You'll Live Forever Son
My mother’s eyes were hollow as Signor Cavalcanti placed the coin in her palm. I could see a silent understanding in the faces of my brothers and sisters. This was goodbye.
“You’ll live forever, son,” the last words she ever said to me.
We left my village for San Gimignano.
I thought of my family as I ate roast chicken and felt the skins of grapes snap between my teeth before the sweet juice spilled from my lips.
A series of vials sat on a tray near the table.
T. dohrnii was scrawled across a strip of tattered paper fixed to its side. The milky glass pulsed with the same brilliant red glow that now stained my lips.
I felt normal during the first days, but then I began to change.
First, oozing bumps crawled up my arms. Then came the pain. My skin screamed with fire if I touched it. Whenever my fingertips approached my skin, tiny dancing needles would push out from the ends of my fingers.
Once, I slipped as I walked alongside Cavalcanti. He caught me by the arm which stretched and tore away from my shoulder.
Over the years his body grew weaker and began to break. Almost like mine, only I stopped aging.
He did his best to take care of me. His fingers trembled as he tended to my wounds. In his last breaths he cried and apologized for what he did to me.
I saw my mother once more as she visited the market near my house.
One shriveled hand rummaged through cabbages, the other held her gown tight against her.
I kept myself hidden, just a shadow observing behind early morning mist.
I thought of how she’d run her fingers through my hair as we lay in our hay field staring up at the starry night sky. Her eyes would shine bright as she smiled, a sight that every child longs for.
My heart broke at the sight of her malformed body, twisted and spent by time. Her breath wheezed. A pale mist in the winter air as she shuffled away and back to her empty house.
As I watched her with my remaining eye, I knew I could never go home again.
Over the years I learned to remain in the shadows, but I longed for connection.
Around me, the world rapidly became a better place. Diseases were cured. People lived longer. Families no longer went hungry.
But everything has a lifecycle to fulfill.
It was shortly after everyone started looking to the palms of their hands for the answers. Lifeless black slabs they clung desperately to, ones that drove them further into their own solitudes until their own humanity was gone. In just three generations.
I visited San Gimignano one last time, when I still had my legs.
The field was still there, but I realized that I had forgotten my mother’s face.
My life lost meaning so long ago and I long for a death that may never come.
The flesh that now constitutes me heals as fast as it is destroyed.
***
You see, I kept changing after Cavalcanti was gone.
My bones have dissolved.
I am continuously tearing and healing because my skin is too weak to hold my flesh inside.
At least it cannot on land.
Turritopsis dohrnii.
The immortal jellyfish.
Everyone is gone now.
As I walked towards the ocean, I saw the petrified body of an old woman sitting in a car.
Tears refused to come as I cried for her. Another child who might have just wanted a good life. Excited to see what the world had to offer.
Someone had written words on a nearby car.
"First came the Alphas, then the Betas, but the Gammas brought the end.”
Rusted steel frames stood as monuments to mankind for centuries. Now, they are remembered only by me.
I’ll live forever in the sea, at least until it boils under a sun gone mad or freezes as the stars above wink out.
But as I drift in these dark waters, alone and without purpose, I think of my mother long cold and lost to time.
My last eye went dark long ago, but I still have my memories.
Of my mother. Of the stars. Of everything we lost.
I like to imagine that she’s down here with me as the stars above us flicker and dance.