The Industrial Maiden

Thousands of stories haunt the car plant tonight.

Take the thumb taker. It's a huge box, a laser for oversized parts. You open it up, slot it in, and cut it down to template. Problem being, you hold the part in position with your thumbs. If the safety bar doesn't engage, the laser will remove them.

I cut a threaded lock, observing the shadow of the safety bar. Unlike Turnkey Tommy, I know to watch for it.

But if it does not kill me, some other story shall.

Someone sawed a girl's limbs off, then left her to die of exposure on a night just like this.

People didn't do anything about it, except close the factory and put everyone out of work.

That's just this town.

Walking the vacant floor, my steelie boots clacking, I click the threaded lock into the gas tank of a fresh campervan.

It is done.

The factory's last vehicle.

Our village is hard to justify. The sea’s too cold for fish, and the dirt’s too frozen to farm.

Here. Make a car manufactory. That's a reason to remain.

But they ended it. Everyone has left. Not me. I guide the van down the belt toward the train cars. The vaulted ceilings echo the squeaking of the tires. No-one but me. Not Two Cup Karl, not Turnkey Tommy, not even Johnny the Rat.

Johnny the Rat was the caretaker, and he got his name by the bathroom wall. They wrote JOHNNY IS A RAT on the tiles in marker pen. You see, he saw the girl, he talked to the management, and it got him no job, same as anyone.

Who else will remember his name?

Just me, and the limbs scraping the ceiling.

The van stops at the belt's end. The door to the traincars a few feet away, snow blowing in out from there. I get the planks lying against the wall, make ramps onto the car.

With a pull of the lever, the vehicle rolls off the belt and rolls up the planks. I think, it won't make it. And for a moment, I pray I will be as Sisyphus: I shall forever push the van up the plank, and watch as it slides right back.

But it doesn’t. It goes into the train car.

Bitter, I slam the doors shut and signal the robot in the locomotive. The train hisses and pulls away.

That's it.

It's done.

I'm done.

The door slides shut behind me. I move through to the fuse box and start flicking off the lights. Each row goes dark across the floor.

The thrum of industry has left, with only the howling wind and her breath on my neck as company.

She lays three razorfingers on my throat. It's a professional job. A fine replacement.

I did not saw her legs and arms off, I did not pretend she was already dead when they finished, I did not stay silent during the police investigation.

I watched.

I watched, and I remembered.

The Industrial Maiden slices my neck open, and all the memories spill out.