A Survivor's Guide to Eternity

by Pete Lockett

  “One more thing, Ed, give ear to me,” added Thomas loudly as the wind howled.

  “What’s that then?”

  “Can you leave all your raiments for us, what say you?”

  “Why? Why would you want my clothes?” barked Ed, slightly put out.

  “Forsooth, the timepiece also, that would be of great use. Worry not - if you return and stop off in one of these places, then you will for sure find yourself garbed in the same vestments. You are inseparably bound with them. They are part of you now and if you find yourself here again, you will appear fully clothed. Your old garments from this visit are useful to us though. We can use them to make ropes and suchlike. We do not have sufficient yet, but I pray in time we can help rescue paused Transients in the bottom of the tunnel.”

  “Oh bloody hell, alright then!” exclaimed Ed as he slipped off his shoes and stripped down to his underwear, surprised not to feel cold in the gusts that brushed over his goose-bumped skin and on into the tunnels.

  “Keep your shoes on though, Ed, you’ll be more comfortable going up the rocky stairs in those,” shouted George, almost drowned out by the noise.

  “Okay. Elegance is out of the window here then,” Ed retorted, as he bent down and put his shoes back on.

  “I’ll tell you something for nothing though, George, you can forget the arm around my shoulders now I’m half naked.”

  “Understood. No problem. Let’s go,” chuckled George before he headed into the stairwell, swiftly followed by Ed.

  “Bye, Thomas, thanks for everything. Hope to see you again someday,” Ed shouted back out through the doorway as they turned the corner and started to ascend the black stone stairs. The gusts of wind completely demised in the stairwell, leaving them in a calm and serene atmosphere.

  “There won’t be much wind in here, Ed, it’s much calmer. Not sure why.”

  “That’s good, it was getting a bit much,” replied Ed, thankful that the stairs were smooth and not slippery.

  “There are six hundred and twenty-four stairs altogether. Should take us twenty minutes or so.”

  “Now that’s a lot of stairs. Will you be okay in slippers?” enquired Ed, aware that it was going to be a tiring climb.”

  “Yes, it’ll be fine.”

  The walls of the stairwell were surprisingly smooth and as glisteningly miraculous as those in the main tunnels. Visibility was good and every twenty or so steps there was a tiny recess in the ceiling with a bright piercing light shining down. Each time the pair passed through the beams they cast a ghost-like, eerie shadow, melting back down over the steps with an amorphous freedom, getting longer and longer as Ed quickly fell behind George’s pace.

  “Hold on, George,” panted Ed, as he pulled them to a halt after a hundred or so steps.

  “No probs.”

  “Where do these lights get powered from, George? I can’t see any cables or switches.”

  “As far as we can tell, it’s all natural light. It is not electric or gas or anything. If you reach into the holes there’s nothing there, they’re just empty. Very strange, but when you land here after hopping from mammal to reptile to sea creature, anything seems possible.”

  “Sea creature? Tell me no, not a fish? How would a fish kill itself? What about a prawn?”

  “I don’t know. It’s rare anyway, don’t worry.”

  “Mmmm! There’s quite a few things I shouldn’t worry about, eh?” replied Ed ironically as they continued on their way, George slowing slightly to Ed’s pace and allowing him to catch up.

  Ed began musing on his next transience, wondering where and what he would end up with. He thought about the strange ‘other world’ running alongside the physical one and began to question George.

  “Have there been any other ways that people have made contact with these communities down here?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, if we know that some other physical world is going along parallel to this, isn’t it possible that somehow we can make a connection from here, some sort of contact or message? Maybe that would save me having to make the jump.”

  “What, like a telephone hotline back to the living?”

  “I don’t know. What about Ouija boards, séances, mediums and all that stuff? I never believed in it but by the same token I never thought I’d end up here.”

