Regression

By: Evie Sum

It wasn’t immortality.

Perhaps it was kinder, that way. Immortals often yearn for death, do they not?

Something he has experienced, time and time again, whilst his companions beg him

to stay.

It’s a shame it had to happen again.

A bloody battlefield. Corpses, stiff with rigor mortis, faces contorted in pain

and fear and sadness.

In the middle lies a man, no different from the others, apart from the majestic,

pitch-black wings, now dyed crimson with blood and hanging limply behind him.

Contorted and broken, much like the man himself.

He blinks slowly, vision swimming as blood pours out the gaping wound on his

chest. His subconscious registers people clambering over bodies and sloshing

through mud. Straight to him.

He closes his eyes.

He feels himself being lifted, soft hands cradling his skin and face and wings

and is someone crying?

Weakly, struggling, his eyes open once more. He’s greeted by the tearful faces of

his companions, the people he sought to protect yet can only keep hurting. One is

gripping his hands as if he’d disappear the moment he lets go.

Carefully, quietly, the ragtag team moves toward their base, carrying their

star oh so gently.

His eyes slip shut. He starts speaking.

“Everyone...”

Voices hush. He vaguely registers the absence of movement - they’ve stopped.

Once more, his eyes open. He glances at his companions and smiles with all the

beauty of a fading star.

“Please live. For me.”

The world goes dark and he fades away, a scattering of light floating to the sky.

A singular, blood-stained feather remains.

The next time he awakens, it’s back to the starting point. The day the apocalypse

started and the day his family died. He sits up, more tired than he’s ever felt

before.

It wasn't immortality. But sometimes, he can’t help but think it might be better if

it was. Because his curse is to suffer, to cry, to die, and to repeat. To have the

peace of death ripped away from him, again and again, and again

Sometimes, he wishes he never existed.

Rationale: nothing fancy, just pain