SCENE 6: ETERNITY
— or —
The truth; the cure for fear; and the reality of forever.

IT TOOK TWO months for their bodies to be found. If the township hadn't been so determined to find the culprits of the now infamous Timefire Murders, they may have lay in the clearing for years, rotting as Rhodes' father had, alone in the vast wilderness.

When Kerensa saw the broadcast, hiding out in a small, isolated motel a few counties over, where almost every resident was either on drugs or selling drugs, she broke down into tears. She had spent months looking over her shoulder, running from police, fearing they'd find her. But more often than not it was Rhodes' face she saw hovering disembodied in the gloom, his perfect smile lurking in her every dream, his intelligent and charming eyes always at her back. She didn't want to get caught, but if it came between being found by police or Rhodes, she'd pick the police every time.

Kerensa sobbed, took a swig from the bottle of whiskey she'd bought down the road, and then sobbed some more. Her dark hair hung about her face in greasy strings. Thick shadows gathered below her eyes. Before that evening, she'd had no luck understanding Rhodes' actions, why he'd promised them immortality, set up elaborate rituals, and lured them out into the woods just to kill them. If he had wanted them dead, why had he gone through all that hassle?

But when his face showed on the TV that evening, two months after the crime, it all came together in her mind. She sobbed. It was almost a laugh.

The police had found four bodies in the woods: one girl, and three boys, all with their throats slit. Their names were Jean Noel, Harlow Whitefield, Tallis Sandoval – and John Rhodes.

And so Kerensa cried and laughed, a mixture of grief and guilt and relief. She laughed in spite of herself, she laughed at herself. She laughed at the whole absurd situation she had found herself in. And as Rhodes stared out of the TV, she understood.

Our last night as mortals, he had called it, when they traipsed around town taking revenge. By the end of tomorrow, he'd said on Harlow's porch, we'll be free of all these childish games of crime and law. She'd thought it ridiculous. But it wasn't, after all.

Timefire claims us all, he had written across Town Hall in her parents blood. How had she not seen then what he was going to do? He had put the truth in giant red block letters over the largest building in town.

It had never been about defeating physical death. It had been about conquering the death of one's legacy.

Suddenly light shot in through her window, dying her box-like motel room in a grim crimson. A high-pitched squeal vaulted into the evening, and her room flashed momentarily blue. They had found her.

Kerensa's face shot up onto the screen, as it seemed to do at least once every day. The sirens howled. She heard shouting, doors slamming, feet pounding the stairs in the hall. The exact motel she was staying in flashed on the TV. Lights swarmed against the window. There was nowhere to run.

Calmly, Kerensa took another swig of whiskey and drunkenly plonked the bottle back on the table. She wiped the tears from her eyes. She deserved this. She deserved to rot behind bars for the rest of her life. She had murdered her parents.

When the pounding started on her door, she closed her eyes and breathed deep. "Police, open up!" They were already trying to storm their way in, and she knew the locks wouldn't hold for long.

She deserved prison. She deserved to watch her face and body slowly wrinkle with time. Instead, her hand found the knife on the table.

The lock broke. The door slammed against the wall. Dark figures stormed the room shouting, swinging flashlights that burned her eyes. She jumped to her feet. The room turned blue, red, white, black. Blinding colours danced across her retina. Her hand tightened on the knife.

"Non omnis moriar," she gasped.

Not all of me shall die.

— : —

THEIR FACES WOULD flash on screens for years: Tallis Sandoval, Jean Noel, Harlow Whitefield, John Rhodes, Kerensa Morin – the Timefire Murderers. They never aged, never changed. On television and online, in the pages of newspapers and magazines, they appeared as teenagers, smug schoolkids, young misfits who concealed a great darkness behind their eyes. Some would swear that if you stared at their photos for long enough, you could almost mistake them for being alive, staring back at you as you stared at them. The photos had an unnerving, eerie quality to them, made even more intense when one thought about the atrocious murders the teens would go on to commit just months after the pictures were taken.

Conspiracy theorists online spoke often of their mystery. Their smiles weren't just smug, but knowing, daring you to look a little closer, investigate a little further. Secrets stared out of their eyes, secrets that had died with them, been buried with them, and lost – locked away, maybe forever. Wild theories emerged as to what they may be. A woman named Sara Kohli, who purportedly had gone to school with the Timefire Murderers, released a book about them that became an international bestseller. The Rhodes estate drew so much attention that the family packed up their things and moved to an undisclosed location, far away from prying eyes. The mansion sold to a private buyer for a monstrous $120 million, who then turned it into a tourist attraction.

People were fascinated by them, sickened by them. They were a group of kids who had murdered their friends and parents in a ghastly act of vengeance, graffitied their town hall with blood, and then promptly ventured into the woods and massacred themselves. Some spent years piecing together the story, trying to understand what had happened, and more importantly, why. And all the while, the group stared out of those same yearbook photos, out from computer screens and the pages of books. They would never grow up. They would never grow old. They would never get sick or deteriorate, wrinkle or age. They would remain forevermore just as they were: young, mysterious, untouchable. They had escaped the bounds of mortality. They had found their cure.