Alive?

By Jill Zero

The wall outside the library is my favorite spot to smoke cigarettes. I like the coolness of the brick, which seeps through my shirt onto the surface of my skin, and I savor the rough texture against my fidgeting fingertips. It’s a silly privilege to lean there alone. No one bothers me. My mind drains the drivel and focuses solely on things that matter, such as senses and stars and solitude. Fine details manifest more rapidly when they’re unhindered by distractions.

Tonight is unfortunately not free from distractions, however. A group of people scatters and lines the sidewalk, fresh from the sports bar across the street. Two couples lean on each other in an attempt to disguise their level of drunk – unconvincingly, I might add – and one woman leads them beneath the streetlights like a pied piper who’s never worn three-inch platform heels. Her shiny silver shoes clomp and clack and bend her ankles at unsightly angles. I watch her with a sort of disgusted curiosity, wondering how she’s remained upright for half a dozen steps and estimating how many more steps it will take her to remove them and walk barefoot instead.

Ten, tops.

“Smoking will kill you, you know!” She exclaims from the street, waggling her index finger. Her drunken-couple friends giggle and tell her how bad she is, that she should be quiet and call a cab.

I smirk but say nothing. She hasn’t the faintest idea how wrong she is and that amuses me. Cigarettes can’t kill me and smoking can’t kill me, because I can’t die. No, I’m not a vampire. Blood cravings elude me and wooden stakes don’t scare me. I’m incapable of converting others to my cause, if you can even call it that. Godlike powers weren’t bestowed upon me other than the fact Death won’t touch me. I am immortal and nothing more.

I discovered my odd gift on my twenty-third birthday, when I attempted suicide in a surefire way only to wake up with fully healed wrists a few hours later. I tested the immortality again and again – sometimes with razors or pills and other times with trains or cars – all with identical results. That’s when I chose to blend in with crowds and make no further acquaintances. People don’t ask strangers probing questions because they don’t want to know about their lives. My life is none of anyone’s business. It all works out for the best, me being alone, and it leaves me to mull over details until I’ve had my fill.

After taking exactly nine more steps, the high-heeled pied piper grips the nearest streetlight and pulls off her platforms one at a time. They now dangle from her princess-pink talons: I like to think they’d experience defeat and relief all at once if personified.

When you’ve existed as I have, you notice everything.