31 prompts: immortality

Evenstar Lucifer

“Immortality is a strange thing,” Mephis says to his captive audience.  He really didn’t want to be up there, and we all knew it.  But then, the six of us had finally managed to regroup in New York after falling out of the sky only a few months ago.  The press had been waiting for us all, separate flights though we all obviously had.  Seeing as how we had all landed in different countries and all.

I had managed to hold off my own ‘conference’ by saying that it might be more economical for all concerned if they would just settle down and wait the few more hours it would take for Belz’s flight from…Paris, I think…to arrive.  Abaddon, Satan, Mephis, and Sama hadn’t been anywhere near so lucky.  And so, under the transparent pretense of needing to use the restroom, I hunted them all down and managed to find a private room in the airport where we could hold our impromptu press conference without disrupting traffic.

“It allows you the unique experience of watching while everything around you grows and changes while you yourself remains static,” he continued, obviously venting his frustration at not being allowed to curl up somewhere warm and sleep on the reporters.  “It allows you the even more unique sensation of standing still while life swirls past you at dizzying speeds.

“You watch while everyone around you withers and eventually dies, while you do not even change a fraction of a degree; you live in your own way as well as you can and then you discover upon coming to a new place that your way is much too slow.

“If you have been afflicted with the disease of immortality long enough, you have lived enough to know exactly what can and cannot hurt you, and you know thousands of strategies for avoiding all the things that can hurt you.  Avoidance is the key to sanity when conquered by this deadly affliction of immortality; if you can avoid something and it can hurt you, by all means, avoid it.

“I speak not of physical pain when I speak of hurt; when you are immortal, physical pain ceases to have meaning beyond a temporary inconvenience.  More often than not, physical pain becomes less time than it would take to think about blinking an eye.  Only the strongest of physical pains can last even long enough to actually blink.

“And so I speak of emotional pain.  Emotional pain can last forever, even when one is not immortal.  Angry words can be sustained within a mind for as long as life; hatred can last even longer.  Sorrow can bind a soul into never finding peace anywhere, no matter where it goes.  It can also twist a soul into only finding peace in the harshest of punishments.  

“I speak partly from experience when I say this.  But that is beside my point.  For when you can die, you know that there is always a way out of whatever pain haunts you.  I do not intend to endorse suicide, nor murder, nor any other kind of killing; I am merely stating a fact that I have noticed over the years.  And there are kinds of immortality that permit the victim to survive forever yet also allow them to be slain, perhaps in violence, perhaps by broken heart.

“These are not the kinds of immortality of which I speak.  I speak of the kind that will never permit you to perish, regardless of your wounds, physical or mental.  This is the most virulent kind of immortality, the most horrible.  For when you know that you can never die, you know that you can never escape any pain that haunts you.  Ever.  And so you seek comfort from others, others who are as afflicted as you…and you avoid mortals as much as possible.  For to an immortal as afflicted as we, a mortal is the most fearsome enemy, for if you grow too close to them, they will eventually hurt you; either within their life or by dying,” he said.  He certainly had a way with words.

“Well…that’s great, but what does that have to do with why you are all here?” the reporter who had provoked Mephis’s rant wondered in confusion.

“Nothing at all,” Mephis says with a smile, and he descends from  the podium.

I applaud him in the mindscape.  You have a way with words, I compliment him.

Thanks, Evenstar.  Now where’s the nearest squishy place?