By Leo Thomas




     I fell in love with Margo the first time I tried to kill her. I placed a gun to the crease in her forehead and pulled the trigger.  I never heard the beginning and end of our love story before, so I should have known.

     "Did it work?" Margo asked me. Clearly, her response told me that it did not. I opened my eyes and found the bullet had flattened against her skull.

     Margo Purifoy had a condition, one that I don't think any medical book known to man can possibly explain.

     She was immortal.

     Of course before that moment, I doubted her. For three months she had insisted that she could not die. And for three months I was sure I was talking to a crazy woman. Noose? Tried that. Knife? All the time? Pills? Absolutely.

     Nothing worked.

     When Margo reached out to me, I was admittedly baffled by the matter. I shouldnt tell you what my trade is but I think it's pretty clear plus people don't usually seek me out because I sell kittens.

     Margo had found me in the deep recesses of the dark web and her message was desperate:

I'm seeking a way to end my life. I have tried to do this alone, but it seems impossible to do so. I am willing to pay the person responsible for my death a sum of 100,000 dollars that can be changed into any currency they wish. Please contact me at wafflesandsyrup@gmail.com


     My first instinct was to assume that this was some kind of sting operation, an attempt to lure me or one of my colleagues out so that we could be caught in the act and thrown in jail.

     But for that amount of money, it was too easy to say yes. Especially whenever Margo made certain that my identity would be protected. She provided me documents and money before even meeting me, all of which was legal tender. I had the opportunity to leave, but this entire matter intrigued me to no end.

     She had money apparently from the long life she had endured. And she wired it to an account I had set up in the Cayman's. Even after that first attempt she insisted I should take it and run. She didn't expect me to stick around and figure out her problems.

     Margo fascinated me though. The moment that bullet fell to the floor I found myself asking a hundred questions.

     How long had she been like this? Her whole life.

     How long was that? Margo claimed she had stopped counting after year 703.

     Then I came to the question that probably mattered the most.

      Why did she want to die?

     "When you've lived as long as I have, seen the things that I have seen... witnessed the deaths of thousands. Kingdoms and nations rise and fall. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING becomes meaningless. You're powerless. You lose everything that means being human. Death is the only thing you have any control over any more, and with that gone... what can you accomplish in life?"

     She told me about how she had seen children die more times than I could count. About events in history that no person living could ever get correctly.

     I discovered as we connected, that I was developing a liking for this woman. She was the one thing in the world that was an anomaly. A window into the soul of humanity.


     So I made her a promise.

     I would help her die.

    We started small. I bought a few fire crackers and had her try to set them off directly in her face. She wasn't even mildly burnt.

     Then we moved to the tub. I had her undress and start the water then I brought in the toaster.

     I made certain the water was almost completely covering her body before dropping it in. She came out of the tub a few minutes later.

     This went on for almost the next five weeks. Each day a different test.

     Car accident. Nothing. Jumping from a building. Nothing. Stabbing her in the face, the eyes, again it all seemed pointless. At one point I got her to drink poison and she had a tummy ache. But then the next day she admitted she was faking.

     "I'm sorry... it's just... I felt like you were going to give up soon," Margo answered whenever I asked her why she pretended.

      "I won't. I can't. This defies everything you can ever believe in. It's beyond understanding," I told her.

     After that, we developed a closer bond as we started looking into more extreme methods. I managed to have her see one of my friends that works as an open heart surgeon in a shady clinic for abortions. I recommended trying to put her in a coma and then taking out vital organs.

     The propofol did the trick to knock her out. But any instrument to cut her only bended and broke.

     I suggested placing an explosion in a tube down her throat. The surgeons got to work on preparing the device and then sliding it straight down her esophagus and into her stomach.

     I lit the fuse and waited. Her body jumped and rumbled a bit. But nothing more. Margo was a goddess. Every extreme we tried only resulted in more failures.

     Finally she admitted that she decided to accept her fate.


     "If I have to keep on living, then so be it. At least I will be happy knowing that I have tried all possibilities," she said as we got back home. "I've wasted more of your time than ever necessary," she added as she passed me a briefcase with well over two million dollars in it. "This is everything I have. I want you to take it. You've been so kind. So patient," she told me.


     I tossed it aside and made love to her that night. In the morning I told her I wasn't planning on leaving her. That in the months we had spent together I grew to love her more than life itself.

     More than death could ever separate us.

     So we married. We had a child. I forgot my old life. I made her smile again. So did our son.

     "Out of all the times I have been with anyone, you have been my favorite," she told me.

     But still, I could tell behind all of this; her desire hadn't faded. She was still curious.

     Sometimes when I came home I found dozens of pill bottles scattered across the floor.

     Other times she had ruined knives and caused house fires, desperate to end her life.

     She wasn't happy. I could see that now. She knew that no matter what one day we would be gone and she would still remain.


     On our one year anniversary I surprised her and took her paragliding. I told her it might be the solution she was looking for. I made certain that she didn't have the equipment necessary to prevent her from experiencing the full brunt of the impact.


     "I love you," she told me as our plane reached the proper altitude.


