Scrap

Two past midnight, the cramped streets are drowned in fog and the smell of sweat, a smog so thick that the moon is a silhouette amongst a starless sky. Dim, incandescent heat exudes from shop lamps, permeating the air in a dusty, copper glow while workers bend their backs and beat their fists. Flesh and forge, hammer and head, their discordant rhythms birth sparks from embers, metal from dread; it was the lowest, sleepless and infernal pits of Birmingham's working class, smelting the sweat of God from courtyard scrap.