[ WP ] A freak accident turned a man immortal . Now he tries desperately to replicate the event for someone else , so he wo n't end up alone for eternity .

When he discovered he could n't die, he tried to imagine his wife aging. He thought he would be sad and lonely without her. He had imagined the histrionics, the keenly pained looks they would exchange, tears dripping off their faces to mingle on crisp white bedsheets. In reality he grew more and more disgusted with her. 
 
 He sincerely tried not to be grossed out by her papery skin. He tried to sit with her in their rocking chairs on the porch, but could n't find anything new about the horizon to discuss after a couple decades. Her mind started to go, eventually, and all their shared history seemed to mean nothing, and soon all he could think about was how godawful boring it was to watch someone else age, even someone you had loved for so long. 
 
 When her eyes finally closed forever, he was relieved. He was tired of pretending to be her grandson, and then her great-grandson. Glad to leave the town they'd settled in, where the old women admired him for his devotion before they succumbed to the same fate; all the while he had to see the young people all around him come into bloom, and not touch them. Now he was free to start over. 
 
 In his new life, he watched an endless supply of young women's perfect bodies bloom into womanhood. They really are like flowers, he thought: their bodies were like plants whose entire life cycles were filmed and then sped up for his viewing. They grew and grew, their faces turned to the sun, and soon they erupted with life, pregnant with babies, possibilities. The seeds of life inside them were expelled and new flowers bloomed as they withered. Watching that process fascinated him, for a time. He fucked them, too, and for a time there was joy in that. 
 
 But soon enough he wanted a companion. He watched a girl mature and then insinuated himself into her life. He liked her quite a bit, and he confided in her, and she married him with her eyes wide open. He had chosen a hearty mate this time, and they cavorted together for well over fifty years. He was kinder to her, in his mind, and forgave her slowing joints and the flab that eventually settled on her formerly taut body. Her mind and eyes were clear, and he cherished her as her body began to fail. But she eventually left him, too. She knew about his first wife, and the obligation he had felt to her, and she asked him to end her life. She would not fade away in the night like his first wife had - but he thought he would never forget the fear in her eyes, how she wrestled with it, as he held the gun under her chin. 
 
 After he buried her, he did n't know what to do. This period of his life he devoted to exploration. First he saw everything he had n't seen yet: the poles, the jungle, peaks, caves, catacombs. He spent a few miserable years stuck in a claustrophobic hole in the ground, until he was finally found by a few curious spelunkers. They helped him out, but he had to kill them to keep his secret. Those deaths left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, and he decided not to kill again. It was then that he stopped eating. 
 
 Then for a time he became obsessed with leaving Earth, but it was a futile effort unless he wanted to build his own ship, which was a complicated craft that he did n't have the patience for. He considered surrendering to some government or other, thinking that it might be nice to be understood, but he knew they would have questions he could n't answer. He did not often feel pain, but he thought if anyone could hurt him, it would be a bureaucrat. And anyway, his favorite government soon toppled, and lawlessness governed his homeland. 
 
 He founded something like a commune, and came to think of the orphans who trickled into his care as something closer to pets than fellow people. He did n't hide his affliction from them, and they called him a god. Men and women infiltrated his borders and tried to slit his throat, and he laughed at the tickling of the knives. Once an enemy of his, whose name he would forget, bombed what he was fondly calling the Farm. The immortal man walked into his enemy's camp and killed them all, and this time he felt satisfied. 
 
 He rebuilt the Farm with a more martial eye, and built an army. He expanded his territory by walking toward his enemies and dispatching them in whatever manner was available to him, only running into trouble when they restrained him, or if they managed to hole up where he could n't get to them. His army followed behind, and he allowed them to do whatever they liked. Eventually he met a force that he could n't overpower easily, and instead of leading his army into battle, he simply left. He heard later that most everyone died. 
 
 He simply walked now. Planes and cars had fallen into disuse, and he disdained bicycles, preferring to move as slowly as possible. He sometimes met people, but did n't want their company. He made a movement suggesting he'd kill them, and they mostly chose to flee. 
 
 Soon he came to the ocean. It was a lazy river to him, and he floated along the currents, leisurely, alone. He met no boats. When he finally ran aground on a new continent, he could n't find a soul. He wondered what had happened to his race, and went days and then months without setting eyes on another person. Eventually he grew frantic, and his dreamlessness felt like a new sort of madness. He began to see the people he had killed everywhere. His wives, the jolly explorers, his enemies, his armies of innocents. They looked back at him with accusing eyes, weeping eyes, with anger and sometimes forgiveness. He felt the most human he had ever felt. 
 
 Finally, as he paced the equator, he found a little village of sickly humans. He called himself god, but could n't speak to them. He did n't know their language and desperately tried to pick it up – every day his heart pounded: he was afraid they were the last humans, and that they would die before he spoke to them. The men feared him and held their wives close. He did n't realize how he looked to them, with his tall thick body, born in a nutritious age. Only the children would have anything to do with him, and he learned their high-pitched tones and played with them, and felt happy again for a short while. 
 
 But they were dying: poisoned, injured, deformed. The women tried to flower but their babies were too often born dead, and as often as not a man buried two thin bodies, with a little tiny baby nestled in the crook of the mother's still arm. It seemed that this would be humanity's final resting place. Sometimes at night he thought about his second wife, and he imagined pulling the trigger on this throat and burying these last humans, but when he saw the sun rise he forgot the bloody past and could n't see life without them. He imagined the histrionics, his pain, living without them. He imagined burying them, and watching the sun set without them. 
 
 The last human was a little girl. After he buried the girl's father, she sickened, and he beat his chest and bashed his head against the wall of the mud hut, trying to remember how it had happened, what had changed, what was allowing him to survive them. He tore at his hair when she closed her eyes, and he wept when he returned to her, to listen to her ragged breathing. He held her close, trying to will his life into her lungs. He would die for her, if he could. He closed his eyes to the sunrise one more time, and he counted their breaths. He was grateful for every one of them.
