Young creatives awards 2022 Writing Runner ups and Librarian's pick

Runner ups

Kicking off my trip to Liverpool by Lewis Mountney (12 to 15 years)

Today I woke up really excited because this was the day I was finally going to see the city of Liverpool. I have read all about Liverpool and the city’s soccer team in a book I borrowed from the Marrickville Library, called Ultimate Encyclopedia of Football. I am so excited to see Anfield and all my favourite players. I want to watch Virgil Van Dijk slide tackling, heading the ball away and his calm blocking of the attacking players.

I sprinted down the stairs with joy and excitement bouncing everywhere in my heart. Then I realised that Mum and Dad did not have any suitcases and that was a little bit weird. Then, instead of going to the airport and flying to England my family drove down a highway and through a tunnel that only took us 30 minutes to arrive in Liverpool. I don’t think we even left Sydney.

I look around this Liverpool for Anfield Stadium and the star player Mohamed Salah and instead I see Bigge Park and a few eshays roaming the city.

I only saw one person in a Liverpool football shirt – I expected to see more. But I also saw lots of guys in Bulldogs jerseys. I did not expect that.

Liverpool have won six UEFA champions leagues and 19 top flight league titles and eight FA cups. I wonder how many trophies the Bulldogs have won.

Even Goodison Park, which is Liverpool rivals Everton's stadium, was not there. Instead there was a run-down Westfield shopping centre. At least my sister was happy about my mum taking her shopping.

I would have liked to have gone to stores selling Liverpool shirts, scarves and memorabilia but I just saw lots of two-dollar shops.

I wanted to see the ferry cross the Mersey, like in the song, but there was just the Georges River. Even worse, there were no ferries. In fact, there were no boats at all. You can cross the river on a bridge, though.

Liverpool has the second biggest port in Britain, and I would like to see that. However, this Liverpool is a long way from the sea.

Instead of hearing the Beatles singing “Let it Be” I heard a song called “There's a Hole in your Budget” which was very annoying.

Instead of seeing the Cavern nightclub where the Beatles used to play, we saw some dark, dingy old pubs that I don’t think any bands played in. Maybe they had jukeboxes with Beatles songs on them.
Instead of Strawberry Fields forever, there were just some paddocks around town – I am not sure any grew anything more interesting than grass.

There was also no sign of Liverpool’s big green Sefton Park; instead there was a big construction site behind a wooden fence and some building cranes in the sky.

I did not hear the funny Liverpool accent, but I did hear people who had come to this Liverpool from all over the world and were happy to live in Australia.

I went looking for fish and chips with mushy peas but instead I found Lebanese chicken with garlic sauce. OK, that was really yummy and probably tasted better than fish, chips and mushy peas.

I was also looking for Liverpool’s fancy Central Library but instead I found Liverpool City Library across the road from Bigge Park. It was not as impressive as what I was expecting it to be. But I’m sure it had plenty of books inside. Maybe it even had books about the Liverpool in England and its football team.

I looked up to see if I could see St John’s Beacon, which was built in 1966, but all I could see was lots and lots of towering blocks of flats that have been built much more recently.

I was also looking for the big, grand Lime Street Station but I just saw some trains go near a small, old-fashioned station by the river.

Trying to book a ferry to Dublin, I had no luck. Instead I found a train to Town Hall.

Instead of people whose families came from Ireland, there were many people whose families came from the Middle East and Africa.

While looking for the Liverpool Grand Cathedral I had no luck. In fact, I didn't even see a church or a mosque.

Instead of the green Cheshire countryside surrounding Liverpool, I saw a busy highway and some warehouses.

There were no double decker buses but there were double decker trains coming here from the city.

My mum went to university in Liverpool, England. I thought I would see her old campus but instead I saw the South West Sydney TAFE college.

I was trying to find Blackpool Zoo. Instead I found myself at Lions Lookout, but there were no lions. My sister said they must have been “lyin’” about the name.

It turns out both Liverpools have museums, but the one I found was lots smaller. Though I think it had more Aboriginal history than I think the other one would have had.

I was trying to look for the Liverpool Empire. It is a famous old building where you can watch some theater and opera. But instead I found the Liverpool Catholic Club, where there are lots of poker machines and there is an old guy called John Paul Young singing songs maybe my grandad knows.

