In need of an end

If we were able to see how a day was going turn out we would do everything we could to change the elements we didn't like. Two weeks ago today, if I could have seen what was going to happen I would never have got out of bed. I have been around family members before when they have died; I have grieved for my loved ones on far too many occasions. But for the last two weeks I have been forced to grieve for the final seven members of my immediate family including the one woman who, in all my years, I can say is my soul mate and our two children who I live my life for. Today is the day I am going to bury the seven most important people to me.

 

Today is the day I want to die.

 

I was the only survivor in a tragic coach crash in the Swiss Alps where forty one people died and I walked away from the tangled mess of metal with minor injuries. I did everything I could to help get people out of the wreckage, but when the coach had plunged face first off a road over a sheer cliff, hit something hard and after, it fell to the side and rolled what seemed like an eternity down a slope and came to rest on top of two cars parked in a lay by next to the road on our very route we had been on before it happened. Fortunately for the families of the two cars they had been tourist and missed the commotion because of a pair of binoculars and the immense beauty all around. I remember how beautiful it was, it was very beautiful and I noticed this whilst I pulled body parts from the wreckage.

 

The smashed glass nuggets, mangled metal bodywork, electrical wiring, material from seats, clothing and luggage lay strewn all over the lay by and partly in the carriageway as I heard the sound of the emergency services coming to the scene. I looked back up the hill, towards the cliff face and saw the devastating site of people lying in amongst the carnage. The road was closed even though it was almost clear of wreckage in both directions. Police cars rallied up the hill to the next safe junction and set up road closed barriers and park their cars across the intersection barring the way whilst their piercing blue flashing lights and brilliant orange bands warned of the closure and strongly hinted of a fatal accident further down the road. I am only guessing this is what they do as I was still trying to help people that may have still been alive. I think human nature kicked in and in reality I was looking to try and help my family so I had been looking for them.

 

All emergency services arrived at scene within minutes and the amount of police, fire and ambulance services gradually increased. A paramedic dragged me away from the wreckage and escorted me to a close ambulance and asked me a few questions in very good English whilst asking me to remove my blood soaked shirt to attend to my injuries. The look on the paramedics face when she wiped away the blood from my chest only to find minor injuries, I did point out to her that I had quite a major cut to the back of my leg. She asked me to lie down on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance after I had removed my jeans. There was a large chunk of flesh about eight inches in length flapping in the shape of a crescent moon. She irrigated the wound and placed a bandage tightly around my thigh. She then pulled out a clipboard with the dark outlines of the front and rear of a human body, she then documented my injuries in little lines and circles showing cuts and bruises with approximate sizes. She wanted me to wear a splint so I couldn't move my leg and tear the wound any more but I refused, I wanted to get back out to search for my family.

 

I was not allowed to search some more the police and fire service made me stay back and finally got me into an ambulance and then on to hospital. I was discharged later that day and went to the British Embassy where they told me that there were no survivors. My entire family had died; this had been until now the best twelve years of my life and the happiest a person could be to fill a thousand lifetimes.

 

The funeral of my entire family is in 1 hour and I am sat here in my house on my own, I am only alone now because I told my closest friends I wanted this time. They have been pulling together and have my best interests at heart, I just want to be alone and remember those perfect times, those time that define love and happiness. Those times you will never forget they will live with you through death and onto the next whatever. I have lived a lifetime in the last two weeks, I have revisited the day I ask my wife to marry me, the days m children were born. The many times I have been starting work early and coming home late not seeing either of my children awake for days on end. Settling down beside them and seeing in their sleeping faces the fun and laughter they have had. Their closed eyes saying, "Daddy, today I built a castle in my Lego and there was an evil man attacking it until the police turned up and ran them all over." Knowing this is what had happened because the remnants where all over the floor downstairs for me to trip over and swear under my breathe.

