6.

Somewhere fifty miles east of nowhere sat the factory. Its silver smokestack, a lone cylinder spanning into the sky puffed a steady stream of black. Once or twice a day a bird would wander into the toxic cloud and plummet to its quick demise. At the base of the factory the poor children would collect the dead birds and sell them for souvenirs. It was a horrid affair. But the authorities understood that the children needed to eat, so they turned a blind eye.
Mr. Caspers sometimes watched them from his office window. He wondered why they bothered? The sickness would smother them all in due time after all. Still his lot in life was to produce. And so he did.
He looked to his desk, a strange metal apparatus with ascending steps to a large projector powering up.  Such wonders he could imagine. He grabbed the film marked Annapolis and smiled. It was a new one just delivered. They didn’t get much in these parts of the world. Not anymore.  He took the metal cylinder, careful to not harm the celluloid inside.  His fingers shook as he adjusted the focus and finally after much fidgeting found the moment, sighed, flipped the switch and sat down for a respite.
The girls skipped.