Furnace Boy

In an existence where all society lives aboard mile-long, double-decker steam trains, coal is a sparse and dire resource.  Those living on dryland that have discovered large veins of coal are few and far between.  Needing protection from the Vandals, these lucky few live isolated lives far up in the mountains, above the penetrating smog and ashen rain.  Trains can stop here and gather coal while being protected by the towering mountain-walls.  Vandals spare none.  They pillage and murder and leave a crimson trail wherever their masked faces lead.  For the coal industry to survive attacks from these raiders, Coal Bosses need workers to protect themselves and to extract their material.  Often the trains will trade the sick and dying for this dusty fuel.  The sickly are only beneficial slaves for so long, and the Coal Bosses desire more.  More coal and more workers.  Those deported from the trains are done so by force, Engineers surveying the trainfolk, searching for the ill.  Great clubs with rusted nails driven through discourage protest by desperate families.  

The Iron Wagon, as its Conductor has dubbed it, sits in a forested depot nestled in the mountains.  Bone-thin, bone-weary humans stumble out of a wooden structure, carrying rough rope in blackened hands.  The coughs of the mine-slaves mix with the coughs of the sick, indistinguishable.  Trainfolk slink out of the shadows of the cars, watching great mounds of coal be dumped into the appropriate carriage.  Those farther down the railway see only dark trees, thrust into the crisp mountain air.  The smell of pine intermingles with dissipating smoke.

All of this, however, is lost upon Crank.  He is the Iron Wagon’s furnace boy, kept in a small car that sits between the coal carriage and the tar-black engine.  A fist pounding upon the side of Crank’s car wakes him.  

“Get us a’movin, ratboy!” comes a voice that sounds like gravel underfoot.  

Crank opens his eyes to darkness, fumbling for a large match.  Striking the match, it burns into fury, and is dropped into a gaping shaft onto the great heap of coal.  The embers take, bloodred light expanding up and out of the shute.  Sweat beads form onto Crank’s soot smeared face as the fire grows.  As the water heats, boils, steams, the Iron Wagon lurches into life, steel upon steel grinding in tortuous screams.  The train, moving ever quicker, pumps out of the secluded station, puking black smoke up and down the length of the cars.  Crank scrambles around inside his dark home, the only light coming from the hungry mouth leading down into the fire.  Grabbing his shovel, Crank plunges the spade into a little doorway opening into the coal carriage.  Hundreds of pounds of coal scrape against its head as he withdraws those inky ovoids.  Muscles across his back tighten and pulsate with every shovelful.  

This is his life.  12 hours on, four hours off, 12 hours on, and so it goes.  Crank’s view of time is when an Engineer drops food into his car and demands him to sleep.  Crank sees no outside, he knows nothing but the ravenous glow of the furnace.  One cannot see how pale Crank’s taut skin is, caked in an eternal smear of soot and grease.  His crooked back aches with every step, screams with every pile of coal.  Long, blackened fingernails leave bloody scrapes in his fitful sleep.  When his day ends, he greedily scrapes the colorless mush into his mouth by feel, and curls into a ball facing away from the avaricious furnace.  When Crank closes his eyes, a blurry, red orange shape sits in his mind.  His body shakes and vibrates with the strength of the Iron Wagon.  The strength that keeps Crank in its iron cage.  There is no escape for Crank.  

A new day dawns its bleak twilight, marked by the hollow whistle on top of the engine.  Rising to his calloused feet and grabbing the shovel, Crank blinks away dusty sleep and begins his duty.  There is no time to think, all thinking is blurred and dissipated by the roar of the furnace and the blackness that penetrates Crank’s soul.  The day ends in the same dark that it began.  He stares at the glowing shute before him as the empty bowl sits at his feet.  Tears make ashen rivulets on his cheeks as sleep devours his painful existence.

More days pass.  Days without number, days without life.  Crank dives the spade into the coal door, removing his existence by another measure.  As he crosses the deck to the infernal portal, a thunderous boom rocks the train.  Crank is tossed against the wall as up becomes sideways.  Steel rips apart in bloody yelps and coal billows forth from the carriage, spilling all around.  His shovel spins through the air and smashes into Crank’s skull, creating a blackness all too familiar yet strangely distant.

When he awakes, all has come to pass.  Wizened hands splash through mounds of coal as Crank digs himself free.  Stumbling forward, he grasps dirt.  Grass.  Dumbfounded, Crank looks around.  A night sky with smog smeared across like spilled ink.  Wispy grass on rolling hills, receding into the horizon.  Smoke clogs his nostrils alongside another scent, a rancid scent.  A mile of railway curves into the distance covered by spilled train cars.  Smoke lazily drifts into the sky, claiming the rotting, dismembered bodies.  Hobbling forward, he understands.  Crank knows.  This is who he has served for.  These rank cadavers brutally torn from breath is who Crank kept alive.  Each shovelful in the pitchblack was for each life onboard the Iron Wagon.  Among the dead lie a few of the Vandals that created this disaster.  Paint-covered bodies rest on the dirt, horned masks splattered with blood.  Cranks stumbles back to his home, his car.  Blown off walls and mounds of coal lay tossed about.  He digs until finding what he wants.  Crank sits on the dirt, an elaborate pillow in comparison to the hardened steel of his life.  A flame erupts from the match in Crank’s hand as he places it on a small pile of gathered coal.  The black turns to a deep red and emits a soft warmth against the cold night winds.  Crank sits in the enveloping darkness staring at the glowing embers, and weeps.