Elina Vikström

The faint tapping metallic sound reminded me of my dreams. My dreams, my hopes, my wishes. It reminded me of my despair when they’d been crushed. When I was a little boy, I really admired my father. He was a big, strong man, who always went to church on Sundays and earned his family’s living during the rest of the week. My father was an example of an ideal man - at least during the time I was young.

My father worked at a factory. He didn’t earn much money, and he was almost never at home, leaving our mother to take care of me and my sister. When he finally came home, he feel asleep as soon as he had eaten something. Still, I admired him. I wanted to be like him - no, I wanted to surpass him. My father was just a regular worker, so I decided that I’d become at least a factory supervisor.

I was so stupid while I was young. I was listening to the sound of the factory, a faint tapping metallic sound, and dreamt about my future. I made up plans for what to say when getting promoted to supervisor, not even thinking about how I would actually get there.

When I was eight years old, I was sent to work at a nearby factory as a messenger. I was running back and forth, delivering messages from the supervisors to the workers, and from one supervisor to another. I was amazed by the sheer amount of people working there - a lot of people looking just like my father. Many times I thought I saw him by some of the machines, but then I realized that he wasn’t working at the same factory as I did.

The days, the weeks, the months passed by. When I was ten, my father died. He had caught the flu, and never got better. My mother cried, and said that if he hadn’t worked at the factory, he would never have become sick. When I heard that, I got angry. Working at a factory was my life, my dream, and my mother thought that my dream was the cause?

As I lie here in my bed, dying by the flu at nineteen years of age, I realize that she was right all along. And the faint tapping metallic sound is heard through the walls of the our apartment - echoes of my dreams.