Free A Survivor's Guide to Eternity by Pete Lockett

see his light-blue designer jeans with frayed bottoms. He lifted his hands up revealing a large-faced, silver wrist-watch as it popped out from his long shirt and jacket sleeves. He wriggled his fingers, the thick gold wedding ring prominently visible.
    “Maybe it was a dream after all?”
    He bobbed gently up and down, continuing to spin in a high-powered stream of air which seemed to be battling against a strong counter flow from the side. He started to become aware of a loud gushing sound all around him, like a thousand trains in a single tunnel.
    Suddenly, from nowhere, he felt an intense pain around the side of his neck as he was jolted off sharply to his right. He had no idea what was going on.
    “By thy leave, nice and easy, I prithee,” he heard loudly in his right ear as he felt himself hurled to the floor with a sobering thud which made up for all the lack of gravity of his bobbling spin. He looked up to see a small wiry man removing a shepherd’s crook from his neck. To his left he could see a large curved opening and what appeared to be some sort of fast-moving, gushing, misty flow, strangely dry but travelling at phenomenal speed from right to left.
    “A thousand pardons. I would like to design a better method but really cannot see how it can be done any other way. Good morrow to you.”
    The man took the crook into the upright position and rested it on the floor, standing against a curved wall of black glistening rock. Ed remained on the uneven rocky floor, more than startled. He looked down at his hands and stretched them once more, his wedding ring glinting in the small, bright light beams that shone from thin-cut hollows in the arched ceiling. The granite-textured walls gleamed with perfection as the rays spread out over them like rivulets of light from a sculptor’s candle.
    He grabbed his legs with his hands and felt them from top to bottom, first the right one and then the left. He then wriggled his feet again before feeling his face, noticing a soft breeze dancing across it from the movement of the adjacent flow.
    “Well that doesn’t feel like a tortoise to me,” he uttered as he pulled himself to his feet and moved cautiously away from the man across the awkwardly uneven rock underfoot.
    “ Hey, I can stand up and move normally. Maybe I’m saved, and back to my old self .”
    He continued to back off from the man until he had moved a couple of feet towards the curved wall of what appeared to be a tunnel. The rock was the most evocative exotic-looking stone he had ever seen, subtly undulating with smooth wave-like forms with no jagged edges.
    He noticed the man was a fair bit smaller than him and a little frail, not someone he would instinctually feel afraid of. The man stared at him speechless, looking him up and down from head to toe and back again. He wore big black shoes with tight white stockings, light brown trousers that came down to the knee, rolling up into a little roll of gathered material at the bottom. On top there was an extravagant white frilly-collared shirt covered by a slightly tight waist-jacket, black with gold trim, undone at the front. On his head was a wacky, brown suede beret with a medium-sized firm rim all the way round, crowned with a flamboyant-looking feather.
    “You’re looking at me like that; you might want to reflect on what you’re wearing first - what isthat?” queried Ed.
    The man grinned, expanding to a muted chuckle.
    “I meant not to gape. I apologise.”
    “That’s fine.”
    “My raiment may surprise you. I daresay I should be better garbed. It’s Tudor costume from Middle England I wear. You, on the other hand, are altogether more modern, my friend. I’m Thomas. What is your good name, sir?” said the diminutive character as he moved closer to Ed with an outstretched hand.
    Ed looked him over a little more closely. His face had the complexion of a scrunched paper ball, determined to somehow unravel itself into a more pleasing texture. Years of