The Factory

The factory was old, far older than any of the buildings surrounding him. He felt his age in his sagging wooden floors and the yellowing walls of his interior. The once bright red bricks that he had worn so proudly had faded into a rose, and a few had begun to crack and crumble. Few of his paneled windows remained, most had been broken by drunken vandals. The machinery that had hummed almost constantly deep in his belly had been silent for decades, as if his vitality had been sucked right out of him. The machines, once confident and powerful, had been stripped and their remains left to corrode. At night, when the city lay almost silent he could hear his joints creak and groan from his own mass and from the weight of the plunging temperatures. His faces were crisscrossed with tattoos left by romantics, desperate fame-seekers, and angry urban poets. He had come to enjoy the surreptitious visits of these night-time artists. The bright colours that they left behind covered his faded brick and their shadowy visits gave him the attention that he missed so greatly.

The building behind him, a soaring glass structure would peer imperiously down at him and wonder aloud when his view would improve. The glass building had a slight curve to its roof which made it think of itself as an architectural masterpiece.

The factory muttered hollowly to the himself about how derivative the glass building was, how there were thousands of it throughout the world, how few people noticed the shining reflective glass. He, however, had stood the test of time. Had he not heard the recent urban explorer enthuse to his friend on how much character he had?

Years passed. The machines showed up. The factory was excited at first, assuming that they had come to revitalize him, to shore him up, to re-open him to the rough workmen.

That was until they pulled down his first wall, the faded brick crumbling as it hit the ground. They were tearing him down, his tired bones shuddered with fatigued relief. His walls creaked and groaned, their age giving away easily to the destruction. He heard the soaring glass building humming happily to itself, "I shall have a wondrous view."

“Your time will come,” he groaned as his ancient roof caved in, “Your time will come.”