Title: Immortality and Inhumanity

Category: One-Shot Fiction (supernatural)

     I will live forever.  Do you know how many people wish for that? None, I tell you.  Sure, some people think they want to live forever.  Until they find our just how much fun it really is.  I used to be afraid to die.  Now I wish I could.

     I destroy lives.  It’s like being a vampire, but you don’t get the excuse of not being human anymore, losing your soul and the like the way they lost them in that TV show I used to like…what was its name?  It’s been hundreds of years since I watched it; I can’t remember anymore.  It doesn’t matter.  That’s not the point here.  The point is that I am a human being who has become a monster out of pure cowardice. 

     I became immortal because immortals must destroy others to save themselves.  I’m not gonna cry about it; she did what she had to do.  This existence, you see, is actually a cruel experiment, a game if you will, of one being who has powers beyond the grasp of any human and a lack of morals incomprehensible to my mind.  If I were the religious type, I’d call him Satan, but over the years I’ve lost my faith.  No God would let His people be puppets for the Fallen Angel like this.  No, he, or IT, is just some freak of nature messing with the weak.  I’ve heard this story so many times…

     IT was the first immortal.  No one knows how he came to exist, but most wish it had never been.  For eons, he chose to lay low, watching societies rise and fall.  And at some point in ancient history, he began to create others like him.  He was gifted, if you would call it that, with the ability to force others into his way of life.  Perhaps he was evil from birth, or perhaps he went mad as his life dragged on for millennia, but whichever it was, he was out to torment us.  Humanity became his toy.  IT started small; he found a rich king and offered him immortality.  The greedy man, believing his gods had sent him a mighty wizard to reward him for his devotion, took the offer immediately, never thinking about the consequences or asking about the catches.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  IT would only have lied.  And so the king became immortal.  He would never age, never die, never be susceptible to disease, and be unscathed by any situation that would cause any other injury.  For eleven months, he basked in the newfound glory.  Then he learned of the catch.  He would be required to make one other person an immortal every fifty years, and as a show of good faith, he would need to choose his first person within the month.

     The king was enraged!  How could this wonderful benefactor now expect him to share this gift with others?  It would be much more enjoyable if he were unique.  IT insisted, and threatened to take away the gift if the king would not comply with the demands.  Reluctantly, the king approached his wife with the idea of immortality.  She, too, was interested.  So the king spoke to IT and told him that the queen was interested in joining him in this blissful state.  IT told him that all he needed do was place his hand upon her shoulder and speak the words, “Join me.”  The king sighed.  It would be a shame to be no longer the only immortal.  Well, best not to think about it.  He went back to his wife and did as he had been told.  Now she, too, could look forward to living forever.  They ruled their nation as demigods.  After all, they did not age!  The people believed that the two rulers were blessings for them from their makers.  And fifty years flew by.

     IT returned.  He reminded the king and informed the queen of the conditions of immortality.  This time, however, they would have to choose someone outside the immediate family.  The king and queen were devastated.  Their children had grown old, and passed on, and they had counted on immortalizing a grandchild.  But there was nothing they could do.  IT held all the cards, and they would have to live by his rules.  They each immortalized their favorite and most loyal servant.  It was bothersome finding a good attendant, and they would now have no need to find other help in the future.  They never even asked permission.  The servants almost resented their masters, but at the same time they felt blessed.  The time for resentment did not come for another 100 years.

     The king and queen were once again not permitted to immortalize family members.  Neither were the servants permitted to do so.  And so, after two more cycles of bringing in others, there were 16 immortal beings walking the planet in addition to IT, 14 of them being palace servants.  Shortly after the eight new servants were added to the ranks, a famine struck the region.  After the famine had continued for months, killing half the kingdom’s people and weakening the rest, disease tore through the capitol city and killed everyone but the sixteen immortals and IT.  It is now speculated that IT had his hand in the deal and caused this terrible loss, simply to provoke the next disaster.

