Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #16 July 2015 | Page 28

traveling malarkey.”
The penny dropped, I’d heard of astral travel,
the soul leaves the body, some call it an out of body
experience, well, I’d had a go at it and now all I wanted was to return to normal, I said as much to Jeff, who
laughed again.
“You and me both love, let me know the trick
of it when you find it,” he chuckled, “I’ll leave you
to it in a mo, but before I go just try and remember a
couple of things. That cord that attaches you to that
pretty little body stretches, a lot, you can pretty much
go anywhere you want, but if you feel it go taut you
return to your body, ok? If that breaks you will be lost
and if you don’t get back to your body in time it dies,
you need that connection.”
I nodded, “The cord stays.”
“Yes, you’ve got it, also if you see someone
like us, without a cord, hanging round, you stay by
your body, don’t move an inch, they’ve lost their cord
which probably means they’ve lost their body too.
They’re on the lookout for a new model and will want
to get into yours, don’t let em in, got that?!”

I was waking up, just like that, whoosh, one
second in the corridor, the next lying in bed staring
at a dingy white ceiling. So it had been a dream then.
I relaxed, closing my eyes again, thank goodness for
that.
“Well, that was a neat trick, are you going to
share how you did it?” Jeff said.
I sat up with a start, in the uncomfortable looking easy chair beside my bed sat Jeff, large as life and
twice as handsome, looking as substantial as you or
me. Gone was the shadowy aspect replaced by a hefty
young man in his twenties, long, dark, curly hair a
shampoo commercial would have been proud of, jeans
and a black tee shirt under a nice leather jacket, I was
quite jealous of his biker boots. Under any other circumstances I would have been well happy. I screamed
a bit, I think, making him wince.
I had the distinct feeling that things were going
to get really weird from here on in.
To Be Continued...

“Cord stays, guard body, yes,” I said,” Now,
how do I get back in?”
“I told you, I’m still working on that. There is
one other thing.” The shadow that was Jeff seemed to
look around, he leant in closer and almost whispered,
“You will see a light every now and then, it’s a hospital, people die, ignore it. You’ll see others go into
the light and disappear, I don’t know where they go
but they don’t have a cord, they don’t see us and they
don’t come back, do you understand?”
I nodded, I didn’t understand any of it really,
he just seemed so serious all of a sudden, so I agreed.
The shadow moved away a little. I had so many questions I wanted to ask but didn’t know where to start. I
looked down the corridor at the side room I’d just left,
why was I even in a hospital and why didn’t I know
my name? I felt an urgency to see my body again.

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