The Shard Keeper

It's just glass, really. But I call them flowers. Crystal flowers. Thousands of them, tucked away in this shed out back, where no one ever looks, where no one ever *will* look. They shimmer, you know, when the weak afternoon sun hits that crack in the corrugated steel, throwing slivers of light across them. They sparkle, each one cut, ground, polished, a sharp, perfect bloom. And each one, a goddamn lie.

My hands are scarred, gnarled. Not from the usual work anymore, not from the factory. These are different scars. Fine lines, like spiderwebs, etched by a million tiny fragments, a thousand slips of the grinding wheel. These scars are from the flowers. From years of shaping this brittle beauty, this cold, dead garden. This is where I come when the silence in the house gets too loud, when Martha's empty chair screams. This is where I confess, over and over, to these unblinking, flawless things that know my rotten secret.

It started, it always starts, with the factory. Glass Mountain. That's what we called it, a hulking beast of steel and fire, spitting out sheets of perfect, clear glass. I'd been there thirty years, my whole damn life really. Knew the hiss of the molten silica, the whine of the conveyers, the specific smell of ozone and burnt sugar. Knew it like my own breath. I was lead foreman on the optical line, the high-grade stuff, the lenses for scopes, for telescopes, for things that needed to see perfectly, without distortion. Irony, huh?

Then came the day. A Friday. Always a Friday, seems like, when the world wants to crack. The primary cooling tank, a seal blew. Not a big thing, not usually. Just a plume of superheated steam, a roar. But the new guy, Jimmy, he was fresh out of school, eager. He was supposed to be clear, but he hadn't heard the warning klaxon, or maybe he was just too slow. He was too close to the control panel, trying to hit the emergency override. The steam, it hit him. Not just steam, but tiny, pulverized particles of glass, aerosolized in the blast. Like a million invisible knives. He went down, screaming, thrashing, blinded. The whole crew froze, couldn't believe it.

I was closest. I could've pulled him out. I swear to God, I could've. But the tank, it bucked again, another seal groaning. Fear. Raw, primal fear. It seized me, a cold hand on my throat, squeezing. My legs turned to lead. I saw him, curled on the floor, the steam still hissing, his face already blistering, turning red, then grey. And I did nothing. Not a damn thing. I just stood there, watching him drown in that cloud of glass and heat. Seconds. It was only seconds. But it felt like a lifetime, a thousand lifetimes, each one a missed chance to save him.

The crew got to him eventually, after the whole line shut down, after the steam dissipated. But it was too late. His lungs, they said. Filled with glass dust. Burned. He never stood a chance. The investigation, it was a whitewash. Faulty equipment, they blamed. No one mentioned me, paralyzed by fear. No one saw. Or maybe they did and just looked away. I kept my mouth shut. Shook my head, looked solemn, offered condolences to his weeping parents. Played the part of the grieving foreman, the decent man. The liar. The coward.

The night after the funeral, I couldn't sleep. The factory was shut down, undergoing repairs. I slipped back in, a ghost in the dark. The optical line, it was a mess. Shards everywhere. Big, glittering chunks of the finest, most expensive glass we made. Lying in pools of oil and water. I picked them up, piece by piece, filling a duffel bag. My hands, they were shaking so bad I could barely hold them. This was the glass that would've been lenses, for seeing. For truth. I took it, all of it. Stole it. And I brought it here, to this shed, to this darkness.

That's when the flowers started. An obsession. A penance, maybe. I bought a grinder, a polisher, diamond dust. Stayed out here for hours, days, weeks. Taking those sharp, unforgiving fragments and slowly, meticulously, shaping them. Petals, stamens, stems. No two alike, each one a different shape, a different flaw I tried to smooth away. The cold weight of the glass, the way it resisted, then yielded under the pressure, it mirrored something inside me. It still does. I wanted to make something beautiful from the wreckage, something clean, something that wouldn't shatter, wouldn't hurt. But it always did, always could.

They stand there now, all around me, thousands of them. Silent, perfect, unbreathing. A garden of my guilt. Every time I look at them, I see Jimmy's face, distorted by the heat haze, the raw terror in his eyes. Every single flower. This is my burden. My sentence. And no matter how many I make, no matter how bright they catch the light, they never absolve me. Never. I just keep making them. One after another, until my hands bleed. Until I can't feel anything but the cold, hard press of the glass.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just smashed them all. Broke every single one into dust. Would it make me feel better? Worse? I don't know. I just keep coming out here. And I keep telling them, to the quiet, the cold, the perfect, transparent witnesses, what I did. What I didn't do. I look at them, these flowers of broken light, and all I hear is the hiss of steam, the scream that was swallowed by the roar of the factory, and my own goddamn silence.