I didn’t have much luck in Liverpool, but next week my parents are taking me to Newcastle. Maybe I will get to see St James’s Park and the fancy bridge over the Tyne. I can’t wait.

I want to see Allan Saint-Maximin’s dribbling and pace on the pitch.

(Inspired by the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Football)

Don’t Call Me Hope by Natalie Chidiac (16 to 18 years)

Amal’s focus was distant, distracted by the coming and going of perspiring cars. Her eyes were sore, inflamed, wet. Inhale. Exhale. Her burdensome asthma coupled with her irregular breathing patterns plagued her lungs as her siblings cried heavily beside her. The Mimosa tissue box in Aunt Mona’s 2001 hatchback BMW car had finished – empty.

“Anyone have tissues with them?” her mother, reclusive and quiet, sniffed from the front seat.

“No, mama (mum),” the children in the back seats responded desolately in synchrony.

“Get ready, we’ve arrived,” she announced, her soft voice dipping.

A lump passed through Amal’s throat. As she stepped out of the warm car into the chilly morning air, her entire body quivered.

‘Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport’, it said. The words stretched up, pulling her up in a solid clutch, ripping her heart apart and hanging its shreds in mid-air. The pieces dropped onto the floor, picking themselves up and running back into her unsewn heart, reminding her of her unwelcome reality.

The day her mum had spoken to her and her siblings about for the past few months had crept up on them. After the devastating Beirut Port explosion – the tip of the iceberg – Amal, only fifteen years old, was leaving her beloved home country, Lebanon, with her mother and siblings. None of them knew if they would see each other again. Everything and everyday was volatile in Lebanon – recurrent economic, political, social dilemmas.

It was the day they would depart their home country and separate from their extended family. It was the day a new chapter in Canada would begin, where more work opportunities would abide, and social pressures on Amal’s mother to remarry after her husband’s death would dissipate. “There should be a man in your house,” her friends and neighbours would remark intrusively – as per usual.

As the glass screens of the airport faded out, she walked into the airport, clutching her mother’s hand, with her siblings, aunties and cousins all following closely behind – momentarily together.

Mama, please don’t take us to Canada, Amal silently pleaded as she gazed at her mum with sagging eyes.

Amal’s aunt moved forward precariously, giving her a long hug and stroking her ginger hair, “It’ll be fine, ya albe (my heart).”

When it was time for them to go through the security checkpoint – the centre of camouflage where travellers would become unreachable figures – Amal ran to Aunt Mona.

“Don’t forget me once we’re gone,” she stood numbly at her chest.

As they embraced in a lingering hug, “Mostahil (never)!”, Amal reminisced about the weekdays she would spend standing at the windowsill at her grandmother’s house, waiting for her aunt to arrive. Their neighbour in flat 3 – the “gossip queen” of the block – would also be waiting for her earnestly. When she would finally arrive, the neighbour would prance down the stairs in her peeling stilettos, carrying her ancient rakwe (coffee pot) and small tissue pack, exhilarated to be filling them in on the latest gossip.

“Yalla (come on),” Amal’s mum called, wiping away her tears with the final tissue from the box.

Amal moved forward. Small, slow steps. Elongated, agonising steps. The temptation to step back rather than forward encircled her.

She turned one last time to catch a glimpse of all their faces, anxious that she would forget them – or they would forget her.

Only a month ago, Amal had been trying new makeup products with Mariam – Aunt Mona’s daughter. The mess they made, the facial paintings they created, the dirty tissues they spread all over the wooden fold-in table – were now remnants of the past.

Meanwhile in the airport, Aunt Salwa orchestrated a façade that she was on a phone call only to evade the final farewell as her heart wrenched uncomfortably. Don’t forget our Saturday mornings, Amal thought, gazing at her pensively.
Every Saturday, Amal would wake up excitedly and run down the hallway barefoot into the kitchen where Aunt Salwa would have knefe and katayif set on the table, ready to devour for breakfast. The generosity, the kindness – intrinsically embedded in her Middle Eastern blood – despite the financial strains of hyperinflation.

Her second oldest cousin was also gazing at her empathetically. Charbel, my ATM man, she spoke internally, devoid of emotion, unable to articulate any words.

On Sundays, Amal would always play with Charbel on his ATM machine – producing play money while they lacked the real money to thrive – and he would relentlessly scare her that someday she’ll return to find the machine gone.
“We don’t need it anymore. Next time we meet, both of us will have grown up, Amal,” he would say.

