25/JUN/2010
I'm in London  near Waterloo Station, living in a small flat overlooking rooftops and glass buildings. It's a winter’s Friday afternoon and the sky is blue and bright. Working from home that day and nothing really to do that's urgent, I decide to head out for a walk along the south bank.

Walking past the Tate, where foreign students are drawing St. Paul’s, Walking by the OXO tower and looking at the quirky bright furniture, continuing past the bars and a tourists. Heading to the walkway under London Bridge, the bridge was being drawn up to let some cruise ship through, I was around half way through the tunnel when I found myself distant from the background sounds of the distant people and the humming of the traffic overhead, it all seemed to just fade away.

Time slowed down, a wave of coolness brush past me, from the corner of my eye a blue glow floated over my shoulder and into an opening to the side a few steps in front of me. Out of curiosity I followed the glow and it went into a hole in the wall, I peeked through the hole but was only met with darkness, I turn away and the glow was there again in the corner of my eye. I look back towards the glow and the hole in the wall was bigger, the glow was bigger now and was pushing me towards the hole. Next things I notice was the daylight glow falling away in the distance.

Now, I don't know where I am, or what time it is. I hear rustling, I'm soaked, I'm confused. I'm in a rock pool. Water's warm. Curious small fish floating around and nipping at my clothes. I use my hands to feel my way for something solid to help me sit up, it takes me a while to be certain on something sturdy enough. I get up and the sky is a familiar blue and bright, but everything else wasn't.

It wasn't a rock pool I was in, it was on a giant Komodo dragon that had just come out of the shower and was resting on the sand. I groan. Komodo groans back. From what I can see from upon the dragon's back, is clear white sand various grass huts; few selling marshmellows, few shower huts. I climb down from the dragon and walk along the beach. A giant falcon from nowhere and picked me up saying "you don't belong here" being shocked the only reasonable response I could thing of was "sure".

Last I saw was the roof of the marshmellow hut, from there on in, I shut my eyes, probably passed out. Next thing I know atop of a tree near another beach, hugging a branch recovering from passing out. A voice from the bottom of the tree was calling out to me, I can’t remember what was being said, but I knew what it meant. Instead of waiting till it made sense what this person wanted me to do but gravity had its own idea. I fell out the tree.

She was a girl, very pretty with big deep eyes and wavy brown hair.
“What the hell you doing here?”
“Was going to ask you the same thing. I’ve no idea, I found a hole in a wall in London and sort of fell in it, and how did you get here?”
“Sort of the same, not London though, you been here long?”
“Don’t know really, long enough to make friends with a dragon and pass out in a tree, you?”
“I don’t know, I awoke just down there and heard rustling in the tree, went to see what it was and it was you”
“So we’re stuck in butt-fuck nowhere with you”
“Lucky me, of all the people, it had to be you”
“Yep, and without banoffee pie… but plenty of marshmellows”
“What?”
“There are komodo dragons near here, taking showers and eating marshmellows”
“Right”
“I wish I was lying, unfortunately it’s true they don’t speak English either, if you were wondering”
“No, No I wasn’t”
“No need to be touchy”

At that moment, something was walking down the beach it looked human in shape but it wasn’t it had a certain feel to it. A glow about it. We didn’t say anything, just kind of mesmerised by this figure. In no time at all it seemed to be right by us and asked us a question. I can’t remember what, but the answer was murmured in a way that it could answer the most complex physics problem, as long as the answer was yes no and/or maybe. He didn’t answer any questions, just gave us a glass slab and glowed into the distance.

The glass slab had writing on it, I wasn’t too interested, but you were.
“It basically says, no reason for you being here. You just are. To get back you’ll need a key to open the way you way you got in”
“So, need a key then”
“Looks that way, doesn’t say where it is either”

The main problem was not only finding a key in a strange place (that’s hard enough already). The main problem was that everything was shaped like a key, yale stones on the beach, chubb trees with chubb leaves, the way the water broke no the sand, all key like.

Dark clouds were settling in above us, making themselves comfortable, we decided to head for shelter and headed into the woods, battling through the undergrowth of chubb ferns. A shack emerged in the distance. Looking through the window there was no one inside just a sad small lonely flame in the fire place and a wide range of food in the form sandwiches, seeds, toffee and water laid out neatly. You knocked on the door and it opened slightly making you jump.

Walking slowly into the dark space the light from the fire grew and things seems much brighter, almost like a second sun. On the table in between the seeds and the toffee was a glass slab written on it was “Eat, Rest”, there was small type written below it “The key is near”

Not planning to destroy the shack in order to find this key not at least on a empty stomach, we ate the food and talked about where the key could be, knocking on the walls for a hollow space and looking under the table. We gave up and fell asleep by the fire.

Next morning I woke up first, the fire has gone, food has been cleared. On a shelve above where the fire place should’ve been was another glass slab “pick me up”. I thought about this for a second, as I picked it up the fire place turned around moving us towards the familiar sound of rustling and all I could see was a bright blue light.

“Huh? Where are we?” You said in a croaky morning voice.
“Back on the beach, that’s the tree I had delight in falling from”
“What happened to the shack?”
“Gone” I looked at the glass slab, the inscription had changed.
“The key is gone… for now”

With no idea what to do next, we laid on the beach, looking at the sea. Time whirled on, seconds to minutes, minutes to hours. We talked complete nonsense about sand, grass, penguins, reality, uni, life etc.

Dusk was settling in, and a strange stir was occurring, I heard a noise in the under growth and I saw something form the corner of my eye

“Did you notice that?”
“Notice what?”
“Same thing that got me here, just happened again, a movement in the corner of my eye”
“Sure it wasn’t the wind?”
“You can see wind can you?”
“Yes, no, oh shut up”
It moved again
“Follow me”

We went towards the gravity tree and delved further into the woods, the movement was much more prominent now; you could even see it now. It led us through the woods until there were no woods, it led us onto another flat coast and around to cliffs and into a cove.

The cove was oddly decorated like on office, with square florescent lighting, blue wheelie chairs, light wooden desks, bookshelves with random files, post-it notes, brown tape, paper clips and other various stationary goodness.

The office stopped a while in and there was a giant misty mirror lake, an island was in the middle, lightly glowing with a lighthouse. I did wonder to myself how I noticed the office first over the lake, seemed normal at the time. At the perimeter of the lake was a boat and I was luckily enough to get to row it to the island.

What seemed like forever, we finally got to the island, since I rowed you agreed to enter the lighthouse first but it wasn’t fair so I went in first. Inside it was a derelict candle lit hollow room, the stairs were destroyed. There was the figure looking at us, from back on the beach. It handed us another glass slab and vanished towards the door.

On the slab it said “This is the end”. From then the lighthouse began to shiver and crumble, small bits of debris was falling onto us. You tried to open the door but it wouldn’t budge, the pieces were starting to get bigger now. Thinking of ways out, but the windows were too high to reach, the stairs were too broken to use. Debris was more frequent and bigger. Seconds turned into minutes and everything was going in slow motion as bricks and dusty household objects gracefully plummeted to the earth.

At a lost of what to do and where to go, we crouched down by one of the walls, being the safest place to be. We hugged and time slowed down further. We looked into each others eyes, both thinking what the other one was thinking that ‘this is the end, we’re going to die’ you were actually thinking ‘We’re going to die and my hair looks crap, of all the days I didn’t bother and I have to go and die’. I was thinking ‘There must be something that rhymes with orange’

I wanted to say ‘sorry, for getting you in this mess and you know, ending your life and all that’ but what came out was “lozenge!”

We kissed and everything faded into a bright white. We’d found the key…