The Stories of an Immortal

Aged

Being immortal isn't living forever; it's everyone else dying. Every day ghosts haunt me, surrounding my brain like a thick fog, making it impossible to see straight. At first these ghosts brought me pain and grief, but now I feel nothing.

Someone once said, "Never lose your emotions when making hard decisions. Your emotions are what make your decision right." But now my emotions have been lost in the centuries of living, and the hard decisions still remain.

The faint spirit of feelings nudge my mind when the time comes to make a choice. Yet they're never strong enough for me to be confident in my decision, never strong enough for me to feel regret over the millions who died as a consequence.

"When your emotions stop, you stop," they said. But if I stop, who will carry on? Sure, spending forever at a beach sounds wonderful, but it also isn't fair to those people who I can help, right? Everything ends and everyone dies (apart from me), and crying at their bedside won't do much good, but telling them a story might, right?

If you were at your last moments and someone told you magnificent tales of mermaids and werewolves, vampires and pirates, past balls and future spaceships, wouldn't that help? Even if that someone had caused your death, and your parents and your siblings and your friends?

There's pain in every story, in every decision, in every choice. Whether you choose to tell people about it is up to you. But that doesn't make it go away. That just keeps it hidden.

So, I may be too old to save your life, too old to make the right choices, too old to keep my morals straight. But my stories can hold your hand as you drift away, like a broken bottle on an ocean wave, and they're only there because of my aged decisions.