ck. The sheet-metal chimneys stand tall around the roof, unevenly distributed
according to some inscrutable logic that could only be understood with the
assistance of as-built drawings, blueprints, mechanical and structural
engineering diagrams. Surely though, they are optimized to wick hot air out of
the giant brick pile's guts and exhaust it.

I move to the one nearest the stairwell. It is tarred in place, its apron lined
with a double-row of cinderblocks that have pools of brackish water and cobwebs
gathered in their holes. I stick my hand in the first and drag it off the apron.
I repeat it.

Now the chimney is standing on its own, in the middle of a nonsensical
cinderblock-henge. My hands are dripping with muck and grotendousness. I wipe
them off on the pea gravel and then dry them on my boxer shorts, then hug the
chimney and lean forward. It gives, slowly, slightly, and springs back. I give
it a harder push, really give it my weight, but it won't budge. Belatedly, I
realize that I'm standing on its apron, trying to lift myself along with the
chimney.

I take a step back and lean way forward, try again. It's awkward, but I'm making
progress, bent like an ell, pushing with my legs and lower back. I feel
something pop around my sacrum, know that I'll regret this deeply when my back
kacks out completely, but it'll be all for naught if I don't keep! on! pushing!

Then, suddenly, the chimney gives, its apron swinging up and hitting me in the
knees so that I topple forward with it, smashing my chin on its hood. For a
moment, I lie down atop it, like a stupefied lover, awestruck by my own inanity.
The smell of blood rouses me. I tentatively reach my hand to my chin and feel
the ragged edge of a cut there, opened from the tip and along my jawbone almost
to my ear. The cut is too fresh to hurt, but it's bleeding freely and I know
it'll sting like a bastard soon enough. I go to my knees and scream, then scream
again as I rend open my chin further.

My knees and shins are grooved with deep, parallel cuts, gritted with gravel and
grime. Standing hurts so much that I go back to my knees, holler again at the
pain in my legs as I grind more gravel into my cuts, and again as I tear my face
open some more. I end up fetal on my side, sticky with blood and weeping softly
with an exquisite self-pity that is more than the cuts and bruises, more than
the betrayal, more than the foreknowledge of punishment. I am weeping for
myself, and