observations (non-fiction) from 2016-2022 in no particular order

library (2020)

I'm grateful that Andy came in before me this morning to turn on the heater. I've had a look before, and I can't work out the complex knobs on the inside wall of the library office. It's empty this morning. All the children are working from home except for two.

The library is made of an arched wooden frame with a high ceiling, a rooftop window letting in ample light. Swamp green metal construction beams, weighed down at the bottom by blocks of concrete, support up the ceiling. Between the beams are the shelves of books - in total, eight of them - what I feel is a paltry number for a library this big. The carpet is thin and pulling up in wrinkles, spotted with black blobs of chewing gum. Those are also probably from the seventies. The ceiling plaster itself is cracked here and there, and though it was built over thirty years ago, it has the feeling of something unfinished. Construction beams and unfinished concrete blocks don't make for a cozy feeling. The beams are cracking their knuckles in the heat. It sounds like footsteps, and I don't like that.

I can't sit in here for long. The children, or child, as it turns out, hasn't arrived yet. For whatever circumstances, she can't stay at home and work. I understand that. Looking out beyond my makeshift desk, there are six tables each with a green computer chair covered in fabric. There goes the popping and shuffling noises again. I turn around, and of course, nothing. I don't like how edgy it makes me.

"They're going to call the office to see where she's gone," said Andy's voice. I jump, and instinctively scroll down on my screen so he can't see that I'm writing about the library.

"Sure," I said, my heart still beating. I tried to make conversation to beat the silence and the strange look he gave me. "I saw on the schedule that she-"

He was already gone, out the door, moments after I'd spoken to him. I didn't think a man's footsteps could sound like that.

bag (2018)

They'd all left too early. I could hear it in my mind - the roaring, the slamming, what would happen after being summoned to the musty office again for negligence. I'd be too scared to respond, like last time they ran out. Where did they go? Hopefully straight home. Nobody knew, and that was the problem.

In the corner of the classroom I noticed a bag. In their haste to get to the holidays, one of them must have left it behind. I grabbed the deceptively light sack, and lifted it up. Out rolled, onto the carpet, something rotten. Putrescent.

R*ville (2018)

Nowhere does the sun shine brighter than in R*ville. The hot air permeates one's skin; even on the coldest day of the year, it possesses a distinctive dryness through the rain and fog. Gum trees loom over, minding their own business in a sinister way. Occasionally, it is said, the gums have eyes. Birds sing like crickets in the thick air, waiting, restlessly calling to each other or bargaining with an unseen presence through their cries. Summer is a season that rings heat and dehydration, dust and gum leaves, chip packets and dirt. Even the water is tainted with a strange quality; upon my first day I was told never to drink it. The unrelenting dehydration in the air is enough for my nose to bleed, drip, pour, as though the air itself were trying to pull the life out of me.

The walls are calloused and unabashed in their green-ness, sickly blinds caked with dust that haven't been touched since the dawn of the first summer here long ago, twisted and crooked like thin metal fingers. Names adorn the tables like those on tombstones, commemorating those who have left. It's never truly silent here, not while the voices of long ago stay in the walls, the unchanging layers of rotten wood upon paint upon voices upon dry heat. Wall panels of unidentifiable purpose are covered with layers of sticky-looking paint, doors leading to nowhere are boarded up with their doorknobs removed. In the silence, through the wood and the paint, if you close your eyes and hear with your mind, you can sense into the pale heartbeat that lingers in the walls, under the wells and piping.

A black fungus, exploded and rotten, swelters in the sun. Flies tentatively swarm to it, though even they keep their distance. The flies do not have a choice.