My Immortal Secret

A Story by CDavidson

There are always secrets someone must keep, but are mine the ones that must never be told?

There is a secret I must never tell, about people I mustn’t know. But there is a book where I keep it all. Locked away, hidden from the world, and scattered all around it. I write every chance I get, of every story or memory that I have. I write until my hand tires of the weary words, and even past that at times. I write until the sun goes down and until it comes up again. And in every night, after I finish writing, I give the pages to the wind. I feed them the stories I cannot tell anyone else. I give them the taste of the knowledge I have come to know, the knowledge I have come to hate.

I give my gift to the wind so that maybe one day, someone might know the truth that lies behind my weary eyes. Maybe someone might learn the knowledge that remains forbidden to all except myself. And maybe, just maybe, they might save me from myself. They might forgive me when I cannot. They may learn my truth, my secret that I have kept for years… years… so many years that I am beginning to lose count. But I never forget the truth, I never forget the knowledge I have learned, or the stories that I know.

I will never forget the people I have met, the events I have witnessed, or even the people that have been taken from me. I do not forget the sorrow that I have caused, I do not forget the joy I have witnessed. I do not forget the stories I was told as a young child meant to scare me of the very thing I had become, of the very thing I am today. And I do not forget why.

Why? Why would I share a story that must never be told, a secret that must never leave my mind? Because I can. I can tell the truth. I can tell the wind my truth. I can tell the birds my truth. I can tell the sea my truth, and all of them won’t matter. They won’t matter when I have outlived the people who would hunt me down if they knew my truth. They won’t matter when the real truth of who I am haunts your every waking dream, your every sleeping nightmare. They won’t matter when you dare not leave the silly confinements of your small house because you are afraid of who I am.

You think you might get hurt, but I know the truth. I know where my actions lead me, and I also know that your safety is not my concern. I know the truth that only time can show. I know the secret that only the wisest of men will ever learn. So in one hundred years, I may visit your grandchildren and they will not know who I am. You might have told them about me, but time will show that they will not remember. Because the secret is that my time is not yours… For I have no time. No limit that I must live.

So you may worry your precious time away, but I will not. I will live, still knowing my secret, writing it down for the wind to read, while you live your life, scared. So my secret will not matter, but it is a secret I must never tell. It is a secret that does not matter to me. It is a secret nonetheless. And it is about people that I shouldn’t know; about events that have happened that I shouldn’t have been at. It is a secret I burden myself with because it means you won’t have too. It is a secret I will forever hold, telling the birds of the turmoils you silly people wage upon; of the stupid lies you believe.

Maybe death is the thing that has evaded me for the last years that I wish so much to have. Maybe death is the one thing that I need more than anything. So there is something about death that I must learn that I have watched those around me witness, time and time again. Time and time again if I had grown up with people, they knew what it is like to die. They know what it is like to not be alive.