A Slackening Current

The crack under Rory's worn trainer was less a snap and more a yielding crunch, the shale-like pieces giving way to the spring thaw. Mud, thick and ferrous, clung to the treads, each step a deliberate, weighted commitment. Her hands were shoved deep into the pockets of her oversized denim jacket, the cheap lining doing little against the insistent bite of the March wind that clawed at her exposed neck. A loose thread on the cuff had begun to unravel, a small, insignificant thing, but it annoyed her, a tiny, persistent itch against her wrist.

She squinted, watching the churning, grey-brown river. It was swollen with runoff, carrying the winter's remnants downstream, a sluggish, indifferent beast. On the far bank, the skeletal branches of a few sycamores looked like fingers scratching at the bruised sky, too thin to offer any real protection. Closer in, the reedy grasses, still mostly flattened and pale, shivered with a dry rattle, a sound almost drowned out by the constant rush of the water.

This was her ritual, this walk. For two years now. Every few days, a pilgrimage to the edge of the city, where the concrete faded into something wilder, if only just. But 'wild' felt like a lie these days, a word hollowed out by the visible detritus of human passage: a rogue plastic bottle caught on a submerged branch, a forgotten shoe half-buried in the mud, the faint, acrid smell of burnt rubbish drifting from some unseen corner further upriver. It was all a bit… sad. That was the word. Not beautiful, not inspiring. Just sad.

Echoes on the Current

She pulled out her phone, the glass cool against her thumb, then shoved it back in. No signal worth a damn down here anyway. Maybe that was the point. An enforced quiet. Though the quiet felt less like peace and more like a gaping hole where something used to be, something that had been filled, slowly, inexorably, by the relentless hum of the digital. Everyone, everywhere, was plugged in. Tethered. Their gazes fixed on glowing screens, their fingers tapping out frantic, silent conversations with ghosts.

It wasn’t just a feeling, not anymore. She’d watched it happen, the slow-motion drift. People at the cafe, heads bowed, not a word exchanged between them. Her classmates, even during lectures, their eyes flicking down to their laps, chasing dopamine hits. Her mother, most of all. That was the real gut-punch. Her mother, who used to paint, who used to spend hours in the garden, whose hands always smelled of potting soil and turpentine. Now, her hands were perpetually curved around a tablet, her face illuminated by its cold blue light, eyes vacant, lost somewhere in the sprawling, endless landscape of 'the feed'.

Rory picked up a flat, skipping stone, testing its weight. The smooth, cool surface was a small comfort. She launched it with a flick of her wrist. It skipped once, twice, then sank, leaving only concentric ripples that vanished quickly into the river’s indifferent flow. That was it, wasn’t it? The fleeting impression, easily absorbed, easily forgotten. Like thoughts, like conversations, like connections. Just ripples.

She thought about last night. The argument. Not a shout-match, just a low, simmering tension that had finally bubbled over. She’d tried to talk to her mother about the bills, about the garden that was now just weeds and dead leaves, about the stack of untouched canvases gathering dust in the corner. Her mother had just nodded, eyes still fixed on the screen, a small, forced smile playing on her lips. “Of course, darling. I’m listening.” But she wasn’t. She never was, not really. It was like talking to a ghost that wore her mother’s skin, a ghost that occasionally hummed a tune from a viral video.

“You’re just… addicted,” Rory had finally blurted out, the word feeling harsh, unfair, but true. Her mother had flinched then, a real, physical reaction. Her favourite crystal ornament, one of the few things she still cared for, sat on the mantelpiece, catching the dull light from the window. Her mother had clutched her tablet tighter, her knuckles white. “Don’t be dramatic, Rory. It’s just… community. Connection. Something you wouldn’t understand.”

Community. Connection. Rory scoffed out loud, the sound swallowed by the wind. She looked around. A few hundred metres upstream, a figure bundled in a dark coat stood silhouetted against the greying sky, facing the river, unmoving. Just another solitary soul. Or maybe, Rory thought, her stomach doing a funny lurch, not so solitary. The thought was probably just the chill getting to her. She pulled her jacket tighter, the frayed thread irritating her more now.

A Low Hum in the Quiet

The river curved ahead, narrowing as it passed under an old, corroded iron bridge. Graffiti, faded and peeling, adorned the concrete pillars. Rory picked her way over a tangle of exposed roots, her foot slipping in a patch of slick mud. She caught herself on a low-hanging branch, bark scraping against her palm, a faint sting. The air here was colder, trapped by the embankments. A low, persistent hum, like an old transformer, vibrated in the air, barely perceptible, yet present.

She thought of Liam. His endless fascination with the online world, too. Not like her mother’s, not obsessive, but still… everything was viewed through a screen. Every sunset needed a filter, every conversation a meme. She missed the raw, unfiltered conversations they used to have, sitting on the dusty porch steps, talking until the streetlights came on, just talking. Now, it was texts, emojis, short bursts of curated performance.

The hum intensified slightly as she approached the bridge, a mechanical thrum that felt out of place against the natural rush of the river. It was an old railway bridge, disused for decades, now just a rusted skeletal arch. Beneath it, the river seemed to slow, the currents less aggressive, almost lazy. The banks here were steep, crumbly, etched with the scars of countless high waters. She paused, leaning against a graffiti-scarred concrete support, listening. The hum, she realised, wasn't coming from the bridge itself, but from somewhere *under* it. A faint, almost imperceptible vibration through the concrete.

Her eyes scanned the ground. More rubbish. A discarded tyre, half-buried. A tangle of fishing line. Then, something glinted. A small, square object, partially submerged in the mud near the water's edge, half-covered by a clump of dead reeds. Her curiosity, a stubborn, inconvenient thing, tugged at her. She knelt, ignoring the cold damp seeping into her jeans, and reached for it. Her fingers brushed against cold, smooth plastic, then something rougher, almost fabric-like. She pulled.

It came free with a slurping sound, leaving a small, mud-filled crater. It was a phone. Not just any phone. An old model, the kind her mother had used maybe a year or so ago, before upgrading to the bigger, brighter tablet. The screen was cracked, spiderwebbed with fissures, but the casing was intact, a familiar shade of faded rose gold. And clinging to the back, still mostly intact despite the mud and river water, was a small, hand-stitched charm. A tiny, fabric owl. The one Rory had made for her mother, for good luck, when she’d left for university.

A wave of icy dread, sharper than the wind, washed over her. This wasn’t just a random discarded phone. This was *her mother’s* old phone. The one she’d sworn she’d lost, the one with the cracked screen she'd been meaning to get fixed. Why was it here? And how long had it been here? Her mother had been acting strange for weeks, more withdrawn, more… furtive. Always on the tablet, but never actually *sharing* what she was doing. Just last night, the way she’d clutched it, eyes wide. Rory felt a sudden, sickening knot tighten in her stomach. The hum from beneath the bridge seemed louder now, a frantic, buzzing thrum against the concrete.

She looked up, clutching the muddy phone, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The figure upstream was gone. Her gaze swept the riverbank, the reeds, the shadows under the bridge. Nothing. Then, a flicker of movement, just at the edge of her vision, behind a stand of sparse alder bushes barely fifty feet away. A dark shape, retreating quickly, but not fast enough. It wasn't the figure she’d seen upstream. This one was closer. Too close. And the distinct, metallic clang of something shifting, like a lock bolt or a latch being quickly secured, echoed from beneath the bridge, followed by the abrupt, terrifying cessation of the low hum. The silence that followed was far more unnerving than any noise.