The flight {open}

[kneedles]

I stop at the tenth railing from the left of the parameter incarcerating Bryant’s matchstick factory, at the wrought iron gates, coal black and weather-beaten like ten long fingers tipped with pointed bistre nails. Curling my hands around a wrung, I press my cheeks into the railing and wait for the whistle to sound. Bryant’s matchstick factory is unremarkable, bulky and inelegant against the soft light filtering through the smog, with stiff square edges, ashy bricks and gaping bay windows like gap toothed smiles. Around the workman’s yard, dozens of felled trees lie sheltered beneath tarp; butchered and bastardized, this is their abattoir. I shouldn’t have come here.

The whistle is a shrill scream over the mechanical whirring, band saws and assembly lines of district nine and it is repeated through neighbouring factories like echoes or the song of mockingjays, over and over as shifts begin and end throughout the district. The gears and cogs are ever turning. As the factory doors open the workers footsteps are a drum keeping to a perfect rhythm. Some are talking, some pause to light cigarettes, some laugh loudly while others stay silent but for the beat of their footfalls against the concrete slab flooring- their uniforms are the cool white of mint cream, dulled under the smoggy sky as the sun begins it’s slow descent this evening, identical smocks and hats, rubber black gum boots- they are indistinguishable and I strain to pick her out of the crowd.

Like the inexplicable urge to hold your finger too close to an open flame, to toss your house keys into a lake and other acts of unmistakable self sabotage, today I was greeted by a most dangerous impulse. Perhaps my grandmother, liquored up and snoring in her battered arm chair was the final thread to tear, the last straw of a bad week filled with swirling guilt, annoyance, being beaten down by each insult and harsh word. This is the result; I have cracked like a glass pane into a thousand acerbic shards, and now, holding each broken piece of myself I have run crying to my mother. Well, I have run crying to watch her from afar at least.

There she is, in a mint cream coloured uniform like everyone else, her burnt sienna skin as flawless and radiant as ever against the dirty white smock, her hair is tied back beneath a midnight blue head scarf and the weight of her last child still lingers in her thighs, leaving her generously proportioned but not unpleasantly so. My mother was beautiful and you can still see the fading echoes of that. She isn’t smiling, and this pleases me, for some reason. Schadenfreude curls through me and mingles with my bitterness to form some kind of hateful cocktail in the conduits of my veins, I don’t want to see her happy not when she was the one who sold me to my grandmother, and I don’t care if she didn’t have a choice either- it was her choice to get herself knocked up as often as she did knowing full well that she couldn’t afford to keep us all. It is her fault I am here, unhappy with my face pressed to the gate of a factory. The work, I imagine is dull, the pay is meagre and with each day on the assembly lines I picture that a person feels their humanity ebb away, their soul turning into motor oil and gear chains but I would take that life in a heartbeat if it meant that I could get away from my grandmother. In her chair, her thin mouth open to reveal the tiny brown pebbles of her teeth it had occurred to me earlier how frail her body really was, how easy it would be to pick up a pillow and smother her, effectively freeing me. And that is about the time I left, I know, I know, I’m a hero for not doing it. Or, conversely, I’m a coward.

With a flicker of my nimble fingers, I roll a cigarette and place it between my lips, getting the matchbook out of my pocket, it was made here and I wonder if my mother’s hands touched the thin little match with its little red cap like a thin, auburn headed infant- this thought gives me pleasure to watch it burn. A woman next to her is saying something, but my mother is hardly listening, staring off to the distance. Tendrils of hate waft from me, the way that the smoke from my cigarette curls into the air. She turns, my heart seems to miss a beat, it stutters, stammers before flitting like butterfly wings in my chest. My mother’s mouth curves into a smile, dark deep eyes lighting up the way the stars must illuminate the sky and from between her lips I see the familiar outline of my name. She’s seen me. It is sickening how pleased she is to see that I am here.

