This is a small story inspired by the writing prompt You are immortal, locked up in a room with no windows, with only a toilet, a bed, a sink and a door with a latch where every hour someone checks on you. You don't remember why or how long you have been locked up there or where 'there' is. Then the door opens and a man says "we need you".

I thought it might have a home here as well. Let me know what you think.

Oh, how they had wronged me. Within my existence one can easily become disassociated with memories but, oh, I remember them. Those I had once called friends, even those I had once called family, had betrayed me, locked me up, and then left. I had been shocked at first, yet I understood their rationale, but my shock became frustration as the days turned to years morphing it into a wave of anger as I slowly started to realize they were never coming back and that they had all just left me.

Still, even as I sit here in my prison, I can’t help but think of them, as with my hatred of them, fondly. Perception is kinda weird that way. I did hate them, truly I did. In all honesty, I still do, passionately even. It’s just that time has a way turning memories of the past, especially those that I can hold on to, into nostalgia even if they’re bad. For so long my hatred of them was my only source of fuel. For so long my hatred of them was my only friend, my only company. My only constant as I deteriorated/regenerated, went insane/sane, forgot/remembered who I am was the fact that I hated them.

And let me make it clear, I KNOW THEY’RE ALL GONE, at least the initial ones. But now “they” and “them” have simply come to represent those that they became. I sat in my cell and watched as they slightly grew in height, augmented their appearance organically or mechanically, became infused with technology, became a reflection of myself, as they transcended into something new, and even as they lost what made them them they became the focus of my intense hatred.

I hadn’t even fully realized to what extent I had transferred this hatred until one of these things, in probably my first contact with anything else in tens of thousands of years, opened the door and shot me point blank in the side of the goddamned face. I lunged at this creature in an attempt to kill, but a searing pain in my temple brought me to my knees screaming in agony. The pain was unbearable but my contempt for them gave me the strength to stand. Slowly, and tortuously, I approached the tiny figure cowering in the corner.

“Please don’t mister, it was the only way for you to understand me! We need you!” begged the small frame.

I froze. The first words I’d heard in maybe a hundred thousand years stopped me dead in my tracks, and I began to weep. I wept for the pain I felt, not just the pain I felt in my temple, but for the pain I felt in my heart. I wept for those I missed, for those that I had loved, and for those that had left. I wept for the uncountable years I spent locked in a little white room. I wept for the hatred I had felt towards my own kind. I wept for the hatred I currently held for the things my kind had become. But lastly, I wept for the child crying for me to spare her life; for the child in front of me begging for my help.

Humanity was gone and had left me behind in that prison but, on that day, in that wretched prison, I had remembered mine.

Edit: Format was changed thanks to submission by u/Socially8roken