“Some things never get old, Charbel,” she would reply, clutching a tissue box in hand and pulling a thick sheet of tissue out – another childhood memory getting exhausted, and dissipating into open air.

As Amal stood feebly below the destinations timetable, a reluctant ‘goodbye’ pulled itself out of her mouth, her voice cracking with every syllable.

Her family. There they were standing in front of her in a curved assembly – metres apart. She wondered if in Ottawa, the same effusive scent of coffee will rise from the rakwes (coffee pots) lined in the neighbourhood’s kitchens, if there will be any nosy neighbours to talk to, if there will be good Lebanese sweets on sale at the sweets shops – knefe, katayif, baklava.

In Ottawa, it’ll only be us, only us. Just us.

Her gaze dropped down onto the empty tissue box, crushed and creased between her clammy palms. Deceased. The short story is passing away, Amal thought, no amal (hope) left.

(Inspired by The Terminal)

Up the Coast by Joseph Hathaway-Wilson (19 to 25 years)

The town sits on a curved hillside sloping down towards the bay. Double storied beach houses decorate its surface from ocean to peak, divided by tiers of winding roads and textured with a mixture of native gums and palm trees. At the foot of the hill, the main street runs parallel to the arc of the bay, beyond which sits a single strip of beachfront mansions. Gran tells me that one of the mansions belongs to James Packer, but no one has ever seen him. Aside from the flocks of Summer visitors, few faces around here are unfamiliar to one another. It is a Tim Winton sort of town, where aimless youth make core memories, and everyone else just sits around – talking to spirits or whatever.

It is nearly midday. Wedged half beneath the coffee machine, a short message is scribbled on the back of yesterday’s shopping receipt: Gone down to beach. Gran still in bed (as of 11:06am). Please check in on her when you see this. Love, Marnie. I pour myself a long black and crack open Gran’s door. The last framed photograph of Dad as a boy has been spiderwebbed, and she’s fallen asleep on top of her bedsheets wearing yesterday’s clothes. I wait for her chest to rise and fall, then leave the door open as I exit.

Gran’s balcony faces the beach, with a view to most of the houses in town. On the other side of the bay, I spot the red brick house where a pot-bellied man used to sun-bathe naked on his balcony. Marnie and I had the binoculars confiscated when Gran realised what we were using them for – until next Summer, when we brought another pair with us. Behind the news agent on the near side of the main road is the house where our godfather grew up. We once had a joint family holiday here with his wife and kids – his youngest daughter chipped her tooth climbing out of the water onto the rocks. The memories are rich, but they do not belong to the town so much as they belong to Gran’s balcony. If you dug up the homes and shopfronts of this place you would find the stories that wrote my father into existence, the stories of the generation that raised him, and the generation before that: memories of joy and heartbreak that evolved into tales of love and loss after being handed down to younger members of the dinner table. You will not find Marnie and my memories here. The memories I have of this town belong to the balcony, or to Dad’s Subaru. Maybe someday we will tell the stories of the city as we remember them, but not of this place. I sit down, dangle my arms over the edge of the balcony, and press the side of my face against the balustrade.

Dad pulls up a chair on my left. We sit in silence for what feels like a very long time to sit in silence with someone, but I know that just when I begin to think he’s annoyed, he will start talking. He is always musing over something; he just takes time to pull his thoughts above the surface. When at last he leans over the balcony and points towards a house a few streets directly below us, I beat him to it.

‘That was where your first girlfriend lived,’ I say.

He laughs. I grin. Something tells me he takes pride in his predictability, that he feels he has adopted just the right number of paternal stereotypes, and that he is making the most of his licence not to be the smartest guy in the room anymore. He brings his focus to the far end of the shoreline.

‘Did I tell you what happened down there when I was your age?’ he says.

‘That you saved a kid who got pulled out in a rip?’ I respond.

‘I saved two!’ he says, comically emphasising his own heroism.

‘God,’ I say, ‘eat your heart out, Hoppo.’

The town grows dim as the sun disappears behind a cloud. An ocean breezes whips around the face of the hillside, and my arm hairs prick up suddenly. My instinct is to go inside for a jumper, but I don’t want the moment to end – we don’t get these moments with Dad anymore. Instead, we stay out on the balcony until one of us can think of something that we haven’t spoken about before.

