I can feel it happening. Day by day, it is taking control of me. Every day, my hunger grows a little bit more. How long before … I don’t want to think about it, but it’s the only thing I can think about. I’ve told the doctor what to do when my heart finally stops, but I don’t think he’ll do it. He’s too curious about what is happening to me. He keeps telling me he’s never seen anyone dying like this. Every day my heart beats a little slower. Eventually it will stop. He’s tried everything he can to stop or slow the progression, but he can’t even tell infected tissue from healthy. I finally told him to give up. He can’t do a damn thing.

You know, I always thought I’d go out fighting. Take as many of them with me as I could. It seems strange just sitting here. I am so tired, though. Peace. How I want to be at peace. I could be that little girl again, safe in bed listening to her mother sing lullabies to her little sister. I miss that little girl. Maybe I won’t come back at all. That would be nice. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead. I’d rather like to join them. Saphir, Papa, all of them. Immortality is nice, but no one ever bothers to tell you how lonely it gets. You stop make friends after you’ve seen a couple hundred of them die. You have to stay distant and alone. It’s the only way to keep sane.

I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. Everything just seems so pointless. When Death is staring you in the face, you feel this absurd need to do something dramatic, something that will go down in history. You need to feel that your life was not pointless, that something of you will live on. A need for some kind of immortality. Immortality, that’s a laugh. I have, or rather had that. It seemed so cool at first, until everyone I knew started to die around me. Soon you’re the only one left. No one understands references you make. You may stop aging, but you don’t stop getting older. You gradually lose track of everything. You become an old eccentric, no matter how young you look. Here they think I’m 20. What a laugh if they found out how old I really was.

I really should have known better. He smelled weird, and it tasted sour. I should have just spit it out into the gutter. But it had been so long since I had last eaten. Perhaps I wanted this to happen, subconsciously. It would make sense. I wonder what the nurses will make of this when they find it. They’ll probably think I was mad. Shows what they know. Maybe some of me will live on in this, the record of my final days. It will be unique in the annals of history. The last words, thoughts, and deeds of a dying immortal, written in her own hand. A dying immortal, and possibly the last. With that cheerful thought, I’ll end this for the day. The nurses will be coming soon, and I don’t want them to find this.

Well, another day, and some more pain. The cancer is spreading faster as I weaken. It’s so hard not to feed. I’m so hungry, but I can’t even get across the room without collapsing. I know feeding won’t help me, in fact it will slow my death, but my instincts are hard to fight. They’re the reason I got in this mess in the first place, so I really think they should shut up. Everyone here feels so sorry for me. They treat me like a young child and it’s driving me slowly insane. I just wish they’d leave me alone and let me die in peace. They keep trying to get me into counseling so that I come to grips w/ the fact I’m dying. They don’t realize that I have accepted the inevitable and am actually looking forward to it. I’ve been bored lately. I couldn’t think of a single thing I hadn’t done. Death will be a new experience. I remember my mother telling me that Death shows up for immortals personally, to make sure that they don’t escape him. I can only hope it’s true.

There’s a young man in here, about the age they think I am. He’s figured out what I am, and he’s not afraid of me and he’s not going to expose me. He said that I couldn’t do anything worse to him than what’s already happening to him. He’s got radiation sickness and is expected to die within the year. He did ask me to make him into an immortal, but I’m afraid to. I think the sickness would spread from my body to his and just hasten his death. I told him that and he was quite surprised. He said he didn’t think that immortals could get sick. I told him that I had believed that nothing could ever make me sick, but that I was wrong. He asked me what it is like to be immortal. I think I’ll ask the nurses to give this diary to him after I die. Maybe he won’t be so angry about dying then. Or maybe he’ll be angrier. I never was good with predictions. I’ve got to stop now. I can’t hold the pen anymore.

Well, it’s only a matter of days now. The pain is almost unbearable. They keep giving me morphine and they don’t understand why it doesn’t work. I could tell them, but why spoil their fun. I don’t take pain well; I never have. It doesn’t help that this is the first pain I’ve felt in so long. I’d forgotten what it feels like to be in pain, especially constant pain. I don’t understand how mortals can tolerate it. My heart is beating so slowly that I can keep time with it. It’s about a dirge pace. The doctor keeps saying that I shouldn’t be alive, that with the amount of oxygen getting to my brain I should have died long ago. It’s really driving him nuts. I am obstinate and mysterious to the end. A grand tradition continues. I will die not as I lived, in violence and bloodshed, but in peace and quiet. It’s a family tradition. My mother died of violence, and she had never hit anyone in her life. My father died in a battle, and he was a pacifist. Saphir died of sunlight, and he hated the day. Never would set foot in it. I suppose that’s why he was so susceptible. I rather like the sun. It’s the only thing that can still warm me now. That’s the only advantage of this disease. As it kills me, it turns me mortal. The sun no longer burns me, water no longer makes me violently ill, and iron is just another metal. I saw my first sunrise in a very long time today. I told the nurses I want to see every sunrise and sunset from now on. I want to enjoy them while I can. I’m going to the National Gallery tomorrow. I want to soak up every ounce of beauty and wonder I can, before I lose it all.

I suppose I should finish this for her, since she never got the chance. She died just as the sun set. Very appropriate and sentimental. She was always such a sop. She was right about the boy. Turning him just hastened his illness. I found this in his things after he died. I don’t understand why she gave it to him, but then I never really understood much about her at all. It’s hard to understand a woman, but she was impossible. Just when I thought I understood her, she did something incredibly stupid or wonderful. Turning me was one of those things. I think she was lonely and I reminded her of someone she once knew. She never would tell me who, though. I suppose it was that Saphir character she goes on about. Can you believe that she never mentioned him to me?! I’ve known her for two thousand years and she never once mentioned him. Sometimes….

I’m not sure why I’m finishing this for her, but maybe it’s gratitude. She provided such a good role model of things not to do, ways not to live. I’ll avoid her mistakes. She did rise again, but her mind was completely gone. The Immortal I knew is gone. Perhaps that’s why I’m finishing this. In a way, it’s her epitaph. It’s extremely long, but she was too complex to fit into anything smaller. The world has lost one of its’ best, and the angels in Heaven mourn for her. It seems fitting to end with her favorite saying.

“You never know what Humanity is capable of until they’ve done it. Their powers are limitless.”

W. H. Tuggle