Have you ever seen a horror movie where the living dead wander, feasting on those still living and eventually taking over the world with their own zombie race? If you haven’t, apart from maybe having a life, you should watch one before venturing into the long road that is Milton Ernest, situated between Rushden and Bedford, what do you really expect? In the cross fire of inbreeding, and an illness creating humans known as ‘the boppers’, the outcome of this cross-fertilisation can’t be anything other than something resembling one of the Devils children.
Don’t be fooled by the pretty gardens, the quite streets, and the smiling faces. Behind them there is nothing. Nothing at all. Milton Ernest converts you, converts your life to nothing. Those that haven’t been fully converted yet can be seen squeezing the last drops of life out of them down at the local bingo on a Saturday night. There is no hope. People come in to save their relatives, their friends, yet end up being drawn in themselves. This life cannot be escaped for those who live here, it haunts them. Maintained and controlled by the elders-ones whose lives, to the outside world, seem like a dream- squash any effort to exterminate this race of demons. They are the ones that time has passed them many a time, they ones that seem to know everything and all. The leader. He calls himself the vicar, yet he is more like a ringleader, one who preaches at these gatherings on Sunday, proclaiming, hypnotising people to believe that the way to live life, is to not have one at all.
This is why the streets are empty. This is why it seems like no one notices each other. This is how you get drawn into this life of emptiness. At first a huge park, where a child could dream about playing, it seems idyllic. But why don’t they ask themselves why no one ever goes in there when there’s hardly a shortage of children? And why, on the long road that is the central character of Milton Ernest, do cars drive so fast, even when there are speed cameras? These are the people that know. These are the smart ones.
Yet ever so often, people need something. A drink or some sweets to shut the kids up. Bobs, is the place for this. A dingy old house/shop convertible, it sells all of nothing within. I’m not sure why someone hasn’t had the idea of using him as a tourist attraction. Bob is a little old man. His body can only be described as ‘shrunken by age’, and his face looks like some kind of foundation has collapsed and a huge gaping hole is all that’s left. Emphasised by his large round glassed, and wisps of white hair, long fingernails and a limp, he is not someone you’d like to meet in a dark alley, only because it’d take all you’re might to stop a creasing smile spreading over your face.
Unfortunately, this is what the future has to hold for me. I’m not one of those people born into the desolate town that holds this race of demons, soon to do nothing, be no one. I am in the midst of being converted, one of those who by a deficit of a brain chose to live here. Just looking at the family I share my prison with, shows the effect of what two years in this place can have on someone. A father, overprotective and slightly strange, with mood swings, hosts all seeing eyes. One step out of line and he knows, then you get to face the wrath, his wrath. The wrath of someone who seems to have nothing better to do than make life a living hell, without the impeding doom of the out-stretched arms of the living dead grasping on to me, pulling me further into the nightmare of Milton Ernest. Soon my fate will be sealed; it’s only a matter of time.
Milton Ernest is a lesson to us all, one where the saying ‘read between the lines’ plays a vital part, for nothing is as it seems.
© This is the property of Miss Charlotte Jayne Cox
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