"The trick to living forever is to not be around when Death starts looking for you. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to know when Death is looking for you, much less where. As a result, very few people have managed it. When it happens, it is usually as much a surprise to the individual as it is to Death.
"The other catch is that Death may not come for you only once."
It then goes on with a few of the better known methods for skipping your date with Death (being perpetually late, getting really lost, etc.) and a list of the few known successful attempts (so far). Finally, it mentions that telling people about your immortality is usually considered a bad idea as this will more than likely make you famous and thereby alert Death to your whereabouts.
Gerald Farnsbury was not concerned about being famous. There were only three or four people left on the Earth that even knew he was alive and they all thought he was in New Jersey[2]. He was not and he liked it that way. He lived in a small cave in the side of a mountain far from anything remotely like a bodega.
What he was concerned about was his date with Death. Gerald had been dying for the last eighteen years[3]. He had a variety of ailments, most self-diagnosed[4], including, but not limited to:
- Bowel Obstruction
- Heart Arrhythmia
- Tongue Boils
- Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (confined to his male member)
- Aquagenic urticaria
- Kuru Disease
Any one of these could potentially kill Gerald Farnsbury. Melded together, he felt that it was a given that he should be dead. Stubbornly, his body refused to 'give up the ghost' and remained pumping blood, pulling in oxygen, pushing out waste products and all of the other things that bodies do when they are alive.
Gerald had tried more aggressive methods of forcing the issue. He had survived for two years with out food or water before giving up and eating because not eating was boring. He had fashioned a stake from a local tree and fallen on it, but the stake had broken. He'd then tried stouter and stouter stakes only to start bouncing off of them. A cliff jump had ended with a freak updraft saving his life. Twenty-three times.
Finally, at age sixty-one, Gerald decided to try getting Death's attention more directly. He left his cave and walked to Orlando, Florida[5]. There, he parked himself outside the house of one Winnie Weinburger, whom was reported to be on Death's Door by all of her neighbors and other members of the Golden Acres Retirement Community and Mobility Scooter Emporium Association[6]. Gerald figured that, if he stood on Death's Door long enough, Death was bound to come home sooner or later.
Unfortunately for Gerald, when Death did come for Winnie, it was through the patio door as it was a shorter route from Dan Bouther's, Death's previous call. As a result, it was not until Death left Winnie's that he stumbled upon Gerald as Gerald had stretched himself across the front door. Stumbling, Death fell the two steps face first and broke Death's neck, dying.
On the subject of Death's death, the Wikipedia Galactica claims that when Death dies, the nearest sentient being will immediately take Death's place as Death. And so, Gerald found himself wearing a black cowl, holding a scythe and with an urgent need to find one Henry A. Carver, Jr.
[1] Hands off. This idea is mine. Just as soon as I can find an interstellar publishing house. - Author
[2] New Jersey and you may be perfect together, but it was decidedly not perfect for Gerald Farnsbury. Not after the Buffalo Mozzarella Incident of 1992.
[3] Gerald had been dying since the day he was born in 1954, but had been getting more serious about it for the last eighteen.
[4] Using the more Earthly Wikipedia.
[5] A trek of some length as there are no (natural) mountains, much less mountains with caves, in the state of Florida.
[6] Free scooter with each new lease.
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