I could run to her, weave through the other workers as though lost in a sea of mint cream cornstalks and find her. I could throw my arms around my mother, take her to a cafe and buy cheap synthetic cups of coffee on the meagre coins that I have swiped from my grandmother’s change purse. Under the glare of strip lights, above ragged linoleum we could laugh as she tells me stories from my child hood that are dim memories to me but that she can recall with ease, has been going over in the eight years since my departure, we can grow a little solemn or misty eyed as we recall my father, but find hope and comfort as she relays to me news of my siblings. I could curl my hands into the bristle of her ebony hair and slam her face into the table for leaving me with my grandmother, abandoning me to the wolves.

I could, I could and for a minute I think I am going to. Instead, I simple turn on my heels.

And now I’m running. The back alleys are narrow and fetid with old trash, rotten food, old diapers and steam rises from funnels like some otherworldly nightmare. My shoes are thinning at the sole, a little too small and borrowed from my grandmother, soon I become breathless from the heavy weight pressed upon my heart, but still I keep on running, not sure of what is ahead of me and not stopping to look either.I wonder, somehow, that if I keep running if I couldn’t simply take off from the ground, run right into the air and sprout soft, sparrow wings.

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[In Brightest Day]

Greez moved the piece of wood to wards the fast turning blades of the buzzsaw, getting showered with little specks of wood that flew off the wood as it was separated into two. The safety glasses they were provided kept the little specks from actually getting into his eyes, but they did little to stop the specks from getting sucked into his nostrils whenever he took a breath. You'd think that after doing this for so many years he'd have realized not to breathe when working the saw, but how does one stop doing a function they were born to do. It's like asking a grasshopper not to hop, or an eagle not to fly.He set aside the two pieces of wood and sneezed rather loudly, causing the other workers to laugh. Greez knew it wasn't at his expense, rather it was just for the situation itself. They had all at one time or another gotten a piece of wood in them. Sometimes it was just accidentally breathing in the specks and having a coughing fit. Other, and more gruesome, times involved a piece of freshly cut wood getting flung by the blades into the side of someones skull. Nobody laughed at those times.

Greez reached for another piece of wood when the relieving wail of the whistles shout out through the District. His shift came to an end and someone else was just starting. Greez removed the safety glasses and put them in the slot beside the work table, along with the thick blue work gloves they were required to wear. "Have a good one guys." Greez waved to the other workers, receiving smiles and waves in response.

Greez was happy to be wearing nothing but a blue bandana, some faded overalls, and black boots the moment he stepped outside. There was a nice breeze going, and he liked the feel of the wind on his skin. It made him feel free. He watched the other workers head off to either their families or their drinks. That's how it works here in District 9 he realized. You either have people to console you and your problems, or you console yourself with a vice of liquor and tobacco.

But who was he to judge? Greez didn't console himself in either fashion. Instead he sought reprieve from his dull life by lying amongst the unharvested wheat fields, waiting for something interesting to happen. Was that really any better than what the others did?

Sighing, Greez decided to head for the alleys, an unusual route to his home. He needed something new today though, somewhat at least semi-different from his usual course of life. He took the bandana off his head and made use of it, blowing into the piece of cloth and then sticking it in his back pocket. Curse those wood specks.

Just as he started into the alleys he was greeted with an already interesting sight. A girl, whether his age or older he didn't know, was running straight to wards him. No, she wasn't running to wards him, rather she was running away from something...or someone.

"Hello." Greez said to the girl once she was close enough. Why did he do that? He didn't know this girl? For all he knew she could be a murderer running from her most recent crime? Oddly enough the idea of confronting a murderer only brightened Greez's mood.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

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[kneedles]

I suppose life is trying to provide me with some kind of twisted metaphor when I find that my exit is completely blocked by a stranger, the narrow alley making it impossible for me to navigate this grinning loon standing head on in front of me but I barely have time to consider what the meaning behind the metaphor is over the sound of my heavy breath. Stopping, my chest heaves a little and I press my hand to a stitch, coughing thinly and wincing as it rips ragged through my throat. I really have to stop smoking one of these days, I think, as if the constant looming threat at being picked at the reapings isn’t enough to keep me fit and healthy. But then again, nicotine is one of the only comforts I have in this grim, dull little world and that is enough to keep me turning back to it.

