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 

Can Fate Be Beaten?

I was told that the wheels of fate have been set in motion.
I wonder if that is a human rights violation that goes as high as it is possible to go?
Does this mean that the next choice that I make has already been made and written in the fabrics of time?
What if I don't agree with them?
Has that already been thought of?
Is this just someone who believes the meaning of fate is set in stone?
Are they telling everyone, to make them think that everything they do is pointless?

Can fate be beaten?

Breezy Hill - Death of the Mi T

For detective Tysoe to be seen leaving the entrance to the morgue before breakfast isn't an unusual sight. But this morning had her needing to confirm the identity the king pin boss of all organised criminal activities in her district. The worrying thing for her was that it is a positive identity. Question after question runs through her mind and the only one she knows is going to haunt her is, Who is connected enough to kill the most untouchable person in Breezy Hill?

If we rewound from this day and went back two days to when the normal everyday trudge for detective Mary Tysoe started with her trip to the district precinct via the morgue to pick up her work sheet for that day.

She didn't mind this so much because it was better than being the corporate conveyance lawyer she used to be, telling people the same old rubbish tirelessly plodding through an office full of clients without thought or personality. Until she joined the police she used to wake up at night with the image of her signing off corporate billable hours for impersonal work carried out for customers who feel they should be getting a better service. Now she gives a personal service to the recently killed, gets paid far less and has a great deal of job satisfaction.

