Just a little something I had lying around my computer. The result of an idea for a story than never really panned out.
He held the little bottle of pills in his old, trembling hands.
Let them think there is no cure, they had said.
Let them think there is no hope.
Let them think that they have no time left.
Let them think that they will die.
There it was. That word. Die. Death. Darkness. The harbinger of peace, the end.
He shivered in spite of himself. It was this place, the memories lying thick all around him. The echoing screams that still reverberated in some back part of his skull. The way the decaying flesh had fallen to the ground.
But of course, this is how it was supposed to be. Everything went as planned.
Didn’t it? The shadow of doubt fled across his consciousness.
He no longer had any reason to think of should have’s and might have been’s. Too old for murmured regrets and fleeting wishes. Too late for any of that now.
Anger. Just a flash. The forgotten emotion trickled down his forehead, leaving fiery eyes and a poisoned grimace to betray the emotions better left unfelt.
His gaze flickered to the single building still standing in this sea of sand, shattered concrete and fallen timbers. It touched the sky, the glassy windows reflecting the filmy light filtered through from the dark red sun, through the deteriorating ozone layer. Or was it thickening? He shrugged off the thought. His mind was too tired to hesitate on technicalities. He didn’t care for them much anymore. Leave it to the ones up there, he thought, staring once more at the tall office-like building, the last of its kind. The modern world had been taken over by a raging storm that left almost nothing in its wake. He looked out onto the crumbs of the city: rusty metal poles, and a few sheets of paper flying up in the season-less breeze.
It was rare to find any of that these days. Almost everything resembling something man-made had been long destroyed. All of the history books, erased. Lost to a time never to be remembered.
He himself sat in the shadow of his own mud-hut, the pills in the bottle rattling furiously as his hand shook, wild with anxiety. It took him a while, but he finally opened the lid, carefully, and took out one of the tiny, baby blue capsules. FOY were the only letters stamped onto the pill, besides the serial number. 9912854.
He popped the pill in his mouth, swallowed, and waited a moment for the pills to take effect. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. He could no longer stomach seeing his hands smooth out to the state of those of a young adult. Could no longer watch as his stomach tightened, muscles binding, fat dissolving. Didn’t want to feel his sagging face lift, his vision become clearer, his hearing more precise.
He didn’t want any of this. But he didn't want to die, either. It was one of the other, and the prospect of living forever, although frightening, had it's own dangerous appeal. It brought forth now vague memories of stories told about deals with the Devil. In them, people would often trade anything to stay away from death. Mankind never really learned from those stories, he realized. Hadn't they all ended in an onslaught of unbearable consequence?
When he felt the change was over, completed, he looked through his bright new eyes to the bottom of the bottle. There, three more pills lay, the equivalent to three more lifetimes. Life in a bottle, he thought, mildly amused. The Fountain of Youth. FOY. There had been seventy-five pills in the bottle when he started. Seventy-five hundred years was a long time for someone to live, and he felt that he may not even ask for a re-fill once he ran out. He could feel the weight of his years bearing down upon his now muscular shoulders, the concept of time a mere figment of a whisper drifting through his ears. Time meant nothing in a world without end. That was one of the first things he had learned.