 

I know people are going to be coming around in a few minutes as the funeral directors will be here for me in fifteen. Seven grave stones, five of which you can say that they at least had a life however short it was but two children, my two children, taken away from me and from the world. Both have spent a combined 6 years on this miserable planet, their laughter echoes around in my numb head, their smiles making my eyes water and their tears flowing through me run down my face and fall from my chin causing wet patches on my trousers. I have made a small shrine in my pocket with the last photographs taken of them all just the day before the accident happened. With all of this I want to know how to die so I can be with them all again so I can again see the light they have brought me and the rid me of the pain I will hold with me forever. I wish I could find that one way that will end this suffering for me for all the life time I have lived in this last two weeks remind me of all the life time I have actually lived. My name is not Connor MacLoed, I have never been to Loch Shiel and I was not born in 1518 but I am immortal and know of no way that I am able to die.

 

~~~~~~~

 

Ten days ago I walked away from the graveyard wiping the remnants of the earth from my hands with a tear soaked tissue. I have just thrown the first handfuls of soil into the grave of my only family members the only family I have unnaturally grieved for. I was the only survivor of a coach crash in the Swiss Alps and I have just buried my life. My name is Nathanial Forever, it is a name I gave myself some time ago and I am looking for a way I can end my life. My real name is so old I can barely remember when I changed it, my real name is Anselm I am more than sixteen hundred years old and I am immortal.

 

Since the crash I have been seeing a psychiatrist, kindly assigned to me by the British Embassy in Switzerland. My shrink was kind enough to return with me back to England and continue with my therapy. Unfortunately for me my grief is not the only therapy I need to deal with, so we can keep the things in context the psychiatrists name is Elise and on the flight back over here she managed to get out of me my story in a nutshell, I am pretty sure she didn’t believe a word and I am even more sure she is humouring me by asking me to write a retrospective journal of my entire life. However I get more of a feeling she had other things to get back to, namely her husband and little girl.

 

Over my years walking this world I have gained a whole lot of experience in nearly everything, I have seen the science of psychiatry grow up from a few people making assumptions about a few things, until out of a small purse of knowledge was brought a wealth of experience by some of the best minds now known to humanity. Although I wasn’t born when Hippocrates theorised about mental disorders but when the doctors actually practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth century I was able to help with the theories they now have as the basis of modern psychiatric principles. I used to go drinking with William Battie and Sigmund Freud was on my Christmas card list, although a great many didn’t like him very much, so I can consider that I had a helping hand in the way mental disorders are treated.

 

I met up with Elise on a daily basis telling here stories and recounting a few of the parts of my life I can consider the best and only on one occasion, since being back in Britain did we talk about the one heart breaking experience I have had. I have known people die before but because they have all been either in violent battles of due to natural causes I resolve those experiences as a natural course in life but twenty four days ago is the only occasion that has ripped the heart out of my body and made me realise the only thing I want now is to end this existence and be reunited with the one woman I have ever truly loved. My wife, my soul mate died in the crash along with my two children who were my other reasons to exist.

 

I don’t believe for one minute I will ever convince Elise of my story but in an attempt to put my life in an order that can be understood I decided to do what she asked of me but I don’t think I will be able to remember everything in order, as there are a great deal of stories that could be told. But I gave Elise some points of interest, points in history that she could corroborate my existence. However she could investigate these instances and say I spent a fair amount of time on Google to make up things to immerse myself in to help my grieving process. I also need to do this to remember the people in my long past who did understand and the people who knew from their beliefs how and why my life is what it is. Those beliefs might give me an insight into how I can die and if so maybe I will be able to pull it off. In my vows to my wife I took out the bit that says “Until death do us part” and I replaced it with Forever, unfortunately people thought it was funny because it is my surname.

 

My entire story began the first time I was supposed to have died. I was born in Germany near what is now the border with the Netherlands, the village I grew up in was situated in a large forest with wood and mud huts built around the base of trees. In hindsight this was stupid as the fires made for heating and cooking regularly burnt the huts and trees to the ground.

When I was seventeen our village was invaded by other villages from the surrounding areas around ours, our village was seen to have good resources to make a community survive for a very long time. We had good sources of wood for fires and buildings, a river for water and great fish, surrounding fields for agriculture and rearing of animals for food and work. During the attack my people were either killed or run out of the forest splitting our peaceful community. What seemed like a large army, walked across the succulent fields and waded across the river, walked right in and killed whatever stood in their way. I was one of those who stood up to fight.

 

