The Immortal Richard Collins

A story about a man in a small Colorado town who cannot die, but desperately wants to.

Chapter One: Pancakes

He rolled out of his cot and hit the hardwood floor with a thump. Dust settled around him as he rose to his feet. If it hadn't been for the pillow that had slipped from the bed directly under his behind, he would have been sore for the next few weeks. Luckily, it had. It always did. The linens from his cot hung to the floor, the same dingy colour as his undershirt. He stood there, rubbing his stubbled face with both hands until the sun fluttered to life.

As light leaked across the mountains of Northern Colorado, as the few sheep scattered along the hill to the west, as lumber tumbled in the mill on the outskirts of town, Richard picked up his previous night's glass of scotch and dove in. Three quick sips, just enough to feel something. He did feel something. Richard continued there, feeling that something until he could feel nothing else. Again he put his hands to his face and rubbed against the stubble of his cheeks and upper lip.

Richard growled like a dog, threw his empty glass against the wall, and stumbled towards the small bathroom. On the corner of the porcelain sink sat a straight razor, bent at a forty degree angel, flecked with rust. He turned on the faucet, slapped some water on his face, and grabbed for the rough blade. The steel ripped across his face, grabbing more flesh than hair every now and again until his morning shadow was gone.

With the faucet still running Richard flexed his hand firmly against the handle and brought the blade to his throat. Blood seeped down his neck, soaking the dingy t-shirt, spilling across the blade. There he stood, in a small cabin in Northern Colorado, staring into the bathroom's cracked mirror. As he looked back into his own blue eyes he saw himself dressed in satin, wrapped in head to toe in elaborate Asian garb, sitting in a bathtub of the same porcelain. Richard saw himself two-hundred years ago, sitting in blood with wrists slashed up to the elbows, and how here in the early morning in the forest with bluebird and blackbirds alike, he stands with the same intent as he had sitting, soaking in a tub in the orient.

His knees grew weak as the droplets hit the floor, thumping just as he had minutes earlier. His heart beat more rapidly now, but the blood stopped hitting the floor, just as the streams had stopped in the orient, just as the platelets had separated from the water and streamed back into the lacerations on both his right and left arm. Today the white of Richard's shirt creeped back up towards his neck, un-soaking thread by thread, as if bleached inch by inch. The droplets rained upward, like a spring pouring back into his veins, into his throat, sealing tighter with each passing second. There he stood, the Immortal Richard Collins, clean shaven and no worse for wear.

He wanted pancakes, stacks and stacks of them, with bananas, maybe even walnuts if he was feeling feisty. Richard threw on a few more layers, a brown leather jacket and mittens the size of grapefruit. He always wore mittens, and for the last decade boots made by a tailor in Boston, Massachusetts.

Richard closed the door behind him, knocking a few pieces of paint from the chipped sides by the force of it. The cold waited to hit him until he reached his car, which lay around the corner and near the evergreens to the west. He put his keys into the lock and shuddered as the chill of the wind smacked into the back of his neck.

“Son of a b***h,” he said as he shrugged his shoulders towards his face, “It's worth some pancakes.”