Very Short Story - Live Forever, Die Young

Note:  Work is mad and my health isn't great right now so I haven't the time or the mental capacity to rant online this month. So I'm resorting to pulling a short story out of my challenge archive again....

Live Forever, Die Young

The young man stared up at the towering figure in his crisp business suit, so like all the others who had come before him, waving contracts, begging, wheedling, for him to sign his awesome and vastly in demand new sound to their label. The pleas and the promises, the guarantees of global glory and riches beyond compare were getting almost embarrassing.

But this one – there was something different about him.

Perhaps it was his ruddy complexion, so deep as to make his skin seem almost crimson. Perhaps it was the neat, black little goatee beard that he stroked so lovingly. Perhaps it was the strange fit of his neat Italian shoes or the odd way his dark wig seemed to balance on his forehead, as though something beneath was getting in the way.

But no. In the end the young man knew. It was his eyes.

And he’d thought Cowell was creepy…

“I’m telling you,” he told the bizarre man, lounging back on his divan and trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered by his strangenesses. “I’ve been offered the works, everything from a yacht to Scarlett frigging Johanssen. What can you give me that the others can’t?”

And then Mr Damien smiled. “What if I tell you I’m not like the others?”

That was bloody true but the young man kept his thoughts to himself. “Go on then.”

Stroke, stroke on that bloody beard. “What if I tell you I can guarantee you immortality? Not the craven choice of eternal life, oh no, but a glorious shining star of a memory that will live on forever. For a few short years, you will be their sun, their shining desire, you will be the star of your age and all will melt before your wonder. But nothing and nobody can last for ever like that. So when the day comes and I call your name, you must come with me. And that will be the end.”

The young man felt a deep and potent shiver run down the length of his spine. “No one can promise that.”

That smile. There was something so wrong about that smile. “Marilyn. Lennon. Winehouse. Holly. Elvis.”

The young man could feel his hands trembling. “What about them?”

Mr Damien simply raised one eyebrow and broadened his smile. “Live forever, die young. That’s the deal. That it or leave it.”

He had to ask the question. “Who are you?”

The lean forward was slow and careful. The wig rocked.

“Guess,” he said.

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