My family were farmers growing crops, raising animals and cutting wood, I stood in front of the people attacking us trying to stop them from getting my family when the men charged me and I was impaled with a large wooden stake. It went straight through my body and the sharpened end came out the other side. I fell to the ground in such an amount of pain my eyes misted for a few seconds until very quickly it cleared. From the ground I looked as the men walked towards me and I could hear the screams of my mother and sisters from behind me; I got to my feet and roared an adrenalin filled scream as the men stopped right in front of me. Taking one step towards them with the stake pointing out right in front of my body and swung the axe I was still holding. The long handle of the stake fell to the ground and the men watched it fall and as they looked at it hit the ground I attacked them with the axe. I took my mother and three sisters out of the forest and away towards the area that my brothers and father were working.

 

After that point, with my family reunited and a new home built I was treated more and more like the devil walking the earth, my mother wouldn’t speak to me and I had been made to live away from the rest of the family. After a few weeks my wounds had healed and the pain went away and I was beaten by my brothers in the night and left lying face down in a stream tied by both legs to trees on both banks, whilst the blood was washing away, I attempted to turn myself over to breathe air. After two days lying there being constantly turned over to lie face down I was cut free and my limp body floated effortlessly downstream and away from the lives of the people I loved. Little did they know that I had set up home in a cave that I built a wooden frontage to just six miles away from them and three times a month I would go and check on them at night? After what I believe was about twenty five years I found out that my mother had started to become more and more ill. Wanting to be close to them, I made a successful attempt to get a job for my family and because they had aged with the years that had passed and I hadn’t, they never knew who I really was a new name, twenty five years and my still youthful life allowed me to pass as a poor worker. I watched my mother and father grow old, my brothers and sisters had married and made their own families until finally my mother died, I had a short moment with her before she did and told her who I was. She held my hand and stroked my face before she said, “My son died in an attack on my village many years ago”, and I could only watch on and grieve away from the families. My father died a short time after I can only believe was from a broken heart. My brothers and sisters, their spouses and families left the area soon after that and I was left on my own to live whatever existence my life could give to me.

 

This is obviously the abridged version of those events, most I have probably forgotten or have decided to wipe from my memories but after sixteen hundred years I still have fond memories about my family and never once blamed them for the way in which they treated me after that attack on our village. After all how can you accept such a faith shattering thing as not being able to die, it goes against everything nature has got for you to believe in.

 

After a week of me going through the broad details of my life and compiling a series of sixteen journals, one for every century, I met with Elise again at her office in the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. Her assistant called my name from her desk in the outer office and showed me through to where Elise was sat behind her pristine desk; she pulled down the blind on the door as she left me. Elise shuffled together a few papers and pointed for me to sit on the ox blood Chesterfield next to the open fire. For a second I thought this was a romantic setting until she wheeled over a TV unit and a low table on castors. On the table were papers, photographs and other artefacts that made up 7 days of research that she had been doing and said to me, “Firstly can I have you permission to record all of our conversations and copy any other media that is produced during our sessions?”

 

I replied, “That completely depends on what you want to do with them.”

 

To which she said, “I want to publish a paper about your problem, all the research material is confidential and your information will be protected under doctor, patient confidence.”

 

Why should I care if she does this, I have spent many years perfecting how to change my identity, “I have no problems with this as long as you allow my solicitors to review a contract prior to anything being published.”

 

Elise started the consultation by pointing out a great deal of information she had attained over the last week regarding the points of interest she should investigate to validate my story. As I expected her too she said that it took her longer to print the pages from various sources than it did to find them in the first place. I said to her, “How often do you get handed a torch in darkness?” She threw a puzzled look at me so I elaborated on my comment, “I could have just said to you I am sixteen hundred years old, I am immortal. You would have thrown me in a padded cell where the only way I would have been able to prove it to you, would have been to still be there on the day that you die of old age. I gave you the specific things to look for I didn’t tell you where to find them. I do know of a few places that the information resides, because I used to help validate the finer details of past events. However I can see a photograph on the table that proves my existence in one movement and I didn’t know it existed.” I stood up and walked around the table and placed my finger on one particular photograph. A black and white photograph of Winston Churchill talking to troops in World War II.

 

