The Ladies of Horror
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At Last, I am Immortal
by Naching T. Kassa
At last, I am immortal. Death with his cold and skeletal fingers, can no longer touch me.
You do not know how long I have waited for this moment. What I have done to achieve it.
It began with my malleable but fragile flesh. As the march of time robbed year after year of my life, I sought the help of surgeons to reclaim them. They smoothed the wrinkles and the stretch marks, nipped and tucked and severed until I resembled the woman I had once been. But it didn’t last. Time raged on, and soon the flesh could no longer hold its pleasing look. No matter how much I cut away.
My energy flagged, and I turned to drugs for vitality, searching for my Fountain of Youth among the many chemicals which lined the shelf. Some granted me the endurance of a 20-year-old. But all the results were ephemeral. For every hour of exquisite energy, I suffered two hours of fatigue. Soon, I could barely move.
Death was hunting me, as he had since the day of my birth. I could feel his slender fingers reaching for me. And so, I turned to Dr. Lazarus Satine and his wonderful machines.
My name on the dotted line was the first price I paid for my immortality. My poisoned flesh came next.
He replaced my right foot with a wondrous machine, covered in silicone skin. I was skeptical at first, the light blue didn’t seem to be the hue I wanted. But he assured me, those who were immortal would not resemble those who had come before. They would be superior in all aspects and design.
And so, I became. I sacrificed my hair for a beautiful head striped with finest blue. My skin, tanned by the moon, possessed an amazing glow. I had never been what one might be called modest, and so I clothed myself in the Satine’s haute couture, a strange, jet-black cloth which covered only what needed covering.
On the last day of my becoming, Dr. Satine presented me with my last piece. The smallest finger of my left hand.
“No longer will you need these tubes of blood to sustain you,” he said, removing them from my chest and back. “The vial in your finger contains a super serum, one which will maintain your needs until the end of time. And the glass can never be broken. It is a polymer of such strength that nothing will ever penetrate it. Not in a hundred years. Not in a thousand. You will live forever.”
I wish I could have believed him. Maybe, if I hadn’t had so many disappointments in the past, I might have. I just couldn’t take that chance. And so, I tore his legs off at the knees, cauterized the wounds, and confined him to his house for the next seventy years.
Just in case.
Death took him today. I watched his eyes dim and heard the death rattle from his lips. I guess he was right. I never needed another body part.
I wonder what he was working on all those years. I could never figure it out.
Today, I took my immortal form into the sun for the first time. The world is much changed from the last time I was out and about.
Something approached me on silent wings, something metallic like me. It looked familiar, like something I may have seen in Satine’s lab. I extended my hand and it landed upon it.
An insect? It had wings and a long needle-like nose.
I felt no pain as it plunged its tiny proboscis into my little finger. But when it began to feast on the serum which pumped throughout my body, I felt the cold clutch of death reaching for me.
He brought me to my knees.
.
Fiction © Copyright Naching T. Kassa
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Naching T. Kassa:
Arterial Bloom
Lush. Brutal.
Beautiful. Visceral.
Crystal Lake Publishing proudly presents Arterial Bloom, an artful juxtaposition of the magnificence and macabre that exist within mankind. Each tale in this collection is resplendent with beauty, teeth, and heart.
Edited by the Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Mercedes M. Yardley, Arterial Bloom is a literary experience featuring sixteen stories from some of the most compelling dark authors writing today.
With a foreword by HWA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Linda D. Addison, you are invited to step inside and let the grim flowers wind themselves comfortably around your bones.
Spreading the Writer's Word 