I was always used to disapproval. It was a given being a drinking, smoking, sexing female of my time. Disapproval clung to me like expensive perfume, and it was just as attractive to some.
However, I was also used to attention. Therefore being alone in the corner of a room filled with people was highly unusual and utterly annoying. I had dressed up for this party, a long straight dress and kitten heels, my face adorned with thick make-up and my short bob covered in a round hat, as was the norm for a girl like me. I had expected more attention, especially of the male persuasion.
So I was not surprised when a dark, handsome man came up to me.
I was not surprised when he handed me a glass of champagne.
We talked for quite some time. He was charming and well-spoken, as well as being very attractive. He could sense, I think, how miserable I was, being young and unsatisfied as a female in the ninteen twenties. He seemed like a genuine guy, and I was about to leave (and ask him to join me) when he gave me a choice, of anything in the world. I laughed in his face, being the bitch that I was, and decided to try and make as big a fool of him as I could. I had presumed he was talking in terms of courtship and marriage, and he was trying to be suave.
Eternal youth, I told him. Let me live forever and never grow older.
I was unhappy, and no matter how many men I slept with, no matter how short my hair was, how thick my make-up was, how fast I drove my car, I was not satisfied. I thought it was fear of growing older, of wasted time that spurred my depression and apathy. I was wrong.
He laughed and told me if I gave him my soul, I could live forever. I laughed in his face and said he was welcome to it, it was going to hell anyway. I didn't believe in souls or energy or any of that new age crap. He produced a document.
I signed it. I was twenty-two and I was fucking stupid.
When I woke up the following morning, I felt fantastic. My skin was as clear as fresh water, my eyes were bright and my hair was practically luminous. My scars were gone. I was never beautiful to begin with, but without my imperfections I could turn heads, if only so they could make sure I was real - perfection is completely unnatural. And still I thought nothing if it.
Until I ate my breakfast. It was strange, everything around me was perfect, it was the perfect temperature, my body somehow was just was the right shape. Then I spooned my breakfast into my mouth, and what was originally eggs was spat back onto the plate as ash. I tried again, but the food kept turning to ash in my mouth, and when I tried to wash the taste of it away, the water burned down my throat like it was fire.
I spat it all out and still didn't understand, not until I went outside and walked straight through a human being. A solid, sentient being. I screamed. She couldn't hear me though, and this time when I ran back to my flat and into my bedroom, I saw myself lying there, covered in blood with several deep lacerations all over my body. My face contorted in horror, and I doubted that it was real, that this horror and savagery could be real.
It was.
I know because I've spent the last one hundred years in this existence. Eternal youth, but without a reason for it. Immortality, without a body to get hurt, but similarly without pleasure. Without anybody, without any human contact, it was futile. Youth, with no one to see me. I think morality is necessary to be human. I wouldn't consider sanity one of my traits anymore.
But c'est la vie. Que sera sera. Or so they tell me. At least now I've had time and space to plan the perfect revenge. My lack of humanity sets me free. Evolution is the only way forward, after all. I suppose the only thing I'll need is a body. And what fun I shall have choosing one.
