of it. Killing the plants and poisoning the animals.  “Well, Mr Trash, the game is up.”

Terry suddenly realised that the reason he couldn’t move was that his torso was completely wrapped in a large, thick Ivy Vine. The vine started to move, slowly pulling him down the hill toward a large Holly bush. 

“Please, please”, cried Terry Rash. “I’ll never do it again”…

The little man appeared at the side of Terry’s head …

“I know you won’t. You’ve poisoned the wood long enough, Mr Trash…Now it’s time to nourish it.

The vine pulled T Rash into a hole in the ground by the old oak tree. After he disappeared underground, the tendrils of the vine pulled in leaves and branches on top of him until no trace could be found.  

A farmer found the abandoned Van ten minutes later, loaded with rubbish, the door open, keys in the ignition, but no sign of the driver.  The police put out an appeal, but nobody ever heard from Terry Rash again.

 

 

© 2026 Phil Gregory. All rights reserved.

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental unless otherwise stated.