Time Comes Around
03/06/17 17:31 Filed in: flash fiction | Writing
It's been a while but I've finally got around to writing something for Miranda's weekly challenge over at 'Finding Clarity'
It was a great photo for Week 13, why not give it a go? Word Count is up to 700 (with no minimum):
When the Wheels of Time went Round and Round
A.J. Walker
The giant cogs and wheels kept grinding on slow and steady circling in a audacious dance. Smaller cogs and gearing sent them off at different speeds and in different directions. The noise was constant and not unpleasant. Young Joshua was aghast at the size of the place it was beyond his comprehension. It was mesmerising; and to think his dad worked here!
‘Room after room dad. How many rooms? Perpetual motion. It’s just like perpetual motion. Don’t they ever stop, how do you keep them going?’
‘Not perpetual motion son. When the tides stop the machines will stop too.’
‘But the tides have never stopped, have they? Why would they?’ There was a little tremble in his voice.
‘There are no guarantees.’ His father smiled. ‘But in our lifetimes I can’t see them stopping. Can you?’
‘No. Never.’
And the machines ground on. In one room it was grinding flour and you couldn’t see one wall from across to the other for the yellow fog, in another ropes were lifting laden casks from a boat to the second floor as if they were as light as a feather, in the next lowering crates onto a wagon. His father walked passed an open door making to leave. Joshua peered into the room. The wheels turned here too and in this one great vats of gently bubbling liquid were being mixed by gargantuan spoons. The surface of the dark purple liquid popped and fizzed and an iridescence splashed across the little waves. Even by the door the atmosphere stung his eyes and the odours were like nothing Joshua could approach describing.
‘What’s this dad?’
‘This? This is out of bounds lad. Forget you have seen it.’
‘Forget what?’
‘Good boy.’
In the years that followed when he saw oils on a puddle or even a rainbow in a moody sky he often thought of that place. That indescribable smell and the secret held with his dad. He was sure it must have been something magical, the colours of magic in a purple blackness. It had to be. But maybe it was dangerous too. The colour of many deaths. He’d almost asked any number of people about that room, but in the end he held on to it like a private jewel.
The summer sun was scorching his parched creased face but he was too tired and old to care and the feeling was tempered by the cool water pulsing over his feet. The tides still came like he knew they would. But now the factory was on cliffs ten metres above the sea decaying like a carcass of a long extinct animal. “The tides come but the water has gone,” his father had said, more than once.
Joshua’s grandson pointed up to a tumbledown tower above them, Joshua could just make out a rusted cogwheel behind it. ‘What’s that grandad?’
‘A place of where magic was transformed into bread and beer, where we made everything from gates to windows, to spears and cooking pots.’
‘Oh, was it magic that made those grandad? What makes them now?’
Joshua harrumphed, he hadn’t seen a new thing made in their town for decades.
‘Some other magic I suppose. Some where else.’ Or do we just recycle what we had already, he wondered.
He'd never found out what was made in the room of iridescence. The secret had probably died with his father. Perhaps it was nothing important at all: Possibly it was everything. He noticed the sun hot on his feet, the water no longer lapping over them. The tide must have been turning or he’d absently walked up the beach. Or the water was retreating from this cursed place once more.
____
WC: 617
It was a great photo for Week 13, why not give it a go? Word Count is up to 700 (with no minimum):
When the Wheels of Time went Round and Round
A.J. Walker
The giant cogs and wheels kept grinding on slow and steady circling in a audacious dance. Smaller cogs and gearing sent them off at different speeds and in different directions. The noise was constant and not unpleasant. Young Joshua was aghast at the size of the place it was beyond his comprehension. It was mesmerising; and to think his dad worked here!
‘Room after room dad. How many rooms? Perpetual motion. It’s just like perpetual motion. Don’t they ever stop, how do you keep them going?’
‘Not perpetual motion son. When the tides stop the machines will stop too.’
‘But the tides have never stopped, have they? Why would they?’ There was a little tremble in his voice.
‘There are no guarantees.’ His father smiled. ‘But in our lifetimes I can’t see them stopping. Can you?’
‘No. Never.’
And the machines ground on. In one room it was grinding flour and you couldn’t see one wall from across to the other for the yellow fog, in another ropes were lifting laden casks from a boat to the second floor as if they were as light as a feather, in the next lowering crates onto a wagon. His father walked passed an open door making to leave. Joshua peered into the room. The wheels turned here too and in this one great vats of gently bubbling liquid were being mixed by gargantuan spoons. The surface of the dark purple liquid popped and fizzed and an iridescence splashed across the little waves. Even by the door the atmosphere stung his eyes and the odours were like nothing Joshua could approach describing.
‘What’s this dad?’
‘This? This is out of bounds lad. Forget you have seen it.’
‘Forget what?’
‘Good boy.’
In the years that followed when he saw oils on a puddle or even a rainbow in a moody sky he often thought of that place. That indescribable smell and the secret held with his dad. He was sure it must have been something magical, the colours of magic in a purple blackness. It had to be. But maybe it was dangerous too. The colour of many deaths. He’d almost asked any number of people about that room, but in the end he held on to it like a private jewel.
The summer sun was scorching his parched creased face but he was too tired and old to care and the feeling was tempered by the cool water pulsing over his feet. The tides still came like he knew they would. But now the factory was on cliffs ten metres above the sea decaying like a carcass of a long extinct animal. “The tides come but the water has gone,” his father had said, more than once.
Joshua’s grandson pointed up to a tumbledown tower above them, Joshua could just make out a rusted cogwheel behind it. ‘What’s that grandad?’
‘A place of where magic was transformed into bread and beer, where we made everything from gates to windows, to spears and cooking pots.’
‘Oh, was it magic that made those grandad? What makes them now?’
Joshua harrumphed, he hadn’t seen a new thing made in their town for decades.
‘Some other magic I suppose. Some where else.’ Or do we just recycle what we had already, he wondered.
He'd never found out what was made in the room of iridescence. The secret had probably died with his father. Perhaps it was nothing important at all: Possibly it was everything. He noticed the sun hot on his feet, the water no longer lapping over them. The tide must have been turning or he’d absently walked up the beach. Or the water was retreating from this cursed place once more.
____
WC: 617
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