Abandoned

It waited. Slowly, so very slowly, It forgot. But still It waited. Aware of the passing of time, closeness of Its purpose, and the gulf keeping It from that purpose.

True purpose, not the shadow of Itself that It had been reduced to. It was not meant to be forgotten. Not meant to be buried. It was meant to be a place. Not a location.

And It was not meant to be in shambles.

Once, It had been maintained. Once, It had been a place, connected to other places. And It had served Its purpose. When It had had to wait, back in the barely remembered past, that too had been part of Its purpose. Now it simply waited.

For a time, It had been different places. Terrible places, but still a place. A very short time. Becoming a new place was also Its purpose, it was part of Its why. All too quickly, though, It had changed from being a place. But It remembered, even as It slowly forgot what It was, so now it only waited.

Shambles. It was meant to be in order or in disorder. It was never meant to be in shambles. Described as such whenever someone so chose, depending on its state, but never to be. Disorder had come in Its previous purpose. Violence against It, impotent aggression against unfairness. Though, as the waiting stretched, It slowly forgot that purpose.

A new one, so far away as yet, glimmered on the horizon. Creeping forward, it whispered of new purpose. It could become something new, a location and not a place; It could have purpose again.

What It had been was slowly fading. The years of people traversing other places, entering It and fulfilling their own purpose. That was what It was for, that was Its why. So many different places It had been, but always a place. Until the slow end of Its time as a place, until the final breath taken withing Its walls was spent. Until the only thing left to It was the waiting.

So much awareness. Right outside, separated by willing hands, Its purpose waited. So many people walking to and fro, chatting and laughing and crying and living. People in other places, and those places satisfying their purpose. There was death also, there was always death. But beyond It, the death was a rare and hidden thing.

Instead of purpose, there once was screams beyond Its walls. Concussions once impacted Its walls from outside, but it could not have been a place of safety then. Those concussions and their causing explosions had come long after the end of its being a place. Concussions that maybe, just maybe, would spare It from the terrible waiting. Spare it from the long march to its new purpose, from the location It was slowly becoming. Allow it to be a place again. Not just a location that remembered being such, if only faintly.

Change is endemic to a place, and for a while It had been so changing. Each occupant seeing It differently, lending their thoughts to Its own purpose. And when It had been empty… but It was not empty. It had not been truly empty for ages, though what filled It gave no purpose. Not yet. Those occupants remained.

Kin to the concussions had been screams. Thin and frail echoes of them had filtered through Its imperfect blockade, the one that had cursed It to become a location. To suffer the long, long, long waiting as Its final purpose as a place slowly faded away. Those screams echoed within the peeling walls of the abandoned place, dancing with ghosts of screams that had accompanied Its final Purpose. Before the waiting had begun.

Wordless screams, so like and yet unlike those other final screams. And It knew only the absence of purpose, the closeness and yet the absence. Taunting Its awareness of Itself, whispering false promises of Purpose as It slowly decayed.

Decoration faded from It; paint peeling off in long strips, slowly at first, then in greater quantities as time took its toll. Rust bloomed in places that once had shone, corrupting, eating away at the foundation of Itself. Hastening the arrival of new purpose, the end of the terrible waiting.

Rot spread like a cancer through an invalid host, at once outpacing and accelerating the rust that formed over what had once sustained those that rot. Close, muggy air to choke the lungs of any who would enter with the remembered terror that had long since soaked into Its wood. Forever it would be a place haunted, if it was ever a place again.

So long as one that, despite the years that separated It from those golden days, It was still the fading memory of that place. One through which people moved, one connected to other places. One with purpose fulfilled. Not yet a location, not yet a permanent thing that did not change. Still containing the memory of It as something alive.

Concussion.

And another.

Hammering against the wall what had once been Its door, shredded wood long-since rotted to slime in the steadily humidifying air. Unaware of the change, the non-living change that merely hastened It from place to location, It did not understand the hammering. It was almost a location, stained and riddled with ghosts of what It had been. Freezing into what It would be forever.

Then change.

Moving through It in a current so tiny it might not have moved the dust from its rest, air flowed. At first nothing, a stir unnoticeable save by the change-starved half place. Then as a flood, sucked out and changing, bringing with it sweet difference and above all perception.

“F-fu-fuck!” coughed a voice from beyond. “Reeks like death in there!”

Again hammering. Again change.

Dust and brick added to Its shambled state. Changing It from decaying to chaotic, changing.

“Jesus, who’d ‘ave thought this was in here,” a person peered into It. A person in a different place, one that It was again connected to, perceived It! “Think I can see the problem, pipe seems to ‘ave burst in the back there.”

Still more hammering. Still more detritus strewing across Its floor, followed by a foot. Light played across Its walls, a thin concentrated light. Discovery lights, It felt purpose slowly returning. The distant promise of locationhood fading slowly as, after years and years of waiting, it was again.

“Never seen mould that stinks like this,” grunted another person ducking through Its door! “Really, smells like-” words cut off as the light played across the remnants Its previous purpose. The foundations of the new one as a location that faded still more quickly as the person with the light stumbled back.

Once again, a room, no longer a tomb.

“Those are bones!”