His eyes were red and aching, he'd grown ill, tired of his regime. There was only so much he could take before his body would push back and tell him no more. He looked at his finger tips, the dye had stained them, the dye had infact stained up to his wrists. He took a strip of new cream cloth and with both hands pushed it down into the bubbling dye. As he pulled the cloth back out, droplets of dirty red dye falling from it, he wondered if he'd ever escape...
He wondered whether he would ever get out of the factory. He'd been here since he was young, he'd lost track of the days, months, the years, but he imagined it must have been a good 8 or 9 years ago. He was one of the more clever children in the factory, most lacking the ability to read, to write, to count. Most didn't even know there was anything outside of the factory, but he knew. He'd seen it once, on one of his first days. That was when he decided he wanted to be free, and from that day he pondered upon how his freedom would be won.
When he talked to the other children, when he talked about the outside, they stayed silent, they knew nothing about it. They were brought to the factory soon after birth and so they knew little different. They never had the capacity to question their being within the factory, because that was all they had ever seen. But going back to that one child, even his hair stained red with dye, he knew. He was 7, whether he remembers his age or not, and a man in a suit came to the factory. The boy hadn't met quota, was being punished in the offices. As the cane cracked upon his already bruised knuckles two large doors we're swung open, the first direct sunlight the boy had ever been subject to lit up the office. A man, of obvious importance strolled in, a large, well built man, on either side of himself. But the boy didn't care about the man.
His eyes were locked on the outside, the greens, the blues, colours he'd never seen, natural light, animals, a narrow dirt track leading to the doors, a large brown animal with wood attached too it and a man sat on the wood. His mind was blown. There were no blacks, no metal, no clanging. Birds sang, he didn't know what birds where but he could hear it. It was the heaven that he had once heard about. All his hopes and dreams were there.
The boy looked down to his knuckles, no longer bruised, or so he thought, the dye making it impossible to tell the colour of his skin. He stared at the pile of cloth to his left, it was mammoth, 90% of his daily quota, if he pushed himself he could do it. He did it every other day. But he wondered, what if he didn't. He'd get caned again, in the room with the doors, the doors to the outside. He could see the outside again. So the boy didn't dye the cloth, he sat staring at the pile until the brutish floor supervisor came over and took hold of his wrist, dragging him into the offices. He didn't resist, a cunning smile stretching over his face.
The office was identical to how it had been all those years ago, the only change being the man in the chairs age. The boy looked to his right as he kneeled on the floor, the doors still there, a hole in one letting through a bright light. The boy could wait no more. He stood tall, and with an explosion of energy which he had never before experienced he ran towards the doors, his body pushed them open, swinging to each side. From there the boy ran, not stopping until he was deep in the trees, no sight of the factory, the supervisor. The colours swallowed the child, the wind caressed him. The noises, the smells, the feeling of everything. The boy was in heaven, his freedom finally won.
~S
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