[The part I've underlined is a part I'd like help to re-word please]

      I'd heard the stories, analysed the photos and read the reports a thousand times and still, nothing could have prepared me for actually living it.
      My fingertips traced the lines on the wall, the intricate pattern of carvings. Supposedly as old as twenty centuries, the engravings twirled and danced their way along the red stone. Depicting man and the earth, plants and other animals, the wall seemed to tell a story of its own.
      Stepping back to admire the primitive art, my eyes were drawn immediately to the centrepiece: an A4 eye made of stained glass.
      The centre of the eye, the pupil, I noticed, was in the shape of a hand, the iris a green blush surrounding it.
      Seeing it in front of me, I recalled and dismissed all the warning stories about touching it. I suddenly got the idea, the feeling, that it wouldn't happen to me, that I wasn't like the others.
      I put my hand up against the pupil.
      A rush of wind, a blinding light, a rumble through the floor, walls, air, and then... nothing.
      I was consumed by nothingness. It wasn't pitch black, I was submerged in constantly shifting colours I couldn't even name.
      Slowly, I turned in a circle. There, on one side, though I'm not sure you can say a null-void has sides, was a circular window.
      I'd hardly call it walking but somehow I knew it wasn't teleportation. I thought about going over to it and then I was there.
      Looking through the glass circle, I saw the room I thought I was still stood in - the ancient red stone and dust-covered floor. But rather than being empty, there was a man staring at me, no, through me, who I'd never seen before.
      I tried to lean forward to see better, pressing my hand against the centre of the window for support.
      At the contact,  a burning sensation shot through my hand and arm and whole body.
      I yanked my hand away but not before the print of it had been seared into the glass. And that's when I realised the stories were true.
      I'm looking through the eye.

Tell me the truth:
1) Did you like it?
2) At the end, I switch to present tense to make it seem like I'm still there. Do you get that from it or should I just change it to past tense?