In a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and winding rivers, there lived a man who spent his days perched upon a weathered wooden chair on the front porch of his modest cottage. His eyes, a mirror to the vast expanse of his thoughts, gazed blankly into the distance as if searching for something just beyond the edge of his consciousness.

The man's mind was a void, a vast emptiness that seemed to swallow up any stray thought or fleeting emotion that dared to cross its threshold. He sat there, unmoving, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the bustling village around him.

Neighbors passing by would stop and exchange fleeting greetings with the man, but he hardly registered their presence. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and memories.

Some said he was a dreamer, a man who had wandered too far into the recesses of his own mind and had lost his way back to reality. Others whispered that he was haunted by ghosts from his past, memories that clung to him like shadows in the fading light of day.

But the man paid them no mind. He remained on his chair, a silent sentinel guarding the threshold between the known and the unknown, his gaze fixed on a horizon only he could see. And there he sat, lost in the vast emptiness of his mind, a solitary figure in a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

The thing is, his eyes saw everything even though they looked like they were seeing nothing. He'd tried so many times to get out of the chair on the veranda in the daylight, but it was no use. He sat in the chair for every waking hour, until at some point his legs told him to rise, and then he had a chair inside, a plush armchair that was still lined with the blankets that had belonged to the woman he'd called his wife...before the change. He'd long outlived her. Oh, well. She was getting bored of everything anyway. And he'd made the choice to live like this. But when they said forever, well, he hadn't thought it would actually be forever.

He'd outlive all the neighbours too. Even the blonde-haired toddler who still sucked her thumb to get to sleep. Shit. He wished he didn't know that. It was scary. He could see inside every house without going over there, just in case the one he was waiting for was in one of the houses. He'd established they weren't twenty-two years ago. But the people (was it people?) controlling him just wouldn't let it go.

They allowed him sleep, but not shut-eyed sleep. It was rest, but still he watched. He wanted to feel the feathery lightness of his mattress again. It was years since he had got in bed. He sat in the armchair until morning ticked round again, and then back outside.

He'd spent so long waiting, trying to find this person. And then he would deliver the prophecy. And then all this would finally be done. They'd finally put him out of his misery. He could stop being this living mummy, this puppet on an invisible string.

It seemed like a lot of money, at the time. Three million for him and his wife to spend, if he passed on a message. That and near immortality. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was. He wasn't ready to see those closest to him live and die. If he'd only been told that the deal would stop the normal clockwork of his body, that he wouldn't be able to ever spend that money, that he'd slowly lose the ability to otherwise speak.

He wanted to get out of here. But he was still waiting for the one.