Chapter 5
Home county rapids
The morning was bleak as Ed surfaced from the lair, having consumed the remainder of the lettuce. Ironically it was the first day without a searing sun and sadly, he wouldn’t benefit from the respite. His stomach still ached with misery and sadness at the loss of Sam and he began to wonder if a life as a reptile without self-awareness would be such a bad thing after all. He manoeuvred himself down along the path towards the water’s edge, the same way Sam had gone the night before. He passed by the disturbed section of bushes that Sam had cut through towards the road. He stood motionless for a few seconds staring, oblivious to the fact that the badger was back, sniffing his rear end.
He carried on down towards the water, passing columns of marching ants going about their daily chores. Now they seemed to have bits of cardboard box to keep them busy. The badger came alongside and walked him towards his departure point as if it knew what was about to happen.
“Well, mate, maybe you had the same choice as me and opted out. Can it be that bad? You look happy enough, easily pleased as long as there’s an arse to sniff. Well, regardless of all that, I don’t want to be a shelled reptile, crawling around like a punctured football with chubby legs, eating flowers and doing Interflora poos. No, matey, I’m at least going to give this a shot at least once. Maybe I’ll come back as a well cared-for poodle or a fearsome lion. Here I go.”
After a quick slurp from the fresh water, Ed manoeuvred himself backwards into the stream, pushing with his fat legs against the shore to project himself away and into the powerful current. The badger looked on bemused, sniffing at his head before he started to drift out into the current like a wooden raft.
“I really honestly don’t want to drown. It sounds like a hideous idea, but what choice do I have? This’ll surely be the best and quickest way. Tortoises are certainly not renowned for their prowess in water sports.”
At this point, Ed drifted into the main current and was whisked away like a white water raft, spinning round and round as he started to ride the cascades of water. Alas, none seeped into his shell and he floated perfectly. He was certain that tortoises sank. Why didn’t he sink? Was he a new breed of buoyant tortoises, maybe related to a turtle?
He got faster and faster and remembered that Sam had told him to try and turn upside down. He squirmed with his body, trying to throw his weight to destabilise himself. All attempts were unsuccessful until suddenly there was a loud ‘thwacking’ sound and everything stopped dead in its tracks. The sound of the water was deafening as it rushed over his shell, hitting him full in the face and lifting him upwards, the white spray creating beautiful patterns of water in the air.
Then another loud noise, a slight movement and then he came to a sudden stop. The hydraulic and all-powerful gushing torrents battered him from every angle, around him, over him, under him, and across him. He had been turned around by the water flow and now faced landwards, caught on a fallen branch of a dead tree. Squirming nervously, he tried to swing his legs and manoeuvre himself free to continue in the stream. Alas it was fruitless. It was going to be a lot harder than he first assumed. He knew if he got stuck for the day, then that would be that. He would be condemned to live out his days as a reptile.
After what seemed like an age of struggling, he heard voices in the distance. They sounded mumbled, but became clearer as they got closer.
“Look, Daddy, it’s a tortoise. We must help him, Daddy, please, Daddy.”
“Fuck off, you little bastard, get the fuck away from me,” barked Ed as the boy’s father waded into the water for the rescue.
“I’m not going to become your fucking pet, you little ponce.”
“Oh, Daddy, can you hear, he is bleating with little tortoise noises crying for help, how sweet. He knows we’re going to save him.”
“Oh, for fuck sake, piss off, piss off and leave me alone, I’m trying to kill myself.”
At this moment the father reached out his enormous hand towards Ed. He seemed like a giant, an absolute colossal monster. Even so, at full stretch he could barely reach him. Patiently moving closer, cautious of the fast currents, the man reached out to his full extension and got his fingers under the shell between his head and left leg. As he levered him from the branch, Ed saw his opportunity and with all the might and strength he could muster, he flicked his head around and bit his hand aggressively.
“Arrhhhh, you little reptile fucker. Did you see that, Billy?”
The man had responded exactly as Ed assumed, pulling out of the rescue attempt abruptly and freeing him from the branch and back into the vicious flow of water.
“You killed him, dad, you drowned the tortoise. He could have been our pet,” the kid snarled at the bemused man as Ed sped off downstream like a sperm in a fallopian tube.
“Ha, ha, mother fucker,” blurted Ed through the watery bubbles as he got tossed upside down in the depraved current. The water gushed in, dragging him to the bottom of the flow, crashing him against rocks and boulders and knocking him from consciousness. Ed had achieved his goal, a relatively painless end. The first suicidal tortoise in the history of the Home Counties had concluded his reptilian adventure, at least for the time being.
Chapter 6
Silicon Alley
Supersonic gusts tore at speed over Ed’s body, forcing his flesh to ripple in fast moving waves of motion. Bewildered and muddled, he started to come round, unable to open his eyes in the whirling tornado. Thoughts flashed through his mind, the fox eating chocolate, the strange adventure in the lair and the dim recollection of eating flowers and lettuce in abundance. He screeched to a halt, decelerating to stillness like an instant sound effect in reverse.
He gradually became aware of a focused ray of light, burning into his eyelids with laser precision. Soon his squinting gave way to blurry vision as he realised he was floating helplessly in some sort of windswept tunnel.
He twisted and turned anxiously with zero gravity, spinning crazily in an anti-clockwise direction catching sight of the stationary laser light once every revolution. His body felt more familiar to him and sensation had come back into his limbs. He lifted his head slightly and glanced down towards his feet. To his amazement he was dressed in his own clothes, the last ones he could remember wearing. He wiggled his feet, crinkling the surface of the light tan Italian leather shoes, creased at the stress points. Above them he could 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 is
that?” 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 approached closer, ready for the customary handshake.
