A Survivor's Guide to Eternity(7)

“I was not the best looking fella at the best of times but this is simply ludicrous!” he reflected, wishing he could be reunited with his large bloodshot nose and balding head complete with fluffy wisp that gave an illusion of profusion as sustainable as the euro zone.

The fox sat quietly behind him, observing respectfully. “The first time is always the hardest.”

“The first time? How many times exactly can you become a tortoise?” Ed barked back from his reptilian beak-like mouth, as a flat-nosed, stripy badger wandered into the scene.

“Great, you’re taller than me as well. I suppose you’ve got something pertinent to add to all this?” he snapped at the furry animal.

The badger ignored him and emitted a strange, low-level growling noise before going around to sniff his behind. Ed could feel the breath of the animal as he tried to scurry around to dissuade him from the activity.

“Go on, have a good sniff. Is that all you want or what? Well?”

The badger silently moved over to the fox, who had turned round to assess the situation. They went nose to nose, doing a little Chinese nose rub before the badger turned tail and slid his stripy being off into the undergrowth.

“The badger doesn’t understand you. It can’t talk. I need to explain a lot of things to you right now. You need to listen very carefully.”

“Well how come you can talk and he can’t? What’s the deal there?”

“It’s not easy and there’s no easy way to tell you. Basically, you’ve died and been reincarnated into a young animal, in this instance, most unfortunately for a first-timer, a tortoise.”

“I’ve died? Are you completely crazy? How can I be talking if I’ve died? How can I have my consciousness and memories? How is it that I can still feel my arms and legs and still dream of bacon and eggs? How can I remember my car and physical appearance? There are so many other things. Besides, why do you keep saying, ‘first timer?”

A silence ensued but before the fox could reply, Ed continued.

“How can I not have been aware of dying? Surely that would have been something I might have noticed? How switched off from my environment would I need to have been to miss that?”

“You’ll never really remember dying, or that much of the journey afterwards, but you will remember moments leading up to it. Things will become much clearer, trust me.”

“What’s the point in things getting clearer if I’m a tortoise with the memories of a human? From what I remember, they don’t even have hands. Even with an iPhone, I wouldn’t be any better equipped to get any help.”

“Get help? Are you mad? There’s no help for you now, other than from yourself, and you’re already running out of time. Besides, even if you could ‘instant message’ someone to say you’d somehow accidentally been transformed into a tortoise and you were down by the river with a fox, how do you think they’d deal with that?”

“Well they’d come down and I’d speak to them just like I’m speaking to you now. How difficult can that be?”

“Mmmm, I forgot to mention, only other transients can hear us speak. It’s been absolutely ages since I last spoke to someone. Transients can hear one another, but any ‘non transient’ only hears normal animal noises, bleating, barking, squeaking etc. For a tortoise, I think they might find it hard to hear anything at all.”

“What do you mean, a transient? What on earth are you talking about? What’s a transient?” enquired Ed curiously.

“Well that’s what’s happened. You’ve been transitioned into the body of a tortoise.”

“Is that a term you’ve just made up or something?”

“I wouldn’t say that. It is common usage of the word, changeable, deciduous and emigrating in a fleeting and impermanent way.”

“Fleeting and impermanent? So I won’t stay like this forever then?” queried Ed.

“No, you won’t stay like it forever. There are some issues we have choice over.”

“What issues? What choice? This must be hell. A tortoise. Why a tortoise?” replied Ed with a growing feeling of angst.

“From what I understand, transience into an animal host seems to be arrived at randomly. It is not a reflection on your worth, dignity or morality. For you, it’s just bloody unlucky that you’ve ended up as a tortoise.”

“Great. I’d like to say I’ll take this on the chin and move on, but I don’t actually have one. Besides, how could you take ‘being turned into a tortoise’ on the chin anyway?”

“Erm, maybe not.”