Chapter Text
Down in the garbage dumps of Waterfall, the area was usually quiet, save for the constant running water that flowed down from the cliffs above. It turned the dump from just a couple of piles of discarded waste into a full-on garbage swamp.
But today, the usual peaceful nature of the dump was interrupted by the sounds of a small man trudging through the muck. His left arm was spread out at his side, while his right clung on tightly to his bag, trying to keep it from getting too wet. The water came up slightly above the height of his knees, a factor he had neglected to consider when putting on an old pair of rain boots he had been “lucky” enough to find in the dump last week. He had been so excited to use them too! He wouldn’t have had to wade through the nasty garbage while wearing his designated “garbage clothes,” and he wouldn’t have had to feel the water and mud slowly seep into his old boots as he squelched through the swamp. But this? This was even worse!
The moment he had stepped into the water, he realized his grave mistake. The nasty water had filled up the new (or well... old? New to him at least) rain boots almost immediately. He had stood there for a moment, simply staring down at his feet before letting out a stream of expletives and going into a bit of a fit. After exhausting himself, he simply sighed and let the boots sink into the mud as he crawled back onto land, stripping off his now wet and muddy socks. He didn’t quite feel like walking all the way back home to get his usual boots, so instead he just rolled up his pants and went in barefoot. It was a bit of a risk since you never knew what could be down there in the mud. He had cut himself a few times before finding a good pair of boots to wear. He had been lucky enough to never step on anything alive. He shuddered at the thought, who knew what weird little things were living down there, just below where he could see. Even now, he could feel all kinds of foreign objects poking at the sensitive skin on his feet. It made him feel a tad nauseous, but he kept going, nonetheless.
He wasn’t really looking for anything in particular today. Sure, he had a few things in mind (like maybe some galoshes or waders) he would like, but he knew searching for specific items was a fool’s errand. If he got too focused on looking for a certain item, he would end up missing other things that he could find. Spamton could usually tell which piles had new trash; there were a couple of landmarks he had memorized in the piles, and if they had been moved, that usually meant new things had fallen in. Spamton wasn’t quite sure how all the trash really got here; he’d never seen a garbage man come by, nor had he met one. Of course, some of the trash flowed down in the water, but considering the fact that there was trash from all over the underground, that surely couldn’t be the only way it got here. Spamton would occasionally eye other people’s trash cans in an attempt to try and gauge whose trash ended up where. In his earlier days, he had even dug through some trash, but he’d been caught too many times to do that again unless he really needed to. Despite that, he knew most of the residents of the underground well enough to be able to tell which piles belonged to which monster.
The Skeleton brothers always had discarded ketchup bottles (gross. Spamton always thought the older brother’s affinity for drinking the condiment was disgusting), old, worn-down pencils, empty spaghetti boxes, failed cooking attempts, and broken components of Papyrus’s traps and puzzles. As well as the occasional large pile of broken bones. Undyne’s garbage piles were always full of used cooking supplies (often burnt), broken spears, torn-up training dummies, and the occasional scribbled-out drawing of what appeared to be a buff anime girl. The ghost cousins (Now just Napstablook and… the other one… Spamton could never remember their name… did they even have a name?) often had trash piles full of scratched up CDS, tangled tapes, and countless ghostly items and snacks that Spamton had tried to take an embarrassing amount of times only for them to phase through his body. There were also very rarely crumpled-up drawings of a familiar-looking cat girl. There was, of course, the garbage from the MTT hotel, often a lot of expired pillow mints, torn bedsheets, and empty glitter glue tubes. Among various other items. All of that paled in comparison to Alphys’ garbage, though. Usually, it was just a bunch of junk food. But occasionally there would be other things, scraps from what Spamton presumed were experiments, that was always useful, but digging through Alphys’ garbage piles was a bit of a minefield. You never knew if you were going to find some great scrap, pages of horrific fanfiction full of things Spamton would prefer not to think about, or something worse.
There were countless other monsters in the underground that Spamton had mentally noted down as having specific trash patterns, but for the most part, he just tried not to go too far into the dump. He hadn’t really ventured out from his usual routine since… well, he preferred not to think about it. Rummaging through a nearby garbage pile that seemed to have new trash, Spamton muttered to himself, taking note of what seemed new. As he continued to sift through the trash pile, he slowly dove further and further in. To an outsider, it probably looked odd, seeing the small man’s pale legs sticking out of a pile of garbage as he squirmed his way deeper in. But he didn’t particularly care. He was already considered a bit of a weirdo by most of the underground, so who cared if someone caught him in the dump again? Not him. Definitely not him. It didn’t bother him at all that he had to spend his free time after work digging through fucking garbage. He gritted his teeth, crushing a torn cardboard box he had been holding in his hands. He felt his eye twitch as he thought about how little he had found these past weeks. The fact that he’d had so few visitors to his shop didn’t help much. It was probably thanks to that damn geezer who had set up shop in waterfall just down the way. Stealing what little business he got. His main gig wasn’t supposed to be selling refurbished trash, but the extra cash that he got from it was always a good boost. Not to mention a part of him missed selling things to people.
Sure, he could get the occasional monster to buy a new magazine subscription here and there, but for the most part, it was a lot harder to do with the general lack of interest in that kind of stuff. Nobody really read any of the moneymaking magazines anymore. Like gossip columns and celebrity tell-alls. Everything was online or on TV nowadays. And Spamton no longer had the proper resources to keep up with that. So, for now, he was stuck as a crummy mailman. He hated it, being back on the bottom rung of the ladder. Except this time, he couldn’t climb any higher. There was no opportunity, nobody above him to overtake. It was just him. Just him. But that was all he really needed, wasn’t it? He didn’t need anyone else; he didn’t need anybody! He was Spamton G. Spamton! And he could rely on himself, dammit! He-
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud shift in the garbage pile above. Spamton had been shaking during his mini spiral, and his searching had become less delicate and more frantic and violent. Usually, he would be able to get out of a situation like this in time before the pile spilled over, but this time he’s been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to pay attention. He tried to weasel his way out, but it was too late. The garbage pile was already toppling over the edge of the waterfall and into the depths of the dump.