Immortal

“1899, 1910, 1920, 1935, 1941, 1955, 1963, 1970, 1984, 1992, 2002, 2010.” He threw the photos down on the table. “Do you have anything you’d like to say?”

The woman chained to the chair lifted her head and grinned. She had a black eye, and there was blood dribbling down her chin from where two of her teeth had been pulled out, but still, she smiled at the man who’d inflicted all the damage on her.

“What can I say? I just have one of those faces, I look like a lot of people.” She jerked in her chair as he grabbed hold of the front of her t-shirt and yanked her upwards, pulling the chains on her ankles and wrists tight, he thrust his face so close to her she could feel his breath.

“I’ve spent my lifetime looking for one of you and the last thirty years tracking you, I know what you are, and I know the gift you have. I want it.” He dropped her back into the chair and started pacing around the room. “I know how this works. It’s a gift, you need to freely give it, but I found a loophole, it didn’t say anywhere in the book about a little persuasion leading to the gift being passed on”.

“What gift? All I hear is the raving of a mad man who has decided I’m immortal.” She spat the blood that was pooling in her mouth onto the floor. She was trying to keep him busy while she debated her options. She’s lived a thousand mortal lifetimes and had a thousand names, never staying in one place too long, so no one would ask too many questions. But as she’d feared for many years, technology had finally been her downfall. It used to be so easy to disappear and take a new name in a new place, but now everything was recorded; he had pictures of her from the last hundred years, damming evidence that she’d been alive a long time.

He glared at her and picked up the bolt cutters, placing her little finger between the blades.

“I grow tired of this. Give me your immortality.” He increased the pressure on her finger, biting into the skin, causing blood to seep out around the blades.

“I don’t have immortality. I have nothing to give.” She grinned and spat the blood from her mouth onto the floor.

He sighed and rammed the handle of the bolt cutters together, slicing effortlessly through her skin, then hacking through the bone. She screamed as he severed her finger, then slumped forwards in the chair. He lifted her head up by her hair, then sighed again, unconscious wasn’t going to help him, as she needed to be awake to pass on her immortality. He slapped her a few times just to be sure. Then grimaced as he looked at the blood spurting out of her mangled hand, as he really didn’t want her bloodstains all over his clothes.

Fourteen days he’d been trying to get her to admit who she was and give him her gift, and he’d been sure losing a finger would do it. He glanced at his watch and slammed out of the room as he was already running late for his meeting. He didn’t notice that he slammed the door so hard it bounced open again, but she did.

Opening her eyes, she looked up at the door and started to wiggle her hand out of the cuff, using her own blood to lubricate the metal and allow her freedom. She ripped the bottom of her t-shirt off and wrapped it around her hand to stem the flow of blood.

She figured she had thirty minutes before he would realise she was gone and came looking for her, but by then, it would be too late. He figured he had a loophole, but so did she.

She made it to the roof with no one stopping her and stood on the edge, looking into the sky and bathing in the sunlight for the last time. She stepped forwards, spreading her arms wide and feeling the wind rushing past her. She re-lived her thousand lifetimes as she fell, remembering her hopes, her dreams, her triumphs and her regrets.

She smiled one last time as she’d used her loophole. She could pass on her immortality, but she could also choose to end it.