Immortality. The ability to cheat death. Everyone wishes for it. Everyone. But no one wants to play the price for immortality. If you eat the flesh of a mermaid you can live forever. But there's a catch. There always is. Once you eat the flesh of a mermaid you will hunger for it. It wont go away. You will live out eternity craving another bite. The constant hunger would be enough to drive a normal man mad. Imagine forever with a starving craving hunger in your stomach that will never go away. That's the price of immortality.
Once upon a time there was a young man. He was afraid of death. He wandered the world looking for a way to cheat it. He talked to Gods. He riddled with Dragons. He even made a pact with a Devil. But nothing would stop him from aging, from getting older, from dying slowly day by day. Until one day he met a man fishing on the coast. The fisherman told the man about the mermaids.
Mermaids, he had said, live deep in the ocean. They have human faces and bodies, but where their legs should be, they have tails. The fisherman said that mermaids keep to themselves. They rarely come to the surface of the water. Curiosity was the only thing that could lure a mermaid to shore.
The now old man told the fisherman that he had no interest in fables. For he had never seen a mermaid in all his travels. The fisherman laughed. It is no tale, he told the man. I saw one in my youth. The fisher confessed that he had never seen anything so beautiful. Then he told the old man that mermaids held the power over life and death. He said that mermaids never die and if one was to catch them, they could cheat death also.
The old man thanked the fisherman and went on his way. In the darkest night of the year he went back to the ocean. The old man called up a merman from the ocean. How do I live forever? The old man asked the fishman. The merman laughed. There is no way to cheat death. Everything dies as is the proper order of things.
The old man in anger killed the merman. He was going to leave the body on the shore when he saw the fisherman again. The fisherman walked up to him and gave him a sly smile. You have to eat it for it to save you. Then the fisherman turned into a devil and vanished. The old man turned upon the merman and ate him whole. Thus becoming immortal.
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"Shit." An older man cursed as he stared at his car's smoking engine. The man was driving a van. It had no windows in the back. It was riding rather low as if heavily burdened. What more could go wrong? The man rubbed a wrinkled hand over his balding head. Thin whips of white hair stuck out crazily. It gave him a slightly wild look.
The man looked around to see of anyone else was around. There wasn't. Not very many people drove along this road at night. It went from the city out to a deserted stretch of beach. Since it was winter, no one used it. The ocean was too cold for swimming. The old man however drove this road every night. People had talked about it when he first moved in three years ago. But now they just ignored him as a little strange.
The old man looked at the back of his van as there was a strange noise. He didn't move until it stopped. He sighed and sat on the bumper of the car. He couldn't get it working, but he wouldn't leave it here over night. Something might happen to his cargo. On the same hand, he couldn't call anyone to help him. For what if they discovered his treasure.
The old man thought about it then pulled out a cell phone. That might work. He dialed a number then waited. There was a cranky voice on the other side. "I need someone to help with a job. Someone who'll follow orders and not ask questions. Know anyone?"
The old man waited for an answer. Then he smiled when one came.
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