‘Do you ever regret anything from when you grew up?’ I ask, looking out at the horizon. The wind beats against the balcony before I think to rephrase. ‘I guess what I mean is, was there any big part of your childhood that you knew you really didn’t want for me and Marn?’

He doesn’t respond, but I can’t bring myself to look around.

‘Surely you have some crap memories of this place too?’ I ask. ‘What about the bash-your-brains-out, mundane afternoons when you wished you could be literally anywhere else in the world?’ There is something in my throat. ‘What about the blokes who used to work down by the beach who you and Gran always talk about? What about all the stuff that you haven’t said yet?’

There is silence again, but it is neither annoyed nor thinking of something to say. I dab my eyes with my forearm, and finish drinking my coffee. When I hear Marnie ringing the front doorbell, I walk uninterrupted back inside. It is a gentle ring, as if it was somehow orchestrated to happen after the whip of wind and the crash of the waves, and the actions and exchanges of every person who ever lived in this town on every day up until now. There is a poetry about this place which I have not noticed before. It is a Tim Winton sort of town, I guess.

(Inspired by Tim Winton’s The Boy Behind the Curtain)

Librarian's pick

A Burning Pear Tree by Zoe Fitzgerald

Dew stills cautiously on the fruits of the pear tree. Each droplet slows from stem to shoulder, sloping down smooth curves, unhurried in its decent. No; unwilling in its descent. The drop struggling against what gravity has preordained for it. It plops to the branch below it, then a leaf, then another stem. The leaves of the pear tree reach easterly toward a sun whose Midas touch is without mercy and indiscriminate with her judgement. A cloth placed on my forehead from hours before has grown warm, the chemise I wear damp and sticking to a stomach that is no longer simply a stomach, this great swelling thing; you.

My love, my love, how could I ever say I do not love you?

I wrote lessons to teach you of this world on passing slips of paper and the back of magazines long since burned.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

I knew you as a child when days were sweeter and shorter: My Mama sat on a porch with her belly stretched wide, watching the mangroves shift their roots in the mud with the ebb and flow of the tide. Sunlight parted through canopies of gums overhead, its heat dividing itself like sand slipping through fingers. Light sifted through branches, breaking into fractures of warmth that spotlighted a patch of red earth or a fallen log, and golden dust motes in the growing dusk floated like confetti, tossed by the heavens above. Mama watched the river whose water was the colour of clay, its steady current to the sea five miles yonder. Watched it from the porch, day in and day out, sometimes patting her belly, sometimes clutching the rattan chair she perched upon, testing herself to see if she could hold out from laying her hands on her stomach. Mama watched that river from her window when baby brother never screamed or cried or even made a sound in this world. Kept her eyes on it steadily as it moved East, as Thia took her blue baby out of the room. The river dried up, my love; we'll go to the city, my love. So we left that Mangrove home for the town her Mama arrived in; no rivers, no rivers, no rivers.

I knew you as a student, where days were humid and long. Where Mama’s Priest would wait expectantly, stretching his arms wide toward her with a smile that was warm and wide. He'd grasp my Mama's hands, folding her palms so they were sandwiched between his, squeezing them tightly as he bowed his head softly; repeating how terribly sorry he was for her. How Esther's parents had removed her from school and that all would be right soon. Mama only nodded, handed me my notebook and left me standing awkwardly on the foyers yellow carpet. The office featured two chairs, a fireplace and a small coffee table opposite a blank beige popcorned wall whose surface was occupied by him. And I watched him, the martyred man above me, wooden, with oak eyes, ogling me, condemning me and my silence. With him, I found nothing but empty parables, untenanted gospels where I was the leper or the arc or the fruit or the woman who had spited man. And with my love - with her, well, I would gladly lay, wrists upturned, palms unfurled, martyred and praying in that garden where sifting daylight parted branches and like it was nothing more than soft sand through fingers and shame turned to dust motes floating in a golden light. Flames danced and entwined in that fireplace beneath him, as I held that spiralled leather notebook, embossed in silver the words; The Lord forgives. I'd imagine every time, the pages floating into those flames each session, hissing like steam as the ink bled upon the wood. It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin.

My love, your heart is never really yours, remember that.