Elise stood up and looked down to the table and said, “What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

 

I said, “Look at me and then when I say, look back at the photograph.” And she did, she looked me in the face and I said, “Look now.” She looked down to where my finger was still touching and she said, “Sorry I don’t see you point.” So I moved my finger she gasped and picked the photograph up and said, “When was this taken?”

 

I said in reply to her, as I sat back on the Chesterfield, “1942 or 1943” I reached into my bag and pulled out the journals she asked me to keep and put them on the table, she was still looking at the photograph and looking back at me. She had printouts and I had sixteen identical leather bound journals each of them containing a two or three page synopsis of which part of my life I am planning to fill the pages with. She looked at the journals and said, “Starting a library?” that I can only believe was an unintentional response to the confusing thoughts she probably has racing through her educated mind.

 

She then said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” She looked back at the photograph and continued, “It is just that it is a remarkable resemblance to you.” I said back to her comment, “This is how I have managed to get away with it for all of these years, people have come up to me in the street, mind I am talking about people I haven’t seen in forty or fifty years, I have seen them stop and shake their head and carry on. I have been asked if I am me and I say no, I am sorry. I believe that people pass me and reconcile it in their heads that I have a remarkable resemblance to someone they knew in a different life.” She nodded her head and gestured that I should sit on Chesterfield and I looked at her until she realised that I was already sat down.

In the way only a typical psychiatrist could do, she sat back in a chair, crossed one leg over the other; both hands fell naturally in position, one on her face with the finger pointing up by the nose with the fingers almost covering her mouth and her other arm fell limp on to the arm of the chair and I said to her, “You are not going to ask me how my relationship was with my mother are you?” to which she replied, “Did I just turn into a psychiatrist or what, even if I tried I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull that off again, but in a way that is exactly what I wanted, that photograph is on my mind. I can see that the person in the photograph is predominantly you but obviously that was over 60 years ago an you haven’t aged, therefore all of my training, my experience is telling me that there is no way it can be you. I could write this up as a convenient doppelganger and this is how you wanted this to play out.”

At this point I would have hoped the agitation was starting to show in my face and ever changing mannerisms, but she seems preoccupied as though in her heart she believes in my story but her training and experience she thinks I am crazy. By using the word crazy I am not talking about a genuine mental illness but the classification of someone might just throw around to identify a person that is more forward thinking or just thought in a different way to the normal. Just by not conforming to what is generally accepted as normal doesn’t make you mentally ill but can make people throw that word crazy at you just to make their own normality equal. Non-conforming people can be very imaginative and extremely convincing which is how they are able to go through their lives not being questioned outside of the group whose normality is in line with the equilibrium.

 

Elise placed everything she was holding back on the table and made some conforming piles just in front of her and picked up a jotter and her pen. She also pressed a button on a remote control handset and a small red light on a recording system over her shoulder blinked to life. She said, “On the plane back from Switzerland two weeks ago you said to me you were looking for an end. You also told me you were immortal, both are the reasons why we are having these consultations. I am bound by client confidentiality and you have allowed me to record these consultations for future use on the understanding that your identity is hidden. Do you agree with this statement?”

 

I replied, “Yes.”

 

Elise continued to say, “The dictionary definition of immortal in its lowest common denominator is, not subject to death or decay; having perpetual life. So are you saying you cannot die?”

 

I replied, “Yes.”

 

Elise said for the tape, “You are identifying yourself as someone who cannot die but you wish to, in your own words you said that you were looking for an end.” She pressed a button on the remote control again and the red light died behind her and she said to me, “Sorry about this I need to get this for your safety and for mine too. I need to know that my research and questions are initially bound by this statement and therefore anyone who starts to listen to them outside of this is also bound by these statements. Formalities over, what year were you born?”

 

“I was born in 505AD” I replied and she responded, “Where were you born?”

 

“I was born, as modern geography goes, in South Western Germany” I said, “at this point do you want any more details?”

 

“If you can add anything extra that you may think about, no too much, but something that may allow me to substantiate what you tell me.”

 

