Tunnel Walk

I was cycling down a country road. A big lorry came and knocked me off my bike. I lay down by the roadside, dazed, confused, in pain. Then I got up. I saw a tunnel. It looked like a really old mineral line, like the railway of some old coal mine or industrial plant. I knew it wasn’t in use now. Grass was growing up between the sleepers.

I entered the tunnel. Every single sleeper felt a little less painful than the one before, so I walked on, for what might have been half a mile. At the end of the tunnel the tracks came out into the daylight. There, I met my old Chemistry teacher from school.
“Hello, Mr. Freizer,” I said.
“One of my old students, excellent,” he said, and shook my hand.
“I remember you. You’re my Chemistry teacher. The one who said, ‘This year we’re going to learn that this amazing thing we call life is just a series of chemical reactions.”
“Jonathan, I’ve come to tell you I was wrong.”
“Have you retired?”
“Retired? That was a long time ago. I’m dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“How long ago was I your Chemistry teacher?”
“1979.”
“How old was I then?”
“In your late fifties.”
“I’m dead, Jonathan, and so are you.”
“Am I?”
“Well, you’re family think you’re dead, and that doctor thinks you’re dead. I think he only intends to carry on for another twenty minutes.”
“What’s it like being dead? Do you enjoy it?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it was something you’d enjoy.”
“Even if it’s a bit boring, it must be really peaceful.”
“It’s not exactly as peaceful as most people think it is, either. Jonathan, you need to go back down the tunnel, even if the pain is agony. Take it from me, it’s a lot better than being dead.”

I walked back down the tunnel, each railway sleeper more painful than the last, for a good half mile, until I came to the daylight at the other end, this time falling on the ground as my body convulsed with pain. I woke up in a hospital bed. My family and some medical staff in white coats were all around me. A nurse looked at me and said, “We had to work hard to get you back.”