Young Writers Society

The old oil plant stood solitary on a sad hill, looking bitterly at the shining city. The city that swarmed with the people who abandoned it. The plant coughed out smoke like a sick man, and the noxious plumes blotted out the night sky like a grim cloud of smog.

When it had been young, the oil plant had a single joy. The joy of watching the neighbourhoods around it. The plant loved seeing children playing in the streets while their parents talked and laughed. It grew as excited as a child when the families gathered together for a barbecue. However, now there were only hollow husks of houses that lay scattered like rubbish around the plant. Buildings that had once formed several friendly, welcoming, and tight knit communities now lay abandoned as more and more people deserted the area after repeated complaints.

"How can I raise my child with this smoke clogging up his lungs?"

"What an eyesore that oil plant is!"

That plant is ruining our neighbourhood!"

They protested angrily, until more and more families found new places to call home. The plant's manager provided funding for this in recompense to the families. The plant watched them go, wishing it could call out to them, to apologise for whatever it had done to them. It wanted to beg them to return and be the cosy communities it knew them as. But, to no avail, for it's mouth could not speak, it could only belch out more smoke. 

The plant then looked desperately for other human life to satiate its need for human interaction. It soon realised that it could watch the workers inside of itself, who took every opportunity they could to start talking and laughing about any matter they could think of. These jolly emotions served as a comfort to the oil plant. However, over the years, it noticed something; the amount of workers was falling. The cries of laughter were slowly being replaced by mechanical whirring. Muscle and flesh became metal and wire. The flawed work of the men became the perfect work only a machine could produce. The oil plant watched helplessly as new machines were rolled in, and the manager boasted about his plant and the advances it was making in providing people with the fuel they needed.

The plant became engulfed in a fire of anger and bitterness.

"What right do those families have to leave me?!", it seethed "how dare that manager steal my workers from me!" Has no one considered me in any of this?!"

A fog of smoke poured out of the plant like steam from a teapot as it raged about these injustices. Eventually, however the flame petered out and was consumed by sadness.

The oil plant watched the exuberant city in the valley, crowded with hundreds of thousands of the humans it adored. The city seemed to dance in the news, lights flickering on and off excitedly; appearing to mock the plant with glee. It imagined it's beloved humans in their city paradise without sadness or worries. It could not see past the city's shimmering exterior to the many imperfections on the interior.

It was as the plant overlooked the city that it realised that it's oil powered the city. It was the one who allowed for the beauty of the city to exist. However, it was alone and abhorred despite this. During these thoughts, the plant thought of a solution, something that would make the workers return with their laughter and joy. The machines were powered down. The smoke stopped pouring out of the chimneys. The city's lights faded in the frigid night. The plant waited. Within the day, dozens of workers flooded back , repowering the entire plant, and returning electricity to the city. The plant was elated; it's workers had returned to it. They would surely think the machines were too unreliable to use and would stay forever. However, these dreams were quashed just hours later as the men left the plant, congratulating each other on a job well done. The plant realised they were leaving, and shut itself down again in the hopes they would stay. Every time the workers fixed the plant, it would just incapacitate itself again, growing more and more desperate each time. This went on for weeks, until the manager finally had no choice. He ordered his beloved oil plant to be shut down for good.

The plant watched as the workmen marched in like reluctant soldiers, not realising that these soldiers would form a firing squad. They trudged into the central power room, and began dismantling the main control system. The plant watched them, puzzled by this, until fear's icy grasp took hold of it's mind. The plant realised what they were doing. They were killing it. The creaturese it loved so greatly were killing it. The people whose lives it sustained were killing it. The plant couldn't believe it at first, trying to convince itself otherwise, however as it felt itself losing more and more control of its functions, that denial morphed into begging, pleading for it's life upon deaf and ignorant ears. As more of it was shut down, the plant's vision began to blur, and then darken until it could see only pitch darkness, and then... nothing. The plant's mind stopped working, it's eyes stopped seeing. It left for another place, without anyone even knowing.