Hey! I’m your lovable crime buddy. Of course, I’m down for nefarious plans.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Emmanuel Tein
Race: Halfling – Human / Panda
Age: 41, physically about 23
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 765 words
 

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I’ve never been one to be overly playful, not in the way I’ve seen some of the others in our generation be. Those who would play pranks on their friends or create a sort of childish chaos that they enjoyed every second of. I was a timid child growing up and once Romeo came into my life, I admit that I might have focused on him more than I focused on myself. Not in an unhealthy way, we balance one another out perfectly fine but I feel that, maybe, if he hadn’t been in my life, I wouldn’t be here now.

Who am I kidding? Of course, if he wasn’t in my life, I wouldn’t be here, because here is with him in my life. This was pointlessly dramatic, and I feel like it sounded as though I was getting ready to say that if not for him, I wouldn’t be alive. Now, there is a hint of truth to that but it’s not something I spend all that much time thinking about.

He’s mine, I’m his, end of that particular story.

Now, I’m an avid reader. I spend a lot of time in the library because I love the feel of pages being turned. I know that I can read any book I want through the pads each house had and I can even have them in audio format but if I can get my hand on a paper copy of a book, I will. Turning each page, putting a bookmark in the spot you’re at, they’re all just things I find oddly soothing. So let me have that. I know I’m not the only one who roams the library.

I’ll read a little bit of everything though I admit that non-fiction is a bit odd to me unless it pertains to some of my favourite authors. I’ve read biographies, I’ve skimmed through cookbooks and other books that help you learn stuff but for the most part, I like fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, romance, naughty stuff. You name it, I possibly have read it. The only one I know I don’t really go for, most of the time, is anything that has to do with horror. I’ve realized rather early on that I can’t seem to stomach horror, even if it’s mild.

There are the books, though, they’re not horror, I think they’re tagged as supernatural, they have a lighter touch of things, ghosts, vampires and other spooky things but not in a horror sense. I’ve recently discovered a series that tags itself as being a sort of supernatural romance and I was a little bit skeptical at first because the snippet on the book made it seem as though somehow there was some sort of romantic relationship going on between the main character—a young man coming from a family of witches—and a ghost.

Now, if you’d said demon, or angel, or something else, I might not have been as confused but my knowledge of ghosts places them as being fairly non-corporeal and while I’ve seen an old and weird comic about ghosts, men, and sexual stuff, I didn’t think this was really a possibility.

Turns out, though, that it wasn’t even really about that. Yes, the man and the ghost—or entity, I guess—had a connection but it was sweet more than anything else. I remember a passage at one point where the ghost seemed to claim itself as being the man’s lovable crime buddy and they were always down for nefarious plans. It was little more than a joke at that point when you consider that nothing in the book was nefarious. Even the general plot fell a little flat in that regard, honestly.

There wasn’t much in the book that spoke of romance in any way, shape or form. I think the author, in that case, tried but didn’t very hard, or well, who knows. I remember these little tidbits from the book, but I also have finished reading it recently. I put it down maybe a week or so ago at this point. I don’t know that I’ll be reading more of this particular author, but I know I’ll have given it a try.

One thing I’ve realized that I do tend to do is that somehow, when I don’t care much for a book I’ve read through, I’ll step away from the genre for a short while, turning to other books for reading until I find myself drawn back to the genre with some hopes that the next book I’ll pick up will be more interesting.

Wait a minute, back up. Someone like you has a mug shot?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Faustus Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 791 words
 

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Certain words are triggers. You might do all you can to avoid them, but they’re so rarely spoken that you don’t even know they’re triggers before they do their ugly part in things, and you can feel yourself spiralling. I hadn’t had any issues in years, I’m not even sure why it truly happened other than, you know it did. One moment, I’m helping Zi with the bit of garden we have near the building, the next I come to, and I’m curled in a fetal position in our room. I don’t even remember anything that might have happened in between.

What I do faintly remember are the two men walking on by. They were possibly in our age group because I do faintly remember that they were talking about things that held meaning to the world before the snow. Things that the younger groups might not really know about. They possibly have been told all about it but from spending so much time listening to others talk, there’s a way to tell the difference between someone who has lived in the before and someone who was either too young to remember or was born after the fact.

These two men, from listening to them talk as they walked on by, had clearly been old enough to have had a life before the snow took hold and then changed our world.

It was a little later, when I’d settled down again, that we tried to figure out just what it was that had dropped me into that near-instantaneous panic attack. At least, without speaking any of the words out loud, we tried to figure out what it had been. Zi mentioned that they’d been talking about cops and misdemeanours, nothing that would have been considered a serious crime. I know I’m sensitive to a few subjects relating to prisons and it’s so rare to hear about any of them that I can’t imagine what word they could have used that sent me over.

Eventually, we managed to shorten the list down to something much more manageable and only a few words really stood out. One of them is about that photo the cops take when someone is arrested. It’s such a mild word that I don’t know that it should have triggered such a strong reaction in me but, you know, it’s one of those things that I don’t have any desire to test out.

There were a few other words in their discussion that Zi heard more than I did that could have led to everything but they’re on par with the one about that photo taken. I just don’t know. I feel like it had honestly been years since I’d had an attack this bad, and I hate it when they happen. Worrying Zi this way is one of the last things I ever do want to do because it feels unfair to him and to the few other people that are still around now that I know I can trust anymore.

I want to believe that I’m stronger than I was when they released me from those five years of hell. I want to believe that I’ve managed to make some progress with my life so as to not fully live in the past, even if that very past still has its claws clearly sunk deep in me in regard to a few different things. I know that it’s no way to live. Cowering away my entire life because of five years of hell isn’t a way to go about things. I don’t want to spend what’s left of my life being afraid of everything that’s out there. It’s just not right by any means.

Every day, I try a little harder. Every day, I face the world to the best of my ability and, every day, I want to believe that I’ve made at least some progress as to everything that surrounds me. I will never be outgoing. I will never truly be able to look anyone in the eye for more than a brief moment, but there are other things that I’ve managed to do that I feel like I’m allowed to be proud of.

I don’t really cower away. I still flinch when someone startles me, possibly more than I should, but I don’t spend my days just hiding away in the apartment, waiting for Zi to come back. As is, I don’t care to be away from him for too long, so I join him when we go outside. It’s good for me, I know. The steps I take may be very, very small steps, but they are steps that I am taking, and I feel as though this is the best I can do.