Ed is dead
This is Edwin Scaramanga. To those who know him, those who love him and even those who despise him, he is known simply, affectionately, bluntly, occasionally with some exasperation, as Ed.
Ed is 33 years old, and lives in an unremarkable side street in Islington, north London. He works in market research. He hates having his photo taken. He has a recurring nightmare in which he is trapped at the bottom of a lift shaft. He always imagines that he is talking to an Easter Island statue when he uses the telephone.
This continued use of the present tense may well be factually incorrect.
Ed is dead. Or at least he thinks he is. He is not entirely sure, since the sensation of being dead is not one he has experienced before. There is a possibility, thinks Ed in his deadness — false or otherwise — that he may simply have drunk too much Ouzo at a Greek restaurant last night. But if that was the case, Ed ponders, would he feel this cold, unmoving and seemingly without aches or pains? Ed thinks that he should find out for certain whether he is still very much alive, or not. He also thinks that he should finally get round to paying his TV licence today.
Edwin Scaramanga: 1976–2009. Possibly.