The Fountain of Youth
I remember reading through a giant Civil War book of my grandfather‘s when I was a boy. In that book I stumbled upon a series of photographs of long ago soldiers who had somehow survived the most grotesque of battle wounds. The images had been haunting enough to induce months worth of nightmares. My mind is sparked to recall those horrid, black and white images now as I lie upon my deathbed, struck by the similarities in those long-ago soldiers’ hollow, desperate eyes compared with the soul-wrenched eyes of these more modern, yet similarly tormented mourners who currently pass by my bedside, curious at the miracle of my demise.
At first the vaccine was only the newest rage, but not being a “fad“ following type of person it was not hard for me to resist. But then insurance companies began folding, and hospitals closing. The money, time, and lives that were saved induced “strong suggestions” from medical experts, government officials, and media outlets for everyone to take the “Forever“ vaccine as soon as possible. There was no time to wait if you wanted to live. Fear was stoked, and a panic followed which drove short the supply and up the price of the vaccine. Politicians fought over which side had gotten themselves onboard first as their constituents lined for miles outside of the clinics and drugstores to be poked. Finally the government mandated the vaccine for everyone, but still some small few of us skeptics held back, laying low.
The amazing thing was, it worked. It took several years to prove, but people did stop dying… period. Cancer no longer killed, nor accidents, nor age. Those with the vaccine stopped dying. The trouble (we came to see) was that cancer, age, and accidents remained. They were as common as always. And heart disease, dementia, and war. It was just that the vaccinated bodies continued to work through their horrors. The tumors continued growing, the organs continued aging, the accidents continued deforming, but all of these ravaging maladies had grown powerless to kill!
But the pain of them remained. Oh, how the pain remained.
And all the while we who were unvaccinated continued to pass, until we became the ideal. The grotesque blobs of human flesh lined up for miles to view us in our caskets, and to dream, and to wish for their own demise, a demise that might never, ever come.
Some fountain of youth they’d found! We were made to realize in the worst of ways that death is not the horror, that death is in fact the blessing, the easement of our suffering.
As they passed by my death bed, these souls to be pitied, I rejoiced that my decision to forgo the vaccine had been the right one, that I might die in my good time, and my sufferings pass. And as my eyes closed for the final time, and my soul prepared itself for endless bliss, I pitied those consigned forever to the hell on Earth I was leaving behind.