Koronowa Direct

A Story in the Womb

As the hose my sister is using blasts me wet, she chuckles between the sprays of water, tenting fully over me like a vertical whirlpool sucking me in.  Whether it was her laughter or the water itself which drew me I couldn't tell.  The sun warmed us, and brightened the water's spread into white strings of cooling liquid, as if my sister controlled some incredible holy instrument.  The sun, and the water, and the grass underneath us, felt like life, it felt vividly like a heartbeat might sound.  Although, there are some sounds that are meant to stop.   

I ran and ran, and ran.  Mom. Dad.  Uncle.  I ran, heaving over, pulling on the grass like it was my mothers skirt.  I felt the heave in my throat, as it lowered into my rib cage, squashing my stomach.  My breath was tortured by ceaseless inhales always expecting but never getting out. It's getting dark, and as I find the door, I rush it's metal knob open, thrusting the wood forward.  Inside, my eyes stutter in their panic, surveying the room and trying to absorb the darkness till it makes sense, but it never does.  The room grows darker, until it's so fully dark that I'm gone.  

My Mother read to me when I was in some other place, before I got here, in the alluvial black that withdraws and flips until you're plucked out of it by breached hands.  There, words sometimes melted into the black, and sounds sometimes submerged in the puddle of becoming that I was.  Her words were the only one's that I could see.  A story told only to me. 

"Seig, wake up boy.  What you doing, we got the 4 shift.  Koronowa ain't gonna wait.  There ain't no time to be dillyin' asleep.  Get up boy." He grabbed the blanket off my almost naked body, the air replaced it, freezing me with it's harsh touch.  "Fuck off, aye" I took the blanket and wrapped around my shoulders.  I looked down below the bed at the clothes I'd worn for the past week and a half.  They were folded, a trick i learned years ago to make myself believe they were cleaner than the mud, dirt, blood, and sweat that probably made up more of the clothes than the clothes themselves.  "Seig, Get the fuck out there before the Gen gets here, you know he'll fuck you up good if not." 

Voices outside muddle, Charles talking again,

"Cherry boy, When is they gonna take that train to the next district?  Hell it's been five years since they's kept us here.  Workin' on it, continual, like it's either the coal burns or the world burns.  They mistaken if they doubt that train won't get them to Koronowa.  You and I both know, that it will, directly and most efficiently.  It was built for a single job, and it will delivah'."  

I finally dressed.  There was no mirror in the steel, but as it stood all around me, as makeshift as any god damn dog-house- beds and steel was all it was, I knew who I was, and I knew exactly what I looked like.  Most wouldn't, most would forget, or ignorance would set in.  But I had to know. What I looked like mattered most, because once i finally cleaned this gross body, I would know, that behind all the metallic residue of this train that's going somewhere I don't care to know, I know that me is under there, it's under the steel cobwebs, and the fucked orders, I am me, and I won't be them." 

Shacklebee was outside.  An old man probly' around 80, who always talking would tell you the most philosophical nonsense you'd ever hear.  "Shack what you doing sittin', you know the Gen's gonna kick ya'.  

"Surely surely.  A man wont cry until he has eyes, and a man cant bend till he's got a back!  Just like saplings won't grow until they have fur, but it has got be just enough fur.  An Animal keeps growing it, i guess reptiles are like saplings. You can't just keep growing fur.  Everything needs a haircut eventually. 

"Jesus Shack, lighten up, we all need cuts."

The Train was eatin' coals already.  That meant the boys had been firing for at least an hour.  The usual crowd sat outside the bunks.  Not yet workin', getting there though, as they smokin' D class tobacco- I mean that shit they mix dirt, tea leaves, and a sinch' of tobacco and call a cig- and they love that shit.  Gotta smoke to live, that's no doubt a dictum here.