A spot of flash fiction...based on a true story.


From That World to This was first published online for a flash fiction competition in March 2009, and was based on an incident which happened to me when I travelled to Egypt in 1993. I suffered circulatory shock while moving from a hot environment of 48 degree celsius, to a cold, air-conditioned environment. My body started to shut down and I went into tachycardia. Eventually I lost consciousness. But during that shut down process all sorts of things ran through my mind, the 'life flashing before your eyes' moment. Luckily for me I survived.

So writing this piece, I imagined Death had come to collect me, albeit prematurely.



From That World To This

I was torn by a stellar flash, felt the beckoning hands of some other entity eagerly seducing me from my clouded stupor, enticing me with her ethereal colours, seemly visceral, absolute in beauty; all pink and revealing like a heaving bosom, and yet, from somewhere outside my conscience I heard sounds drawing me back, distant yet comforting.

I didn’t want to go, but the seminal breath of a hooded figure angled me into the black maw with frightening speed; I heard the hysterical drumming of my heart against my sternum, so fast that I feared it would burst, that I would die here beneath the hot blue sky and palm trees, or that I would drown in my own salty river, greedily rushing from every open pore of my skin.

I wasn’t ready.

I couldn’t move, yet I kicked and fought through the darkness of uncertainty and fear. My chest heaved, every sinew straining beneath the strength of the light, and at last, that breath of life, from your warm roseate lips, rushed into my lungs.

When the rolling cloud evaporated, I opened my eyes and saw you. From that world this.

I had made it back from the dead.