[ WP ] You are functionally immortal : you can die but instantly come back to life . Over the many , many years you 've become jaded and bored , and now dying is the only thing that gives you any sort of rush anymore . You 're about to attempt your most elaborate and thrilling death yet .

I remember being afraid to die. Maybe afraid is the wrong word. I recall being unable to imagine being dead. At 9 years old, when my great grandmother died and my family and I had returned home, I lay awake wondering what it would be like, how I could cease to exist, fall into the void of nothingness. Would it be like a restful eternity? Would I dream of fantastical things and have some reward for the life I lived? Where would I go? What would happen to the consciousness that seemed so much more real and alive than my body ever did? 
 
 The first time I died, it hurt. It really was n't the manner of my death, but re-entry into consciousness. I guess there's a reason people do n't remember being born; it stings like a bitch. There's this blinding white pain, and I considered briefly this was what people saw when they died - their rebirth that did n't quite take. A near-death experience is probably really jarring. Dying, though, that's the way to go. 
 
 Have you ever flown? Not in a plane, but put your arms out like a bird, soaring for just a moment before your body slams into concrete? Do n't ask me how I survive that fall, I do n't know. I do n't know how my body does n't shatter into a million chunky pieces. I do n't know why I take a ragged, choking breath that tastes like stale cigarettes and somehow revives me. Nobody gave me a manual, and nobody seems to be able to tell me the story about how I was born, either. I've just always been, and it seems, I'll always be. 
 
 I know what you're thinking - that's awesome, right? Everyone wants to live forever, and I see that my body is aging very slowly, and somehow seems to be stuck in stasis at 29 ( nearly 30, but nobody wants to turn 30 ). But after I made a lot of money, pissed away a lot of money, saw what the world had to offer, died in every way imaginable, I got bored. 
 
 Your favorite food gets bland after a while, even if it tastes just as good as the first time. Death is thrilling, it gets my blood pumping, and then I assume not pumping and then pumping again, but it's so expected. I'd become apathetic to living, to death, to the trials and tribulations of life and the cyclical nature of all things. It was so dreadfully predictable. 
 
 I sat on the edge of my bed in the still of night, contemplating a way to pull myself from the ennui that gripped me, pulling me under, gulping mouthfuls of listlessness and somehow still breaking the surface to gasp the air that made my lungs ache. ( I'd died like this a few times. ) I was like an addict constantly chasing that first high, except it was the first death, the first feeling of the end. 
 
 The adrenaline kicking in, the lifetime encased in a second, the way time slowed and everything became brighter, louder, softer, quieter - it was something I could n't recreate now that I knew I'd rise up every time. It was lessened. 
 
 I'm not going to say it's entirely gone, otherwise I'd just avoid dying and stick to orgasms, but it was n't ever like that first time, before I knew that I was immortal, before I knew that even chopping myself up into small bits would n't keep me from somehow reforming in the infinite speck of time between death and rebirth. I craved that feeling that gave my life meaning. I needed it more than anything else, and I was suddenly determined to die and stay dead. 
 
 So, then, what to do? How should my last death appear? How would I convince myself I'd be dead, I'd stay dead? I went back to my memories. Found the one stored away, kept repeating it over and over. I was afraid of dying. Once I was afraid to die. Once I thought I'd cease to exist. 
 
 It became a mantra until thinking of diving off a building was coupled with a fear of heights and not the thrill of falling. I thought of being mauled by a wild animal and shivered instead of being in awe at how wild things are so primal. I considered that a violent act of jealousy and passion from a jaded lover was n't ideal, instead of feeling unique at their reaction, feeling the life fade as their hands wrapped around my throat knowing that they'd run when I was dead, and I would smile at the collection of incendiary experiences. 
 
 I would have to change the perception, and I systematically went through the catalog of deaths, focusing explicitly, with pinpoint precision on the glimmer of fear contained in each one; convinced myself there was no guarantee of life after death, sprinted across the tile floor of my penthouse suite, crashed through a plate glass window ( ow ) and leaped from the balcony, screaming for once instead of flying.
