Sublime

Marlowe stands close and lights it for him, smelling of hair cream and something else as well. The faintest whiff of brimstone. Marlowe enjoys a different kind of immortality, achieved by different means. No magic acorns or slumbering under trees. He sold his soul on the dotted line, joined an exclusive members’ club. Eternal life. But not eternal

He’d lost perhaps half an inch in height, and gained perhaps an inch in breadth; but generally speaking the years had glanced off him without damage, and he was as unaltered as Bethesda’s pews.