Rocky Flats

by Shannon Peil

The dust covering this old, forgotten dictionary could have choked me if I hadn't been wearing my respirator. I looked around and everyone was wandering away, making scraping noises with their plastic covered boots against the tiles. Opening this dictionary, flipping to a random page, I closed my eyes and ran my index finger to a random word. I exhaled deeply and the sweat dripped from my eyes, breath fogging up the inside of my plastic face-cage. 'Asbestosis,' it said, deliberately, coldly. At this moment, standing alone in a closed-down nuclear weapons facility, holding my dictionary, wearing my respirator, I believed in God for just a second.

6S

Shannon Peil runs amphibi.us for kicks and hopes the DoE isn't mad about this one.