DO GHOSTS EVER DIE?

 A very short story I wrote a few years ago. I used to work in the textile industry. This was written after I left driving past a factory (not the one I worked in) in the process of being demolished. A workman was sitting eating his lunch. I imagined all the other workmen through the years when the factory was a factory.

 

DO GHOSTS EVER DIE?

The man sat on the loading bay in front of the rotting corpse of the factory, that rose fully four storeys above him.  All about him the bulldozers cracked the factory like an egg, for the silent workmen in helmets and masks to fill lorry after lorry with the dust strewn remains of the buildings.    

The man did not have a hat. The man did not have a mask. The man carefully unfolded the package that lay beside him and began to eat his carefully prepared lunch.

Dust swirled, and bricks tumbled, and wood cracked, but the man sat, and ate, and wiped his face free from the sweat of the mornings work.

A sudden tilt of the head back towards the factory, and a disappointed face, and the man rose and stretched, then folded his carefully prepared sandwiches away.

He looked out at the small crowd that had gathered on the hillside opposite the factory, that watched and winced with every whip of the bulldozer against the crumbling building.

A sudden shout and the workmen turned to gather at the safety of the gate. Then the sudden gathering of noise and the man walked deep into the bones of the factory that crumpled to dust, and he was gone.