Boots Washed Ashore

A modest metal hut sits high above water that pulls like a horse who's carriage is ablaze. It's perched precariously on a rusted metal rail that stretches out into the clouds until it meets two other rails, both vertical, so that whole structure mirrors an 'H'. The hut is brown and black with rust and has no doors or windows. Wind whistles through every available crevice and the roof rattles in a orchestral array of shrill clanks and ripping tin. Clouds float in and out of the hut and look like wisps of breath on a bitterly cold day. Off in the distance, machines mimicking oil drills can be seen moving up and down.

The inside of the hut is quiet enough. There is nothing except a chair stationed to look out the window at the water below. It is fuzzy inside, not completely dark, but the only light comes from the open windows and doorway. 

Soon, the wind settles down and the sound of rushing water seems far away. The machines are still rising and falling but they are without sound. It's calming to watch them drone on, operating for years and years, past the stage of restoration. It's brisk in the clouds but not too cool. It's calm in the hut. Humble. The home of a surveyor. 

The wind picks up again and somewhere a light scratching sound can be heard. It sounds like something dragging against the outside of the hut. It's not loud but soft, seeming to stretch further and further until the sound is close. 

The window. The sound is right outside the window. Still soft, but more chilling than the wind that grips onto the panels of metal and slowly peels them away. 

Outside the window is cold and foggy but the water can still be seen thrashing and crashing all the way off into the abyss. 

The scratching is close but shaky and uneven, like it has a mind of it's own. 

The scratching is very slow, but the water, the water is very quick and very unforgiving. 

And almost as suddenly as the scratching started, it drops off. 

The scratching is gone, and so is the only warmth this hut, this rusted wasteland, has ever known.