“If you look at a modern map the area I was born in is now called Wegberg and a British forces hospital now occupies some of the area where my tribe created their community. The Roman Empire was advancing over much of Europe but we managed to miss a lot of this until the migration into the western lands happened towards the end of the 6th century”

“Do you know I have looked up on the internet a specific timeline from 500CE to present day and do you know what I found? Well, being a rhetorical question I will tell you I too found information to do with the Migration and the advancing of the Roman Empire through Europe. So this can be placed into the grey area which is easily proven because it is information that is readily available.” Elise said with her sceptical head screwed on nice and tight.

 

I replied, “If you look into this and I am guessing some of your information came from Wikipedia, you will find that this entry was edited by a specific person. Part of my life’s endeavour is to make historical references as true as possible, because I was there. We all know that Wikipedia doesn’t have the best track record for displaying accurate information which is why I am an editor on it. Oh by the way you said you started in 500CE what does CE mean?”

 

Elise said, “CE is a reference to Common Era, because of the nature of my job, I have to have a non-scientific Bias, a non-religious bias, a non-political bias and other non-biases. I need to and try to remain neutral to everything and everyone.”

 

I replied to this in a way that throw doubt into the non-bias her job requires, “So you need to make sure you do not take a single side but see the stand point to both sides or more sides if more exist. However you remain sceptical about my statement that I am immortal. Isn’t that your bias, if you asked me to prove it I could, however I would refuse, simply because like you and the next Joe Bloggs around the corner I still feel pain in the same way as you do and the next Joe Bloggs around the corner. So you are able to sit here in front of me and discount what I am saying.”

 

"The only reason I discount it is because it only exists in Myth or fiction.” She said.

 

“Are you aware of a process that exists in Biology called, ‘Regeneration’? There is a Sea Star that can regrow its arms, certain types of geckos and other lizards can regrow their tails. Even in the human body we are able to regenerate at a cellular level, granted human cellular regeneration takes seven to ten years to complete the entire body. But did you also know that many cancer cells are considered immortal.” Elise looked at me as if she was trying to swallow then entire Wikipedia website, “If I had one cell in my hand and that cell divided so I had three cells but the first cell died there are now two cells that are exactly the same as the original. I believe, but I will stand to be corrected the concept behind something called the immortalised cell line.”

 

She took a long gulp on an old cup of coffee and pulled a strained face until she had swallowed it all, I do believe that if I wasn’t present she would have spat the whole mouthful back into her mug. She replaced the mug onto the table but she placed the small cork mat she would have ordinarily put the mug back on, on top of her cup to remind herself not to drink any more of it. Elise said, “OK science facts about regeneration and immortal cells, I will look into these further before our next session, this however from what you have said still puts my point about immortality, what I mean to say is, the point that a human can be wholly immortal in its own right is still the basis of Myth and of fiction. At the moment I am still lacking the evidentiary proof that belies fact, everything in life can be categorised as a myth or as fiction until the evidentiary proof has been substantiated.”

 

“Try this one, in 1060CE I moved in the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps, this was the first time I had decided to become reborn and after years of living there in a monastery with a legion of Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Bec the monks realised that I wasn’t aging or dying and I told them my story, I was then officially named Anselme de Candie Genève and my life was then written. I kept my first name as I had no need to change it that was until people started to realise that ordinary people could think for themselves. In 1079 I became Abbot and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury under William the second and Henry the first.” I said.

 

Elise looked at me again with yet more questioning disbelief, “Archbishop of Canterbury?”

 

“Yes”

 

“You really expect me to believe that you were the Archbishop of Canterbury to William II and then to Henry I?”

 

“Elise I don’t expect you to believe anything of me, I provide you with the facts and you decide that I am a complete fruit cake and that is it, I was originally here for you to help me through my recent loss and because I said to you I was in need of an end. My grief will always be with me and I am tired of my existence because my life, the one I have waited a number of lifetimes came to an end in Switzerland and I want so much to be with my family again.” I started to talk aggressively and the anger followed the aggression and then I was fighting back the urge to break something to release the pent up, bubbling grief that every second of my life is filled with. “I don’t care if you believe me and I wish I had never said what I said on the plane journey back here, if you want to substantiate anything then follow the money!”

 

With that outburst I got up off the Chesterfield collected all my belongings together, threw them unceremoniously into my back pack and left her office, maybe for good.

 

