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The cigarette was tough to keep lit in the rain, but with guidance, the smoldering tip stayed lit even against the wind. He walked with his shoulders hunched, trying to keep what little heat he could produce trapped within the confines of his body, but even the bitter cold couldn’t keep the cocky smile off his face.
It was hard to keep from chortling as he stared around at the buildings. Every time humanity had a new modern age, they claimed their achievements were better than any before. In his opinion, the Egyptians still held that title, but the Babylonians hadn’t been too bad either. Too bad most of their stuff was about as transitory as the current modern age; the things they could do with magnets had been pretty impressive.
Flipping his collar against the wind, he smiled at the flashing lights. The weight of his guns against his back was a permanent comfort; never knew when you might need to shoot something. He had fired the first gun, after all, and had found a taste for it immediately. Something about the smell of gunpowder and the feeling of an intricate piece of metal bucking in his hand really spoke to him. It had only taken a few centuries for humanity to perfect the intriguing little weapons, too.
He was an immortal. He didn’t know why. He didn’t want to know. Life was as life did. If he found out that he was actually the son of some god, he might find out he had a destiny, and he liked his freedom too much to risk it. After ninety-four thousand years, he wanted nothing more than to keep on rolling with life as it came.
Nations rose and fell, cities grew and crumbled, and the world kept on turning. He had watched it all change, and changed along with it, observing as humanity bumbled their way through time. He could more or less remember where he came from; somewhere in Africa, as he recalled. His family had kept on the move, usually just eating whatever they found as they roamed, hunting as they needed to. They never aged, never got sick, and life had been good. Eventually, as the world changed, they were forced to change with it, if only to keep surviving.
He was the only one left, now. His last cousin had died about six hundred years ago or so, in Ireland. Pretty bad bar fight, as he understood it. He had visited the grave. He left a bottle of whiskey.
Ages came and went like blinks of his eye. He had more names over the millennia than even he could remember anymore, more lives than he cared to think about. He had been a hero, a villain, a king, a knight, a tyrant, a lord, a god, a pauper, a monk, an engineer, a leader, a gunfighter, and hundreds more. He had been present at the Sack of Troy, watched the Mongols crash against the Great Wall, broken bread with Rasputin, and stood on the edge of the crevasse as Atlantis sank into the sea. He had been through three world floods and seven ice ages, and kept tabs on the rise of the Himalayas. He knew more languages than the world even knew existed.
He had stopped using the expression “Can’t say I’ve ever…” or anything of the like, because no matter how unlikely it seemed, he had probably done it before. He had been everywhere, seen everything, and done it all. Though many had tried, none had brought about his end.
He was the king of it all, second to none.
With a pause in his step, he took a long drag on the cigarette to breathe life into it. One of the better inventions of this “modern age.” Of course, the cancer and diseases that came with them weren’t such a good thing, but it wasn’t like it was a worry to him. The way he smoked and drank, his lungs and liver should have shriveled up and fallen off a long time ago. He had given drinking up entirely when his tolerance became more of an immunity, sometime during the Roman era.
The rain was cold in his short hair. Looking around at the transitory achievements of the Seventh Age, he wondered just where the hell he had left his hat.
I really like this one, too. I have a sense that your character, through whatever name, will soon meet his end.
"When a nightmare finally does unfold, perspective is a lovely hand to hold" -Relient K (Forget and Not Slow Down)
I'm not surprised this won now that I've read it. Interesting from start to finish. It's the kind of story that leaves me wanting to ask a whole lot of questions about its character.
More or less, Veins
This was also the best contest rule.
Don Roble I won't spend half my life explaining away the other half. When I'm sick I rely on medicine, not voodoo.
I really enjoyed this. one thing I would change though. Pretty bad bar figh
the bad bar fight, it just flowed odd to me. I would say pretty rough bar fight, or something different. I think it is just the double ba's that stuck out to me.
Just my 2 cents
Writing is like grooming hair. The longer the writing the more work it takes, but it's loving work.
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