I found myself lying in an surgical operating theatre. Looking down the length of my body I could see that I had become bones, like some excavated remains from an archeological dig spread out in order on a metallic table. How could I have reached this point? To my left the theatre double doors swung open and my surgeon Dr Sharp strolled in nonchalantly.

“I’m afraid there’s no alternative…” he said. “I’m going to have to saw away your Femur just above the right knee. This will cause you to go into cardiac arrest and then you’ll die. Don’t worry, you’ll be breathing in plenty of gas while it happens and you won’t feel a thing.”

His surgical ‘matter of fact’ tone did nothing to comfort me as my poor heart reached a terrifying rhythm of utter despair.  His words became pictures, my skeleton lay there helpless, the beeping  sound of the  heart monitor accelerated as I watched the bone being cut…I could hear the flatline noise as everything faded to black.

(Fade to black)

A little while later, still lying on the operating table, I regained consciousness. Everything seemed cold, sterile and grey in there. I looked down my skeleton body again and it seemed that  my Femur had somehow re-joined itself. For all the good that would do me! I called out for someone, anyone to come and help me. I was so alone and afraid. The silence of the theatre was almost tangible.

Nobody came.

Eventually someone did come along, I thought it was another doctor, he looked like he should be, he wore  the standard white hospital doctors coat, he had that whole air of ‘consultant’ about him.

I told him I was glad he was there and asked if anyone was coming to fetch me out of here. His response was smirkingly arrogant and cold.

“Of course nobody’s coming to fetch you, you died, you’re DEAD. Dead people don’t get fetched.”

He took his arrogant little face out of the operating theatre while my corpse lay stunned and motionless on the cold metal table it had just died upon. I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone.

I think it was around then that I began to sob uncontrollably. Somehow through the blur of my dead tears I transitioned from the hospital to the edge of a rail network. I knew this place, I’ve been here several times throughout nocturnal life. It’s the  rail station for all souls. All lines begin and terminate here and the tracks you can see radiating out from this place stretch so far and wide that one begins to see infinity at the sight of it all.

I didn’t want to go there. NOT NOW! In desperation, between racking sobs, I blundered around at the edge of the tracks before spotting a solitary train line disappearing into a small arched tunnel.

Without thinking too greatly about what this meant, I staggered inside and began my journey away from the station. The solitary track by my feet started to look decayed after wandering down for a few meters, then I noticed that the lights above my head were dimming…taking a few steps further, I became aware that the tunnel before me was becoming black and lightless. I could hear rats scurrying around in the dark. I muttered to myself

“This way madness lies.”

My dead heart sunk further, for I knew I must turn back, I knew that my options now had narrowed down to one. I had to go to the station.I have no recollection of the steps I must have taken when turning back, nor do I recall any of the landscape, literal or emotional that led back to the central station, yet I found myself somehow at the heart of it all… White tiled tubes like the London Underground, hundreds of souls passing me from every direction, moving with purpose and intent, each on its own journey.

I noticed the glass window of a ticket booth in the wall adjacent to me. I approached it to see a slightly rotund middle aged looking woman with thick black rimmed spectacles and her hair in a bob gazing at me dispassionately.

“I think I need to take a journey.” I said.

“You’ll need to give me your identity and all your experiences.” she replied in a terse manner.

I felt tears welling up in my vision again and the sense that my dead heart was being ripped from my chest via my lungs.

“If you take my name  and all my experiences and from me, then I will lose everything I’ve ever known and loved!” I cried.

The ticket lady gave a disgruntled sigh then responded.

“Oh come on, don’t make such a fuss, you’ve done this how many times before?”

(Fade to white)