Malignant Atrophy

The sound of the spade in the earth has become the white noise of the worker's life.

He has come into a rhythm of apparent ease and his mind has begun to wander. Digging simply hasn't remained as demanding as it once was. The worker spends more time looking around as he digs....noticing the other workers, occasionally talking to them about how the man has asked them to dig. He feels, at times, that he is intruding on their digging...but so far, this has not managed to stop him.

The thing most prominent in his thoughts is the enormity of the hole.

As the worker looks around, he is in awe of the man's plan. The hole is simply enormous and the more of the earth it eats away, the more workers are needed to aide in it's invasion of solid ground. The man has assigned people in the hole who no longer dig, but build support walls. The hole is getting so large, it is in danger of collapsing. It looms over the worker, reminding him every day of the work done before him and the possibility of it all crashing down with one misplaced spade in the future. The hole must be kept in tact. The man has known this since before the job started. The worker is just now learning.

The man and the worker and talking more as of late and for that, the man is glad.

There appears, to the worker, to be more in the hole than out of it. The hole has consumed him...taking him longer and longer to get in and out of it. So while the digging has become more of an extension of who he is, the commute is now more taxing. The worker seems to do less digging and more traveling.

The man knows why. The worker doesn't.



The hole continues to grow...