The Egg

Beneath the sawdust-choked rafters of a nameless lumber mill, a gangly angel of entropy—Stan, part saint, part splinter—trundles through the workday as though choreographed by a drunken demiurge. His broom becomes a baton, his wheelbarrow a runaway comet; each plank he caresses mutinies, each gear he greets jams in mechanical apostasy. Around him, brawny bark-peelers and time-card tyrants march in lockstep toward quotas, their sweat perfumed with pine and payday. Yet every fulcrum of industry tilts once Stan’s saucer-wide eyes survey it: logs pirouette off conveyors, buzz-saws yodel in falsetto, the foreman’s toupee takes flight like a startled corvid. The factory itself—an iron cathedral to capital—keeps disgorging beams, boards, and blistered tempers until the final whistle, whereupon our klutzy protagonist exits, cradling a single perfect egg he has rescued from the pneumatic chaos, a smooth ovoid promise that fragile grace can outwit the grinding world.