If you've watched Highlander, you must have thought it was just a tale.
Guess what? Same. I thought so too. Until I woke up one day and realized, oh crap, I'm immortal.
But unlike those trench-coat-wearing Highlanders who can sense each other from miles away like some magical Wi-Fi, I've got nothing. Zero signal bars. I can be in a Starbucks, standing next to another immortal, and the only thing I'll sense is overpriced coffee.
And yes, like them, I can only die if my head gets separated from my body.
But here's the difference: Highlanders only die when struck by another immortal's sword. Me? Nope. Any sword will do. Kitchen knife, samurai katana, even that cheap souvenir blade from a tourist shop, slice my head off and it's a game over.
So basically, my weakness isn't epic duels with immortals. It's… any idiot with sharp cutlery, beheading punishment, is basically my one and only Kryptonite.
"Doesn't that make you anxious?" people ask.
"No," I tell them, "because unless I join a Middle Eastern political protest, I'm statistically safe."
In fact, these days I feel more immortal. Why? Because only a handful of countries still practice beheading, and most of them are too hot for me anyway. I burn easily.
But here's the real kicker: my immortality isn't like theirs. Mine comes with… glitches. I can get sick. I can get old. The weird part? I age only from 20 to 30, then, bam!, reset back to 20. Like a human iPhone restarting itself.
You'd think that's a blessing, right? Wrong. It's a curse. Try explaining to your wife of thirty years why you still look like the boyband member she married while she now looks like… well, her mother.
"Are you cheating on me with yourself?" one of them once asked.
"No, honey, it's just… biology hates me."
I've buried families, lovers, friends. I've watched my children grow old while I stayed young enough to be carded at bars. Do you know how depressing it is when your granddaughter gets mistaken for your date?
And the stares… oh, the stares. People look at me like I'm some creepy sugar baby clinging onto an old lady's arm. The irony is, I am the sugar baby. Literally. Forever twenty.
So yeah, don't envy me. Immortality is not a gift. It's an eternal practical joke.
,
My name is Ewan MacLeod. Born in the Highlands, centuries ago. A farm boy, nothing special. I married at twenty, as was normal in those days, nobody wanted to die a virgin when the plague or famine might take you by twenty-five. My wife, Mary, was kind. We had children, we had sheep, we had lice. Life was simple.
When I reached thirty, something strange happened. My hair had just started to gray, my back ached like every other farmer's. Then one morning, I looked into a water basin… and my wrinkles were gone. My face was young again. Twenty. Exactly twenty.
Mary fainted. The neighbors screamed. The local priest was summoned. He studied me long and hard, then declared, "It is a gift! A sign, just as Christ returned from the dead, so too this lad is chosen."
I didn't argue. Better to be called a miracle than a demon. For the next ten years, I lived with the title of "God's favored one." People came to touch my hands, hoping I could bless their chickens. Spoiler: I couldn't. The chickens still died.
Ten years later, my eldest son was already a grown man, beard to his chest, while my wife had wrinkles Mary didn't used to have. And then it happened again. Reset. Back to twenty. Same face, same skin. I looked like my own son's drinking buddy. The priest was summoned again. He nodded sagely, "Still a gift."
Mary wasn't convinced. She aged, I didn't. Villagers whispered. Some thought she'd married a demon. Some thought she'd married two different men with the same face. Honestly, both explanations sounded better than the truth.
By the third reset, though… I knew. This wasn't a gift. It was a curse. My wife grew frail, my children turned into fathers, and I… stayed the same. I buried Mary with a twenty-year-old's hands, though my heart had lived half a century. People still called me blessed. But I knew better.
I was cursed to live forever at twenty. Too young to be respected, too old inside to belong.
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By the third reset, things got… awkward.
The villagers started whispering. They said Mary must have remarried after I died. Because surely, that young man walking around with her wasn't me, but my son. Or worse, my son's son.
At a wedding feast, I heard one drunk neighbor mutter, "Aye, Mary's still got it, she caught herself a lad young enough to be her grandson."
Mary almost threw her mead in his face. I just sat there, smiling politely, because how do you explain to drunk medieval farmers, "No, it's still me. Same husband. Just… magically rebranded every decade."
Another time, the priest stopped me in the square. He peered at me with watery eyes, then leaned close.
"Son, are you truly Ewan, or are you… his boy?"
I sighed. "Father, I assure you, I'm still me."
He squinted harder. "Then why do you look like a stable boy while your wife looks like my aunt?"
Mary snapped from behind me: "Because God's ways are mysterious!"
That shut him up. For a while.
But gossip spread anyway. Soon, half the village was convinced Mary had betrayed me with a younger man… who just happened to look exactly like me. The scandal was delicious. Every time we walked hand in hand, people gave us side-eyes sharp enough to cut bread.
And when my eldest son introduced me to his friends, I swear one of them winked at me and whispered, "Not bad. I see where he gets his charm."
It was hell. Hilarious, humiliating hell.
That was the moment I stopped believing this was a "gift."
It wasn't divine. It wasn't holy. It was just… cosmic comedy at my expense.
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