He Who Cannot Die

by Dan Pearce

  I laughed again. “I do not love this woman, Cain.”

  This time Dishon laughed. “I have seen this thing called love creep into your eyes and lift the edges of your lips in ways only love does. You are in love, friend.”

  I denied it again. He argued it again. He finally told me to go find Mila and look long into her eyes and ask myself if he was not correct.

  “I’ll do it,” I half-heartedly promised him. “But I know love, and I know this is not yet it.”

  Dishon was so right about it all that it was humorous. Minutes after my conversation with him, Mila returned from fetching fresh water, and it was then that I realized just how much the two of us had been finding any silly reason to remain near one another. It was only then that I thought back to all those brief moments where our eyes met, and our gazes stayed locked on one another just a bit longer each time. It was only then that I realized just how much I had been thinking about her whenever she wasn’t present, and just how beautiful I found her to be. Once I let those thoughts in, I was officially done for.

  Dishon laughed heartily about it the next day as he assured me that he needed the break from our long wanderings and exhaustive search.

  Mila and I soon embraced the love we could not avoid, and we built a home for ourselves in Grath. Dishon jumped in and out of our lives during those ten years, and the three of us remained very close during that time.

  Toward the end of our tenth autumn together, Dishon made sure I was aware of the end which was nigh upon us. Dishon always made sure I was aware, always making absolutely sure I did not linger long enough to be displaced and separated from him for another impossible amount of time.

  I dragged my feet as long as possible, desiring to stretch my time with Mila out to the last possible moment. Dishon finally told me enough was enough; it was time.

  Mila had softened greatly during those ten years. She was far less toughened and had become much more vulnerable. It was with me that she experienced her very first love, and she talked more than any before her ever had of our long future together. There was no version of it that didn’t include me as she thought ahead, and that became increasingly clear as the end approached. She and I had found an incredible harmony to life, and I knew her heart would absolutely shatter when I was gone.

  Dishon asked if I still wanted to fake my death, firmly reminding me that he thought it was a bad idea. Thinking honestly and freshly back to the many broken hearts of the many different loves I left without answers, I told him I wanted Mila to love again and to eventually live a life free from the crippling hurt that disappearing would inflict upon her. Dishon begrudgingly agreed, and we made a plan which we carried out together two days later.

  Just outside the village, a man named Hym had built a large and stable raft, which he used to carry locals downriver to a fishing hole so overrun with fat trout that they could collect enough food to last a month. In exchange for whatever a person’s talents and skills could offer him, he would guide the raft to the fishing hole, wait while his customer filled his own baskets with fish, then put in the grueling work to maneuver the raft upstream again. This all took place on the River Morgan, which was fairly wide, fairly slow-moving, and the depth of which reached no deeper than eighteen feet or so.

  We had bartered with Hym on many occasions, and so it was not strange to Mila when Dishon came to visit and I suggested we go fill our baskets so that we might begin preparing extra meat to last us through the winter. She did pick-up on my drooping countenance, though, and asked me what was weighing upon my usual happiness as we walked with our baskets in tow. I replied each time that I was fine. I just needed to keep walking and bring more fresh air into my lungs.

  Inside of me, it felt like a stake had been jammed deep into my gut, and my heart never stopped speeding at twice its normal pace. Faking my death did not give me anxiety on that walk to the river. I had already been through what should have been death so many times that I thought it was nothing to fear. What scared me most was the pain and franticness Mila was about to feel. This was the first time Dishon would be with the woman I loved at the moment she knew I was gone and knowing that I would relive that through his accountings made it so much more real to me. I was about to turn Mila’s life completely upside down, and I suddenly hated everything about it in ways that had never affected me before.

  We exchanged a large badger pelt with Hym and boarded his raft, along with one other woman from the village who was there for the same supposed purpose we were. The fishing hole was some two miles away, and the nervous stabbing pain in my stomach intensified until it became so thick that I could not deny its existence to my ever-inquisitive Mila.

  “You are not right, Cain. Tell me what is wrong.”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “But did I tell you yet today that I love you?”

  “Yes, six times at least.”

  “You told her,” Dishon chimed in, then turned his attention to Mila. “I am excited to see this fishing hole you both have told me about so many times.”

  Mila insincerely smiled at Dishon, her worried focus still centered on me and whatever was obviously wrong. The more I tried to hide it, the more it seemed to burst from me.

  I checked the large stone which was attached with a short hog-hair rope to the bottom of one fishing basket. I had weakened the rope by rubbing it against a sharp rock, expecting it to snap in case I lost consciousness and couldn’t free myself from it once under the water. Fishing this particular hole involved tossing our baskets overboard, after which they would sink to the bottom as the weight of the stone pulled them deep below the surface.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Mila said, as she cupped her own cold hand over mine. This had an immediate calming effect on me to the point I was able to think a little bit more clearly. I looked lovingly upon her and reminded myself that this would all soon be in the past. I knew that our love had been such a good thing, and that she was very strong, and that this was only one tiny necessary moment in time.

