BOILER

at the back of the kitchen, tucked away in a dark corner was a door. behind the door was a steep, dusty, rickety wooden stairway down into a pool of musty shadow—the cellar. my favorite place in the house. down the narrow passage i would go, most days, to the vast concrete chamber—my private universe where the sounds and smells were like an alien world. i could have been in the belly of a ship, though i didn't really know what that was like. i knew it was at the bottom of the house, so it felt secure, to know that the rest of my world was right there above me. i enjoyed exploring the perimeter of my alien world like some frontier adventurer seeking new vistas of beauty. the angles where the walls met and the places where pipes penetrated were of particular interest to my young, abstract mind. but the lord of the cellar was not me, no—i was just a visitor. the true master, the mysterious and unpredictable regent who's will flowed like invisible tendrils of magnetism through every dusty, smelly, darkened corner of the cellar, was his royal highness—the Boiler. every now and then he would make some unintelligible pronouncement—hissing suddenly, clacking metalically. he had a vent cover that moved like a hand casually dismissing a servant.