Immortality

By Hani Manjunath

 Utter silence. Utter silence was all I could hear. That and the thundering of my heart in my ears. She stood in front of me with an expectant grin, waiting for me to return it. I didn’t. I wonder what makes her think I will, what makes her think this is anything other than the worst possible punishment she could’ve bestowed upon me. I take in a shuddering breath and exhale in staccato bursts, feeling as if I’ve been stripped bare, in front of a vulture no less, “What have you done?” She turns away from me to face the open stars with a pout, disappointed with my obvious lack of enthusiasm. But even that is a mere shadow on her exuberance. She believes she’s won. I suppose she has. “Darling, I simply wanted to repay you, for healing my wounds when no one else would.” She walks along the railing trailing her fingers through dust with eyes locked on the skyscrapers and the million tiny specks moving below. “I always wondered what it would feel like, to be timeless and perpetual. To be amaranthine in a way that is an affront to creation itself,” she turns to me then, with a glint in her eyes,” To be immortal.” ——————————————————————————————————————— 1000 years later… 
  I suppose it is tiring after all. To see the same stories on repeat, as if stuck in some broken recorder. My musings keep me trapped in my own head and, once more, I wonder if this is what hell is. I wonder what I did to deserve it. “Still glowering?”, she says, bemused, as if all these years have been one big joke. “Hardly, just contemplating.”, I reply, smothering that spark of rage. I’ve held myself together all these years, I can hold myself together for a while longer. Loyalty is such a farce, I laugh inwardly.    She steps up beside me to the railing and looks out at the city beyond. It’s bleak, as if life was a fleeting memory for it and nothing more. Grey is the only shade one can see. I wonder again, after all these years, what mortals ever saw in it. Does its mundanity reflect what's inside them, as if a colour were a broken mirror? “You know, sometimes, I wonder if I should have picked someone else.”, she says, her tone unreadable. Well, this was new. I turn an inquisitive gaze towards her. She doesn’t look at me and I notice, for the first time, what she’s wearing. Black. That was also new. In the long millenia I’d known her, this was the first time she wore anything other than blood red. She’s stiff all over and a shiver of apprehension runs down my spine. “Metaphorically speaking, I think the blood from my wounds have cooled down enough, don’t you think.”, she says before she lunges and pushes me over the railing.    I suppose immortals can die too.

By Hani Manjunath