  The plan Dishon and I came up with beforehand was simple. Halfway to the fishing hole, I would tangle my foot in the rope which attached the stone to the basket, and I would clumsily fall overboard. He would dramatically dive for me and look for me, and ultimately relent that I was gone. I would stay beneath the surface until they were out of sight, and he would take Mila home again, making sure that everything I arranged for her continued comfort was still in place once it all was over.

  I pulled Mila against me and again assured her everything was fine, and that I was happy for the day she snuck behind and followed us on the road to Grath. She pressed her cheek into the stiff hairs on my chest and I held her even more tightly. Warmth began to build between us, despite the frigid air which accompanied the season. Unbeknownst to her, I worked my foot in and out of the rope several times until it became so tangled that I knew it could not easily slip out. Dishon quietly watched as I did this, the worry seemingly leaving me and spreading to him. Hym and his other passenger were oblivious to it all.

  Once we reached the halfway point, I gave Dishon a look that told him it was time. He returned a look that told me this all was ridiculously unnecessary. His look pled the question of whether or not this was something I actually was going to carry through with doing. Having made up my stubborn mind, and not wishing to further combat my friend in silence, I gave him one final nod and turned my attention back to Mila.

  I pulled her away from me and cupped both of her chilled cheeks in my hands. I said nothing. I just kissed her and held that kiss while I slowly nudged the basket which my foot was attached to over the edge. “Cain!” was the last thing I heard Dishon yell before I was violently yanked free of Mila and jerked away from the raft.

  I hit the water with a great splash and bobbed on the surface for a moment while the basket filled with water. Knowing death was coming did nothing to stave off my natural instinct to survive. I struggled in the water while my now shocked brain registered the freezing temperature
that was suddenly stabbing my body. I heard Mila also shout my name as the basket sank, first pulling my feet below the surface, then pulling the rest of me down with it until I sank out of sight. The very last thing I saw above the surface was the honest terror, as it spread across Mila’s face. The last thing I heard was my lover shouting my name. I will never forget the way her eyes bulged in horrored disbelief as I was pulled into the murky waters below.

  I had never drowned, and for some strange reason thought it wouldn’t be so bad before it happened. I had visions of sinking to the bottom of the river and either passing out or just waiting it out, uncomfortable with my inability to breathe, nothing more. I could not die, and I knew I could not die, so the question was simply how long I would have to remain under that water.

  As the basket sank deeper, a built-in panic I could not control took over me. The instinct not to breathe underwater was so powerful that I began frantically attempting to free myself from the stone which had finally landed against the riverbed. I thrashed violently in my attempts to free myself, and as I did this I was very much aware of the rays of sunlight shimmering through the water from the world some ten or so feet above me. I was very much aware of the silhouette of the raft, but the water was too murky to make out any more detail than that. My legs kicked and my arms flailed in an attempt to break the rope and propel myself toward the light above, but I had done too good a job of tangling myself within it.

  I began feeling a lightness in my head as my bloodstream ran out of oxygen and became so saturated with carbon dioxide that my unthinking brain was forced to weigh the dangers of not taking a breath with the dangers of taking a breath while under water. Since too much carbon dioxide should physiologically mean certain death, my brain finally decided that a risky breath under water was better than no breath at all, and I inhaled cold dirty river water deep into both lungs just as everything around me started to turn white.

  This did not propel my journey into unconsciousness, which I would have gladly welcomed, but instead brought delirious, yet full-consciousness back to me. I lost mental control of my limbs, and my mind’s efforts split into two simultaneous yet congruent thought processes. Half of my thoughts weren’t even mine, as I registered the incredible pain and panic that comes from suffocating on water. The other half of my thoughts sent flashing images through my mind, first of Mila with a newborn baby, which we were singing to sleep together, then of Tashibag dancing like a goon atop her bear, then of Dishon being plucked from his sleep by a giant eagle, and the thoughts flashed on.

  As it turns out, most people who drown are still very conscious when it happens. It takes a moment of great torment for the drowning person before the last bits of oxygen are absorbed from the bloodstream and the mind loses consciousness completely, unable to pull more oxygen from the water which now fills their lungs. I didn’t ever lose consciousness, though, and I never fully found it, either. Instead I remained attached to the bottom of the riverbed, experiencing the ongoing panic and torment that only can be experienced when water threatens and then fills the lungs of a person. There was no reprieve from the torture. The five hundredth second was easily as tortuous as the first second after I first inhaled water, and bizarre visions of different moments and places in my life kept mixing together with some deep part of my imagination I never knew existed.

