Yesterday, 11:22 PM
The maintenance trailer was never meant to be lived in.
It was too narrow, too cold in winter and too hot in summer, its walls little more than thin sheets of aluminum riveted over a steel frame. Once it had housed nothing but spare rigging and electrical supplies, following the Carnival from city to city like an oversized toolbox on wheels. Somewhere along the years, Marek had simply taken it over. Nobody objected because it made sense. The tools already belonged there.
The trailer smelled of grease, dust, and solder. Coils of cable hung from dozens of hooks. Shelves bowed beneath neatly stacked bins filled with bolts, bearings, washers, and fittings collected from rides that no longer existed. Broken floodlights waited beside stripped generators. An old carousel horse's cracked fiberglass head leaned against the wall beside a milk crate overflowing with copper wire.
To anyone else it looked like junk, but Marek could have found any piece in the room with his eyes closed.
He stood at the ramshackle workbench, broad shoulders bent beneath the fluorescent strip light overhead, turning a socket wrench one final time before giving the repaired gearbox an experimental spin. The teeth meshed cleanly.
Good enough.
He wiped his hands across an already stained shop rag before tossing it onto the bench. His palms remained black around the creases no matter how often he scrubbed them. Grease had a habit of becoming part of a man after enough time.
The workshop occupied most of the trailer, but the far corner belonged to him. A couple of old chairs rescued from a roadside cleanup was squished beneath a battered flat-screen television mounted crookedly on the wall. The screen was older than most of the performers who wandered through the Carnival these days, but it still worked. So did the game console beneath it, its casing cracked and yellowed, both controllers repaired enough times that fresh plastic gave way to epoxy and tape.
Nearby a little fridge hummed beneath the window. Beside it rested an overflowing ashtray and a coffee mug filled with loose screws instead of coffee.
He rolled a joint with practiced fingers, struck a lighter, and leaned against the workbench while the first lungful settled into his chest. The tension behind his shoulders immediately loosened by degrees, but his thoughts wandered where they shouldn't. To a pendant of bone wrapped in copper and the line of her jaw disappearing in the cowl of his work coat.
He frowned and exhaled sharply through his nose, smoke following.
It was too narrow, too cold in winter and too hot in summer, its walls little more than thin sheets of aluminum riveted over a steel frame. Once it had housed nothing but spare rigging and electrical supplies, following the Carnival from city to city like an oversized toolbox on wheels. Somewhere along the years, Marek had simply taken it over. Nobody objected because it made sense. The tools already belonged there.
The trailer smelled of grease, dust, and solder. Coils of cable hung from dozens of hooks. Shelves bowed beneath neatly stacked bins filled with bolts, bearings, washers, and fittings collected from rides that no longer existed. Broken floodlights waited beside stripped generators. An old carousel horse's cracked fiberglass head leaned against the wall beside a milk crate overflowing with copper wire.
To anyone else it looked like junk, but Marek could have found any piece in the room with his eyes closed.
He stood at the ramshackle workbench, broad shoulders bent beneath the fluorescent strip light overhead, turning a socket wrench one final time before giving the repaired gearbox an experimental spin. The teeth meshed cleanly.
Good enough.
He wiped his hands across an already stained shop rag before tossing it onto the bench. His palms remained black around the creases no matter how often he scrubbed them. Grease had a habit of becoming part of a man after enough time.
The workshop occupied most of the trailer, but the far corner belonged to him. A couple of old chairs rescued from a roadside cleanup was squished beneath a battered flat-screen television mounted crookedly on the wall. The screen was older than most of the performers who wandered through the Carnival these days, but it still worked. So did the game console beneath it, its casing cracked and yellowed, both controllers repaired enough times that fresh plastic gave way to epoxy and tape.
Nearby a little fridge hummed beneath the window. Beside it rested an overflowing ashtray and a coffee mug filled with loose screws instead of coffee.
He rolled a joint with practiced fingers, struck a lighter, and leaned against the workbench while the first lungful settled into his chest. The tension behind his shoulders immediately loosened by degrees, but his thoughts wandered where they shouldn't. To a pendant of bone wrapped in copper and the line of her jaw disappearing in the cowl of his work coat.
He frowned and exhaled sharply through his nose, smoke following.
“You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is, I know how to curse.”
Is, I know how to curse.”
Caliban, The Tempest
⛦⃝