Two weeks later I had decided to fly over to Vermont and stay in a lakeside cabin in the woods to work on the journals I had been asked to keep. When I say the woods it is a three bedroom tree house with a full height glazed aspect overlooking the lake and because it lies on the western shore of the lake I see the full sunset every night.

 

I have not been answering the phone to anyone in my house in Britain and I have learnt to route incoming calls from specific numbers on my mobile straight to voicemail, Elise had phoned me twenty one times in the last two weeks. Modern technology also allows me to retrieve my voicemail over the internet. On my first night in the cabin I stood in front of the window and looked at the lake, the last time I was here my wife and children were with me and that room was filled with noise and fun. Now all I could hear was my shoes squeaking on the highly polished floor and even the sunset filling the wide open space with pink champagne coloured evening light was audible.

 

My heart lay as low as I ever though it possible to lie and my memories were the only things I had shooting through my head. My children racing around the lower floor on push along tin cars laughing and shouting, “brrmmmm” and “screachhhhh” as they took corners and mimicking the sound the tires made. My wife, my beautiful wife handing me a glass of wine after putting the children to bed and cuddling up to me as we watch the summer sun disappear over the canopy of the trees on the far side of the lake as the shimmering glints on the almost still water vanish for the evening getting ready for all the work they have to do another day. We settle down on the comfortable sofa and she cuddles up to me further and before too long we make love under the evening stars and sit watching the fire crackle whilst draped with an itchy blanket but it doesn’t itch enough to make me want to lose the memory.

 

The next morning I got out my laptop and connected to the internet and review the entries on Wikipedia I spent so much time updating. I could see from my admin login that the quite a few of the pages I was an editor of had recently been viewed a few times over the last fourteen days. I believed that Elise had been checking the fine details of all the information I had given her in our last few visits.

 

I had a little window appear in the bottom corner of my screen, you have one hundred and fifty seven emails unread, I clicked the box and my email program opened and I sorted the junk from the legitimate ones. A few from business, one from my oldest friend and my solicitor, there were many from Elise Hadsworth (e.hadsworth@lon.edu.ac.uk). I started from the bottom of the list and read; the first one was an apology and a little long to keep my attention from the start. As I read and got to the top and the one dated two days ago, from the way she was writing I started to believe she had hit upon that one little piece of information that corroborates something I had told her. I don’t believe for one minute she could follow the money as she is a psychotherapist not a forensic accountant.

 

I click the reply button on the email I had received from Hans, my only true friend and solicitor and just said to him, “It is time to move on”. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral and he was aware about my state of mind and he expressed his concern in one of the ways I believe someone in that position could, “Come and stay with us for a while, you need your friends around you at a time like this.” I declined and walked away alone and lonely. After that he had tried to call me every day but I wasn’t taking any calls from anyone regardless of who they were.

 

I never returned any calls and just now when I read his email I knew I had to cut all my ties and move on to whatever life has to offer and being here in this cabin with the memories I have I am filled with the feelings that defined my life and the way my life will be for however long it will now last. My life disappeared on the winding roads in a beautiful country many miles away from here; my life as it was is lying out in this room and the memories of the last twelve years.

 

I have now spent two weeks writing down what on reflection will read as the most fictional set of events a non-writer could ever have dreamed up. I decided to dedicate the final journal to my hand written epitaph. I can only manage a single page of this one and it has taken me a whole day of thinking and have only come up with this, “Life deals you the cards that no imagination can deal, the heart breaks in ways nothing can heal. It’s time to move on.”

 

I click reply on the last email I received from Elise and just wrote, “I have finished the Journals, they are lying in chronological order in my cabin.” I gave her the address and added, “PS time is up” and clicked send. I went down to the lake front took off my deck shoes and socks, climbed into the row boat I have tied up on the jetty and rowed out into the middle of the lake.

 

Elise received the email on her a few minutes later, she happened to be in America attending a seminar in New York. She made a few calls and made arrangements with the British Consulate to travel to Vermont to the address in her email. The consulate had made arrangements on her behalf to have the police and the letting agent to be there when she turned up.

 

She entered the cabin and she saw the immense window that over looked the lake she went down the few steps and passed the kitchen and dining table into the main living area. Just because it was in her nature to examine things she felt the log burner to see if it was hot and said, “Cold” Elise walked up to the window and looked out, “Wow, I can see why he comes here.” She spent some time looking out over the lake and around the trees that enclosed the cabin in perfect solitude. On noticing the jetty down below her she let out an inaudible gasp. In her head she looked closer as if the camera deep inside was trying to zoom in, “Does this cabin come with a boat for the lake?”

 

