Refined Tastes

No one can fathom what it means to live forever. It’s akin to something like insomnia, where time bleeds together in a long string of continuous torture: history unfolds, cycles of life begin and snuff out, and the earth turns. But I remain a relic: forgotten, passed over, and unchanged. I didn’t choose my fate. I never wanted it. I’ve always been a lonely creature because I dare not share my curse with another.

Not that I could now.

Bombs dropped, cities fell, and nuclear winter blanketed the world with snug suffocation. I suppose it was only a matter of time. This species I’ve always admired, with their glorious ingenuity, diversity, and passion, have ultimately destroyed themselves. Civilization crumbled in under a month, mass extinction of the world’s beauty occurred globally in a slow, mournful, united death cry. Immortality forced me to watch it all. All the delicious souls in their perfect fragility becoming nothing but grains of sand in a toxic wasteland they once called home. Radiation poisoning is a horrific way to die, but so are exposure, starvation, and hopelessness. I often feel the effects of these, but they’re more like a buzzing gnat around my face—annoying but not deadly.

There are no others left like me. I no longer hear the pulse of their blood—the almost tangible sound, like the heartbeat of the wind—that others like myself produce. It came to a halt a handful of years after the calamity. I assume most blew up with the...