East Anglian Sluiceworks - Ministry Of Redundancy

Hey,

I know you blocked my number. I’m really sorry.

I didn’t mean what I said in the texts, and I didn’t want to just run away like that. I just, I just need to type this out. I don’t know how to explain it, I just, just read, please. Then you can hate me.

Just read. Please.

It was July, maybe August?

Any one of those long stretching summer days that seem to go on indefinitely, until they’re lost in the damp rot of autumn.

You do weird things after getting fired. I quickly got lost into my childhood routine. Jogging every day in the warm, silent hour just before dusk. Jogging by the canal’s waterside.

The same winding path every day from my parents house. Number 19.

First the long stone stretch, around a mile of worn-out pathway, jagged and rough rocks jutting out at every unfortunate opportunity.

To my left, a long wire fence, old boats scattered around the canal, dilapidated. One in every five or so would still have a little yellow light shining from the window, and smoke from it’s whistle, it’s owners entering the soft death spiral of retirement. To my right a new housing project was being built. The old blackberry bushes murdered to make way for a haze of half-built buildings, cranes and slowly rotting heavy machinery.

Paved stone gave way to dispersed gravel. Buildings and machinery fleeing as quickly as they invaded, displaced by bushes, trees and what remains of the English wilds. A speck of nature in the lens of Industry.

The gravel too stopped, and all that remained was a path of the variety poets and liars call less travelled by.

In reality, the council ran out of money and didn’t bother with the rest.

Past the gravel, all of a sudden your sides are flanked by willows and oaks, branches on either side winding and weaving themselves into 8ft tall hallways. Rather than canal boats and metal fences, the canal lifts, the corners smudge. The roots of the trees poke out into the water. Just past the trees on the left, a sharp incline down into reeds and grass. Once in a while a foolhardy tree decided to be sowed into it’s side, it’s roots regretting the decision wholeheartedly as it slowly fell into the canal.

It’s there that the little blue plastic caught my eye. It was sticking out of the mud, at the side of the bank. Unmistakable between the shit colored water, shit caked mud, and shit covered grass.

I don’t even remember why I picked it up. I don’t know if you’ve been to Lincolnshire. there’s not much else to do. It was the most interesting thing in a 10 mile radius in this stupid place.

Sorry. I’m still bitter. I miss you.

It’s pretty in it’s own way I suppose. I was here half my childhood, so that thin foil smudged off a long time ago. I spent so much of my life here trying to escape it so I guess I never really appreciated it’s twisted form of prettiness.

There is beauty here. Lonely, empty beauty, even in the town. The shops are mostly closed down. The temporary concrete from the 50s that constituted a high-street is dying, bakeries twisted into gambling bookies, the coffee shops and newsagents melted into rows of grotesque neon purple vape & American sweet shops.

And the Flies. So many Flies. Swarming, Buzzing. Everywhere. You can’t escape them. Can you hear them?

I remember there was an old artist we saw once in a museum. You were telling me about some ugly sculpture as we walked past. Do you remember?

You stopped me, asked why I wasn’t listening. Said something snide about how I do it all the time. Scatter-brained.

But I remember the painting. Do you remember that painting?

It was this beautiful still life. Ripening fruit, and flowering buds. Perfect soft lights and shadows fell on each individual petal, it’s creators obsessive attention shining through. You said you’ve seen a thousand of them before. You laughed at the right half of the canvas, featuring a howler monkey on the table going ham on a ripening fruit, red juice splattering all across his face.

We kept walking. I didn’t talk to you about it. I don’t know why.

But below the ripe fruit bowl, and in the vase of flowering roses, something caught my eye. In the same vibrant shades and hues, with the same gorgeous detail lay dead and rotting exotic birds.

The monkey wasn’t biting into a fruit.

Still beautiful in a way; bright coats of amber and lilac, still and rotting, small dots of Flies
circling carcasses.

This town evokes that same feeling, that same weird beauty. The mixture of life, death and wilderness fighting for the same space on the canvas.