She sighed deeply when she saw the face she knew so well staring up at her from the morticians slab, her boss from her old job. His corporate wings had been torn off his body and used to smother him in a very gruesome way. This was more for effect than the cause of death seventy four stab wounds and the wooden splinters from a spear carved from the wood of an apple tree. The only apple tree in this district was the fortress headquarters of supposed thug and supposed villain Michael Teeah, or because he has threatened death to anyone who doesn't call him Mi T.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is probably a good time to tell you a little bit of background, Detective Tysoe is one of the allowed officials that are not hired by the Mi T Corporation, she is one of three still alive and able to work towards trying to clean up the district of Breezy Hill. Breezy Hill wholly owned and governed by the well-known organised crime King Pin Michael Teeah. The district is a set of seven overcrowded trees set, almost in a precise circle around the heavily fortified Mi T Corporation apple tree. With a population of over one hundred and fifty thousand with a low level poverty line a high line dedicated to the ridiculously rich and the ones who Mi T is favouring at that time. Positioned an adequate distance below them is for the workers and anyone who can be a useful person to have around. Officially the primary industry of the district is hospitality so on the branches you will find restaurants, hotels and casinos around every knot and junction and of course Michael Teeah has his hands in everything making him one of the richest, most recognisable and deadliest faeries in their land.

~~~~~~~~

Detective Tysoe left the Morgue and walked the gnarled bark roads into the most depressing part of the district, she instantly felt like turning around and walking back into the morgue. But more pressing things lie on the horizon, firstly a visit to Mi T. He is always the person her and her colleagues would go and see when something like this, lands on their desks. She knows exactly how it will go, she will turn up, insist on seeing Mi T, he will come out and escort her into his personal office suite offering a cup of tea, "or maybe you prefer coffee", she will ask him necessary questions, he will deny knowing any details, she will ask him where he was at the time of the death, he will say I was with friends or at one of his clubs, she will ask if there was anyone else who can corroborate this and he will respond saying, about 50 other people.

Unfortunately for Tysoe this is something she has to do as party of her job meaning she would have to fly to the tree where the Mi T Corporation is situated and go through the process for the paperwork. she walked a little while long, sort of prolonging the inevitable and when she can to the edge of the branch and looked down to the grass so far below her took in a large breathe of air, filling her lung whilst she unfolded her wings out wide, fluttered them a little to get out any creasing and she jumped.

The distance between the trees meant Tysoe has to fly for about ten minutes to get to the apple tree in the centre of the district, fortunately today is a dry day so the flight over will be fairly easy. She also knew from bitter experience that as soon as she gets within a certain range she will be watched by the guards and even closer still she will get an armed escort to one of the landing platforms. She made the flight casually knowing what is going to happen but when she was expecting the armed guards there was nothing and when she landed Tysoe was met on the platform by Michael Teeah's personal assistant.

"Detective Tysoe, that was quick. I haven't even contacted the department yet. Come in and see, we need to make a report." the artificially altered assistant greeted her. Detective Tysoe looked back into the skies around the corporate headquarters to see them all clear, no guards anywhere to be seen, she had never seen it like this before. Usually the skies directly around this tree were patrolled by faeries with spears; anyone comes too close without permission gets escorted into one of the security rooms. Try and force your way down to land on the platform then you will be expected to be made dead or worse.

Detective Tysoe made a mental note about how she had been addressed, especially after she heard those words; we need to make a report. Taking her time to follow the assistant, noting that how incredibly well spoken she was, but how low her IQ should be. Knowing a job well, doesn't mean a person is able to relate that knowledge outside of the working environment, in fact a certain type of person will not be able to do it at all and this is exactly the sort of person Mi T liked to hire. It gives him overall control, he will pay to have her surgically altered, pay to have her wings clipped and pay for the elocution ladies to take her under their wings until she can sit behind the desk and animatedly say exactly what is written on the script. They don't need a mind to think and definitely don't require the ability to remember anything outside of her working environment.

"Please Detective come as quickly as you can." The assistant said once again, Tysoe replied, "I could probably get to wherever you are trying to take me too quicker than you can possible take me." Tysoe eyed up the skin tight clothing, it looked almost painted on and she followed close behind until Tysoe heard, "This!"

The assistant looked like she was going to cry as she pointed down to the floor where her boss and the scourge of the district were lying in a very large pool of blood. Tysoe only assumed this was Michael Teeah, in reality all she could see was a mound of blood, skin, hair and clothing. She knelt down and said to no one in particular, "Can you send for the coroner and also can you get a message to my precinct to let them know we have a bloody mass I am investigating. Can you get me a set of those disposable rubber gloves that you use to touch everything with and I will need a rather strong coffee, when you think you have got it strong enough, double that strength! Go Go Go" Tysoe gestured in a dismissive way still not taking her gaze off the mound and as the assistant walked off Tysoe looked up and saw as she walked away she was using her hands and fingers to try and remember what she was asked to do. Tyson never expected to see that coffee. She said, more to herself than to the bolognaise like mess on the floor in front of her, "I wonder whose toes you trod on this time Michael."

