Immortals | ✓

09 | aethera

THIS year was automatically fucked for me from the minute that it began. I knew it. Deep down, I had known it since the clock struck twelve and another year began with screams of happiness and tears of joy and kisses of love and lust. 

I am superstitious in ways that one should definitely not be. 

At twelve 'o one, I began the year in my dorm room, alone and away from the chaos unfurling behind my door, tucked in my blanket on a bitterly cold January morning. My windows were shut but the drawn-away curtains gave me a clear view of the thing I hated the most, snow. 

It fell calmly that night, all through the morning of the new year's first day. 

Snowing on new year's day is definitely not a bad omen, but sustaining a paper cut by the oldest book on my shelf is. Barely sixty seconds into the wretched year and there were two drops of blood on my favourite pyjamas and just that night, I had to be out of any band-aids. Too many coincidences or just one really shitty year's beginning? My superstitious self thought of the latter.

Since that moment, my over-scrutinizing brain blamed every misfortune on the year that just couldn't start on a better note. A bad grade? Another paper cut a month later? Pasta salad cancelled from the menu? The next novel on my reading list issued by someone already? Slipping in the shower? Blame it all on the year.  

And this week, was the cherry on top of the cake. It had to happen this year. I knew it. I knew it since I had woken up that if and when I would have the answers and the reasoning behind all of this, they would be bad, but of course, this year had to make the answers not just bad, but - pardon my French - really fucked up. 

The woman I had been chatting with all morning and sharing clothes and pleasantries with, was somehow easily over a hundred years, looking not a day over twenty-five? She made even twenty-five look young if I was being honest. But then how could I, or Art have ever known? How could we ever know what awaited us? These weren't things one could imagine, these were things someone would write books and fantasies about, never expecting them to actually happen in real life. 

Stories like these weren't supposed to be real. 

But then by not believing my reality, am I just trying to be rational like Art or straight-out delusional? It is, actively, happening. I cannot deny its existence anymore. Ever since I woke up, my life seemed to be playing like an old story of the legends we ever only heard of. 

As I sat on the floor of the shower, I hummed an intelligible sound, just to tune out the voices and noises. For once, it was me, my thoughts, and the running water. I had just lectured Art on positivity and here I was, crumbling in negativity. I had it all bottled up. 

Within me, I was freaking out. Sure enough, I was the one who believed there was no logical explanation to this. But this? Is this what I had actually expected would happen? Never in my wildest dreams and craziest imagination did I perceive a reason that would lead me here? I touched my arms, my legs, the damp skin of my face and for a moment, it didn't even feel mine anymore. 

What have you become? I whispered to myself. 

I woke up this morning thinking I was going to wing all of this, after all, how did it matter? Being here was better than being strapped to a hospital bed. I had no one before and I had no one now. I could walk out of here and no one in the world would protect me. No parents, no relatives, no best friends. No one to care. 

Being here, listening to her, made me realise that I had been worrying about the wrong thing all this while. I shouldn't be caring about not having anyone to get me out of this mess, I had Art this week, didn't I? Somehow, we got here.