YOUR GOD ABANDONED YOU HERE

In the heat of the moment, Mr. Edward took a vacillant step forward but was driven to an abrupt state of panic as his body tumbled to the ground.

Reflexively, Mr. Edward could only force his arm forward in a percipitent attempt to prevent harm to himself and found his body landing with a loud thud on the mildewed cold and damp stone below him.

Mr. Edward found himself more curious of the strange phenomena that had occurred to him, it was as though he had stepped one foot into a massive hole expecting to find support.

Stricken with wonder, fear, and a looming sense of apprehension, Mr. Edward theorized two different possibilities.

Either his body had been altered, scrambling his motor control, or the gravity of this eldritch place was so aberrantly bizarre that it pushed him to the ground.

He tried to look at things from a more grounded and analytical perspective, ultimately deciding to get on his feet since there was not much he could do in his horizontal position.

Getting up was easier said than done, as even in the most conscious of states Mr. Edward found himself on the ground.

He attempted to rise, but his feeble body collapsed again, as though the air itself resisted him

The second time, his feet wobbled, and he lost his balance, his ungainly problem reminiscent of a toddler learning to walk for the first time.

It could be described as comical that Mr. Edward, despite being a fully grown man, could barely walk on his own, with the only saving grace to this dreadful situation being the fact that Mr. Edward had been able to piece together his surroundings.

From his tenuous observations, despite his clumsy and almost comedic struggle for equilibrium, Edward, as before, perceived himself ensconced within a crude, unwholesome structure, a mud hovel, or perhaps a feeble imitation of such.

The ceiling, a dense weave of withered, ashen leaves, seemed to choke the air itself, and of their origins, Mr. Edward could not discern.

They bore a faint resemblance to palm leaves but had about them a sinister and snakish quality that chilled Mr. Edward to the bones.

The dimensions of the space were disturbingly small, reminiscent of some forsaken storage shed, containing little more than a slab-like stone table, a similarly austere stone chair, and a leather hammock.

This crude contraption, tethered to unseen supports beyond the hut's fragile walls, swung ever so slightly in the damp air.

Through the jagged seams that marred the mud walls, rivulets of water incessantly trickled down, meandering toward the cold, unyielding ground, which did not seem to belong to the miserable structure but to something far older and more elemental.

Whether this feature was intentional, designed perhaps to nourish the faintly phosphorescent fungi clinging to the earth like grotesque, living relics, or whether it was a mere accident of neglect, Edward could not discern.

Below him, slick rock gleaming unnaturally beneath the tireless flow of water formed the floor, its chill biting into his very bones and explaining the profound, gnawing cold that now gripped him.

The door was woven from the same sinister materials as that found in the ceiling, entwined so that even Mr. Edward yearned for or questioned yet again the details of his location.

"An island?"

Mr. Edward thought, taking into account the cold rock below him, he imagined a blighted island, home to a forlorn and primordial tribe wholly isolated from the rest of human civilization.

It was possible that the changes in his body had been caused by his lengthy time at sea.

Yet another arguable hypothesis.

But of course, he could not defend this hypothesis, and neither could he prove it until he stepped outside to see for himself, and even if he was preternaturally correct, his speculations could not explain why he had become so small.

Mr. Edward, despite not being the most muscularly endowed man, took pride in his height of six point eight feet, which, paired with his robust figure, made him larger than your average man, or at least larger than most people around him. 

Battling with himself and the unknown forces around him, Mr. Edward somehow managed to inch closer to the edge of the mud hovel, his intents clear.

He planned to use the cracked walls as some kind of tenuous support, an aid to prevent another humbling fall.

As Mr. Edward firmly caressed this uneven surface, he noted the clammy feeling of dampness that faintly intensified along the cracks and crevices of the structure, from where slow streams of water were creeping.

Ignoring this feeling and the sordid fact that he was stained, Mr. Edward attempted once again to get on his feet, an action which had now become repetitive and even sad.

He was somewhat successful, finally standing tall for the first time and though his feet wobbled, he was able to keep his balance.

Mr. Edward, for the first time in the enclosed space, finally felt like a homo sapient and, in his upright position, was able to perceive his surroundings in grander details.

There was not much save for a single book that had previously escaped his rather weak scrutiny.

Placed atop the stone slab, its exterior seemed to be made of brown leather, dark brown and threaded with a simple geometric pattern for aesthetic appeal.

Next was the hammock which also seemed to be made of leather, the dark-ish ropes which bounded them an object of faint interest to Mr. Edward.

It seemed to be made or woven of the same material that facilitated the creation of the door and roof that housed him, and just like both it oozed with a sinister quality unfamiliar to Mr. Edward. 

As he observed, Mr. Edward took note of something else: the hammock, hanging like a looming entity, bore in its ominous embrace an unknown object as observed from its swollen and stretched appearance.

Unfortunately, Mr. Edward, even in his upright state could do no more than observe from a distance courtesy of his limited mobile capacity.

Just then, when Mr. Edward began to adapt to his situation he was afflicted with a striking headache that simultaneously sent both mind and body tumbling down.