"Your coffee Detective Tysoe." A voice said, but it wasn't the same voice as the physically enhanced assistance that walked away. Tysoe stood up and swung around slowly so she didn't startle whoever was standing behind her. Silhouetted in the doorway, the expanse of daylight flooding in behind him was a man wearing a coarse knit robe tied around the middle with a small piece of vine. He walked forward and said, "Just as you like it, but a little better, I guarantee it." He said.

He walked towards her, she didn't move as she felt there was no reason that she could think of to be afraid. He handed her the cup, an ornately carved wooden cup and nodded her head, "Thank you" after a first sniff and a big swig of her coffee, "What."

"Like I said, a little better." He said.

"Who are you?" Tysoe replied and continued to drink. He walked over to one of the comfortable chairs and gestured to her to take a seat. She walked over and sat where he had indicated and continued to enjoy her drink. "Michael Teeah's assistant will be back in a few minutes and I don't think she will like a stranger in the same office where her employer has just been killed." Tysoe said and continued, "Did you tell me who you are?"

"No I didn't Mary, that lady will be away for a while, you gave her enough to remember in that tiny little mind of hers, not her fault though I suppose. " he paused for thought and continued, "I am unable to tell you my name and what makes you think I am strange?"

"I didn't say you were strange. I said stranger as in someone who she doesn't know." Tysoe said.

"She knows me, not really knowing she knows me. Much like you, you know me, you don't know it yet but you do know me all the same." he said with the most calming way of talking and he watched as Tysoe enjoyed her coffee.

“Michael Teeah’s death was not murder it could probably be put down to nature’s causes.” The man said.

She looked over to him but could still only see him in silhouette; she couldn’t make out any discernable features, “How would you know this?”

Dodging the question he replied, “This land is going to need a new principle, someone who has shown that they can be honest and provide a structure that will not be influenced. All the residents of each tree in this area need to know their best interests have the full attention of the principle.” He stopped talking and looked over to her as if he was awaiting something to crank into place in her head but all he saw was her finishing off her coffee and looking for somewhere to put the cup without getting up out of the chair. He leant forward and took it from her and continued, “I am talking about you Mary.”

“Me” she exclaimed, “Why would you think I could do this?”

“You worked, very successfully in a job you hated, this job allowed you certain of life’s luxuries without you having to worry about your home, your food and fun times.”

Tysoe interrupted, “There wasn’t any time left for the fun times.”

“But you gave up that job without any prompting because you didn’t like it. You were not forced out and you had nothing else to go on to. You then signed up to be a detective, a great deal less coming to you. You even down sized you living arrangements so you could afford a life outside your meagre earnings, but you still did it and you are good at it. You made a sacrifice to your life because you were not able to have a life outside of your work. Now you serve the people and those people respect you more than some of your colleagues because you serve them not The Mi T Corporation. You can serve them again and make this land a place faeries from lands far away would come to spend their pleasure time as a family.”

“No, no, no way, are you asking me to sit in an office like this and run Breezy Hill?” she said.

“It is not my place to ask you to do this but who else is there to do it?” the man said.

“This land has one hundred and fifty thousand plus inhabitants there must be at least one that fit the bill.” She said.

The man responded, “You are right. I believe Michael Teeah was the holder of something that didn’t belong to him” detective Tysoe raised her eyebrows in a manner to suggest, there is probably more than one thing he had that didn’t belong to him, her thoughts faded as the man walked over to a stone wall, “An unusual place to put a stone built wall don’t you think, we are after all in a tree, surely the wooden walls all around are strong enough.” He made a simple movement of his hand the all the mud that bound each stone together dried up to dust and he learnt forward and pulled a single stone out of the middle and all the other stones fell into a long pile on the floor at his feet.

Detective Tysoe watched each stone fall and all of them fell around the man, not one of the tumbling stones connected with him or even brushed his clothing as they fell. She looked to where the wall used to be and saw a shelf cut into the wall, “Could you hand that to me please? I am not as nimble as I used to be.” She got up from the comfort of the seat she was sat in and climbed over the mound of rubble and picked up a stone that was smooth all over, had a bulbous end and another end that came to a sharp point.

She looked at the stone and then back to the shelf and couldn’t see how the stone was supported but she remembered just a few seconds earlier taking the stone in her hand and it was point down. Initially if had felt very cold to her touch and it warmed in her fingers, or was it warming her fingers, she couldn’t decide. Stepping back off the rubble she held the stone out to the man and for the first time she saw his face, his handsome features had a darkened glow, not one that she felt to be a threat to her or anyone but maybe one that was trying to hide something else.

He said, “You are the holder of that stone, use it well and take it to where it belongs.”

She walked over to the mess in the floor where the remains of Michael Teeah’s body was still lying and said what about this, she turned her head to the man and pointed at the mound. Fire erupted from her finger and hit the mass which in turn burst into flames. She quickly looked back and watched in start to burn, she then heard a splintering crash and turned. Blazing sunlight came in from a new hole in the exterior wall, dust and small bits of wood rushed around in the air and the man stepped into silhouette once more, unravelled his butterfly shaped wings to full stretch and jumped out into the air around Breezy Hill.

She flung her hands forward and shouted after him, “wait” but it was too late but when her arms reached their full lock the ceiling, a wall and the floor burst into flames. She outwardly said, “Oooops” and ran through the fires, whose flames felt cold to her as she went through them and she too jumped out of the hole.