Aware of this stranger looking, I thread a hand through the loose cotton on the sleeve of my threadbare cardigan and wrap it tighter around my body like twisting myself underneath a protective casing or a snail’s shell to sneak into. I try to speak, but find myself gasping for breath, the words getting lost around my wheezing. It’s an odd sensation, chest tightening rapidly as though a two hundred pound man is tap dancing on my ribcage and it makes me hunch over and cough again. A few slithers of tears slowly unfurl from my eyes without my meaning them too and I grit my teeth together, trying to blur out the pain.

It’s this place; it gets deep inside of your lungs and almost batters them to pieces, the smog slowly curling around your oesophagus and ash running through each threading vein. My father was carried away on the thick industrial smoke too, grey and yellow like ugly old bruises, sweating coldly and pressing a dirty handkerchief to his lips, hacking up phlegm and pieces of lung in short sharp bursts of agony. Breathe, I tell myself firmly, breathe Birrin dammit.

I purse my lips as though to blow on a delicate wood instrument like a flute or piccolo and slowly coax the toxic air back and forth though my throat to quietly steady my heartbeats. Weakly, I groan and open my eyes back onto the boy in front of me giving him a look that screams ‘laugh and I will kill you slowly with my bare hands’. When I am confident that I can speak again without wheezing pathetically I finally choke out, “Get out of my damn way, right now.”

Somehow, in all of this, I’ve managed to keep a hold on my cigarette- it’s been extinguished of course from the rush of air and the breeze but I pull my lighter from my pocket, listen to the familiar click and hiss of the gas as usual and relight it, nonchalantly as I possibly can after a coughing fit as bad as that one. Ah nicotine, my only friend- unless you count those glorious little painkillers in my bag, each one a sugar coated smile saved just for me. I don’t stop to tilt my head as I exhale, letting the cigarette smoke waft its way towards the boy. “Seriously. Move.”

[In Brightest Day]

Greez could tell this girl wasn't very athletic. The way she was gasping for air and the cigarette in her hand told him she was probably a heavy smoker, which surprised him since she seemed to have very nice skin. He tried to see if her teeth were yellowing when,

“Get out of my damn way, right now.”

Well, she apparently wasn't in a talking mood. The way she kept eyeing him like something to squash was unpleasant, though not nearly as unsettling as her heavy breathing. Did the girl just not realize how bad those tobacco sticks were for her? Then again Greez knew nothing about her. Maybe she was addicted to the stuff and had tried quitting before, but had lost the will and fell back onto the addiction.

Still believing the girl to be a possible murderer, especially after that nasty glare, Greez backed up a few feet when the girl reached for something in her pocket. He gave a sigh of relief when he saw it was nothing other than a lighter. Another cringe came over Greez as the girl re-lit her cigarette, even blowing the horrible smoke into his face. Gods that stuff was nasty.

“Seriously. Move.”

Again with the orders, although this time there was no evil glare to accompany them. Maybe that's why Greez felt a little brave and stood his ground, his eyes not leaving hers for a second. Well except for when he blinked, but he was sure that his blinks were less than a second in the time it took for them to happen.

"Why are...were you running? Did you kill someone?" Bluntness would probably speed the conversation along better than alluding to the possible fake make believe murder that this girl may or may not have committed.

Ugh, Greez was getting a head ache.