  I did stop flailing after breathing in the water. Moving my extremities was no longer something my mind had control over. I was greatly over-aware, and at the same time only partially-aware when I saw what I knew was Dishon splashing around in the watery space above me. I silently screamed out for him and silently laughed at him, believing both my scream and my laugh would somehow help him sense my panic, find me, and free me from it all. I watched the raft disappear and reappear, again and again. Great fish swam by me, slapping me across the face and chest with their razor-sharp tails. A large serpent with the head of a woman swam from the darkness and sank its fangs into the top of my skull, inserting me with her venom. Pain shot through my mind and down into my body like I had never experienced. The entire thing somehow lasted forever, yet only for a moment, and was all so terrifying.

  Based on the accounting I received from Dishon later, I believe I was under that water for twenty minutes or so. Definitely no fewer than fifteen. That is a long fucking time to experience that profundity of mental torture. If someone had asked me immediately afterward, I would have sworn that hours had passed from the time I went under to the time I came up.

  The one smart move I made in all of it was fraying the rope in case I could not free myself. I don’t know whether the rope just slowly came apart until the current was too much for it, or if in my state of agonizing delirium, I kicked hard enough to snap it, but it did finally break. The current began pushing my body downriver and up to the surface until I finally emerged. I became wedged against a fallen tree, which pinned me between its soggy wood and the force of the river.

  Eventually I coughed the water from my lungs, and unable to open my eyes just yet, I became increasingly more aware of my present situation. Where was I? A sharp broken branch was pressing painfully into my neck. My leg was uncomfortably twisted beneath what felt like a log. There was water. So much water. Water was everywhere. It was on top of me. Below me. To the sides of me. It was splashing against my face. Everything was so wet. I was so cold. I was…

  As if a defibrillator suddenly shocked me into awareness, I jerked awake. I pushed my gasping head away from the log and looked up and down the length of the river. The raft was gone. Mila was gone. Dishon was gone. The heaviness of realizing they had indeed left behind my sunken body hit me, and a great sadness settled-in on my still hyperventilating body.

  I lacked the required energy and composure for at least a few minutes to free myself from the fallen log and pull myself to shore. While I lay in that freezing river, I remember my thoughts shifting back and forth from the sadness of the situation to the stupidity that often accompanies acts done in love. I remember thinking how ineffective the brain was at ever knowing what was right and what was smart when it came to love. I remember all at once laughing at the concept of love, hating the concept of love, and being thankful for the existence of love. I remember desiring lasting love and desiring freedom forever from ever loving again.

  Love really was a stupid and wonderful thing, and I was never more aware of it than I was while pinned against that log in the river that took yet another love away from me.

  CHAPTER 17

  I would have thought hearing Samantha’s voice would be comforting to me, as she said such nice things while I sat at the back of a sandwich shop of the main terminal of the Jorge Chávez International Airport. It wasn’t. For some reason it annoyed me that this woman I loved, and had left standing in our entryway with every reason to be upset with me, didn’t have more ruffled feathers than I would have expected. I had been kicking myself throughout the entire flight, thinking back to our last conversation, and could only reimagine far better ways I might have handled it. I left her hanging and worried there, and that wasn’t okay with me. I wanted her to be mad and to tell me how terrible it was for me to do that. Instead, she began affirming her love and trust for me.

  Samantha sat-back easily into our dark plush sofa back home, her right arm wrapped around two knees which she held clutched to her chest. The vase full of unbloomed flowers I had ordered kept moving in and out of the picture, as her phone moved back and forth in sync with her gestures and emotions. Samantha admitted to me over our Skype call that she was certainly confused, but that she didn’t need answers before I was ready to give them. She told me she knew I was an honest and integrity-filled man, and she thanked me for leaving her in the dark instead of concocting some bullshit story to cover my ass and whatever it was I was doing. Yes, I said that right. She actually thanked me for it. And that greatly annoyed me, mostly because it didn’t give me any chance to do or say something more to make things right with her or to somehow balance the scales betw
een us as we spoke. It didn’t give me a chance to give her all the responses and rationalizations I had come up with to fix the way I left things with her. She took all that away from me by being… nice.

  That was my Samantha. She had never been anything different. Her kindness was the first thing that drew me to her. From the moment I met her it was obvious to me just how kind her heart really was toward any person she encountered, friend or stranger. Sure, she got moody from time to time, especially when she was hungry, or when family members came to town. There were times when she pouted and snapped and pushed buttons she knew I didn’t enjoy having pushed, but she was kind. To her very center she was kind. I never doubted that for a moment. It was what I always loved most about her, and right now it was the one thing I for some reason didn’t want her to be.

  “Just promise me you’ll come back soon,” she said. “That’s all I care about.”

  “I promise,” I told her. “I love you, babe.”

  “You too,” she replied. That was the last thing she said to me before she ended the call.

  I usually hated it when she replied “you, too” after I told her I loved her. For some reason saying the complete statement “I love you” was so hard for her to do when she was hurt or upset, and she was very well-aware just how much I didn’t like it. I smiled this time though, happy that she finally gave me at least a small taste of the internal grit I had expected her to show after I landed. She ended the call, and I just stared for a moment at the part of the screen where her face just had been as if I could absorb just a little more of her through it.