The case of an unUsual mind

This one was not so much of a case but more likely Holmes had slipped back into the over use of cocaine and other narcotics he picks up the those dens he sometimes frequents down by the docks.  It was a very rainy early morning when I had a knock on the door of my room, "Watson, are you awake?" and with continued knocks and exclamations, "Watson, Watson are you awake?"

I opened my door as he almost fell through it trying to knock harder, "Watson you are awake, good.  I need to talk to you about something very unusual."  Holmes looked drawn and long in the face, his eyes were darkened and sunken into his skull and he said, will you share some tobacco with me, here sit next to the fire and we will talk."

On the few occasions he has done this, by talk he means that he will talk and I will listen to him, it helps him get things straight in his over active head.  I sat next to the fire and decided not to call Mrs Hudson for some coffee and I lit a cigarette.  I had almost finished smoking before Holmes started to talk.
"Watson, over the last five year I have been consulting, with a gentleman, who has been sat in that very chair that you are on no less than 7 different occasions, he is a very interesting man and has told me some very, very unUusal stories."  Holmes stood up and tapped his pipe on the palm of his hand, walked over to the fire and threw the bits of tobacco ash into the fire grate.  He put the arm of his pipe into his mouth and puffed air whilst taking a pouch of shag from his pocket, filling the pipe and lighting it he started to wander around the room leaving smoke trails in his wake.

"I am sorry Watson I was a long way from here.  This man, THE man with the unUsual mind, lets call him Paul for sake of giving him a name.  He first of all came to me five years ago and all he told me was that in four days time I will be engaged in a case that will take me to the Reichenbach falls and everything that entailed in The Adventure of the Final Problem, that you so wonderfully chronicled.  Since my return two years ago he has come back to see me 5 more times and we have talked and talked about all manner of things."

I watched as he blew out smoke time after time and enquired, "Holmes you said he has been to see you on no less than 7 occasions but you have only mentioned 6." And Holmes turned to around to face me and he looked to be in deep thought, "Well done Watson, well spotted I will make a you a consulting detective out of you before you know it.  He met up with me just before I went to see the Maharajah in Calcutta.  He seemed to know that I was going to be there before I knew I was going to be." Holmes walked around a more and his pipe smoke lingered in the air and showed that he was walking in a figure eight around the room. "On the last occasion he told me this, he told me that both you and I are actually fictional characters that are penned by an English man called Arthur Conan Doyle."

I cut Sherlock off in his obvious drug induced state and said, "Fictional, that is obvious rubbish he is feeding you and you seem to have fallen for it.  Tell me Sherlock are you feeling OK? You don't seem yourself, have you been down to the docks again?"  Holmes replied, "I thought exactly the same thing but he told me there was going to be a knock at the door and I was going to tell Mrs Hudson to show up the person who knocked."  I interjected again, "And the knock, who was Mrs Hudson going to show up, this mysterious person is obviously the person who has made you think more about this unusual mans outrageous comments."

"Watson, I met and talked to the man, not the unusual man, but the author, Arthur Conan Doyle.  I do think I have finally burst a blood vessel in my head, I met an unusual man 7 times, which as you know is not like me to meet someone more than once unless it is on a case, except of course that buffoon Lestrade.  But I talked to him 7 times and then I talked to the man he says is the author and creator of Sherlock Holmes the consulting detective.  I talked at length to him for almost two days solid in this room whilst you were up in the Lake District fishing.  All of this has been too much for me and I am now thinking of retiring to keep bees on a farm I brought on the Sussex Downs."  Watson replied to this revelation, "What about your consulting, what will the police do without your incredible skills."

Holmes then said, "You know my methods Watson, you can carry on where I have left off, besides since the death of Moriarty the cases I have been dealing with are missing sisters, a dowry being claimed by a parent other mundane things I am not being stretched anymore."

In need of an ending - Opener

If we were able to see how a day would 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 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 be 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 and 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 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 road 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 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 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 had people die before but because they have all been either in battle 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 impaled me 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 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 large series of journals, I met with Elise again at her office in the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London.  He 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 two.

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 eighteen 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 an 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 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 6^th 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 names as 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 Jos, my 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 eighteen 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.  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, “The End” and she read the uncomplicated statement on the first page and turned the pages to find the rest of it empty.

Elise, the psychotherapist who had a biased view on what Nathanial had told her in the meeting 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 and told her that the man 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 a man leaving through the front door.  She quickly got up to run after the man only to see him 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.