The Closet Box

Born of Ash

Draw the iron.

Pound the blade.

Heat it.

Pound it.

Flip it.

Pound it.

Cool it.

Pound again.

Reheat it.

That was it. A continuous cycle for me. My face was covered with soot, my hands ached with blisters and burns. Sweat dripped from my body. My hands trembled as I continued pounding on the blade.

I looked like all the other people here. Skinny with shaggy hair and dead soulless eyes. My whole body was covered with ashes.

We all pounded away on iron blades, breaking our hands just to produce weapons for the military. We've been here for so long. So long that even I started losing count. We were stuck in a building-a factory. One with no windows and no light aside from the glowing orange from the furnace.
They forced us to make weapons to use for the war, a war that we were inevitably going to lose. This war would cost us our lives and this world we live in. We all knew it. It was only a matter of time. Until then, we wasted our dead lives pounding metal, with only the music of metal on metal to accompany us.

Everything was normal. And then everything wasn't. The world came up in smokes.

Then there was a boom. And the world went black.