The Senselessness of Immortality

 

The Senselessness of Immortality

A short story by Bryan Smithson "Lovecraft"

I had been sent to the ocean. I had been sent there to die. My judge had been the monster from my very dreams. A tentacled freak, he cares little but for himself. As I set out for the cabin by the beach, I noticed a number scrawled atop of it; the number 19. Birth. Death. This is what 19 meant to me. The beginning of your life to the very end. All of it. 

It wasn't long after I started my stay at the cabin that there was an electrical fire. Everything was caught in the flames. All of my clothes had gone to a cinder, leaving me with only the coat on my back. I left, continuing on to the abandoned school. Children had not been taught there for several decades. In the school's whispy halls, I imagined the brutality of one such student, the very same incident that caused this school to close. He had bound up student after student, piling them into the corner. After gathering each of his classmates up, he left them there, only to open fire outside in the halls. After each potential witness had been slain, he then executed what could have been his chums.

My journey didn't end at the school. I went to the place that Cthulhu had wanted me to see, the underground casino. A door, that opens to a door, and then another door. Behind these doors, a lavatory, presumably that belonged to the casino. Behind it was spiraling stairs, leading to the room where my captor sat. He was a young man, with long flowing hair and a golden smile, eyes full of crimson, it was he that I knew could not die. He dealt me cards, to the tune of 21. This was the number I had came to, from 19 to 21. 21, 3 sevens, or the assumptive God's lucky number. This is when I knew my own fate, unlike the other victims in the fire, or the students in the school, I would live like this man, forever. Why? Because I am Cthulhu's chosen, and he hates me so. To live a long meandrous life where I watch daisies die and maidens lie, upon a field of rotting grass. This is a true nightmare, to hurt, and not perish, to hunger, and not crumble. Welcome to eternity, found right next to the Pacific. I've found hell, it being a watery undying grave.

He didn't resent the fact that he could not die, saying he has at least 15 years to continue his friendship with his chipper mate. 15, a dreaded number again, this one adding to 6, the tempter's favorite. I despised the subtle ways of this trip, and wondered what my contractor really intended with my life. To kill a man for his fruit was a spoiled venture, one full of maniacal splendor. If I wanted to fulfil the wishes of dear Cthulhu, I must take with my own force this man's legacy. I could make this immortal die, for I am in the bellows of a place where the leviathan shouts and dreams flounder. I reached across the table, and choked the man, in front of all his accomplices. He turned lavender, and not one tried to stop me, as he ceased to do the one thing he needed to presume, to breathe. For even though a man lives forever does not mean he can do so if he no longer breathes. Like a fish out of water, and a man buried beneath the sea, he laid on the floor, motionless, his attendants without an expression.  I had proven my labors, and now I would wear the mantle, of the leader of the filthy casino under the sea. May they gods have harrow, as my existence now insulted thy maker. From 19, to 21, to 15, I had learned the lesson with simple logic, that what goes forward may still come back. 

There's one simple thing I will embrace. Death is for the unworthy. The worthy are those that the gods pity. Cthulhu asserted the fact he hates me. This is why I must be his, and dwell within the bowels of his lair. God would hate anyone he spared, and hate them indefinitely should they live on so. This is what I know, that I am damned.