Immortality is not what you’d think it is. My father was righteous, or well, he thought he was. He was a witch-finder. One of those old men who burned women who could read at the stake. Unfortunately for me, I was the firstborn to my father. And as all stories go with witches and firstborns, I was cursed. Because of my father’s actions, I was never to die. I was cursed with immortality. You might be thinking,
“How could immortality be so bad? You get to live forever!” I suppose so. However, it isn’t that easy. I got to live my life normally, as normally as I could, being a kid in 1660. I got the bubonic plague when I was very young, but I survived. My body, however, did not. My heart stopped pumping, I was declared dead, but I could still think. I couldn’t feel anything, but I watched as my mother grieved at my side, me being unable to tell her anything, to tell her I was still alive. I tried, but nothing worked. I tried so hard to cry, to move, to speak, but nothing worked. This was only the first time I would go through this endless cycle of madness.
Imagine having to watch yourself rot, painfully aware of all the bugs eating through your skin until the maggots finally eat your eyes, rendering you blind. Imagine trying not to go mad, sitting underground for thousands of years until, finally, the earth sets you free, and you hope that somehow you will be able to see once again. You’re a tiny dust particle in a world full of them.
Once you make contact with something living, you get to see through its eyes. Well, if it has eyes. You can hear through its ears, taste through its tongue, and feel through its nerves. But you can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t communicate with the host. You’re like a parasite, leeching off of the host and controlling in the dark. If the host is unconscious, you can take control.
I have no mind of my own; nothing is forever. I have seen empires rise and fall, rockets launched, and guns fired. I have died hundreds of thousands of times. The world has become strange. I never know where I’m going to end up. I saw inventions; I am quite proud of how far electronics have come.
People say that life goes too fast, but they wouldn’t think that if they were like me. I cannot breathe my own air, cannot speak my own words, cannot feel my feelings. It’s like an infinite loop of eternal limbo that I can never escape. Everything is so strange. I’ve thought about taking my host’s life during their sleep to try to end this awful cycle. But it never ends. It just keeps going. I can’t stop it. I can’t talk to anybody about it. Nothing is ever going to get better.
Immortality is not what you’d think it is.
Author’s Note:
This was written a while ago. The whole idea behind it came from a “what if?” question regarding Immortality and its faults.
Phoebe Schaefle | 14 | United States of America | @inconvenient_lamp on TikTok
