I am a hundred years old.

I watch the looks on Human faces, as they wait for me to Go.

But I never do Go.

I am 110 years old, now.

They are starting to wonder.

But it’s not enough. I’m still within Tolerances.

They pass me by.

I reach 120.

I am now considered a “World Marvel”. A “Marvel” of their “World”.

They celebrate.

They think I cannot walk.

“You’re the oldest Human left, in the World, Margaret.” they tell me.

It’s not so much that I don’t have the Heart to tell them.

It’s that I do not like them enough to.

I have not liked them since 1989.

I reach 121 years of age.

They’re waiting for me, now.

A young artist, not thinking clearly, still dumb with youth, fashions me a coffin. It is ornate, and covered, and filled, with pictures of things they have researched, that they think I Love.

It is presented to me. It feels a bit like Jesus being presented with a gift Cross, and a packet of Nails.

I smile, congenially.

“I’m sorry, dearie,” I tell them. “But I don’t intend to ever use it.”

They laugh.

The artist notices something in my eye.

122. 123. 124.

“Any day now,” they say, in hushed tones, and breaths. They expect the breath to leave me, soon.

Soon, they only think it.

125. 126. 127. 128.

Now they begin wondering.

129.

130. I ‘reach’ 130.

Medical teams are brought in, to study me.

Human ethics have much improved. They ‘allow’ me to ‘refuse’.

One still tries to sneak a cell culture, by scartching me.

I let him.

It won’t be any good, anyways.

131. 132. 133. 134.

Articles come out, now.

“Modern-day Methuselah, Margaret,” the covers read.

My surname is wrong again.

There are memes with my face on them.

I am posed next to ancient paintings, as if they are searching for Dorian Gray.

135. 134. 135. 136.

People are scared, now.

They are growing weary of me breathing.

137. A World ‘disaster’ is blamed on me, through some conspiracy theory.

The ruckus will let me hide a while lnoger.

137. 138. 139.

140.

On my 140th birthday, pictures are taken.

People are now rightly suspicious.

A doctor and a nurse, worried, not willing to touch me, ‘joke’:

“I think you’re getting a bit younger, aren’t you, ma’am?”

They nervously laugh, and smile.

Like a child looking for not just affection, but some indicator that things are ‘alright’.

I don’t smile back.

Pictures of me are found from 1980, 16 years before I was born.

I appear fully-grown.

There is something in my eyes.

141. 142. 143. 144.

I am laughing.

One day, I go ‘missing’.

I return, but I am never found.