Young Writers Society

"So how's your castle going?" Avery asked, sucking rat blood off his fingertips.

I told him about the wall  I was adding, and how I was debating what color of cullet-- the broken glass that’s recycled into new glass-- I was going to use. He nodded, and his half-smile would match his eyebrows for a split second.

"Any chance you're ever gonna let me see it?"

I shook my head with a shy smile. No one had ever been to my platform or seen my castle. Once, I caught someone following me to see where I slept. I just led him on a wild goose chase, eventually losing him in the labyrinth of rooms. He came back six days later half-starved, and more-than-half-crazy. We had to send him back on the cart: he was blabbering about demons and screams and shadows.

The cart was used mainly for sending supplies and glass orders up to us. In return, we sent down the finished glass. We couldn’t get another shipment of supplies until we completed the previous glass order. Sometimes that took longer than our supplies lasted, so we had to eat the rats that scurried around in the walls.

The only way we knew of to leave the Factory was on the cart, and that route was left for the dead and insane. If you tried to escape on the cart without fitting one of those two criteria, they sent you back, your tongue cut out, your pinkies cut off, and a polite note that said, "damaged wares: return to sender."

“Mmm. I get it. Maybe you’ll show me one day, when we escape.” Avery turned away from me, and I got a good view of his profile. His features were sharp, almost as if they too were made of glass.

It wasn't a secret that Avery wanted to escape. Everyone knew. It was hard to keep secrets in the Factory. Words had a way of echoing around corners to the nearest ears. That's why I liked my platform so much. It never echoed. I had many secrets to keep. For one, my glass castle wasn't really a castle. I was building a miniature model of the Factory. However, the glass sparkled so regally that I couldn't help but think of it as a castle. Only Avery knew about it. I kept it hidden up in my platform.

Avery and I parted ways after a scant dinner of rats. I listened to his footsteps retreating down the passageway. In the Factory, every footstep crunched. It was no mystery why they did: the ground was covered in coal slack and glass shards left to cool and shatter in the cracks of the floor. The slack came from the coal we used to fuel the furnace. Turning the furnace off would damage it, so we burned onwards, squandering hundreds of tons of coal daily, increasing the cloud that hugs the earth and blocks out the sun. Who cares about the sky? Money is much more attainable anyway.

---

"Luke!" called a voice from far away. I woke out of my half-sleep, startled to hear my name. Most people just call me Lurk for my habit of hiding quietly in the shadows and startling people. I didn't do it on purpose: it just happened to be shadowy wherever I stood, and I was careful with my feet because I didn't own any shoes. That had been a problem the first couple years I was here, but eventually my feet grew so hardened against the cutting glass that I couldn't even feel the sharpest pieces of glass on them.

"Luke!" the voice called again.

It must be Avery, I reasoned. He was the only one who called me by my real name. I delicately set down the piece of cullet I had clutched during my slumber and jumped down from my platform.

I found Avery wandering in the hallway looking edgy. When he noticed me, visible relief flooded his face. "I'm glad I can always find you somehow, Luke," he said, ruffling my dirty blond hair.

"Your voice carries in a way no one else's does. It pierces my brain somewhere. I think it's called the 'would-you-shut-up-already nerve.'" I grinned.

He gave a little chuckle, which seemed out of character for him. Usually, when he laughs, his smile takes over his whole face until the laughing attacks his lungs. I looked up at his glass-green eyes and saw they were clouded with worry.

We neared the passages that spiraled out from the main furnace room. It was eerie how quiet everything was. Usually there were people rushing back and forth to fetch something from another room; sounds of glass breaking and machinery pumping; and voices that shouted, laughed, and sang. But the only thing I could hear then was the furnace. And even it didn’t burn with its usual scream. It just moaned like a mourning mother.

The light quality changed. Instead of warming from a dusky yellow to a warm orange as usual, the light soured into a sickly green. Dread settled into my stomach, the same color as the light.

When we emerged into the furnace room, an unnerving sight affronted my eyes. The furnace glowed with a green light. All the workers were standing back from it, not saying a word. Then someone bravely grabbed a ladle-- the device used to carry molten glass-- and approached the furnace like it was a wild animal. He turned around and singled out his buddy who dutifully took up station as the tableman. I held my breath as the ladler pulled a ladle-full of glass. It glowed green rather than orange, like the furnace. He performed the hopping walk used to get the molten glass over to the table.

When the glass had been deposited on his table, the tableman flipped and mixed it with his two-pronged fork, relying on muscle-memory to get it done quickly. He then fed it into the machine with rollers that flattened it to one eighth of an inch thick. The machine sent it through the annealer to be cooled off. If glass isn’t properly cooled, it will shatter.

When the annealing process was complete, we gathered around to inspect the glass. It looked like any of the other glass sheets we made, but it was glowing slightly, and this wasn’t just glow from heat. The ladler carefully touched the glass as if he was afraid it would burn him, but it didn’t. It appeared to be just glass.

We all waited for the small group of supervisors to make a decision. Their heads were put together in a circle and they were whispering furiously. Finally, one straightened, faced the rest of us, and declared, “Take the day off. We’ll investigate this further. Be prepared to work again tomorrow.” The supervisors returned to their huddling and whispering.

The group dissipated slowly. I disappeared up to my platform and brooded over my glass sculpture, thinking about that green that burned so bright in the furnace. It was if my glass castle had become sick with this new presence within it.