Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27190570-20160110215647

You’d be surprised how easy it is to not realise that you’re immortal. Your mind feels pain because it’s convinced itself that it should  feel pain. A lot of times, people don’t realise their own immortality until something that should  have killed them doesn’t. For example, I knew an immortal, let’s call him John. John and I were walking down a street when the fifty dollar bill in his hand was caught by the wind and drifted to rest in the road. Since traffic was slow he ran into the street to fetch his tinder. Even I  didn’t see the truck coming. Plowed into him at thirty miles above the speed limit and rolled right over his body. I’m sure anyone who saw this occur would expect to see a John-shaped stain on the road, but unfortunately for any stain enthusiast, John was unharmed. John was twenty-two at the time, now seven years later he still looks twenty-two. John was made aware of his own immortality, and as a result his body saw no reason to age. But, cases such as John’s are rare. I’d wager to guess that about one twenty-fifth of all humans existing at any given time are born immortal. That’s right, about Three-hundred-twenty-million of you have the ability to never die.

Granted, the body must be made aware of its deathless status. You wouldn’t believe how many people die of old age while being immortal. You’ve heard the anecdote about the frog in the pot of water right? Turn up the heat slow, and the frog boils to death. Turn it up fast, and the frog leaps out. The same is true for humans. Slow killers such as natural causes or disease won’t make the body aware of its deathlessness, for that you need trauma. To become immortal, you need to suffer trauma that normally would have killed you instantly. Now before you go leaping off of cliffs, ask yourself, is living forever worth the risk of possibly killing yourself. Would you rather shoot yourself and end up being immortal, while possibly being killed by the gunshot, or are you going to play it safe, live for eighty years and die choking on you own vomit in some low-rent retirement home without ever knowing the truth?

By now, you must be thinking about who I am to possess such knowledge. Who would be evil enough to pose such an impossible dilemma. I go by many names, all of which were given to me by you lot. Satan sound familiar? Maybe death? The Grim Reaper, Hades, Bahamut, Prince of Lies, Shepherd of the Damned? What about Thanatos? Yama, Pluto, Nergal? So, yes I posed the question. There’s three outcomes to this. Either you pop a gun in your mouth and don’t die, you die from the gunshot wound, or you die of old age never knowing the truth. Of course, I could be lying about this whole thing, but you’re human. If I know anything about you lot, it’s that you hate missed opportunity. Either way, chances are, I’ll be seeing you soon.  