Tonight he was hitting one of his usuals, a clothing donation bin just off Van Nuys Boulevard. Getting in required some finesse, but if you found something to stand on, held the door just so, and crawled halfway in, you could retrieve stuff people had donated. It was a good spot for bin-diving—next to a Wells Fargo parking lot, across the street from a Kingdom of Jesus Christ church. Nobody was going to bother you there on a Friday night.
Dennis started pulling himself headfirst into the chute; he got his head all the way in, and his left arm too. Then something slipped.
Maybe it was a hand, maybe it was a foot. The chute’s pull-door swung down, crashing onto Dennis’s throat. He struggled, hands and feet free of the ground—like Superman in flight, but all wrong. He couldn’t get traction on anything. The metal door cut into his skin and crushed his larynx; he couldn’t get air through. Dennis couldn’t breathe. He was asphyxiating, and he was alone. With his head still upside down, the blood ran out of his nose. His limbs ceased their frantic motions. Superman’s heart stopped.
The endless traffic of Van Nuys Boulevard pulsed all night, indifferent.