Could anyone please read my Creative?

[ateenytinybear]

The Slums of Samarang

Tacky sweat at the base of the neck. Yellow stains. The scent of overripe fruit.

Stepping out into the rumbling streets of Samarang, Maria delicately stepped around mounds of rags that seemed carved out of the ground. The growling of the motorbikes, and humming of the morning Islamic prayers accompanied the stroll to her own motorbike. The heavy scent of pollution and cigarette smoke in the air was pickled with something like drainage.
Wrinkling her nose at the loaded open sewers on the side of the road, Maria unlocked her grey motorbike from the bike shed. It gently purred that no vagrants had broken in and stolen her engine overnight.
Speeding to work, she weaved in and out of the seemingly never-ending flow of cars, trying to get there as soon as possible. However a heavy blockage of the traffic suggested an early morning accident, with a conglomeration of motorbikes beeping, and sealing every entrance.
Looking to the left, the dense smell of the drunken river was impossible to ignore.
A towering, grey concrete bridge stood, seemingly staring at its occupants between its legs.
A morbid playground of cardboard box homes, people moved like ants between them.
In the distance she could see some business owner’s truck loading it’s rubbish into the already clogged canal. Little children, some as young as 5 or 6, scrambling over each other’s rucksacks to get the choice pieces of trash to sell.
Two begun to fight over a tin container of baby food, throwing sluggish boney punches, hoping the other would lose strength first.

Looking away was hard, but the images never left the mind.

The traffic clearing, she kicked off her bike to start, but all she heard was a shy spluttering.

Someone has siphoned her fuel overnight.

Exhaling gently, she turned looking for anyone selling gas.
Amongst the dozens of food stalls, and trinket selling paupers, there would have to be an oil merchant.

Pushing her bike on the sides of the street she called:
“Ada bensin? Anyone selling gas?”

No one looking her way, she continued pushing her bike onwards. She wasn’t too far from work anyway.

Looking at the food stalls, she observed children trying to snap scraps from off the floor, or from tourists, where the food hadn’t quite matched their taste palates. They grovelled on the floor pecking at the small grains of rice, or stains of soup.

She looked away.

It’s hard to see your own countrymen so alike to animals.

Looking back at the bridge she saw people burning clothes and boxes; their faces striped with dusty tears, and sunken with hopeless eyes. Mourning for their dead.

She saw tourists pointing at them, and looked down at her own feet.

Treated like an attraction.

Arriving at her work, she locked her motorcycle to the bike rack, and rushed inside.

There was a familiar desperation in the noising cries of the employees, all trying to get the newspaper out on time, and all trying to be a shining employee for the chance of a promotion, and that frail green money.
Putting her bags into her locker, she flashed superficial smiles and exchanged cursory greetings. Settling into her station she begun the monotonous scanning of prints.
Somewhere she heard a hard, gruff voice.
“You are fired. Pack your things and leave this complex.”
“It wasn’t me boss. I would never sell our stories to another company, please. You have to believe me.”
Shoving a stack of papers into the young man’s chest, he roared at him.
“Well the evidence says otherwise. They told me. It. Was. You.”
He pushed him at every pause in the sentence.
“Get out. Now.”
Maria’s boss turned on his impossibly shined heels and left the employee, their papers in a flutter around him.
Looking away, the awkward atmosphere suffocated like a puff of car exhaust fumes.
A quiet sniffing from the now fired employee cut the silence.
Turning away, he left the building, leaving all his papers and materials behind.





After work, she called a merchant she knew over, to buy some petrol.
Water bottles filled with light yellow fluid.
Waiting for the merchant to arrive, she saw the young man.
An image of deja vu. Streaks of tears. Flesh wet eyes, hopelessly sunken.

Perhaps, she thought, all these poets got it wrong.

We aren’t bound by love, but by melancholy.

The purest human emotion of fear, pain, sorrow.

The shining city district in front of her, was dampened by a layer of shameful filth. The people running these businesses only profiting off the desperation of the poor.
But that’s what connects us, she continued. Connects the homeless under the bridge, the tourists, the fired employee.

Melancholy.