Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able. To watch your love ones perish. To know that you’ll never get the chance to see them again in eternity, or wherever it is you go. They are all the saddest things about our way of life. If I could go back, to that stormy winter night, I would have rather gone down to the sea where the cool surging waves would have carried me into blessed oblivion. My body would become limp and numb, deserted by my soul as it floated away. To live in secret as the rest of the world around you lives, ages, dies, while you sit around unable to waste away. No hope, no love, no joy. No anything in that kind of life. For immortality is a fate far worse than any death ever imaginable.

1
Nicholas

September 30th

I sat in the make-shift living room of the farmhouse that we called our home. Tattered, mothball infested couches were placed in a semi-circle around the large fireplace. An empty mantle rested above the flames, swathed in intricate spider webs. The wallpaper that once had clung tightly to the walls was peeling, leaving remnants of its existence on the dusty hardwood floor. I sat in chair that was pushed up against the window pane, trying to use as much of the moonlight as I possibly could. It was hard to make out the words of the novel that I was reading in the dim light. The crackling of the fire was the only sound that resounded in the room. There was almost a peaceful eeriness to it; the quiet.
Isolation from my brothers was something that didn’t come as often as I had wished it would. The breaks from the chaos of our life were barely enough to keep me going. The past four hundred years were filled with relocating constantly due to our inability to age. A life, if you could even call what we have living, full of inconsistency. There is nothing solid, no foundation, absolutely nothing stationary to hold on to.
I began immersing myself into the words of Jane Austen. It was the books that really kept me going. With the turn of every page, I often lost myself in the words that those artistic geniuses spent years imagining and cultivating.
The door opened with a quick motion, the sound of my eldest brother Garrett’s footsteps broke the stillness of the air. His face was filled with the usual anger that overshadowed his handsome features. His black, curly hair was soaking with rain, and his pallid eyes were welling up in rage. Garrett’s intense presence caused me to stir in my seat. I gently rested the book onto the arm of the chair as I opened my mouth to speak.
“We’ve got to relocate again, Nicholas,” Garrett interrupted, restraining himself for a change, as he answered my unasked question.
“What happened?”
“Blaine,” was all he was able to muster out. Blaine was one of the youngest in our family. A youthful spirit at heart, he was frozen at the physical state of raging hormones, stuck a life of emotional turmoil. As much as we tried to keep our existence a secret, at seventeen, Blaine couldn’t help himself but long for something of interaction with the opposite sex. He had recently run into Charlotte. She was kind, sweet, and attractive. She balanced out Blaine’s compulsiveness, and they were honestly amazing together. However, he just didn’t understand the fragility of the relationship. She was going to age, start a family, and after a few decades, die. And he was going to live on forever- without her. Deep down, Blaine knew that, but he chose not to accept the truth. He let his heart, or his hormones, control his decision making skills. But he was truly happy. And happiness with our kind of life only passed by once or twice a decade.
“He told her, didn’t he?
“Of course he did. The imbecile can’t keep his mouth shut. You’d think after four centuries he would have learned by now.”
“Where are they?”
“Everyone’s at her house, trying to calm her down,” Garrett said the irritation still present in his voice. He stood silently, looking into my eyes, asking for something. He didn’t even need to say a word for me to understand what he wanted me to do.”
“You want me to fix it…” I retorted, an uneasiness to me response.
“Yes, Nicholas. It’s the only way we can stay here. But Blaine—”
“He won’t let me touch her until Hell freezes over.”
“I know.”
“I can’t do that to him, Garrett. He’s happy, and I don’t want to be the one to take that away from him.”
Garrett looked at me with a look in his eye that I was too familiar with. It was the look of distain, and the loss of his emotional control. The irises of his eyes turned a velvety black. I felt my forearm shatter within my skin. Letting out a shriek of pain, I watched as Garrett closed in on me. “You’ve got a responsibility to this family, Nicholas; to all of us,” he shouted, his teeth clenched together. “You will do as I say, brother.”

*does it seem publishable? like would you continue reading it?

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Tags: couches, crackling, dim light, eeriness, evils, farmhouse, four hundred years, hardwood floor, immortality, inconsistency, jane austen, mantle, oblivion, quiet isolation, remnants, semi circle, spider webs, stormy winter, window pane, winter night

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