Mwah hah hah! I managed to post this before you started your next challenge. ::dances:: "I love the nightlife, I got to boogie, on the disco round, oh yea." (Music for the Dance of Timely Completion.)
Melancholy
Beautiful green-eyed Jih Thasgood had been cursed by the dark goddess, Thazil, with an immortality that first put him into a deep sleep for 50 years under her watchful eye, and then, upon awakening, completely robbed him of existence during the waxing phases of the moon. Even when the moon was in the proper phase, he was good for nothing during the daylight hours. It was an enormous effort to keep his eyes open, let alone perform any significant action during that time.
This mode of life made it hell on maintaining relationships, catching up on current events, and following his favorite television series.
His family had mourned him as dead. His sweetheart, after searching for him for years, married another. His little sister had been playing hide and seek with him in the old graveyard when he disappeared. She spent the rest of her life looking for him.
Jih would have wept enough tears to fill an ocean, but tears (he found) did not come easily to an immortal of his stripe. He angrily supposed that if he had to do it all over again, that he would accept the advances of Thazil instead of rejecting her (thus, breaking his lover's heart in a different manner). He'd probably end up trying to throttle Thazil, though.
Jih had tried to appeal to different deities for assistance, if not sheer justice, but to no avail. He had even tried to kill himself after he turned 100, but it had no effect. To make it worse, Thazil would pop up every now and then, without even knocking.
At first she was a total bitch. And then Thazil started trying to woo him again. Lately, she'd simply taken to crying about how she was sorry, how much she loved him, drooping over the furniture leaving behind patches of dark fog that took hours to demist and looking mournful in general. He couldn't believe fate was allowing this! It was completely unjust.
He tried to lead some kind of life, rather than go mad. He'd been to different universities (never earning a degree, but gleaning different types of knowledge) and worked a variety of jobs to keep his interest in humankind alive. He was now at the ripe age of 450 and while he still looked like a radiant young man in his late teens or early twenties, he was starting to get a little bit confused. Jih hoped the lack of mental acuity was some indication of impending death.
His last job was working part-time in an emergency room. Night shift, naturally. He still remembered the nurse asking him:
"Why exactly do you need chloroform at two in the morning?"
He had stared at her, horrified, realizing with a jolt that this wasn't the late 1800's, that chloroform wasn't an approved anesthetic, and he wasn't posing as a doctor this time around.
Then there was the incident (on the same job) where he gallantly swooped a hobbling old woman into his arms and into the examination room. She hadn't whacked him with her handbag, but there was great indignation on her part.
"Please put me down, it's just a sprained ankle!"
Ah. Right, the women's liberation movement. These days, Sir Walter Raleigh would probably be locked up as a lunatic.
Plus, there were just too many faces from the past, crowding his memory. Lonely as ever, he'd started dating a girl a few months ago (though he should have known better). She seemed to tolerate his strange schedule. He had courted her slowly before moving in for their first kiss aboard a riverboat casino. "Loretta," he murmured, as he gently nibbled his way down her neck.
"I hope you know, my name is actually Autumn," the young woman had snapped at him, before pulling free from his embrace and stalking away.
Well. That was the end of THAT. (Though sometimes he suspected that a certain jealous dark goddess had a hand in these types of incidents.)
And then there were the inevitable
violent confrontations.
He'd had a brief liaison with a handsome psychic in 1966, Sundog Moonbeam, who was getting too close to his secret and asked too many probing questions. Jih slipped away during a wild group "happening" in Santa Cruz, leaving Sundog a cryptic note asking him not to look for him. What Jih didn't realize is that he was mistakenly reported as dead after someone tripping outside in the dark saw him jump off the cliff (but did not, apparently, see him walk away unharmed).
In July 1969, he was walking down a street in Greenwich Village when he was surprised by a sudden blow to the face. He wasn't hurt, but he leaned against a building as if bemused, eyes shut as if in pain, and listened to the voices around him.
"So, exactly why did you have me punch that guy?" This was from a brawny man in a paisley red shirt with a gold medallion around his neck. He was rubbing his fist with a woeful expression.
The man's companion, Sundog Moonbeam, still beautiful and slim, with the profile of Indian royalty, scowled at Jih.
"He left me! He ate all of my cereal and faked his death for three years! The bastard!"
Jih started to stutter an apology, but Sundog simply put his nose in the air and pretended like Jih wasn't there.
"Let's move on, Miccah. There's no one here that matters." And he pulled his new boyfriend down the street with him (who looked back with an apologetic glance).
And so it went. And had been. His lonely existence punctuated by the wailings of Thazil and the vague memories of lost lovers.
###
It was night again, the dark of the moon. Jih had started a new part-time job in a laboratory that used animal research. When he looked at the want ad in Skraggslist he thought it was odd the lab was only open at night.
He hated the idea of animal research, knowing that the most terrible cruelties could be practiced and often times, simply would be overlooked. He wanted to investigate. Gods knew that he didn't need the money, he simply sought employment to keep in touch with his humanity before he withered away. In the meantime he wanted to do
something worthwhile.
When he entered his new workplace, he could see it was a mournful setting. There were small crowded cages full of fearful unhappy little animals. He unlatched the top lid of a cage at random and reached down to touch the fur of one such small captive beast. Jih had a soothing peaceful touch and the creature looked at him with wondering, pleading eyes. Jih could see that they had been badly treated.
"Please stop petting the test subjects," a voice said harshly from behind him.
Jih twisted and looked up into the cold eyes of his new supervisor.
"Uh sorry," replied Jih, pretending to be both alarmed and rather stupid.
He closed the cage lid softly. His heart was ablaze with the light of love again and this time love didn't come with a name like Loretta or Sundog. Jih had purpose again. He would continue living and fight for the liberation of these gentle creatures and all like them.