  “Well as far as I am aware, there has never been any sort of contact made like that, at least not from this portal. We think it was all human hype, a myth. Pseudo contact with the spirits and all that. We have had a few fortune tellers and mediums in the past but they’ve never been able to do anything. They try for a while, sometimes over a prolonged period of time, but they always give up. One of them had the idea that it was the souls trapped around the outer edges of the flow that communicated with the other side, the physical side. They even held some ‘events’ down near the entrance, but all to no avail.”

  “That’s interesting. Maybe getting trapped is like being half in and half out, caught between worlds. A distant and faint voice of misery. Maybe that’s Hell itself. I hope that doesn’t happen to me,” replied Ed as they continued up the stairs.

  There was a very faint chemical odour and as they got higher Ed could see a series of small cracks in the rock with minimal amounts of what looked like a black fluid leaking out. He stopped on a stair, spent a while to gather his breath again and poked at the substance with the first finger of his right hand.

  “What’s this?” he enquired, realising its spongy foam-like texture.

  “I don’t know. We’ve only ever found it here on this stairwell. It looks like it’s leaking out but really, it never changes. In all the years I’ve been coming up here, it just remains exactly like that, no more and no less. Very odd, eh!”

  “Yeah, very odd, along with everything else. Do we have much further to go?”

  “No. We’re nearly there now but come and look at this,” replied George, pointing to something just ahead of him on the wall. As Ed got closer he could see it was a single vine growing from one of the steps and meandering up the curved wall, disappearing into the ceiling. Above it one of the jets of light bathed its entire length, casting evocative shadows across the wall and onto part of the stairs. Ed drew closer still and caught sight of a series of tiny bright blue flowers like tiny buttercups.

  “It’s the only one we’ve ever found anywhere in the tunnels. Amazing isn’t it?” stated George.

  “Certainly is. Why hasn’t it spread? How long has it been here?”

  “As far back as we know. It appears to be growing at a very slow rate. Touch the flowers in the centre, Ed.”

  Ed went even closer and put his little finger out towards the centre of one of the tiny flowers. It immediately and instantaneously curled up into a tight ball, leaving Ed aghast. He removed his hand away and was shocked to see it open up as quickly as it closed.

  “We call them Tumpleberries. Odourless, harmless and altogether a mystery. Anyway, let’s crack on,” said George, continuing up the stairs, promptly followed by a bemused Ed. The mysterious flowers had certainly taken his mind off the task at hand and relieved his increasing anxiety of what was to come. The climb became steeper and steeper, causing Ed to become more and more breathless with every step.

  “Not far now, come on, keep up.”

  “Alright then,” sighed Ed begrudgingly as he followed suit, ascending higher and out of the grasp of the odour.

  “Strange really, we don’t know anything about each other, George. I didn’t even tell Thomas much about myself. Truth is, it’s still all a bit sketchy,” reflected Ed with concern.

  “Don’t worry, maybe you’ll come back. Anyway, it’s too late now. We’ve arrived,” exclaimed George, as they finally reached the top of the stairwell and a small entrance, through which the gushing wind noise could be heard. A light breeze manoeuvred across them, chilling Ed’s bare chest. George directed his guest over towards the entrance and the point of departure.

  �
��This is it, my friend. Take off your shoes and sit on the edge with your feet dangling down. I’ll need a shoe to throw down the stairs to alert Thomas that you’ve jumped and to get ready with the staff. I’ll count to three and on three, you jump and I’ll push. That’s it; job done. It’s been pleasant meeting you.”

  “Thanks, George. Nice meeting you as well,” replied Ed, as he bent down, removed his shoes and sat with his feet over the edge. As he looked into the hole, he could see the windy torrent below gushing from left to right. He was directly above it and starting to feel anxious about the jump. Would there be any impact or pain? Would he become nauseous or disorientated? What other horrors might await him?

  “I know what you’re feeling, Ed. Don’t worry, just get on with it.”

  “Okay. Thanks again for all your support. It’s only been a short time but I’ll miss you both,” replied Ed nervously.