I knew you between youth and adulthood when life was painful and exquisite: It was the Summer of the year that Prime minister drowned in the sea, and I found myself sitting empty and warm and alone at the edge of the stripped mattress in apartment 109. Tracing its floral embossment, my finger danced along its formulaic ridges and curves absentmindedly, wishing for a body that would not betray me. I'd go dancing each night, the city's humidity pulsing with each twist and turn, watching my friends kiss strangers and fall in each other's arms with ease that had never possessed me. With every man who came through life, I willed my body to be serene and present. Each time I pressed my eyes closed and leaned in closer, trying to sink deeper into that world of quiet wherever people go when they kiss or have sex: that land I had never visited, that land I begged was not forbidden. For what woman was so thoroughly broken she could not feel love. Yet I pushed closer; I imagined myself, a ladle dipping into a jar of molasses, willing to be submerged- however transiently- into that plane of existence inaccessible to me. Where passion drowned thoughts, where desire was etched in every breath, where lovers memorised the ridges and curves of each other. That place that was sticky, warm, awkward, vulgar.

The molasses froze over, and the ladle bent and broke. Every time.

This body was never mine anyway, my love.

I knew you perhaps from the moment I came to realise I existed. I knew you when I didn't want to; your imminence like war drums, each beat thrumming on, unwanted or desired, it did not matter. The inevitability of this fate is my curse, my love. Indeed, it was akin to the dew's path to earth, as steady as the leaves stretching to the East and as sure as rivers flowing to the sea. It was written in the fabric of the universe that my life would never simply be mine. So, let me walk to the base of this magnificent tree, her fruits shifting from red to gold before my very eyes. Let me sit beneath these fruits a while, writing lessons you will not hear. Let them drift into the wind, unheard and unspoken.
Let me have just this, my love.

(Inspired by Emmanuel Angelicas’ picture Ellena playing Mother)

Mother and Child by Amy Zhong

The perception of this lady; Chén yú luò yàn, makes the fish sink and wild geese alight.

My mother repeats a Chinese idiom from the tale of the ‘Four Beauties of Ancient China’, but I never really understood those sorts of things. I sat by my mother on the old wooden pews of our local church. She was dressed in almost business attire and had forced me into a matching dress. She always had the sort of beauty and reverence I could never replicate. I pulled at the discomforts of the rayon fabric in the near empty hall. The church was situated on the border of conservative Warraderry and bushland nothingness. My mother loved to arrive early and parade around the carpark. She’d greet the same few regulars who showed up every week, lapping at the compliments paid to her new bag, her new outfit - which she’d brag was from the city - or me. My weekly styled locks always brought a lot of attention; her smile never dropped on days like those. In front of me, a young priest read from Judges; the great betrayal of Samson by Delilah. The gaining and losing of the power of his hair.

In the interlude of hymns, I took in the odour of burning myrrh and my mother’s sickening perfume as I let out the yawn I could barely stifle. I’m met with a pinch on the inner fat of my upper arm - immediate and sharp - by familiar hands which have perfected the ratio of discreteness and pain. I could already hear a lecture coming on, something about lady mannerisms or self control. The awkward lump in my pocket shifted as I moved to straighten my back. I touched the metal through the fabric; the stroking of the kitchen scissor blades brought about a strange feeling of comfort as I deliberated on some unfinished business. The priest's voice echoed across the halls. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man… or woman. My mother froze, but I hung onto every word. I smirk at the idea of the unforeseen.

The first time she did that, I was twelve. She prided herself in the presentation of her model daughter. The Fifth Great Beauty, with lustrous black hair that eclipsed the moon. My nights revolved around the soft stroke of my mother’s fingertips plaiting my hair. The same hands which would yank on my braid if I moved around too much, guided by generations of preceding ancestors. One time, my friends and I tried on clip-on nose rings. When she came home that night, she dragged me by the ear to a mirror so I could watch as she ripped it out, screaming vicious threats and comments on my body. All alone, I cleaned and bandaged the cut left on my skin. I had learned to despise her behind my smile.

“I wish you were more like her” She nodded towards the head of shiny, brown curls of a girl seated in front of us. “I heard she’s moving to the city. They say she's studying at USYD.”

With a disapproving sigh, she gauged my reaction. My mother was always made for a more glamorous life than she had lived, and she reminded me of her ‘immigrant story’ everyday, like it was my fault or something. I could barely remember a time when my schedule did not revolve around tutoring and extracurriculars. You should be grateful, she would say Your nǎi nai had it a lot tougher on me. When I was younger, I would cry about the injustice; when my friends could hang out and I could not, their latest model phone that I did not have, or parental affection I never received. I felt the all too familiar feeling of envy bloom within; let her dream of a child, obedient and angel mild. I caressed the stolen scissors and it sent a pleasurable chill up my arm. I will escape what my mother could not.

