to miss you

December, 2018

HOW MANY YEARS had it been? After one long-lifetime, I tend to question just that: how many years had it been? I remember being born into a dystopian—or much like it—world of constant bewilderment and disagreement. I was never one for wanting to be a soldier, and the refined ways of a Victorian Gentleman never did appeal to me, never had sparked an interest within me, and perhaps that is why I still roam the world today. Maybe I'm just looking for something to interest me.

No, that's far too ridiculous.

Born in 1815 was I, and quite the adorable babe, although the gashes and blows of a hard life in the orphanage never paid off well. My skin was patterned, and still is for the matter, with the marks of my childhood, and more than I would like am I questioned about it, their tone being soft and warped with an agonising concern:

"Sir? Are you okay? How did you get those marks?"

Number one: please don't address me as Sir. I may be two hundred and three years of age, but for an immortal it is rather young, and let me tell you—Sir is for old people. Number two: I am perfectly fine, thank you. I always do love when someone cares for my wellbeing. Number three: well, I'm a two-hundred and three year old man who has walked the Earth and seen the beginnings of Ferrero Rocher and I was whipped through a majority of my adolescent life.

Oh people, you see why I hate having to answer these questions?

Maybe my diversion of human interaction is because I am consistently lonely. I always enjoyed my own company in Cardinal Place back in 1895, around the time where a masked killer—whose true identity is still unknown, may I inform you—roamed around, murdering prostitutes with the esteemed skills of a doctor, which made him appear to be that of the richer classes—and boy, did that cause an uproar!

"A higher class! Never."
"Probably a peasant roaming around, pretending to be a higher class man!"
"I bet it was that doctors apprentice, James McCoy!"

Ah yes, the ignorance of humanity. Never had I missed it, and still to this day I don't. Perhaps that was my reasoning for always being alone—the avoidance of man and their prodding questions of curiosity and the hunger for the exceeding of the knowledge that the next man would be curious to want. Perhaps it was the fact that I never really did fit in, and when all my fellow associates at the orphanage had reached the staircase of death—in which the Grim Reaper greeted them with an awfully friendly smile, which startled them more than death itself—I still looked as though I was a man in my twenties, a mind still inexperienced and lacking the knowledge of life. Or, and this is the only correct one, perhaps it was because I had never connected with an individual on the same emotional, mental and physical level as I had with him; and only him.

Augustus Beauchêne.

A late night in 1909, the summer warmth of July still lingering on in September. Stars gleamed the sky and set alight the sheet of eternal darkness, the streets filled with lamps of oil and houses of age and vintage. I must've been walking down la Rue de l'Église, for the time seemed to shift on that very avenue, the paintings and tapestries which were threaded from the finest silk available were magnificent, depicting historical events such as St Bartholomew Massacre Day of 1572, and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1668. Remarkable work of the hands of impeccable weavers—I was astonished, and still it was the greatest sight I had seen.