A Custodian

He wipes filthy hands on filthy jeans, fingers pale beneath the grime. His breath frosts as he glances at the curved stones far above his head, the surmised resting place for the modicum of heat produced by the vents behind him. The building was never intended to be comfortable, only functional. And functional it was; hundreds of feet of monolithic machinery sprawled across the walls, an overwhelming display of cogs and axles turning quietly, accessible by an ad hoc system of scaffolds.

He leans back against a vent and feels the tepid, stagnant air trickle by. The soft mumble of machinery continues its chorus of quiet clicks and groans, whispering in its well-oiled way. The walls here never cease their chattering. Beneath this array of complexity lies a roughly brushed concrete floor littered with rags coated in varying amounts of oil and grime. He stoops to retrieve a relatively unused rag and heads towards a scaffold ladder.

The ladder complains beneath his ascent, flakes of rust settling on the concrete below. He continues from scaffold to scaffold, methodically removing any excess rust or dirt from the wall of inter-meshing parts in front of him. Each movement is almost a caress, something close to affectionate. He has, during his lengthy time here, developed a sense of camaraderie towards the mechanical wall he services; or, perhaps, an envious attachment; for who else can follow their trail of individual parts to the culmination, the conclusion, to conclusively observe their purpose. He glances down at his clumsy conflation of flesh and conscience, wondering again.

His movements repeat for hours, his machine-like maintenance continuing without pause.

He is interrupted, however, by an unfamiliar undertone, an almost inaudible groaning. After traversing a couple of scaffolds he arrives at the source of the objectionable noise. A small cog, three hand-widths wide, is moaning softly, twisted slightly between two larger pieces of the wall. The angle of the cog had slipped; nothing un-fixable; nothing he hadn't dealt with before.

He reaches out and places a hand on the slowly rotating wheel and is surprised by its heat; it is almost too warm to touch. Despite this, he places both hands on the metal and warms them, the first real heat he has felt in this building since he first arrived. His shoulders relax noticeably as his fingers lose their frigid pallor. The groaning of the cog increases slightly, and he shifts his hands to the edge of the cog as if to ensure the threads are properly oiled. The man watches blithely as the teeth of the wheel bring his hand to where they join a larger cog, flinching slightly as his hand is crushed between the two parts. The wheels spit his unrecognizable digits out the opposite side, the dysfunctional cog growing dark with his blood. He lifts his stump, letting the scarlet warmth spurt down the remainder of his arm and seep into his grimy shirt. The smaller cog has begun to thrum in an insistent, shuddering manner, pieces of bone and flesh causing the issue to escalate quickly into something worrisome. The man, noticing this, places his other hand in the wheels' teeth, shivering as his second wrist is crushed and torn from his arm. The cog is now vibrating violently, the entire wall of machinery quaking slightly as the customary rumble increases into a wounded scream. 

The cog shudders deafeningly and violently detaches from its position, striking him in the jaw and knocking him through the rusty scaffold rails. A trail of blood flits from his ragged stumps as he descends, his fall lasting almost a quarter of a minute. For the duration, his insouciant expression of contentment remains unchanged; until he lands, and the cog atop him renders him expressionless. The wall has by this time degenerated into a mass of shrieking joints and twisted parts. Massive pieces of deformed metal are being explosively ejected from the walls, making monolithic craters in the crude concrete floor.

He never saw what this incredible machine produced, but it must be something fantastic. It must be something worth preserving. 

Reviews

[FJ Davis]

Seems to be a metaphor for life--perhaps, more specifically, the Universe.
Whichever or whatever, "A Custodian" staggers the imagination; it dwarfs us with its size and stuns us with the possibilities.
As far as I'm concerned, Ben, your stock has gone way up with this one.
Amazing!

[Ben Taylor]

Thanks Frank :D I actually put a lot of time into it. I don't know if you're familiar with "The Penal Colony" by Kafka, but it drew from that short story a lottt.