Concrete

A deserted hallway; concrete, crumbling, cobwebs in the exposed wooden rafters. No natural light, only a pale orange glow from an ancient, tired, overworked and overheated bulb, covered in dust and debris. Slowly it swings through the still air, making the shadows dance, a puppeteer of the maniacally inanimate. One shadow is not as cruelly carved as the others, it curves and breathes and could move on its own, if only the strings of starvation and poverty and desolation could be cut. A small girl owns this shadow, although she is too far gone to observe this. As the light swings, so too does her mind. Should she continue? She could prostrate herself on the streets, begging for money or food or clothes…she could. The light illuminates a door all the way at the end of the hall, a metal door surrounded by mold and leaking pipes. The girl is almost tempted to glance; from her perspective, this ugly aberration is the best representation of hope, the lid to Pandora’s box. However, what would that make her, sitting alone inside Pandora’s box? Will she destroy lives and dreams and hopes if she attempts to save herself? The light slowly swings back towards the uneven, cracked, and crevassed floor. The exposed rafters above the girl’s head are swollen with water and mold, weakened and near destruction; the girl looks down at her own distended and malnourished stomach, and contemplates her own destruction. Has she ever been outside this basement prison? It doesn’t feel like anything else exists. She jumps slightly as, overhead, water bangs through the leaking pipes, and she can feel her stomach rasping against her vertebrae; slowly, the light swings towards the other end of the hall. The girl doesn’t resist temptation this time; she looks up towards the dark stains on the floor, the broken rafter…this is the place where all of her hope died. She lets herself slip into white static, a mind-numbing place of thoughtless, existence-less abandon. The light continues to swing, the wood continues to rot, the shadows will always dance; the girl slips into a comatose state, unaware of reality, unaware that her only companion is beginning to flicker and fail. Slowly, the faltering light decreases its arcs, slows its swinging. Soon, the light cannot even reach the door, or the stains. Soon, as with the girl, the hallway is comatose, a single spot of light, unmoving and apathetic to life. As the girl breathes, the light flickers. How sad that, so soon, the light will fail completely.