now and then finished

The school is dirty, the floor covered in the dirt of so many people’s shoes and the walls filled with a hidden army of bacteria that spread across it in a desperate bid for the poorly cooked food that hasn’t been eaten yet. In the basement the rats are gathering. They are going to feed on crumbs that have fallen through the cracks of the poorly made floor. Above them, in a lesson, talking fills the air; abandoned books linger unused on their shelves since 1915.

Outside trucks and lorries drive past depositing a toxic miasma of fumes onto the nearby crowd of students as they hurry to get through the door before 8.45 am so they are not held against their will underground for 50 minutes to “teach them a lesson” for something they probably were not able to control. This basement has an atmosphere of hate and disgust; not even a rat would run in to disrupt any work that could be done.

The playground is constantly being blanketed with litter, and what appears to be concrete is actually compacted dust falling from the roof. To the left of the gate the “mobile building” is literally made from paper or wood; near the stairs to the second “mobile” building there is a hole near the floor which foxes make their homes inside of, letting them lead a “mobile life” I suppose.

At 3:30 pm the loud siren which oppresses the students finally rings for the last time today.In a torrent kids stream from the school as if they thought were finally free from the hellish slavery that bound them to the school.As the sun moves the lower part of the building is plunged into darkness – the medical room which sits disused is now a home for the many pigeons that inhabit the school.

-nighttime-

Due to the lack of students and food, most smells have gone and the halls are easily traversed through:in the hall: it is nearly silent and the ovens in the kitchen stop humming as no food needs to be prepared. All of the lights in the building are out.

The library is actually quiet for once. The books rest comfortably – maybe the rats are learning to read now, as the sound of a page turning is accompanied by squeaking. The pigeons are grouped in a ball on the roof of the school, the foxes are looking in the playground for food and fighting with over it with snarls.

The classrooms rest empty, like what a book of what the students have learned for the day would look like. In the basement some kids could still be in detention – but no one knows. In the art room it’s become colder then is thought possible – even WOOD AND CONCRETE have frozen somehow; inside the mobile classrooms termites have started to make their homes to avoid the deathly frost.

In the office, the roof waits patiently for an unsuspecting child to walk in; the poor thing won’t know what hit him – then again, most people wouldn’t survive the roof falling on them. But this is part of a larger organism which desires the children’s next return; it sits patiently in the night, motionless, like a preying mantis, waiting.