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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RaynaClay on 2024-10-07 13:57:56+00:00.

The ping from the computer in the corner tells me that a new order just came in, which means he will be back soon to cut me open. I can still feel the knife on my skin from the last time. The wounds are long gone, of course, but the memory never seems to fade. You’d think with all the money he has made off of me, he could afford to sedate me properly. He always said there was no reason to bother because he had invested in soundproofing the room, instead. At least he gave me this phone, mostly so I could play offline mobile games, because he obviously couldn’t let me have internet access. Which is why, when I finish writing this, I am going to send it, even if it can’t go to anyone, yet. That way, if this phone is ever connected to the internet, even by accident, hopefully it will go through. No matter where I am by then. Either way I should hurry, I don’t have long to tell my story.

So, how did I end up here? Well, I am sure everyone says this, but the whole thing started innocently enough, with a car crash. I was 17 at the time, and we were all on our way back from a party. It turned out that the designated driver hadn’t been taking their job as seriously as we had expected. I don’t remember the accident. Either I had fallen asleep in the car, or my mind just blocked the memory out, I’ll never know, but I do remember waking up in the river. The car was upside down and water was seeping in, slowly filling the space around us. It might sound strange, but I remember my first thought so clearly, even all these years later. It was: please don’t let me die in my shitty hometown.

I won’t say where I lived, exactly, it isn’t really important. If you have been to any small town, you know what it was like. It wasn’t just that it was boring there, with nothing to do in the evenings but drive out to a field and get drunk with whichever classmates could manage to sneak out that night. It wasn’t just that I was a teenager yearning for bigger and better things. After all, I haven’t been a teenager for a long time, and I still hate it there. No, it was the people. I am sure they weren’t any worse than people anywhere else, but with so few of them present, relatively speaking, it could be inordinately difficult to find anyone you really meshed with. Sometimes, you just had to spend time with anyone you could tolerate, and who returned the favor. After the accident, there weren’t many of those left for me.

I was the only one that survived that night. The paramedics were astounded that I was still alive, after so long underwater. They theorized that I must have ended up in some sort of air pocket that kept me breathing until they arrived and pulled the car out. I tried to tell them what had really happened, that I had, in fact, been breathing in river water for over an hour, feeling myself drowning and dying over and over, but without the blissful darkness to release me. Instead, I would reset back to perfect health, then repeat the process again. Just a functional eternity of agony, until rescue came. No one believed me. They chalked it up to a near-death hallucination. And eventually, I convinced myself of that, too. After all, the alternative was impossible. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I survived, when no one else did. But that’s not something I want to dwell on here, I’ve dwelled on it enough in therapy. Regardless, I put the strangeness of that night out of my mind. Until the next time I died.

I was home from university visiting my family over the winter break. I figured that the only stress would be from trying to hide my new tattoo from my mother. The housefire disrupted that a bit. When the firefighters pulled me out of the basement, where I had been trapped by the flames, they told me it was a miracle I had survived. This time I knew for certain that I hadn’t. I felt my death. But it couldn’t claim me, for some reason. And I needed to figure out why.

That wasn’t a quick process, so I will spare you the details and just summarize what I have learned over the years. The first, and most important, thing I found out is that everyone gets one, and only one, request of the universe. The trick is you don’t get to decide which of the many requests you will probably make over the course of your lifetime gets granted. It seems to be mostly random. That is why most people don’t even notice that this happens, because what they are granted is so small or random that there is no way to tell anything unusual even happened. How many times have you silently wished for a traffic light to turn green before you get there, or for a table to open up at your favorite restaurant, or for the zipper to come unstuck on your jacket? We make so many tiny, inconsequential wishes or requests of the universe that most people’s boon ends up being nothing special. Mine was a little different.

Basically, I can’t die, but only if I am in my hometown. Yes, I have tested that. It turns out it was sort of a monkey’s paw type deal. I got what I wanted, but only that. I won’t die in my shitty hometown, but the second I leave, all bets are off. I would recommend that people be careful with their wording, but it wasn’t like I was even intentionally making a wish, was I? How could I have known? How could anyone?

So, the whole thing was a bit of a mixed blessing. Immortality might seem like a nice thing to have. But it also meant I was stuck there, in the place I hated since I was a child. I could still have left, of course. Realistically, I would only have been taking the same risk that anyone does when living their life, but how many of you could really walk away from that kind of safety? Whatever you think, you’ll never really know until you are faced with the same decision. I used to leave time to time, but whenever anything went wrong, all I could think was what if I die here, like this? So, I left town less and less. Drawing in on myself. Perhaps the irony was intentional, the wish I made because I wanted nothing more than to leave was what kept me there, of my own free will.

So, I stayed. But, since I knew I couldn’t die, I began taking greater and greater risks. Perhaps it was to make up for my own cowardice, or perhaps it was simply because I was miserable. I bought a motorcycle that I drove much too fast. I took up base jumping, spelunking, bungee jumping, rock climbing (though the cliffs in town were nothing to write home about). And that was how I met Reese.

Reese was part of the admittedly small thrill-seeking community in town. Honestly, he was kind of a dick, but like I said, in small towns you have to make do with what you’ve got. At least he was… exciting. People said that he took things too far, that he was reckless, even cruel. But that was what I liked about him; he was interesting. And really, what was he going to do, kill me? We dated for a while, mostly just casual, but I had fun with him. Maybe a bit too much, because one day I blurted out something I shouldn’t have. I told him I couldn’t die. He didn’t believe me, of course, who would? He just thought I was drunk, which in fairness I was, or I wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. In the sober light of day, I was glad he hadn’t believed it and hoped he would just forget the whole thing. Maybe he would have, if it hadn’t been for the climbing incident.

It was just the two of us up there that day. We were free soloing up a somewhat challenging route that I hadn’t tried before, and no one else was crazy enough to join us. Maybe I was trying to impress Reese a bit, I am not really sure. Whatever the reason, I jumped for a handhold that I couldn’t quite reach, and I didn’t make it. I fell a long way and landed badly. And I don’t mean a broken leg or a sprained shoulder, badly. I felt my neck hit rock, felt it snap. I knew I had died there. I could always tell when I died, and it just didn’t take. This was definitely one of those times. On the upside, it did resolve the cold I had been struggling with for a few days, so silver linings. You see, a few moments after I die, my body simply resets to a state of perfect health, slate wiped clean. If it didn’t hurt in a way that I can’t really even describe, I would probably have used it to cure all my ailments. But I digress.

By the time Reese climbed down to me, I was already brushing myself off and preparing a story about how I had managed to catch myself a couple of times on the way down, so I really didn’t fall that far. I’d hoped his view of my tumble hadn’t been very good. But I could tell by the look in his eyes that I hadn’t been that lucky. He’d seen everything. And he knew I was lying.

Reese didn’t call me out on it, though. He acted like everything was normal, and we even continued to see each other. I convinced myself that I had gotten away with it and resolved to be more careful in the future. Then the accidents started. The first time it happened, I was just walking up to his apartment when the air conditioner dislodged itself from the window and came hurtling down, landing only inches from me. Reese apologized profusely, saying he was trying to do some repairs, and it slipped. But it kept happening. My brakes failed, I got brutal food poisoning whenever he cooked for me, I stepped into the shower to find that the tub had been greased. I probably let it go on longer than I should have, but I assumed it was just bad luck, at first. After all, he would have to be crazy, right? But eventually it was …

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