Immortality at a Cost

When I wished for immortality I didn’t expect this. I stood, looking down at the splattered remains of my previous body. I had been offered a single wish, from what I assumed was God or a possession of pure madness. Either way I was tired of being a weak, defenseless man. Robbed at knifepoint, still stabbed even though I gave them everything, and in crippling medical debt I was ready for something to change.

Surely I was crazy and at the end of my rope so I decided to believe the wish was real and stepped in front of a bus. Now as I looked at my own brains splattered across the asphalt and a shattered form of my body I second guessed myself. Somehow though I was alive, standing just fine, if not completely naked where I had been before the bus had hit me.

My bile rose in my body and I vomited everything out of my stomach. It was empty, no signs of the hot dog I had eaten as my last meal. No signs of my scars left on my body either. I sat there losing my stomach when others rushed over to me, confusion clearly written on their faces.

A coat was thrown over me, “What the hell boy, you're just standing around naked after someone got hit by a bus! Get your dumbass out of the road.”

I stumbled back onto the sidewalk, thankfully someone threw a coat over my shoulders and I looked back into the street. A dozen people were on their phones making calls to the police and I had a sinking feeling in my gut. How would I explain this to the authorities? Taking the coat I fled from the scene, my bare feet slapping the hard ground over and over. Someone called after me a single time but I got away.

Back in my shitty studio apartment I pulled on clothes as my mind raced a thousand miles an hour. “What the fuck just happened?” Dressed I looked at the medical bills on the table and more and more thoughts filled my mind.

“What if it was only a one time thing?” I couldn’t just sit around. Thoughts filled my mind of what I could do with what I had.

I climbed to the roof of my building. Looking down the eight floors to the hard concrete below. Swallowing my fear and embracing the dark thoughts above that this could be my ticket into being rich I stepped off and let myself fall head first into the ground. The last thing I felt was my neck snapping at my head was shattered into pulp.

I was standing naked next to my own body. My own head crushed and deformed, my eyes pushed from their sockets as in horror I looked upon what I had just done. Without worrying about anything else I had just killed myself. Twice. In one day.

My hands shook as I stripped my own body and stepped into my clothes. I knew what I had to do.

…

I sat in a dim room with a powerful light shining down on me from above. I was in nothing but a surgical gown with back marker all over my body. I had arranged to sell off a kidney, half my liver, and a lung for enough money to pay off all my medical debt. I would either ruin all my future lives, or when I died I would be returned with everything back intact. It was a huge gamble.

Thinking back I remembered the bills. The stacks of mail waiting to rob me of everything in my life. Collectors, debtors, loans, all of it waiting to bring me into homelessness. I had worried for days that my bodies would be found and that I would be pronounced dead or something against my will. However, when the news came on it was all I could hope for. They could not identify my corpses. Both were claimed to be suicides by John Doe. All efforts were in place to find out who had died but no leads presented themselves.

Shaking with excitement a collection of nurses and doctors strolled into the room with all sorts of equipment at the ready. “Are you ready sir?”

With a single nod a needle sunk into my flesh. Darkness overtook me.

Suddenly I was drowning. My body flailed in the water as cold pierced me to my very core. My eyes flared open and I looked at a tied up body wrapped in chains sitting at the bottom of the water. I swam for all my worth towards the surface as panic set in. This wasn’t what I signed up for. They had promised me money, wealth enough to free myself of debt. Still, one thing was keeping my spirits up. I could tell I still had both my lungs and all my parts.

Pushing to the surface I looked around and could see a boat speeding off away from everything. No doubt the people that had dumped my body. I couldn’t see the shore, or any land. But the barest hint of light painted the horizon in the darkness. I started to swim that way, towards the light. Twice more my body succumbed to the cold of the ocean as exhaustion set it. Each time leaving a body behind bobbing in the water as I woke up refreshed and ready to continue. Hours passed before the city finally came into view. The harbor with all the boats still bobbing up and down mocking me.

…

I walked naked through the streets as I shivered in the freezing cold. The water still clung to my skin as I felt waterlogged and disgusting. No one would spare me any clothes or things that would keep me from succumbing once more to the darkness of hypothermia.

I climbed up the stairs, pulling the hidden key I had to get into my apartment. When it opened I found nothing inside, no clothes, no mail, no trace of who I was, or who I had been. Tears welled up in my eyes as I knew I had tangled with the wrong people in hopes of getting rich quick. It would have been so easy, sell my organs off over and over again to the black market.

A thud of a boot caught my attention and I turned around to look at two men, clad in great hazmat suits the collor of fluorescent yellow with the initials SCP on it standing and looking at me. “Get him,” two large burly men in thick military like armor burst from behind the two and sprinted at me. I turned to run, but was tackled to the ground.

“You can’t do this! I’m an american citizen!” I yelled and kicked hard trying to buck myself free. I was just too cold and weak to do anything.

“Actually, you’re dead. Yet alive. Our company takes a great deal of interest in people like you. Time to come with us.” A boot smacked into my head and everything went dark.