Resolute

I think the first few decades are the best, but also the most deceiving. I mean, it’s eternal life, right? You fool yourself into believing things can only ever go uphill. All your normal, earthly problems and concerns, debt, estranged family, distant lovers, shitty friends, don’t matter anymore because you’ll outlive them all. Everlasting youth takes you into its lovely embrace as the affliction freezes you in time. That sounds bad, I know, but you’re frozen in the most beautiful way. A walking, talking human-like ice sculpture of immaculate detail and grace. Your likeness will never fade, and every beholder of your beauty will dance at your command.

Thankfully, you’re still able to taste food though it no longer serves as a source of sustenance. It’s a luxury that lasts only as long as it exists on your tongue, bringing your taste buds’ wildest fantasies to life. But, as I said, there is no way to sustain yourself on it. Food and drink are now a luxury that fades away once it passes your tongue. Regardless of how you find out, be it through instruction or incident, it quickly becomes apparent what is necessary, what you’ll need to do now, to survive. It’s not for the faint of heart. Although, once you realize you no longer have one, it gets easier.

And that’s sort of how it goes for the next several decades or centuries depending on how long you can deal with the monotony of it. It’s a cycle of limitless self-indulgence coupled with a monstrous desire to be more dominant than the creature standing next to you. Be they human, something like you, or something else entirely, they’re all either prey or competition to you. Eventually you’ll come to realize that death is all that surrounds you. You embody it like a dark avatar but, soon enough, when you’re too wrapped up in your own pride, it’ll swallow you whole.

In fact, I’d say that is the biggest contributor to my kind’s untimely or unsurprising demise is hubris. We think we’re untouchable, infallible and frankly, it’s easy to fall into that frame of thought. We don’t age, we can't get sick, and we’re stronger and faster than any other predator on the face of the planet. Our only setbacks are the sun, the thirst, and ourselves. That’s where I think the true curse of it lies. Just outside of our periphery is the crux of our downfall but we’re too focused on the needs of the one to see it. A lot of us call this a gift but, once you ascribe to that frame of mind, the real curse sets in and there’s only so few ways out from underneath it.

I suppose this can be seen as a last instance of soul baring from a creature devoid of such a luxury. A suicide note blanketed in a resolute farewell. Notions of self-termination, let alone the act itself, are not the traditional train of thought that my kind adhere to. But over the last several decades, the idea has infected me. Its inception was the product of a dear friend's drunken tirade.

Derek was the name I knew him by during our years of friendship. He wasn’t my maker, but he taught me everything I know: How to choose prey, how to stay a few steps ahead of any would-be hunters, how to deal with life as a true creature of the night. You know, the basic shit. He always had a worldly wit about him and always tried to help myself and others see the bigger picture. He carried himself with a confidence that seemed unmatched even in the presence of those far older than him. Derek was the only one of us that I had ever met who truly seemed unkillable. Whether he felt that way too or not didn’t matter because the hunters came for him one night. I don’t know the details of it or how they got the jump on him but, it doesn’t matter now, and it didn’t then. They didn’t get to revel in their victory for more than a week before I found them.

Derek meant the world to me. His words were my gospel and everything he said always genuinely made sense to me. Until he said something I wouldn’t have ever expected him to say in a million years. It was some years back, so the details are getting hazy, but I think we had just finished feasting. I remember our hands and mouths were stained with sticky crimson, and as we made our way back to our den, in those last moments before dawn, Derek stopped and said, I'm not so sure we're meant to live this long. I didn’t entirely hear him at the time, I was lost in a stupor of excessive feeding. We went to watch the beginning of the dawn before resting and Derek really poured his heart out. He felt like he was drowning in all the violence and mayhem this world, our lives, constantly floods us with. He wanted out and eventually, some hunters granted him his escape. I never told anyone what he said. Didn’t even hint at it until now.

Frankly, now that I'm saying all this out loud, I feel even more sure that this is the right thing to do and there’s no sense in me wavering from it. I guess I just wanted to get my last thoughts out to someone who cares or at least says they do.

No being deserves to live as long as I have, as we do, carving vile, wretched scars through the years with no remorse to temper us. A golden afterlife isn't something I want nor is it a thing I think I deserve. What I deserve is the white-hot pain of a thousand suns for all eternity and if hell exists, I'm sure that's what I'll get. If I had my way though, I'd just want quiet. Everlasting silence to lull me into that forever sleep. Life is good but death, death is a new frontier calling to me from beyond foggy mountain tops. A beckoning whistle at the end of a dark alleyway that I can no longer avoid. Dawn will be coming soon so I think I ought to go. I haven't watched a full sunrise in centuries and it’s time for me to see it, at last.