  “Maybe we’ll meet again one day. We’ll still be here, the keepers of the flame eternal. Anyway, are you ready?”

  “Ready as I will ever be,” replied Ed tensely.

  “What if I land on one of the people, souls or whatever they are in the current?”

  “Maybe it’ll help you if anything. Perhaps it would cut the risk of going right through. I don’t know, to be honest.”

  Ed stared down motionless into the gushing torrent. George could see the tension building and felt he needed to lighten the atmosphere a little.

  “What do you call a flea on the moon, no, a crazy flea on the moon?”

  Ed stared back round at the dressing-gown-clad individual, slippers looking even more ridiculous in this setting.

  “What?”

  “What do you call a….” Ed interrupted,

  “I know; I just can’t believe this is the right time for a joke. Anyway, what do you call a crazy flea on the moon, George?”

  “A Lunar-Tic, a Lunar-Tic, get it?” announced George proudly, bursting out into an uncontrolled giggle.

  “Whatever. Now you’ve really made me want to jump,” replied Ed wryly as he glanced up at George’s grinning face before turning to face the abyss once more.

  “Good. Shall we go then, Ed?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it,” replied Ed apprehensively.

  “Good. I’ll throw the shoe down, give it a few seconds to get to the bottom and for Thomas to be prepared, and then we go. Are you clear? One, two and then we push on three.”

  “Yes, good as gold. I’m still full of hope though that this is all nothing more than a dream and I’m about to wake up to a big mug of coffee.”

  “Don’t bank on it.”

  “I won’t. Anyway, let’s do it and stop talking.”

  George hurled the shoe down the stairs. It clattered in increasingly distant thuds as it descended to the bottom. The few seconds’ delay felt like an hour to Ed. He was more than reluctant to jump into the ferocious flow.

  “I would think of a prayer right now, but I’m having serious doubts about God,” interjected Ed ironically as George began to count.

  “ONE.”

  “TWO.”

  Then before he got to three, he gave Ed a sturdy push in his back, projecting him speedily out and down into the speeding flow of souls.

  “Arrhhhhhhhhh,” exclaimed Ed helplessly, before being tossed, turned, pummelled, aggressed and finally caught fully in the merciless central flow. Whoosshhhhh and there it was again, the fiery laser-like bright light, this time moving like a bullet train towards him. It got louder and louder, brighter and brighter until, zzaappp. Nothing. Sensory deprivation. No sound. No light. No feelings. No cares. No sensations. Nothing and nothing. A darkness that soon overcame all his consciousness. He disappeared.

  Chapter 8

  Get Smunky

  “Dad, what’s a Coalition?”

  “Basically it’s when a man without a head is rushed bleeding to the hospital, and they sew an arse on top to block up the hole in his neck.”

  “Wow, that’s horrible; he’d crap from both ends.”

  “Yep, that’s about the long and the short of it, Ali,” concluded the plump middle-aged man, entrenched in a comfortable-looking, but cheap leather reclining chair. The TV blurted out the news, focused on the new dual party alliance that had been the disappointing outcome of an election full of hope.

  “Sweeping legislation, big society, massive shake up, positive reforms, more changes than since 1832. A load of baloney if you ask me. They’ll be just like the last lot, fraudulent and sleazy.”

  “I couldn’t care less, dad. They’re so old and boring. Why do politicians have to be boring old farts? They’re about as exciting as a slug under a paving slab,” interjected young Ali, a quickly growing thirteen-year-old teenager, riveted to his laptop and ever-expanding social network.

  Similar as Ali was to his father, the pair weren’t great lookers by any means. Slightly fat-headed, though not in a thuggish way, their heads sat upon their chunky necks like medicine balls on tree trunks. Their voluntarily short cropped hair gave them slightly more of an aerodynamic feel but that was combated by protuberant ears that jutted out gracelessly in a way not too dissimilar to a hippo. Their rounded features made their heads look even more spherical, as though they had been sanded into shape by someone who simply forgot to stop. It was like seeing a baby elephant with its parent, identical in everything apart from size.

