Today is my two-hundred and fifteenth birthday. I traipse across my cave and bludgeon my foot on a stone. A rotten toenail tears away, and I threaten the emerging sun, with my stick.
My stink nauseates me. Over the years I have come to smell like that moment, one hundred and fifty years ago, the moment that set my cursed fate in train. But I’m getting ahead of myself, old fool that I am.
Back then the world was convulsed by the virus. I was young; young – and dumb. At first, I couldn’t look at the news from the global pandemic. Then all I could do was look. The television gripped me: hour after hour, day after day; until all I could think, over and over – was one thing.
I didn’t want to die.
The Government told us: do not move. ‘Locked down,’ as they said.
Well, I was locked down in Ekhard’s house. Which would have been fine – except that Ekhard was dead. Not of the virus, no, my brother had died because he wanted to die.
‘Better go out in style than as a serf,’ he wheezed, lighting up his fortieth Bensons and quaffing another Port.
That was a month ago. Ekhard died and I received a letter. A lawyer informed me that I was his executor. I was indignant – as brothers, we had never been close. But that was why I was in his house, sorting out his muck, and then – thanks to the virus – stuck here.
I sighed and switched off the TV, resigning myself to another evening with the sherry.
Ekhard was an amateur alchemist. His bookshelves groaned under esoteric wisdom. Dulled from another day of lockdown, I had spent my day perusing his bookshelves.
A fire warmed me and I picked up the strange book I’d found in Ekhard’s study. The language was odd, with strangely angled Latin letters covered by mysterious runes.
One page seemed to suck at my attention. I intoned the strange words, trying to make out their angled sounds.
Then, at my third attempt, with no warning a blue flame broke free from the fire, a log exploded, and sparks into the room.
Sherry blustered across my waistcoat and, coughing, I waved smoke from my face.
Where once was a log now stood a three-inch high figure.
A sulfurous bouquet bloomed in the room.
The smoke cleared and I saw the imp wore tiny thigh-length black boots. A forked tail whipped around her body. “Christ, what the fuck…” she said, coughed, and hawked deeply. She spat out a great globule, which exploded in the flames
She was completely scarlet, with horns and cloven feet. Her yellow eyes found me and burned with annoyance. Flames gusted around her head.
“Who the hell are you?” she said and kicked at a lump of coal which scuttled across the carpet. A strong smell of rotten eggs accompanied her words.
“Reginald Sasquinatch – the third,” I spluttered, “and, er, you?”
She swore and stalked out of the flames towards me, burning tiny footsteps into the carpet. I hauled up my old knees and hugged my blanket. She carried a miniature trident, whose tip she now thrust at me.
“Where did you get that”, she demanded, indicating the book. “you rotten bastard. I was in the middle of a party.”
“I, er, I found it. It was my, my brother’s.”
“What, wait – did you say Sasquinatch?”
“That’s right.”
“Fuck me.”
“Look here,” I said, regaining some balance, “I apologize for my provenance, but do you mind telling who the hell you are. And what you’re doing in my …. fire.”
The imp glared at me. She swore again, her eyes glowered and the flames grew stronger around her head.
“Alright: Sasquinatch, you say?”
I nodded.
“Here’s the deal. You should know: it’s PR bullshit if you ask me.”
My ignorance was evident because by way of explanation she continued: “The boss.”
The trident jabbed downwards.
“The boss says being evil has had its day. There’s just too much of it about. Everyone does bad shit these days – the boss has lost his monopoly.”
His monopoly. Right.
“So where I come from,” she went on, “we hired some consultants. And they came up with the genius idea.” she rolled her eyes, “that instead of our usual modus operandi – you know, bad,” she seemed to have trouble spitting out the words, “we do something different.”
I stared at her dumbfounded, my mouth open.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Good. Yeah.”
There was an awkward silence. She continued: “We’re moving in on the market of – you know” the trident thrust upwards, “him upstairs.”
“So let’s get this over with.”
Ass that I am, I nodded,
“You get one wish. One wish – your brother used up the other two.
“What were his two wishes?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I thought about it. All I could think about was the virus. The terrible images on the television. God knows I didn’t want to die.
“I want,” I said, slowly emphasizing each word. “I want to live forever.”
“That’s it?” said the imp.
“Er, yeah,” I said, suddenly shy.
“Nothing else?”
“Not, er, too much to ask?”
She shrugged. “People is people. They ask all sorts of things. You should have heard what your brother asked for,” she chortled.
I let that one pass. “So… about my …request?”
“Oh, that, yeah, no problem. Done. Right, gotta go.”
The fire exploded once again and the three-inch imp was gone.
I looked around. Everything was as before. The fire crackled as if nothing had happened. The room smelt of a troll’s armpit. I picked up the book. The page I had read was blank.
My life from that point was pretty standard, I suppose. I grew older, into my fifties, my sixties. After a while, I forgot about my unexpected encounter with the imp.
When I hit 70 I had bowel cancer. I had all the treatments – chemo, radio, before they finally decided to operate. The surgeon gravely told me I might not make it. But there I was the next day, coming around from the anesthetic, feeling like the worst hangover I could ever have imagined.
A nurse told me my heart had stopped during the operation and that they didn’t know how I was there. She gave a bright smile. “You’se a miracle, me darlin’.”
At eighty-five I contracted dementia. At ninety-five I had Corona three times, followed by septicemia, with gout thrown in to boot.
Hospitalised once again, sometimes I thought I could hear a burst of tinkling laughter and a sulphuric smell, but I could never put my finger on it.
None of my ailments killed me. The doctors couldn’t figure it out. The heart attacks began when I was a hundred: my heart would stop, then ignite again. Start, stop, over and over – but the cursed thing would never give up.
Soon, my condition meant I attracted attention as a freak. I found no peace. I became the subject of magazine articles. Thankfully my gangrenous legs meant my increasing smell kept people at a distance, but soon I retreated to this cave on a distant Thai Island, happy – if such a word means anything anymore – that my condition guarantees my excision from society.
The pain from my legs is constant – I wonder what ailment will assail me next. How many aging diseases must I live through? Have I become ageless to live through the pain of ages?
As I sit and watch the sunrise over this birthday today I think, as I have done a thousand times before: what a devilish thing it is to defeat death.