     Immortality has its downside.  You outlive everyone and everything that was important to you.  And the servants turned on the king and queen for putting this burden upon their shoulders.  They took off for another land, never to return to their home.  After all, there was nothing left there but an abandoned capitol with no citizens and a ruined kingdom with too few people left to be called a nation.  The king and queen tried to come to terms with their loss, but they could not.  They now realized that the gift they had so readily taken was truly a curse.  They begged IT to revoke their immortality and let them die.  He would not.  To watch them suffer had been his plan from the start.  The queen, feeling that the king had somehow deceived her when he made her immortal, left him.  The king was crushed.  He had gained everything, and now he had lost it all.  He would have done anything to rid himself of his eternal life, and given anything to undo the act of passing the curse to others.  In his shame and grief, he took to wandering the desserts, feeling hunger yet never being able to starve to death, feeling thirst but failing to dehydrate.  When the time came for him to make his next immortal, as he was required to do ever fifty years, the once mighty king refused.

     IT chuckled.  His voice rang with a sinister, yet pleased, tone.  “But you must remember that you wanted this gift.  A deal is a deal, and you must.  If you do not, you will be damned to Hell for all time!”

     The king sobbed.  “No Hell of the gods’ making can be worse than the one I have made for myself!”

     Again IT laughed.  “You’ll live to regret those words.  Forever!”  With that, the sand of the desert was blown up into a short-lived storm.  When it cleared, the king saw the queen standing before him.  Many years had passed, yet he immediately recalled his passion for her.  He moved towards her, and she shed a tear.

     “IT told me that if I would not make another like us, IT would send you to Hell.  And after all these years, my love for you fades not.  I didn’t want too, but I did as I must; I have taken another.  And now IT tells me that through your own refusal to do as you must, you’ve condemned yourself to the fate I sought to spare you from!  It’s terrible…”  With that, she fell to her knees and wept.  And as her tears hit the sand, the sand again began to blow in the storm winds.  When again it cleared, her husband was gone to the depths of Hell, or rather, IT’s dwelling, and all that was left was the faint echo of IT’s laughing.  And so for fifty years she wandered the desert like her husband had, wishing only for the death she could not have.

     The time came again for her to make another of her kind.  How many were there now?  Too many.  Too many innocents suffering for her and her husband’s greed.  IT appeared to her, demanding that she make another.  She refused.  After all she’d been through, all she’d suffered, Hell would be better than this.  He laughed.  “You are wrong.  I can show you what your husband suffers now, and what you will suffer if ever you fail in your bicentennial duties.”  He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her screaming to his dwelling, which IT likes to refer to as Hell.  What she saw there has never been recounted in true detail.  It is known only that it was horrible enough that to this day, the queen lives on and every fifty years takes another to become like her.  And every day to punish herself, she has lashed herself with whips, belts, chains, anything to feel pain to repent yet unable to bleed.  No one knows for certain what she saw in IT’s domain that could be worse than what she puts herself through.  We know only that we do not wish to find out.  And despite the guilt that we feel, we continue to make others.  Over time, the rule became every 100 years, then 150.  After all, if there were no more mortals left in time, what would IT have to torture us with?  And every now and again, you hear of a few immortals who had a moral or religious epiphany, found God or some such spiel, and had themselves sent off to Hell.  Well, I begin to understand.

     Every time I take another mortal and make them whatever sick and twisted breed I am, I make them face this dilemma.  I make them face the possibility of IT’s Hell!  What right do I have to endanger them so that I may preserve myself?  None.  Nothing but cowardice keeps me doing this.  Because that queen knows what’s down there.  And the suffering she inflicts upon herself is more than I could bear.  If that is less than the torments of IT’s Hell, I won’t be letting myself go. So I’ll take my victim.  That’s really what they are, is victims of this torture.  Every day, every night, every waking minute and in my nightmares it tortures me that I destroy so many for my own well-being.  Isn’t it hypocritical that I used to be a firm supporter of animal rights when I was mortal?  Don’t kill the animals, don’t torture the animals, and now I torture humans every century and a half, curse them to an eternity of mental anguish, and set off an ever-expanding pyramid of innocents that will suffer.  Am I a monster for my weakness?  Long ago I gave up judging.  And I don’t care if you judge me.  What can you do about it?  What do you matter to me?  I’ll live to see your great-great-great-great- great-great-grandchildren six feet under.  And in only five more years, I must take someone else.  It might be you, your family, your friends.  I’m sorry…but it will be so.