Stories i will never write

Sixty years later

In the beginning of the world there was fire, and ice, and darkness. Darkness for centuries. Nothingness. That's what waking up felt like. Waking up to the cold and dark, the burning and burning and ice in my veins. The cold and heat, all at once. That's all i know. It's all i knew.

But that day, something else arrived. An image as i watched a man stare at a tree in some park I've been wandering around for hours, trying to look for any food left behind on beaches or somebody distracted enough to pickpocket.

He was standing under an orchid, staring up at the flowers in a way that made me stop in my tracks and watch. His expression had been...wistful. Longing, aching and deep. I remembered how emotions must feel like, then. He made me remember. I welcomed it, the unfamiliarity. The unknown.

I thought to myself, then, i wonder what he is thinking about to twist his face so.

Then, almost as though he heard my thought, sensed me somehow; he turned. He turned my way and our eyes connected. Everything stopped. Everything stopped, and then began again. I was reborn. But this time it wasn't in darkness no, it was...light. Life.

The past.

Life. Life. Life.

I had lived, once.

I remember falling to my knees, too shocked to cry or run or scream or do anything else besides stare and stare and stare. I didn't allow myself to blink for fear of him disappearing, an illusion, a ghost of my past.

He jerked forwards, each of his steps tentative—as though he, too, feared the same thing i did—kneeling down stiffly when he reached me. There were tears in his old eyes, and they silently fell, one coming after the other, as he held me and we walked and walked and walked.  And now, here we are, in his withered Rhode Island apartment, the building probably as old as the both us.

No. As old as him.

Because even though we were born in the same year, even though the memories of us as children are springing up as i sit and stare at him like flowers in spring, there is something off. Something wrong.

He has aged. And i have not.

"What happened to you, Varsha?" He finally speaks. It has been so long since i have heard his voice—then tinged with youth—now croaky and spent. Wasted away.

I don't know. I don't know what happened to me.

All i can think about is that he is old, and i am not.

Some people think that immortality is a blessing. A miracle, even. A wish come true for so many. But no. It's a curse. How can someone go on living an eternal life with no recollection on who they are? Where they are from? My name is Varsha but the people behind it are blurs. All i can think about is the unfairness. The emptiness.

"What happened to you?" He repeats. He is sobbing now, pained, horrible wailing. I take his hand. I don't let go. "Where did you go? You were gone. You were gone, Varsha."

What happened to me? I'll tell you what, Georgie. I'll tell you exactly what.

There was light, there was laughter, there was music, and then there wasn't. There was you, Georgie, there was the woman who was supposed to be my mother and the man who was supposed to be my father, and then there wasn't. There was life, and then there was nothing. Absolutely nothing for me to hold on to in the dark.

"I don't know," I say, a whisper of the girl i once was. "I don't know what happened. I was there, and then i wasn't."

Author's Note:
Part 2 is coming soon :)