indiana herondale } . district nine

It is 6 A.M.

I awaken
and I leave through the groaning door.

It is 7 A.M.

Gray pours into the cracked windows from the overcast sky. I would be submerged in utter darkness if not for the old lamps I had brought in from my house. Sometimes they flicker and buzz- it's almost like they are gasping for air. In this haven, it is barren, but it is safe. Locked away in silence, I am rendered blind and deaf- but I have never been more immersed in paradise.

Shadows creep down the walls. The old factory would be stripped utterly bare if not for the veils of darkness resting themselves on everything there is to see. I think I once thought up in my head, when I was younger, that monsters were bred of shadows, but I reached out my hand to the wall drenched in their darkness and felt only comfort.

Sometimes I see spiderwebs glistening like silver threads in the corners where the walls and the ceiling collide. I cleaned most of them out with the end of a broom when I discovered the old plastic factory years ago, but every once in a while, I spot new ones creeping across nooks and crannies.

I find things, lost things, and I find a lot of them. I find them in the field just outside the factory. (Mom told me to stop stealing junk from the old field, but it isn't stealing if it doesn't belong to anyone. She says I've got sticky fingers and an an eccentric, empty avarice, but I think I'm just curious.)

There is a multitude of wooden tables spread throughout the second floor. They are filled to nearly overflow with metal scraps and parts to broken machines and any other nonsense that winds up curled in my hands. It's a workshop, in a way. I have my own little shop in the market, fixing clocks and toys and anything else they give me and selling trinkets I make with lost things.

I have filled the warehouse, adjacent the main building, with entire valleys of boxes. They are filled to the top with the lost things, collecting dust until I need them for one of my projects.

It is 2 P.M.

This place is forsaken. There is an old abandoned factory and an old abandoned field. Silence fills the air, but it does not choke me, it only brings me to life.

Unbridled and left to grow in a frenzy, the grass has surged to the skies. It is a golden sea and at its depths, I find fistfuls of old parts to add to my collection.

The field seems to stretch out to forever. In the distance, all my eyes can scrounge up is more of its tall grass kissed all pale and golden by the looming sun. I've walked for miles at a time until I walked right into one of its ends- a sparse little forest with a gurgling creek.

I once let myself become absorbed in the fringes of its trees. I walked through its tangles, wild and verdant, and I saw only wonder and beauty. When I wandered and wandered farther than I thought my feet were capable, I found myself standing before an old junkyard. It is piled high with wonders- rusted metal scraps and screws and tools.

This place is forsaken.

It is 5 P.M.

Having returned to my house, I miss my haven already, and my tools and my tinkering.

I lace my fingers through the holes in my grandfather's sweater. It's tattered and worn and old as bones, it's ripped and torn and I remember my father said we should throw it out, but I can't bear to let the last piece of him go to the grave, too.

It sits on the chest behind the sofa- and it's been there, still as a silent pond, since the day he set it down just hours before he died in his sleep. My mother can't bear to move it, but she can't bear to look at it, either.

It is 12 A.M.

These nights are long; I swear they drag onto infinity in a spiral. I like to watch the people who come into the bar and pour themselves drink after drink. My ears strain to hear the tick tick ticking of the gears whirling within them- the people I see along the bar counters are like machines.

They are like machines, running on a strict routine: be done with the day and then drink it all away. Hollow eyes, empty words, wires for brains; they are like machines. When they walk, heavy from the alcohol burning in their amber veins, sometimes I swear I can hear their rusty steel joints clink clink clinking against each other- or perhaps that is just my tired mind playing tricks on my reality.

{ table by zoe }