Work Text:
He remembered the day he was born clearly
Well, born was a bit of a dramatic word for it. But he could clearly recall that first day when he was put up on his ledge by anonymous, underpaid workers that slaved all day under the brutal New York sun while being smothered by the ever-present fumes and smoke. His home was cleaner then, the marshland clogged with slightly less amounts of debris and forgotten waste than it was now. But even then, the so called Valley of Ashes was achingly depressing, filled with workers that worked their entire lives, cleaning up the messes of the big city just a few miles away, never to be acknowledged or thanked for their work.
In the beginning, he complained to himself about the billboard on which he was placed. Why couldn’t those workers have put him up somewhere cleaner, brighter, less devoid of life? Why couldn’t he have been one of the scores of ads plastered across the billboards that stood proudly along the highways leading up to Manhattan, watching as the glittering asphalt got slowly worn down by the cars full of happier people on their way into New York City? Why was he stuck here, in Manhattan’s ever growing wasteland, to spend his days staring sadly at the people who would never be able to even dream of affording a pair of glasses? It wasn’t fair that he was placed here. It must have been some sort of a mistake, a typographical error that sent him to this dreary landfill of a city.
He eventually realized that thinking like this just made things worse. It didn’t make life easier to start every day hoping that today would be the day! and today he would finally leave this pit where people’s dreams went to die and he would be reassembled on a new billboard overlooking the newly paved Grand Central Parkway, where he belonged. And so he spent all day, fruitlessly waiting for the workers who never came, until the day would end, with him hoping that tomorrow would be the day!
Eventually, he became worn out, tired. His home was the very valley of the smoking husk of the American Dream, for God’s sake. There was no room for hope here. Maybe there was in the big city under those glittering lights that sang of possibility. But not here. And so he waited with calm dread for the day when he would be torn down and dumped in his final home among the waste and refuse that lay rotting at his feet. That was his fate, and there wasn’t much he could do to change it. He would share the same fate as the poor workers over whom he watched day in, day out, as they broke their backs and spirits trying to eke out a living for them and their families, waiting until the final day when their bodies gave out and they were buried just across the road from where they worked every day of their abbreviated life. If only the poor workers knew that the very eyes they revered with God-like trepidation had given up too, just like them. He too had learned the lesson they all learned at some point in their life- There is no hope in the Valley of Ashes. Only death.