Immortality Is Just a Fractured Sense Of Reality

Her breathing is fast and laboured.

She knows this is the end, knows that she’s dying. It was only a matter of time.

Her lover lies fast asleep next to her, unaware of what is going on beside him. For a minute, his peaceful face creases in his dreams and she thinks that she has woken him up. But he only sighs heavily and rolls over, turning his back toward her weakening form as if he wants nothing more to do with her.

A spasm takes over her body and she chokes, fighting to regain control. The pale moonlight reaches its fingers through a small gap in the curtains, caressing her face pleasantly. A garbled sound that is her breath escapes her trembling lips, meeting the air with a rasp. It’s getting harder to breathe now, and she doesn’t know how much longer she has left.

She knows she’ll be forgotten when she’s dead. It’s not as if she ever did anything exciting or worthwhile in her life and she’s not even sure she wants her meagre years on the Earth remembered after she’s gone. After all, immortality is just a fractured sense of reality.

Her eyelids are as heavy as concrete. They delicately flutter closed as she convulses for the second time. She has to force them open again, treasuring every glance and moment that she is still alive. Her heart beat is slowing, fading, providing a marching band-like rhythm that will march her to Death’s awaiting icy embrace.

But not just yet. Oh no, not just yet.

The moonlight has turned sinister, and shadows are emerging from the corner of the room as her oxygen-deprived brain struggles to keep her alive. She’s fighting for her breath now, trying to suck in any air she can. But her lungs won’t let her. It’s like she’s locked in a battle with her mind and body. Her spidery-like fingers scrabble uncontrollably towards her lover in a desperate attempt to find comfort. But there is nothing; he still sleeps on, blissfully unaware of the agony she’s going through beside him.

Not enough time, she thinks desperately. She always knew she was going to die. She was even looking forward to it when the heavy blanket of depression was swallowing her in the past. But now she’s actually dying, she doesn’t want to give up her life without a struggle. A struggle which she is losing as the seconds crawl by.

The air in the room has grown as thick and hazy as her brain. She can almost sense Death waiting for her, tapping his feet impatiently and humming a merry tune under his breath.

This it; the end. Her time has come.

Her heart still provides the marching rhythm as she gives in and lets her eyelids slowly fall down, covering the pain and desperation laced in her eyes like a stage curtain hides performers on stage. And then, with one last pathetic attempt at breathing, she is still. Gone. Dead. However you say it, it will still sound blunt and ugly. There are no fancy, eloquent words for death, no matter how hard we try to make them up.

The room is silent, unchanging. It’s almost as if nothing ever happened. The only difference is that there were two souls in it at the start of the night. Now, there is only one. Clouds obscure the moonlight, darkening the room in one last tribute to her insignificant life.

And still her lover sleeps on.