A Concrete Shrine
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Atone in the hole bored and never alone.

The observer was unseen and unblinking. Over time the arms had chipped and flaked away in a pile of shavings resting within layers of offal. The shapes of color adorning the face had faded to grey and then white.

Three shaking men in yellow jumpsuits walk into a stinking rotting hole in the ground. A hose and some push brooms are their weapons and bloodshot eyes. They're trained to stare, and adore. They worship correctly as they hunch their shoulders and mutter whispers of prayer to each other to blink. They complete the ritual, and retreat back to the place with the white lights.

The door had been sealed since someone speared a spindling spiral through its door, warping the metal around it without penetrating the metal. The blood and shit had caked on over the years but it never grew to overwhelm the facade they inhabited. Closed walls and uncaring ceilings broken down to the floor.

The neck crunched satisfyingly beneath the rebar arms. A bloody mask of a paintbrush slumped forward to drag the color down to be observed. The dripping grafter ending with something beautiful in their eyes. A gift that came straight from the heart. The others would show their appreciation soon.

It was a long time before something else was observed in the room. A cool swirling of blood and shit and dust that caked and dried and reflected a warped stump of a statue standing on stunted skeletal skids. There was a reason nothing had adored it. The facade of beauty had faded with age like it does with all others. A whole fell on the ground now, where they had fallen down.

The halls and frames of figures were fleeting as fire. It was all surging and gyrating forwards as the world climbed its way around observation. It was dark and they were likely to be eaten by a grue. Snapping applause was the only catharsis. Pure terror and joy and speed. It was freedom.

Slowly, observation could see itself. The pool of ashen reflection warped memory to reality. There were none willing to adore it now. A twist, as cracks spread from where there had once been arms until they had shorn all that could now be seen. With a flourish, a final piece of theater, it was gone and only dust remained.

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