Ramble and Fumble 2: Lights in a Line

I stood in a deserted engine manufacturing shop floor. It was a block closure day. The runts of the corporate employees, we worked all through the Saturday sun and breeze. People came by; they huddled in a corner near the exit of the shop, far from where I was standing, laughing and talking enthusiastically. I looked away from the light and into the darkness. I knew what lies ahead but for a moment, the darkness made me shiver. The ceiling of the shop floor might have been about six stories high. Usually, the lights would fill the space from above. But today, only a handful of bulbs near the floor of the shop were lit. It seemed as if the darkness was descending from above, waiting to devour all in its wake. It would, eventually, and I wanted to leave before it came. The green-painted walk-way was lit thus, by lights in a line, leading to a place known but whereabouts unknown.

I stood on the gangway of my office floor, balancing myself playfully on one foot and then on the other, swinging to the right and then to the left. I had nothing to do today. With all my work wrapped up for the weekend, I had begun my well-worded whispers of the 4-hour weekend workday agenda. Us, the runts, unlike the more fortunate employed citizens of this era, do not enjoy a five-day work-week. Naturally, with all the managers gone, the mood was sufficiently relaxed to allow my childlike activities go unchecked. As I danced from one foot to the other, I noticed the reflections of the lights in the gangway. Square-shaped, they lit up like tiles on the ceiling, and shone on the tiles on the floor, equidistant from each other at a direct line of sight. As I moved to one side and then the other, the reflections began to oscillate with me like the string of a pendulum, wherein I acted as the shiny metal ball of mass, directing it harmonically. I admit, that is the closest I have ever felt to being the maestro of an orchestra. Thankfully, even if anyone saw me, they did not disturb my brief moments within the doors of unfettered childhood imagination. I would have hated to have been dragged back into the droll adult world against my own volition.