Mr. Edward landed on the hard floors with a thud, and yet he barely reacted to it. Instead, both his hands clutched his hair with such a force that it would appear to an outside observer that he wanted to pull them out, not because of the fall but because of something more internally oriented.

Scenarios, conversations, and experiences flood his feeble mind in an excruciatingly forceful manner.

Mr. Edward, spasming because of both physical pain and mental shock, was reduced to nothing more than a dispossessed observer in his own mind, pushed aside whilst what remained of his active consciousness or sense of self struggled to remain afloat.

This continued for what Mr. Edward would describe as years, and yet only a few agonizing hours had gone by in the forsaken world.

Powerless and in a state of profound confusion, Mr. Edward lost consciousness.

Time passed.

Darkness, confusion, and cold were the only words that Mr. Edward could think of as he regained consciousness, but as he steadied his bearings, he remembered with chilling accuracy all that had happened and was frightened of all that had yet to happen.

For how long was he out?

He knew not, but the passage of his time did not seem to make a difference in the scale of things.

A saving grace, solace, or an object of optimism were things Mr. Edward sought with futile attempts in the confusion of his own mind if it could still be called his own.

Separated but within reach, Mr. Edward found something mixed amid his beautiful sea of existence and memories of unfamiliar origins.

There were memories of a boy no more than thirteen years of age featuring conversations that Mr. Edward could simply not understand.

His confusion mostly stemmed from the now reduced but still present language barrier that plagued him; it was akin to holding a device storing a lifetime's worth of films, with said films spoken in a completely alien language featuring some strange, outlandish sights and practices wholly unfamiliar to the wielder.

Mr. Edward stood up slowly, encountering none of the earlier resistance that had so persistently inconvenienced him.

He stood still, shocked, confused, and skeptical of his own locomotion whilst he tried to comprehend what had just occurred.

"Reincarnation? No. Transmigration?"

He muttered to himself in wonder whilst ransacking his mind for topics, facts, and research material on said subject.

The only leads he could find were occultic, tinged with superstitious practices and beliefs that he had happened to come across on his journey for answers about the end of human life. In other words, they were worthless.

Mr. Edward was quick to dismiss those fragments of information as an instinctive reaction more than anything else, as he found such beliefs without the presence of tangible evidence nothing more than folklore.

But at this very moment, in the confines of a mud hovel, walls glowing with different colors and his mind with the memories of another entity, Mr. Edward was forced to reconsider grimly.

He remembered the practices of Hinduism, Jainism, and certain traditions within Taoism that believed in the presence and existence of an eternal soul passing through a circle of birth, death, and rebirth.

Then there was the practice of Buddhism, which did not believe in a soul but rather a continuous stream of consciousness that moved from one life to another, its fate governed by karma.

Pertaining to Buddhism Mr. Edward could recall things, words with profound meanings he had picked up during his travels like Anatta, Skandhas, and others of such which he dared not think least he died from the sheer absurdity of it all. 

At this point, Mr. Edward was aware that it would be considered foolish not to seriously consider a likely solution or answer to the problem before him.

He was just unwilling, averse to the fact that he had been the hypocrite by discarding religion altogether, and yet amid his overwhelming emotions, he found excitement.

Odd, baffling excitement not in his situation but at the existence of potential research materials that he could use to further perfect his life's work.

"It seema that there is more to it all than I have been able to grasp."

Mr. Edward muttered whilst making his way to the stone slab before him, his unfaltering gaze set on the tomb-like book lying atop it.

Unclasping the leather straps with his unfamiliarly tiny hands, Mr. Edward found himself caressing a thick brownish page possibly handmade with the materials derived from cotton rags or something akin to it, like a form of linen perhaps.

The pages were sewn to the book with diaphanous thin threads of linen-like material bounding them tightly to the leather cover of the book.

Mr. Edward noticed the cryptic nature of the writing on these arcane pages, cryptic indeed to him and only him, as he was sure that the intelligent lifeforms native to this place would think otherwise.

Amid the unfamiliarity, he could at least find some faint traces of the English alphabet; for example, some scribbles resembling the letters A, D, H, E, and P, a few deformed X's, and something akin to a caricatured N.

Unfortunately, Mr. Edward, to his dismay was forced to close the book which so tickled his fancy, not because he wanted to, but because of outside disturbance which left him frowning in anger, a hint of regret in his mind.

He should have expected by the progression of earlier events the results that lay before him and escaped beforehand, and yet he did not.

He also had not fully regained motor control. That much was true, but such did not elude the truth: Mr. Edward, in his thought-absorbed state, did not try to flee; if there had been a numerical figure associated with his survival skills, he reckoned it would be zero.

But thoughts be thoughts and were irrelevant in the face of the ever-increasing truth before him.

Footsteps, suggesting multitudinous entities, the cacophonous and almost pandemonic sound of chatter in a strange and alternative language, paired with the ominous chill that spoke of an uncertain future.

It suggested, no Mr. Edward was sure of it, outside his hut was a crowd, and judging by the nature and tone of their chatter...

They were hostile.