• If it hadn't been for the date I wouldn't have even noticed the time. The annoying clock in the parlor rang out twelve times announcing midnight. Announcing that today was October 21st. I sat on the couch dreading this day, it seemed to come so fast. Day by day, year by year and nothing changed. The pain remained the same, as did the horrible loss.

    For years one thought disturbed my mind going unanswered. If only. If only things had been different, if only I hadn't listened to Ben and drank from that well so long ago. Wow...it really was a long time ago. Some things you don't even notice until you realize that nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed. Back in the days of my true youth, when life was full of happiness, sarrow, hopes, and dreams. Sometimes when I close my eyes I wonder where all the time had truly gone. Was it hidden in some dark corner of the universe? Or was it just...gone?

    I stood and crossed the living room of this old abandoned inn and stared at the face in the mirror. Young. Only seventeen. Nothing had changed since that day, but brown curly hair was still the exact same length, my green eyes were still as green and not even a wrinkle had occured despite my true age. If all had gone according to plan I would have died long ago. But instead I was here, alone and tortured. This one day of the year made it worse.

    On this day in 1863 I lived in southern Virginia and my true love, Benjamin Alerman. A Union soldier, my father and three brothers were off fighting in the war when I had met Ben. When Ben and I discovered a map hidden in a wooden box that had surfaced during a storm...that was when everything had changed.

    Since Ben was a soldier for the north our relationship was kept secret, he said he would take me away and marry me. But he became obsessed with finding the hidden treasure on the map. The treasure of eternal youth. I had never believed him, if only I knew.

    One night my father had discovered my secret, Benjamin. Ben had promised me he had found the stream that could keep us young and healthy forever, he told me to meet him there at midnight on the 20th of October. He had left directions scribbled on a piece of paper on my desk for me to find.

    So that night I went and nothing went according to plan. Then again when does it. My brother Daniel had seen me crossing the yard and woke my brothers and our father, when I think back I see how crooked my family would be to murder both myself and Ben. When a father is willing to kill his own daughter, there has to be some darkness in his soul. Something so dark that the devil himself would be ashamed to be seen with him.

    I got to the stream just before midnight, but Ben was caught. He screamed at me to drink from it...no matter what happened to him. And I did...after that...the worst and most darkest moments of my eternal life had happened.