It was a cold October day when Lily told me she was going to die. I still remember the chill of the wind on my face as I looked up at her in surprise. A moment before I had been hunched over my book, eating it up with the voracity of someone who knows they are going to live forever. Her words came like a splash of icy water. I couldn’t speak for a long time. Everything felt numb, and then slowly everything came back in lurid clarity. The smell of rotting leaves mixed with her perfume, the sun beat on my back and made it itch. I was too calm when I asked her why. It was forced, but I didn’t want to betray my blind desperation. It didn’t last. I yelled at her and trudged home. When I found her bible on my bedside table, I ripped out all the pages and threw it on the ground.
The months that followed crippled her. She accepted every treatment except the one that would certainly cure her. Soon she was confined to her bed. I sat beside her, staring at her as if she were a stubborn child. I was so cold and angry, but she stayed kind and patient until her lungs gave out. The room was quiet. The lifeless trees stood like statues outside the window. She had been sleeping, and then quietly she stopped breathing. I looked at the pale blue walls, at the curtains that separated us from the rest of the room, at my own white hands, at anything other than her body. I thought of all her warmth seeping out into the sterile hospital. I thought of all the times I had held her close and felt her heat against me.
A month after she died, I went to EternaLife. We had laughed at the name while she was alive, while she was still planning to live forever. It was so commercial, so crass, and yet they offered something that, up until now, only God had claimed the right to give. Something gave her pause though. Some asshole gave her a bible, some idiot outside her college had handed her a pamphlet. I don’t really remember. It had been nothing at the time. She had always laughed at religion. I don’t know what changed.
Most of the churches started to close when EternaLife released their cure for death. God just didn’t matter after that I guess. Those who didn’t apostatize just let themselves die. Congregations dwindled and eventually nobody was left. The ugly churches got torn down or repurposed. The cathedrals, the beautiful mosques and synagogues, those were turned into museums.
For a long time, I couldn’t stand to even look at a church. Lily and I were so close to living together forever. It was like a dream, something that people in the past could only frantically hope for. They could force themselves to believe in an afterlife to allay their fear of death, but now we had the real thing. We had eternity spread out before us.
I finished school a few months after she died. I didn’t go to the convocation. I didn’t celebrate at all. If it hadn’t been for my parents, I think I would have just dropped out of life. They kept me going. Because of them I eventually landed a job at a publishing firm. I bought a house and lived the life of a bachelor. There were women, but none of them stayed for long, and eventually I lost interest in people altogether. I spent my evenings in my living room, staring out at the quiet little street where children played. I watched those children grow up and move away, and none replaced them.
Spring evenings were long and bittersweet. The way the soft light lit the trees, the smell of flowers, the sudden, short bursts of rain, all reminded me of the first few weeks when she and I had started seeing each other. On those nights, sometimes I would even venture outside of the house. It was then, in the warm, fading light, when the breeze played gently with the leaves, that I could believe the world had some kind of meaning.
One of these spring evenings I walked up to the local church. It was an old, small building that had been turned into a museum even before the cure for death. You could still visit on the weekend, but now it was closed. I walked around it once, noticing the white peeling paint and the curling shingles. The stained-glass windows were still heavenly, but the rest was beginning to look worn. I finished my lap and stopped in front of the stairs that led up to the front door. I had the urge to be inside, but I didn’t have the courage to break in.
That night, my long battle began. I could see the years spinning away into forever, and I didn’t feel free of death, I felt trapped. Still, when I imagined non-existence, then I remembered all the books on my shelf I would leave unread, and all the little pleasures of life seemed more important than they had a moment before. But then there was Lily. I closed my eyes and it was like she was there. She was smiling, coaxing, waiting.
I remember someone told me that after centuries of life, the first twenty-five years would feel like a dream. They were wrong. Everything that has come after has felt like a dream. I’ve been floating through the days and months and years after Lily’s death. That’s why I’m lying here now, in this bed, waiting for the doctor. I wonder if they’ll use gas or a needle, or something more sophisticated. I don’t really care. I just want to know if there’s something beyond, somewhere where Lily is waiting.
Scott Roads is a writer from Edmonton, Alberta. When he’s not reading or writing, he enjoys listening to paranormal podcasts, birdwatching, and spending time with his family.
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