“Yes, it is only a small rowing boat but yes it does.” said the letting agent.

 

“Is it kept in a boat house when unoccupied?” Elise enquired.

 

“No it is always tied up on the jetty, there hasn’t been any crime around these parts for years, this is part of the attraction and also in the agency fee we arrange keep a patrol company on the roads and on the lake. Mostly it is window dressing” the agent was saying when Elise cut off her conversation, “So where is the boat now.”

 

Elise quickly left the cabin and ran down the steps to the jetty and right to the very end. She came to an abrupt stop just by the deck shoes still on the side on the jetty next to a post with a big steel ring bolted to the side. She moved out to the very end of the jetty and looked forwards and then scanning left and right. There was no sign of the little rowing boat anywhere, Elise turned to the Agent and said, “I think you had better get your window dressing patrol company to do some real work.”

 

The agent looked at her with a very puzzled look all over her face, Elise pointed down to the deck shoes, pointed at the empty ring that had no little row boat tied to it and then shrugged her shoulders looking around. The agent took a little bit of time staring at Elise looking around still shrugging her shoulders until finally the penny dropped, “Nooooo” the agent said disbelievingly and got her phone out held down one of the numbers to speed dial the entry that the number is setup for. She put it to her ear and started to talk to the person in an office somewhere else. Elise walked up the wooden steps back up to where the consulate car was parked. The police were still waiting up next to it and she explained what she had found. One of the police men pick up the radio and called it in.

 

Within two hours the place was teaming with police and the patrol company had boats on the water. Elise thought to herself that is probably the most amount of work they had ever done. The row boat was found about a mile or so down the shore with a jacket inside, Elise ventured inside and after the police had catalogued the contents including fifteen leather bound journals and the laptop she signed a receipt and took possession of everything under the authority of the British Government. She handed over her business card and wrote the number of the embassy in New York that made all the arrangements. She asked for a little help to get everything packed into her car and set off.

 

Three days later she was in her office back in the university in London awaiting the delivery of the journals and the laptop from the home office. When they eventually turned up she signed for the boxes and cut the tape that help the lids in place. Removing the journals she started by skim reading the first few pages when the phone on her desk rang, it was official communication from the sheriff in Vermont to say they have found partially eaten clothing in the middle of the lake but as yet they haven’t found anything that they can completely substantiate as the body of Nathanial Forever. However they are running tests on a certain amount of biological material that has been recovered along with the clothing. Early indications are that they are human remains and were found in the lake near to where the boat had been recovered. She continued to look through the journals until the very last one, on the cover had been a crude branding saying, “Twentieth Century” and was filled with scribblings dates and paragraphs of text from the first page until the very last.  On the last page it said, “Another new millennium!!!”

 

Elise, the psychotherapist who had a biased view on what Nathanial had told her in their meetings she had with him and had made up her mind that he was suffering from grief, that together with information gained out of the Wikipedia offices that a great deal of entries had been edited over the last four weeks on the website using a login that was registered to a validated account owned by a Mr. N Forever, from an address in Bexley Heath, Kent. This was the same address Elise had for him, she almost cried when she thought about how much he truly loved his wife and how the grief had made up this imagination of immortality. In her notes later that day she made a comment on the initial page simply stating innocent grief induced psychosis.

 

Elise packed the journals into a bag, turned off the lights and left early for the day. She made it to the underground station down the road in a matter of a few minutes got onto a train and got off at the station local to her house. Her children were still with the sitters for another hour so she stopped off in the brasserie around the corner and had a glass of wine and started to read the journals more closely. After thirty minutes or so, the waiter came over to her with another glass of wine.

 

She said, "What is this?"

 

"It is a glass of Chablis from the Abbey Of Bec in the Aosta Valley, Italy" The Waiter politely replied and told her that the person at the bar had asked him to take it over to her and when she looked over to the bar she saw the back of someone leaving through the front door. She quickly got up to run after them only to see the anonymous benefactor of the glass of Chablis, put a helmet on and ride off on a motorcycle. She stood there and watched the bike turn a corner and away from her sight.

All four in this series
In Need of an End
The Forever Lecture
Inner Peace Forever
The 21st Century Journal