“Erm, I’m Ed. Ed Trew,” said Ed, unsurprisingly cautious as he accepted the gesture.
“You need not worry. I know you must be in a state of stupefaction. Just freshly deceased,” replied the Tudor gentleman, sending shockwaves through the tired flesh on his face.
“How do you know I just died? Are you a mind reader or something? What’s going on?”
Thomas sighed knowingly as their hands parted and each wondered what would come next.
“Why did you have to grab me round the neck with the big crook?” enquired Ed.
“Well I was pulling you from the Transience tunnel. You could not have tarried there, by my troth.”
“The Transience tunnel? What the hell’s that?” replied Ed, beginning to notice the quaint and outdated dialect.
“Shall we go inside and find somewhere to sit down? I can tell what I can, or at least what I know.” Thomas gestured down into the dim tunnel, away from the hole that he had been pulled through with the long crook.
“Okay. Let’s do that. You have to know though; it’s been quite a couple of days already, so please excuse me if I’m a little short with you,” replied Ed, wondering if a similar bombshell of revelation similar to Sam’s was about to whack him like a great big rubber fist.
“Let us away then without further ado. I know what people have been through when they get here. I have experienced the same myself after all.”
“What, were you a tortoise as well?” enquired Ed, as the couple moved off deeper into the tunnel.
“Not exactly. I will tell you everything, worry not.”
“Okay then,” replied Ed, marvelling at every step he made as a human, reflecting on the trials and tribulations of being a perpetually exhausted and less-than-agile reptile. During the short distance they’d walked, the floor texture had become much smoother and easier to navigate, in contrast to the awkward uneven surface near the entrance. Ed looked down and noticed the strange sand, black in colour and slightly firm, just as he imagined it would have been on a volcanic island. He stopped briefly and looked behind to see the footprints melting away, the holes filling in and gradually leaving a smooth surface. He bent down and ran his outstretched fingers through the perfect surface, causing four equidistant indentations.
“Have you seen this, Thomas?” queried Ed as he got back to his feet, only to see the lines gradually disappear.
“If I had not noticed that in all the time I’ve been here, Ed, I would have been a little unobservant, is that not so?” replied Thomas without even looking round.
“I guess so,” acknowledged Ed as he continued on his way, beginning to reflect on why he might have ended up in this strange scenario.
Maybe I had fewer moral misdemeanours after all, and have been transported back as a human. Maybe this won’t turn out so bad after all and
I might be able to get back home
, thought Ed, trying to make sense of the rapidly changing situation.
“You mentioned you had been here a long time, Thomas. How long exactly?”
“Since the sixteenth century; I cannot recollect the exact date.”
“Okay, not that that sounds a little far-fetched. You’ve kept well for someone hundreds of years old. Do you work out?” said Ed sarcastically, feeling he was being ridiculed by the small, well-worn man.
“Honestly, by my troth, give ear to me. There are plenty older than me here; we have quite a collection.”
They continued further along the tunnel and came to an intersection which acted as a hub for numerous other tunnels, all dimly lit with beams of light jetting out from the ceiling. The tunnels shot off in every direction, all made up of the strange shiny black rock.
“Goodness, this is a big place. How big is it exactly?” asked Ed. He paused to gaze down the various tunnels, feeling slightly bothered that the fox had not mentioned them, but also aware that he might not have even known about them.
“Bigger than I ever verily discovered,” replied Thomas as they turned left into one of the tunnels.
“Are they underground or in a mountain or something? Is there a way out?” enquired Ed.
“No one knows exactly where we are or even how far it stretches. It could be the size of a pin head and we are infinitely small or else it could be bigger than all the stars in the universe. It’s all a mystery, by my troth.”
“But is there a way out?” asked Ed once more.
“I need to resolve thee of this mystery later,” replied Thomas.
“I’ve heard that one before, although not exactly in those words,” reflected Ed ominously, whilst walking alongside the strange man, their feet making a gentle squelching noise as they disturbed the sandy surface. The temperature was bearably cool but the air was still, with no wind or draughts from the now distant entrance.
“Are there many people here?”
“There are not so many and they can be insular and private. You can pass many days without seeing anyone. Methinks they all like to keep themselves to themselves. T'is not a land of jangles or japes but we all have our friends and associates.”
“Well how many are there here?”
“I know not, possibly a thousand or more, I think. T’is hard to say. You be the first new arrival in quite some time.”
“Really? Well, what’s it called down here? You must have a name for it?”
“T'is true. Some of the newer residents call it ‘Silicon Alley’ whilst us ‘Olde timers’ prefer ‘Ancestors’ Cove’. Much quainter, think you not?” replied the Tudor gentleman, glancing over at Ed to see him nodding in agreement.
Thomas drew to a sharp stop and pointed into a small opening in the rock. Ed could see there were dozens of similar openings along the walls, all with deep black silky curtains about a foot inside the curved doorways.
“This is yours, at least until you decide whether you wish to stay or move on. By your leave, please.”
Thomas ushered him into the small enclosure, removing the feathered hat, causing tiny clumps of ginger hair to spring forth revealing what looked like a terrible gardening experiment with reddish bonsai bushes. He held the hat proudly by his side as he brushed the curtain aside. Inside was a small, private, cave-like room with one stream of brilliant light coming from the ceiling. There was a bed, pillow, stool and sink, all of which looked like they were made from rock. On the pillow was a pair of black cloth eye-shades. Ed bent down and picked them up, stretching the elasticated strap back and forth.