Forever Young - Chapter One

The first time I died, I was killed by a woman in a really, really bad mood. She had all manner of poisonous kisses at her disposal, artificial love, broken hearts, glass cut lips, but the weapon she used on me was one of the simplest she could find in the moment. My very own diamond stilettos. It was a shame, really, for both of our lives to be ruined by a stupid man's stupid mistake, but I suppose that's just how things work. Men are eternal idiots, women are eternal bitches. Nothing's going to change that, or at least not while I'm alive to see it.

You see, there's a lot that ordinary humans don't know about the way hat our society truly has been functioning all these years. Sure, they have thoughts and theories and junk like that, but as my old friend Lara used to say, you can't understand even half of the world if you haven't lived for at least half of the world's history, so then the older you are the more that you know. Which is pretty good for me, because I'm older than the pyramids - Djoser was actually pretty cool, although his wife was a bit of a jealous bitch sometimes. Although, come on, no one could deny the fact that he was smoking like Ra on fire.

But still, the thing about knowing everything, is the fact that you know you know pretty much everything, so when someone tries to invent a new method of murder and it is made readily available to all, you get caught a tad bit off guard, and then voila! You're half dead for a few months, good luck getting back to life.

Anyway, I've returned now. My fourth death in the last hundred years, and I'm still not looking too bad for it, which has to mean something. In fact, even my old home is still mine, complete with all its quirks and nooks and crannies and the floorboard that just doesn't co operate at all. The wall too, with all the pictures and memories hidden behind the most normal of things, but bursting with life when you see it.

It's an odd sentiment, but I like to think of love as a universal thing. It exists in everything, from the planets and their maternal sun, to the children of Verona, who would do most anything for a love that lasts forever. No matter where or what you are, you can see love, just around the corner or even right beside you, whether you can find it for yourself or not. And, in darker times, swhen one begins to doubt the existence of love and happiness and the sun and the universe, if one can just open their eyes, perhaps one can open their hearts, too.

See, it sounds quite narcissistic of me to say, but I count myself as a person who knows quite a good thing or two about love.

Hate, too.

Most of what I know of hate came from that first night - when I was killed the first time. I'd be lying if I said the memory didn't haunt me.

I mean, I can't quite remember every detail of that night, given I was, well, sort of tipsy. It wasn't my fault, really, but one thing led to another and I ended up in a bed with someone whose face I can barely even remember. Sure, I knew him - I'd actually quite liked him for a while - but faces tend to just merge together after a while, and he was kind of irrelevant, anyways.

To Dorothy Parker, though, he probably wasn't so much. For one thing, they were engaged (I didn't know this until right before I died, so don't blame it!), and for another they'd known each other just about their entire lives, so I guess seeing him with another girl wasn't exactly the best thing that could have happened to her, especially when she'd just managed to get rid of the moonshine she was being chased about.

But anyway, I'm getting off topic, and I seriously need to keep a record of what I'm actually remembering somewhere, but I can't really be bothered.

There's no point in denying what I have done. Doing so would only get me into more trouble than I am already, into more of a confused and tangled web than has already swallowed me whole. And it's not like I could go around shouting 'I didn't kill him, I swear!' without having half the country on my tail, anyway.

I suppose I should get the facts straight about this, really - my mind is still all messed up by what little I actually remember and what torturous horrors my nightmares have thrown my way. I didn't actually go into that room planning to get together with that boy, and nor did I even totally expect to, even if that was a bit naive of me. I'm not a cruel person, a fiancé stealing bitch or anything, just as much as I am a mortal human being. It's what I tell myself sometimes, when it gets dark, when I think that maybe, after all these years, I deserved my deaths. It can be hard to believe myself that I didn't deserve this, or that the cold murders are fair, but at least sometimes it works.

None of this can undo what happened. Whether I deserved it or whether Dorothy was just in a bit of a crap mood that day, she just sort of psycho on me, and then bam, diamond stilettos, bam, dress chucked at me, bam hit so hard my make up seemed to fall off of me like raindrops.

And then, bam, dead.

It's actually a highly accurate description of human life nowadays, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Probably bad.