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“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”

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[kneedles]

“Did you kill someone?” He asks me. It is a strange thing to say to anyone, as though they will just come out and say it, if they had, like it is something you just confess to a stranger. “Okay okay you got me, I am serial killer…done in over five hundred people in just three years, the peace keepers, the government never found me but you did…just because you asked. I’m about to snap, no of course not, call him an idiot for even suggesting something as ludicrous as that when I reflect on it for a moment. I have never killed someone….is not actually a statement I feel confident that I can ever make- not now. It is the nature of my job after all, to look after the lives of women and their children in the moments leading up to and directly following childbirth. I am supposed to keep them safe, to deliver the children into the world without much fuss. They trust literally everything with me. But there have been infants and there have been mothers who have died under my care.

Is this my fault though, I wonder? Is it fair to say that I killed them rather than that they died in my care? In some instances, no, I daresay that it wouldn’t be. This is district nine and our resources are limited at best, I’m not a doctor or what I would call professional and my trade is an ancient and primal one, passed down through daughters simply because nothing better can be provided. The drugs we use are too strong or not strong enough, our methods are laughably outdated and the conditions in district nine as far as sanitary goes are far from wonderful. Even as I think this a rat skitters past my foot, clutching between tiny sharpened jaws the remainder of a sandwich so given over to mould that it’s form is all but unrecognisable. In those instances, no, it definitely would not be fair to say that I have killed anyone.

But there are other times, other heated points when there is blood flowing freely that I have to think that could have been averted easily, or been prevented entirely had I performed a little differently, done my task a little better, paid a little more attention or indeed, in the worst cases to look back upon, done nothing at all. I think then, I would probably say that-yes- I have killed people. A mother who worked on an assembly line somewhere, an infant who has done nothing at all, someone’s son, someone’s daughter. I have killed them all- by accident. And I have gone unpunished, barely had to even think about it. It is a strange line of work.

“Not today,” I give as my answer, with a shrug of my shoulders, letting my words slip out on a carpet of smoke as I exhale my cigarette. I sounds vaguely sinister and oddly enough the realisation pleases me, it certainly makes me seem a lot more interesting than I am. Almost like a femme fatale from those film noir books my grandmother used to read, brought in from the black market that I was absoltley never ever to tell anyone else about or I’d get the switch. I’m so pleased with it that I’m this close to leaving without another word when I realise that, actually I have little desire to end up in prison, which this big stupid boy might do.

The cigarette gets smoked down to the stub and I flick it to the ground, crushing it under heel with a twist of my scuffed, misshapen ballet pump until scraps of tobacco leaves lie stringy and pathetic in the ground. It is not gone two seconds when I realise that I will want another one very soon, forever clinging to the tip of a limp roll up like a life preserver.

“I mean…I’m in the business of life, not death,” I explain to him and reach into my bag. There I pull out an assortment of pills- of which I will sure as hell be self medicating from as soon as I get the chance (possibly one of the only perks of my profression), my stethoscope and a set of ugly, ominous looking forceps. Those are always the worst ones for me. I hate using them; they don’t look natural, like anything that should be involved in something that cows and pigs seem to manage well enough without any kind of fancy equipment. But that’s just me. When my grandmother feels using them is best, she barks it at me and I very rarely get any say in the matter. She treats me like I’m green around the gills on every single delivery, as though I haven’t been doing this for nearly ten years, doing her job while she pockets all of the cash.

“Midwife,” I say by way of explanation. “Well, a midwife’s apprentice….not technically qualified or anything. But no one seems to mind when they are on their back screaming.” I snort a little at this. Well, at least I can make myself laugh if no one else. What else can you do in situations like this one if you can’t laugh, right?

Though maybe, really I shouldn’t be laughing. Because I’m not a doctor, and I’ve killed people and I take too many of the drugs meant for my patients. And here I stand, the best that District 9 has to offer; a girl who hates the job, and has no bedside manner to speak of; I fear for the new wretched generation I have birthed I really do, those dozens and dozens of children nestled in there rows of dull houses, all with the same dull faces and the same dull lives. Between the smog and the Hunger Games, what kind of a world do they come into to have someone like me, mouth set into a permanent frown coldly gazing down at them? Or worse than that…my grandmother’s face.

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