     I promised her I would never tell our son and said my goodbyes. Then watched as she plummeted to the ground below. Once she was out of my line of vision I told the pilot to touch down and I ran to where she had hit the pavement.

     She was standing there waiting for me with tears in her eyes. "This is torture! I can't do this I can't!! Why? Why is this happening??" she screamed.
I held her close and looked up at the heavens. Did god even have an answer for this?

     I thought there was nothing else that could be done. And I was certain that her depression would soon swallow me and our son whole.

     I begged her to forget this dark dream. "So What if we die? At least you have us now!!" I shouted one day.

     "You don't know how many times I have heard that before," she moaned angrily. That was when I knew there was nothing I could say that would stop her from trying.

     I worried for our safety, my son and I. I knew that in her attempts to take her own life she might hurt us, even if she didn't mean to.

     One time she came close to drowning him in the tub while trying to end herself. Another time it was a knife and he almost cut his finger off.

     Something had to be done.

     I reached out to my colleagues from the old days, when I was the one that was seeking to exploit suicidal cashcows. I told them everything and asked for advice. Some took it as a joke.

     But one man had a solution that I had never considered before.

     take her out to sea and dump her with stone weights on her legs. She may not die but she'll never bother you again


     I showed Margo. She said it was worth a try. We got a babysitter and set out for the coast a few weeks after that.

     As we moved toward the open ocean and I got things ready I asked her if she was sure this was what she wanted.

    "It's the only way, right?" she said as she hugged my neck. We said our goodbyes and I watched her sink into the darkness below.

     I thought that was the end of it. That Margo was gone forever. But then she came to my door again, sobbing like an infant. She was covered in wet sea grass and moss, a tangled mess of barnacles covered her skin.

     The current had swept her along and the ropes that had tied her down had eroded. Water had filled her lungs for days on end.


     By all accounts she should have been dead. Margo felt everything though.


     "It's hopeless, this is punishment, I just know it!!" she screamed.
I comforted her as our son watched on in wide eyed confusion. I told her that we would think of something.

     But years went by, and nothing came of it. Our son grew up and learned of his mother's condition and the sadness that crept into our lives because of it.

     "Why does Mom not want us? Why can't she just be happy?" he asked.

     It wasn't something I could explain. Margo isolated herself from us, going on trips for days to find doctors or get high on drugs or even terrorists.

     Absolutely nothing seemed to work though.


     Then one day after dinner, she tried to choke on some food and our son jumped up and tried to help her cough it up.

    "Get away from me!! Just get away!!" she screamed as he performed the Heimlich Maneuver.

     She slapped him across the face. I stared in shock as she sobbed and ran off to our bedroom. My son only stormed out, angry and confused.

     This had gone on too long. I knew that if it continued her curse would destroy our lives altogether.

     So I consulted the dark web again and looked into the mystic arts, spells and tomes that no man dared read.

     I found one that I felt would fit the bill and bought it during a Christmas sale.

     When I showed Margo, she seemed hesitant to even give it a try. But since it was the last resort, she eventually conceded.

      We placed the goat's blood around our bed in a circle like the ritual implied. Then chanted the phrase 6 times. We walked around the bed counterclockwise.

     Then I took her hand and we both fell asleep.


     When I woke up the next day, I was staring at my wife and she at me. But our souls had transferred to each other's bodies.

     She was mortal and I was immune. The spell had worked. She reached into her drawer and pulled out a gun, meekly passing it to me.


     "Do it. I'm ready," she said. I pressed the barrel against her skull, and I felt like the bullet in the chamber was the period of our story.  I closed my eyes and did the hardest thing possible; performed an action that my mind and heart was against.  it was hard for the human body to defy your feelings.  The shot rang out.  I felt the bloody mist on my face.  I opened my eyes and saw that I had finally completed a job she had been wishing to happen.  A lonely hitman finished the job of a women he fell in love with, how fucking cliche.  now I had to go back to living half of a man I was before Margo.  She had made me feel full and complete.  Life!  Then something strange was happening.

     As the life drained from my body I caressed her forehead and watched her breathe her last. She said two words.

     Thank you, and then she was gone.

     That was so long ago, when I watched my only body fall into a grave. When I explained to my son that now the curse was upon me. He will be on his death bed, and I will only watch in horror as he slips away. Margo was right about this curse, and it's one I carry now. One that holds a further curse upon me.

For the spell said one thing that I never told Margo. That I could never go back to the way it had been or transfer again.  The things we do for love wasnt a cliche, but probably scratched onto the cell underground in a dungeon by a man about to be hung commissioned by a King.  As he was outside in front or the crowd and a hood was put over his head, in the cell he just occupied it said, "The things we did for love."

But... now that I have seen through her eyes what this hell is like, perhaps it is time that I start to explore this world and discover exactly what it means to live.




______________END______________________

Sawyer Hughed | Learned to Die, Learn to Live


I really hope you enjoyed this short story.  I had fun writing it.  Its actually a novel that I dissected and put together into a short story.  If anyone wants to hear the second part, I will submit it.  Please, if you enjoyed it, by you supporting it really helps me!!