“It’s your turn for the communion,'' a church usher said to me as he walked down the aisle. Mother watched on as I stood with hands hidden where she could not see, holding on to things she could not imagine. Her small frame looked so puny and weak from above. An anticipating silence settled. I exited the aisle and began to run. My feet led me away. A fastening of a door. A stained, cracked mirror. I seized the scissors and took a deep breath. Then began. Tentative at first, but small snips quickly became large sweeping motions. Long slashes of dark hair collected in the old sink of the church bathroom.

Kě lián de róng yào. Dōng shī xiào pín. Pitiful glory. Beauty is a tear-stained face.

(Inspired by Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and sacrifice short story from Nam Le’s The Boat)

The Sanctum To The Workers by Kishore D’Souza

A parade of rubberized boots squeaked as they walked across the vast concrete floor. A large ceiling fan hung above, circulating a cool breeze throughout the stage. The procession climbed a mountainous staircase and soon arrived at one of the many facets of The Machine, and what lay ahead was a polished array of brass valves and impossibly convoluted switches.

A prolonged silence fell upon the men until it was abruptly broken by the raised voice of the assistant trainer. “What lies before us shall someday be yours to control wholly”. It came out in an unsteady tone, betraying the intended grandeur and importance of such a phrase. The new employee chuckled, for The Machine served him. As long as he desired it would provide him with the employment he needed, but without him it was a hulking heap of scrap.

It was as if the assistant trainer saw straight through the younger man’s eyes. The assistant trainer had met the gaze of the new employee, with a defeated expression that seemed to scold and reprimand his peer’s sacrilegious disregard for The Machine. His senior's face was blackened by some sort of soot or oil, along with his overalls. How was that so when The Machine glimmered with a sterile otherworldliness?

The assistant trainer stepped forward, with a hand movement instructing his command to be followed. After a short stroll, in which eye contact was deftly avoided, the party arrived at the front of a roped off area. Behind these ropes, pistons mashed with violent power, with hydraulic systems hissing powerful and machinery grinding together to sing a brutal and uncivilised cacophony.

“What is it for?” the new employee queried.

“What isn’t it for?” The assistant trainer replied,

“We know not its purpose, but we work with the knowledge that it provides for us in its infinite benevolence.”

The assistant trainer broke off into a fervorous rant –

“Such a powerful Machine will consume us on a whim for your ignorance!”

The new employee internally cursed at the paradoxical logic of his superior. How could we serve a mere machine? After all it had been created by men, therefore it was subservient to them.

The Machine groaned, shuddered and creaked. It began spraying the men with a fine mist, while black oil drooled at its base.

The eyes of the trainer flashed with intense fear, he stepped backwards and stammered incomprehensibly. “To me, listen, great Machine. Mercy, Mercy. I beg of you. I have toiled under your supervision till my hands have grown calloused and my hair has fallen out in clumps. I stand before you, hollow eyed and ashen. I beg of you; hear my plea. Mercy, Mercy.” A black tentacle of a thick oily consistency seemed to extend itself, although it was hard to be sure beneath the shroud of scalding mist. At once the trainer was grasped, and pulled deep within the gnashing gears of The Machine. Just as it had once given him livelihood, it had taken it away from him in an act of ritualistic sacrifice.

The Machine belched, blasting the new employee in a coat of black oil.

The force of the spray had knocked him into prostration, and from this perspective, he saw The Machine in all its glory. The walls of The Machine expanded around him, as he voraciously swore to serve it, to become a most pious member of its faith. His lungs filling with thick suffocating smoke, his last breath was spent ferally clawing at the enclosing steel.

He awoke to the buzzing, crackling echo of an intercom, as he wiped the mixture of blood and oil clean from his face.

“Workers of the East Wing Machine, a new assistant trainer position has become available. Please report to conveyor belt 6-B to receive the necessary equipment.”

Again, he felt The Machine address him, and knew at once it was he who was wanted at the belt. Before he opened the box he knew what title his new name tag would read. As he walked, he felt his spirit shudder with terror and pride. With unsteady legs, and a defeated expression, he was humbled to accept his new position.