Down in the lock

Original fiction extract.

From the bank, the lock had looked shallow. Once our boat was inside, I sat on the roof beside the folded chairs and watched a woman close the gate behind us. The trees remained visible above the wall. I expected the journey down to feel like a movement of the boat, something I would recognise in my feet.

Instead, the world began to climb. The brick wall rose beside my shoulder, its wet lower courses coming into view like a history being unrolled upwards. A dark ladder lengthened one rung at a time. Above it, a man’s shoes became the last part of him I could see. Our boat rested in a shrinking rectangle of sky, a little room whose ceiling had moved farther away. Water whispered somewhere beyond the hull. Its quietness made the widening distance to the bank seem more unreasonable, as if such a large change ought to have announced itself loudly.

The lower gate opened, revealing the canal at the new level. We moved out into the broad afternoon. I looked back at the wall and could no longer see the place where my shoulder had been. The folded chairs had not shifted at all. I put my hand on one of them before climbing down.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the narrator’s changing perception as the boat descends in the lock.

Write about 200 to 250 words.