  He sported an ill fitting and extrovertly multicoloured stripy tracksuit top, whilst his dad was equally casual with jeans and an anonymous white tee shirt. They were the perfect pair.

  “Is that computer still playing up?” queried Frank, his single-parent father, a bricklayer from South London.

  “Yeah,” replied Ali as he swivelled round in the bargain computer chair and gave a disgruntled face-scrunch in his father’s direction.

  “Well I don’t know anything about them. Can’t see why you bloody well bother with it anyway. Games and instant messages. Why don’t you just call someone and go and play in the park? In my day you just needed a ball and a patch of grass and that was it for the week. That’s why we have football geniuses like Rooney and Messi, because they had a ball in the street and not a nose in a faulty laptop.”

  Frank cranked the recliner back fully, perched a pillow under his head, and went quiet.

  “It’s not a faulty laptop. There’s some temporary glitch. Anyway, at least you’ll shut up now,” replied Ali as he span back round to the computer.

  “Oh no, it’s frozen up again. I can’t do anything,” he exclaimed as he tapped furiously at every key of the QWERTY keyboard, furiously wiggling the mouse.

  “It’s now 6.30 and time for the news where you are,” sounded from the TV, followed by the characteristic BBC news theme tune inter-spliced with: “Coming up on tonight’s programme…”

  “A man has been arrested in Hoxton after being caught carrying two holdalls full of guns and ammunition, along with a large amount of cash and class A drugs hidden in condoms.”

  “The clergy has announced it will be investigating the molestation of more than a dozen choir boys in one of their Islington churches. Two priests have already been charged for alleged offences in the early nineties.”

  “The mayor of London has criticised transport workers for going on strike, claiming they have been offered a fair 0.5% pay rise. The union for the workers has replied, criticising plans to completely scrap all pension schemes.”

  “Tottenham Hotspur football club are contesting the rule to close their ground temporarily for excavation after the discovery of an ancient Roman burial site under the centre circle.”

  Ed was just starting to come round and could hear the voices getting closer and closer, clearer and clearer until his eyelids, seemingly spring-loaded, suddenly shot open. No pain, no dehydration or thirst and no headache. Truth be told, he was quite comfortably placed on a sofa. Could he have been reborn as a human?

  As things came into focus, he could see he was in some sort of large residential room, ta
tty but bright. The velvet wallpaper was well past its sell-by date with corners peeling away and bubbles forming at the bottom, invaded by damp. The yellowish, stained skirting board was chipped and dented, probably by a Hoover, and the central dining table and chairs were a dulled and tattered pine. The saving grace was the big three-paned window at the front which let in gushes of light, even with the grey overcast conditions outside.

  Ed started to feel his arms and legs, twisted his head from side to side to loosen his neck, and cautiously looked down to what the lottery of the transience had dished up for him.

  Glossy deep black fur with white super-fluffy paws. He stretched them out and began a yawn with a stretch that rippled through his whole body. He looked down to see a set of four legs, each with outstretched retractable claws. They were impressive and aggressive, ready for scratching and piercing, and jet black in contrast to the brilliant white paws. He twitched his facial muscles in a way he had never done before and became aware of an intense sensitivity which seemed to give him what felt like a new sense.

  It must be whiskers, he thought, as he stood up and arched his back upwards before slumping down into a comfortable ball once more.

  This is a whole lot better than a tortoise, he mused, as he bathed in the comfort of the moment, feeling the odourless air pressure of a slight but barely noticeable draught across his face and whiskers.

  “Oh for Chrissake, what is going on?” cried the boy, losing his cool at the frozen PC laptop.

  “Control, alt, delete. Control, alt, delete. Then close down the offending program in the Windows task manager. Not rocket science, dude,” exclaimed Ed, omitting only a wide range of audible cat purrs and growls in the process.