There’s no rolling hills to look out on, even when you get out of the city it’s just fields, canals and dispersed bits of wood & nature clinging to life against the encroaching developments. It’s strange, but you feel a stranger being within that nature.

It’s not like Britain has wild bears hiding in the trees. Snakes are few and far between, and mostly harmless. Any bigfoot left in England long ago had put on a tie, shaved and started working as an estate agent (the final resting place of all monsters). Yet slowly, a dread comes over you when you approach a deeper section of wood here, one I haven’t felt in any other country. It’s this feeling in the back of your head that you can’t escape, a question that noisessly forms towards the wood.

Why are you still here?

And sometimes, through the wind, the whistles and the straining of the branches - I sometimes used to think that I could hear a word uttered in the rustle of the leaves.

Interloper.

Sorry, off track. I’ve been getting a bit feverish. I was taking about the Phone.

Just, please, I added read receipts, stop leaving me on read.

I don’t remember what made me pick it up or walk through the swarms of summer Flies, squelching in the soft dirt of the canal, it was half buried in the silty mud, it’s casing caked with soil and dirt.

I don’t particularly love old tat, but there was something so nostalgic about seeing the thing.

Submerged in that dirt was a old Nokia 3310.

I had one in school. My parents struggled to afford anything more expensive, but I cherished that thing like it was pure gold. Even as the other kids started to get the first Iphones, I held that thing for dear life, you couldn’t do much apart from play snake and text, but those things were indestructible.

Apart from being covered in a layer of silt and dirt, it looked… It was like it had come from the Factory brand new, no scratches, buttons all there. After wiping it clean with a nearby dock leaf, It looked like it did two decades ago. I took it into my hands then, climbing back up the side of the canal.

I’ve been running on that path every single evening, I never put much thought into it, just jogged. The bird song, the crickets. The wind rustling through the leaves. All things I’ve become used to.

But as soon as I got back up that path, back in the gentle nature of the path - it stopped.

It was instant. Like listening to a loud song and just pausing it in the middle of the beat. My ears filled with silence, the woods themselves seemed to stop. I can’t explain it, but there’s a sort of dread that comes through you. It’s primal. Ancient. My bones filled with the fear of silence.

I ran.

I ran faster than i’ve ever ran. I didn’t dare to look back, the eyes of the woods felt like Schrodinger’s parable, death to the observer, fear and hatred was behind me and the lights of the houses my only clinging reality. Each branch felt like it was coiling it’s way round my body, the bushes of nettles felt like they lunged at me as I ran, my arms stung with it’s sparking shocks.

I tripped, the rough gravel of the path burning my palm with it’s shaved skin. The noise came back, a roaring, breaking wind within my ears as I grasped, my knees shaved and bleeding, my arms rough. I barely got up as I ran again, the lights ever more distant.

I was screaming from the pain and the wind, my mind filled with nothing but the sense to run. I felt like a child, turning off the light and running into my bed, unknown horror right behind me, grasping at my shoulder, ready to pull me into the silent darkness.

I saw a figure then, in front of me.

A dogwalker, emerging from a winding path. He looked at me, bewildered. “You okay lad?”

I looked at him, then looked behind me. My normal path. The normal woods, the bushes unkept but stationary. I spoke. I tried to explain.

I forgot about my accent.

I remembered how his demeanour changed. How his eyes shifted, his nose sneering. His voice was rough, slow, as if talking to a child. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was a variation of:

“You people, it’s bad enough you’re taking the work from our good local lads, but you take god knows what and bother us now too? Go home, before I call the police. Then go back to where you came from.”

I muttered a sorry and walked back home. I was back at the fencing and housing soon. I looked back every few minutes, trying to see any sign of what caused that primal fear.

I only saw him. And he was watching me.

I swear every time I turned around he’d be staring. Even as I reached the path next to my house and turned back I could’ve sworn he was stood there, same exact spot. His dog at his heel, ready.

It was when I got back to the house that I heard it. Past the pain of the nettles and the gravel, A familiar, three-second snippet.

The phone had turned on.

I’m sorry. It’s too late. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so selfish.
But I need your help.