The cobbled road beneath Elena's worn boots felt no different than yesterday, or the hundred days before that. Each step was mechanical, her body moving because it must, not because she willed it. The fog clung to her hem, swallowing the edges of the world as she walked with head bowed, the weight of memory and routine pressing down on her shoulders.
The factory loomed ahead-an iron beast with countless limbs and endless breath, always exhaling smoke and steam. Its brick walls sweated with dampness, its windows clouded and cracked like tired eyes watching the same scene repeat endlessly. The whistle had faded, but its command lingered, pulling the workers in like moths to flame.
Other figures joined her along the path, drifting out of alleyways and crumbling houses, hunched against the cold. Women with red, cracked hands. Men with soot-streaked cheeks and hollow stares. No one came here full of life. They came because they had no other choice.
Inside, the air was thicker still-warm with steam, but harsh with metal and sweat. The clang of machines rang like church bells of labor, the rhythm of survival measured in turns of gears and hiss of hot pipes. Elena took her place at the sorting line without a word, slipping on thin gloves and tying a rag over her hair. Her fingers moved by memory, sorting bolts and wire, scrap and salvage, the same as always.
Someone murmured a greeting beside her. Another woman, maybe new, or maybe just one Elena hadn't noticed before. The words brushed against her like the wind-soft, momentary, but unable to stir her. She gave the smallest nod, her face unreadable.
Others tried, now and then. A joke whispered across the belt, a question asked during a lull, a tin cup of tea passed with a faint smile. But Elena never said much, and when she did, it was only enough to be polite. There was a quiet around her that no one seemed able to cross, as if her grief was a cloak she wore so tightly that it kept the world at bay.
Time passed without shape or sound in her mind. She worked. She blinked. She moved forward an inch, then another. Around her, the factory pulsed like a heart that would never stop beating-loud, relentless, indifferent.
The hours stretched on, marked only by breaks that felt too short and tasks that never changed. By the time the end-of-day bell rang, Elena's arms ached, her back throbbed, and the muscles in her face had forgotten how to smile.
Still, she did not complain. She wiped her hands, folded her rag, and stepped once more into the fog, blending back into the gray silence of the town.
Evening had fallen like a thick woolen blanket by the time Elena pushed open the door to her small, dimly lit home. The hinges creaked like old bones, and the air inside was still and stale. She stepped in without ceremony, shutting the door behind her and leaning her back against it for a long moment, as if gathering the strength to go further.
The silence here was different than the one at the factory. Heavier. More personal. She crossed the narrow room with slow, steady steps, shedding her shawl and hanging it on the peg beside the door. The chair by the hearth waited for her, its cushion worn to the shape of her body. She sank into it with a soft grunt, legs aching, spine stiff.
A kettle sat cold on the stove. The fire had long gone out.
She didn't move to light it.
Instead, with slow fingers, she reached into her coat pocket and drew out a small handful of coins. They clinked softly in her palm - thin, dull pieces of copper and silver that felt far too light for the hours they had cost her. She let them sit there, watching them without expression.
Two for bread. One to save. Maybe.
She closed her fingers around the coins and rested her hand on her lap, staring at the empty space before her - the cold hearth, the shadowed corners of the room, the ghost of a man who once filled them.
She didn't cry. Not anymore.
Only sat, still as stone, listening to the ticking of a clock that no longer kept time.
The coins slipped from her hand and rolled gently onto the small table beside her. Elena leaned back, her eyes drifting toward the shelves and corners of the room, where time had settled like dust.
A wooden toy sat on the mantle - one of the boys had carved it with a dull knife, its legs uneven, its smile forever frozen. Near it, a fraying ribbon, once bright blue, tied around the handle of a chipped cup. Little shoes, long outgrown, still tucked by the door. A drawing on the wall, faded but untouched, as if removing it would erase them completely.
Her gaze moved from one object to another, her mind tugged deeper into the quiet ache of memory.
What is left? she asked herself, the words forming without sound. Is there still something more than this?
The thought hovered, unanswered.
Hope, that elusive thing, seemed too far gone-like the sunlight that never quite reached their town anymore, swallowed by soot and steam.
She felt it deep in her bones: the exhaustion, the sameness, the slow erosion of self. Maybe she was becoming like the machines-always moving, always grinding, without feeling.
Her eyes grew heavy, her head leaning slightly to the side. The chair cradled her like a tired old friend. And before she knew it, she drifted-swept under by a sleep too long resisted.
In the dream, there was laughter.
Light streamed through the fog, golden and warm. Her boys ran ahead of her in a green field she didn't recognize, their arms stretched wide, faces bright. One turned and called to her, voice clear and ringing with joy.
"Come on, Mama! Look! Look!"
She ran after them, her body light again, her heart whole. For a moment, it was real. She reached for them-
Clang.
A sharp, metallic sound echoed outside.
Elena woke with a start, breath catching, eyes darting toward the door. The dream fled like mist at sunrise, replaced by cold air and silence.
But then-there it was again. A scuffling. A scrape of something moving just beyond the wall.
She sat up, heart pounding, the dream clinging to her like a second skin. The coins on the table shimmered faintly in the candlelight.
Someone was out there.
Elena rose from the chair, limbs stiff from sleep and sorrow. The sound had not returned, but her unease lingered.
She stepped softly to the window, lifting the curtain just enough to peer out. In the dim street, under the flickering lamplight, she caught sight of a figure - a shadow moving steadily away, shoulders hunched against the cold. No face. No name. Just the quiet scrape of boots on gravel, fading.
Her eyes dropped to the door. Still locked. She turned the handle to be sure, then slid the bolt with a firm hand.
It must've been nothing, she told herself. A passerby. A worker too tired to care where his feet took him.
And yet, something inside her stirred - not fear, but a quiet question. Had someone been watching her? Or was it her mind playing tricks, softened by dreams and weariness?
She crossed the room and lay down on the small bed, wrapping herself in a worn blanket that barely held warmth. The pillow still smelled faintly of lavender, though it had long since dried out and crumbled between the threads.
Staring at the ceiling, she let her thoughts wander. No answers came. No plans for tomorrow. Just the dull ache of the in-between - too tired to hope, too alive to stop breathing.
She closed her eyes. The image of her children still danced at the edge of sleep, but now they felt farther away.
And before the dark could pull her under, a single thought rose in her chest like a whisper:
"Please... not just this. Not only this."
Then silence.