Things I Wrote at One Time or Another

Omelas; "January"

A/N: something small I wrote when I was fifteen based off Toni Morrison's works and my life in a small Hispanic town in Massachusetts. There's only two parts, I never finished it.

There's a clock in the center of the town, where ravens threaten the robins that perch along the marble stone. Clock hands hesitant within every hour as the sun slowly caresses it's nostalgic fingers along its surfaces. It's bell was perched above an old grand church that sang it's hymns and dirges with a heavy and burning soul, calling for all grievances and sins to be washed away like a quick shower. The clock would often be off, instead of chiming hourly, it would reside in a moment and move onto another. It may have been off, but it never seemed to be late. It chimed when Patria Rosado was born— naked, ugly and empty, it chimed when Satira Rosado adjusted her wedding veil just right so she could get a better glimpse of her husband through the burning light of the sun. The clock chimed the moment Nolan Pollak smiled at Tulsa Vera. It chimed when Lillian Kesler wanted a moment for her body to be hers. When her son decided he could love who he wanted. It even chimed right at the moment Theodore's curls intertwined with the scarlet painted weeds that grew behind the old park they all used to play in, the one just a few turns from the old wine factory— and the framing proved him casket pretty.

It sits right at the intersection of the North and the South, the North being populated with those of freckled, dotted, speckled, dirtied, burned and ashed skin. Shades of ebony, hues of chocolate treats that were once wrapped in gold, the memory of a lake in the midst of August's end. There were alabaster people too, with their sunken eyes and cracked lips from the words they've begged to put together. The drumming of their peeling fingers and the dust around their tranquil eyes. Not all were like that, some were. The South were all ivory and alabaster, eyes of spring and summer, locks soft and long. The houses rose above most of the roofs in the North, women dressed in their privileges and men leaving a trail of success and dominance with every step their loafers took— smiles straight out of the Sunday television. The adults avoid each other — as adults often believe they should— while the children line up on it's border. The church's clock tower marked an uneven line that favoured the band of ivory skinned boys and girls and roped the ashed skin of the Northern children into an oval within the ivory territory, surrounded. But these days the corner street remained deserted as the security cameras aimed itself in the shadow of their footprints, whenever it panned towards the tower it was clear to see: someone had spray painted a message, so if it were to chime at the correct time, the people would have no clue. The message read thus:

Welcome to Omelas

The town's name was Gardberg, yet, the moment everyone awoke from their new year hangover and false hope, they— even the opposed children— began calling it so. No one bothered to find out who it was, even so they'd usually blame it on the Northern teenagers, yet the clock held no more significance to them anymore, they had clocks on their wrists and their phones, what was the use for them having one in the center of town?