district eight || baldwin evalina krumm

w i n n i e   k r u m m

t  r  a  s  h  o  n  i  s  t  a

Eddie Scrundler is a wasteful pig and I will have his head on a pike.

In the last week, he's thrown out a yellow sheet, two shirts, and a pair of jeans that'd been cut into jorts that were frankly much too short.

A disgrace, truly.

No one really cares if you steal from their trash, not here on the outer edge. Most of the time, your trash doesn't even make it to your trash before it becomes someone's treasure. Hand-me-downs galore, and not just clothes. Stale bread, a broken mirror shard, a pair of sandals with a ripped strap so really you can only wear the one shoe unless you tie the other one on with a strip of a shirt.

Stylish.

Gran Critta says it looks stupid when I weave the rest of the ripped purple shirt through my hair and twine wire around broken glass and mirrors to make ear-cuffs and nab a giant denim shirt from a trashcan to wear as a dress, but Gran Critta also regularly talks about loving the Shadow Man, so I don't take her word too seriously anymore.

Most days, though, are quiet in the way that the world is so loud that nothing stands out. Not Gran Critta, not the snores of my cousins from the apartment upstairs, not the touches I try to add to my clothing whenever I'm free from the factories and wringing my hands under water boiled on the stove to stave off the pain building on day twelve in a row working at the assembly line.

That doesn't mean I stop creating. It doesn't mean I toss aside a possibility that could bring the world back into color.

If I did, I'd be no better than that worthless pig Eddie Scrundler, and that's simply unacceptable.