by Mark Benedict.
At eighty-five, lingering at a table in the dining hall after lunch, Winston realized that he was probably immortal. It was a wretched thought. Every room at the senior home reeked of cleaning fumes and was painted in hideously swirling pastels. A few seats down sat a security guard reading a paperback. The plague had killed most of Winston’s friends here, even a few staffers, but Winston himself had never had a single symptom. His puma-like gift for survival, once a glorious blessing, was now the cruelest curse.
“I’m invincible,” he whispered sadly. “I’m the last assassin.”
The guard snorted, then glared. “Keep it down, ya old mutt! I’m trying to read.”
Winston took a deep breath. Back in his stealth days, he would’ve handily fucked up this kid, who was the bane of the senior home, a menace to all its residents, but as an old man you had to be cautious. Or did you? The satisfaction of smacking the bastard would be worth any punishment. Winston slid off his belt and then, conjuring that old stealth magic, lashed it into the guard’s neck. The kid gasped, then slumped over, dead. Winston blinked. Holy fuck! Must’ve hit a pressure point. But alarm quickly gave way to pride. Still lethal as cobras. And maybe he would get the death sentence and be done with this lame-ass life. For the first time in decades, Winston felt like God loved him.
“You’re going straight to jail, buster,” the judge at Winston’s trial said, his voice filled with promising fury. “But given these deathly times,” he went on, sighing deeply, wimping the fuck out, “I can’t in good conscience sentence a healthy person to death.”
Prison was putrid. Winston was in a cell block with all the other geezers. The meals had a puky zest to them and redoubled his longing to die. His cell was tiny and roach-ridden. Winston considered hanging himself but could never go further than tying his bedsheet to the ceiling pipe. He prayed for the strength to go through with it, but per usual God was the big no-show. Fucking hell! Rage lit up his whole body. Even his turds were angry. They snorted out of him like scorching fireballs. What he needed was someone else to kill him. In the senior yard, he pushed around every white-haired dope in a jumpsuit, but these lames were too timid to fight back. They squawked off like scared geese. Changing tactics, Winston tried stealing their cigarettes to rile them into a killing mood, but they just stood there whimpering and he always ended up giving them back.
“I see what you’re up to with these ruckuses,” an inmate named Mewley said, grinning lazily. “You wanna get killed, but why? Plague’s gonna get us all soon enough.”
“Not me, though,” Winston grumbled. “Let’s talk at dinner.”
The night was nourishing. At dinner, Winston shared his tale of current immunity and past stealthiness. Afterwards, on the sly, Mewley shared a pint of tequila and a box of naked lady snapshots. They laughed and wheezed. It was a real hound dog night. But before they could have another one, Mewley caught the plague virus and croaked. Winston was sad, then furious. What the fuck was it with life? It gave you gifts, then stole them back. Consider, for instance, his bright vicious days. After high school, he spent a glorious year roaming the world and learning martial arts. Returning to the states, he found a lovesome wife and opened a thriving kung fu studio. Smack, kapow! Soon after, he was recruited by a stealth agency and trained as an assassin whose supremely important mission was to find and kill escaped serial killers. But things soon unraveled. The agency closed shop around the same time his wife left him to join a cat-worshipping cult. Bright times never came again. Worse, memories of the bright times made the cruddy times that much cruddier. And of course old age was the big lame all around.
“You’re free to go,” a guard said one day, unlocking his cell. “The world’s dying out. Oh, I know you think you’re immune, but not anymore. It’s end times, old man.”
Winston ventured out into the sun-scorched wilderness. He lived miserably, subsisting on bitter plants and sleeping on jagged ground. The survival instinct was the cruelest trick. It kept you alive and suffering. One morning a vulture landed on his withery old arm and started snacking. He broke the bird’s neck, then tore its body apart and made a blanket from the feathers. The heat was hostile. Coming across a dead, plague-ravaged family, he said a prayer and covered them with his blanket. Life was cheaper than his father. One afternoon a drooling desert rat munched his leg. He dug his fingers into the rat’s belly until it burst, then yanked off its tail and wore it as a necklace. All these evil creatures! Why the fuck had God make them? But then, humans weren’t so saintly, either. Maybe God would arrive, finally, and explain life to him. Winston ached and coughed. For the first time in his life, he felt elderly. His thirst was like spiders. He wished he’d never been born. He found a splashing stream and crouched unsteadily down to drink from it. The water was colder than his mother. He decided to wait here until God or death came. He wept like koalas. His bones screamed. His stomach begged. He wished he’d had children. Staring into the rushing stream, he spied a small darting minnow.