Brimstone

Below the intestines of drainpipes and veins made of industrial cables, below the sleeping train-cars on their steel paths, below the howling motors and conveyors made of iron, and far below the moonless ceiling of grey cloud, the toilers begin their work.

Donning scavenged raincoats and paint-splattered masks of rubber and plastic, they set upon the rotten steel with jets of water. Wielding six-foot lances, triggers wired open to prevent wrists from locking up, the air hums with the sound of 10,000 waterlogged hornets – the sound of war.

The Corrosion is in need of a home, the underground conveyors are its willing host. In that humid corridor of concrete and rebar, blanketed by a miasma of rotten eggs, an exorcism is taking place.

Pack-rust bursts like blisters, bursts like tumours, bursts like the naive aspirations of your twenties. Shrapnel ricochets off of hardhats and visors, revealing the raw and naked steel beneath. Vision narrows in the steam, joints cry out against the resistance of the lance. Just nine hours to go.

Piles of sulphur, abandoned or forgotten on their rubber conduits, collect around conveyor legs and in hollowed out pockets of acid-burned concrete. Defecated by satanic industrial mills, extracted from vast fields of northern tar-fields, it has made its way West, rolling towards the ocean in innumerable train cars to fill the bellies of great ships, stomachs of iron which only know a relentless hunger for profit, a relentless and gnawing ache for oblivion.

The piles liquefy under the force of the washer jets, mixing with mechanical grease like dirty mustard or liquefied shit. It runs over their work-boots like a poisoned river, cascading into waterfalls, pumped back into yellow settling ponds above where fat geese of this country’s namesake will swim and frolic and die in pain.

Midnight. In the back of a decrepit work van, the workers dive into lunch pails, dripping wet, still in their rain gear, scratching at mild chemical burns which punish exposed skin. It gets cold when the movement ceases, a creeping cold that seeps into your bones. They sit on five gallon buckets of paint, stockpiled salves for the lesions of steel opened up below. Cigarettes are passed around like soggy communion wafers, bosses are blasphemed, and laughter resonates out into the oppressive night.

There is a palpable anticipation for the shift’s end, when they will race home to quick showers, to crowded apartments, to sleeping women not yet risen for their own shifts. And although their pillowcases will smell of brimstone, perhaps their unconscious states will be kaleidoscopes of roses or of childhood laughter or the beaches of far-off shores.

My dreams will be corroded by the sounds of wailing peasants and laughing devils and a leering industrial cathedral where Mammon holds sway.