Stop letting your gryphons into my house. They’re destroying all my pillows.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Current Date: June 21, 2024

Character: Air aka Samir
Race: Elemental – Air
Age: 35, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
 

---

I wonder if it comes as any surprise to anyone who might know the truth about us that we’ve never really met anything that could be considered a mythical creature. Aspen himself aside, that is. I mean, we’ve asked him a tiny little bit about his past, I know he doesn’t care to talk about it, but we do know that he’s the last of his particular species.

As we were growing up on the island and coming into our powers, though, things were different. None of us could create animals, Chrys is as close as it gets on the creation front and he’s all things flowers. It’s different than creating living, breathing things. Though if you were to ask him, flowers are living, breathing things and he’d argue his point vehemently, pouting all the while. I’m not interested in seeing him pout or argue his point.

When Remy first came to the island, we discovered a whole world of things from him. He brought in with him so many things that I don’t think any of us would have ever experienced or learned about if not for him. Story books, fantasy settings, creatures from far and wide that might or might not really exist and, coming from a guy whose body and soul came from another plane of existence, that feels like it’s saying a lot.

I remember learning about unicorns, dragons, gryphons and plenty of other things. I remember watching Llyr make these figures out of water; they took a lot of energy out of him when we were young, and they never lasted long, but they always made us smile. Lan was pretty good at creating all things strange and unusual out of the earth. They were sculpted beautifully as though they had taken hours, but they never took that long for him. They certainly looked more polished the longer he spent on them, but I suppose that this is a given.

There was a game we played for about a year or two until most of us got bored with make-believe mythical creatures. We would scribble out the animals we wanted to on that particular day, and we’d just play invade-the-house. I don’t even remember how we got started, I just remember holding on to my own drawing of what I thought this half-lion, half-eagle creature looked like. I would be snagging pillows and playfully throwing them at my brothers.

Someone would eventually huff tiredly, claiming that we had to stop letting all the creatures into the house because they were destroying all the pillows and from there, we would sort of just stop playing and start picking up the mess we’d done. Not that the house was ever completely thrown into chaos, but we did make plenty of messes that we learned to clean up.

I mean, we were kids, after all. We were young and playful, we were learning about life and we just wanted to have fun.

I feel like our childhood is forever ago now. Not that I mind it being forever ago. It would probably be for the best that it is, anyway. There were a lot of bad days before Remy came into our lives. I know Aspen was doing his absolute best, but he had no real idea what to do with the lot of us. All of us together learned how to be a family and I don’t regret any of what happened.

I don’t regret Remy coming into our lives, even though he was ripped from said lives with very little warning. Without him, we wouldn’t be the people we are now. However, like all of my brothers, I’ve moved on from what used to be, not that I ever spent that much time living in the past, but I guess that it was a little easier for me and some of my brothers than others. Most of us had partners early on. We just matched in a way that felt natural with the other half of our elemental pairs, but it was different for some.

I feel as though all of us have come such a long way. We adapted to life here, we adapted to loss, but on that front, we adapted to newcomers into our lives. We’ve allowed our family to get bigger than it already was, and this has opened our eyes to just so many other things. I wouldn’t change a single thing. All of the emotions we’ve gone through from the moment we were old enough to understand them all the way up until now were just one more piece to help make us into the people we are now.

We are just as we were meant to be.

Final Word Count: 788

One of these days, you’ll regret pushing my buttons.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: June 20, 2024

Character: Sasha Lars
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

---

There is a new mother in our building, and I don’t know how I feel about her. Though I say new mother and I suppose the term is fitting but at the same time, the fact remains that this isn’t her first child, she has two more living with her, an on-off boyfriend and I still don’t know how I feel about her.

I suppose that starting from the beginning of things would likely help.

She moved into the same building we live in about two years ago, I think. She already had the two kids with her at that point and back then, I would have put the older one at possibly six, the younger of the two maybe three. I could have been wrong, I’ve never been great when it comes to pinning the age to the face or body but Magnus said that was just about the ages the two kids seemed to be. There didn’t seem to be a father figure in the picture, but I also didn’t make it my business to ask her about it. She seemed as though she’d been in another building, but still in the hub, so it wasn’t as though she didn’t know her way around and all.

She wasn’t even really courteous to any of us, she’d ignore us if we crossed paths in the stairwell or in the hallways and I guess we learned to mostly tune her out, if nothing else. Her kids were sweet, though, they were playful and not even wary of strangers, but I think that most kids born after the snow just aren’t. Our community is just so small that being wary of strangers isn’t exactly common anymore, though it technically should be in some way.

Anyway, over time there were men coming and going and I have to use that term very loosely because, based on the sounds coming from her apartment, I just feel bad for her kids, and I hope they sleep like the dead when said men are coming. I wish it was a pun.

About a year ago, the flow of men seemed to slow a little and I guess it wasn’t all that hard to understand why considering how big her belly was at that point. I’m not saying that heavily pregnant women aren’t attractive, I’m well aware that for some men, the more heavily pregnant a woman, the more attractive she will be. But clearly, she was heavy with at least one child, and it was the same man that came around at that point. At least, the one that we saw more often than not.

Cue six months back, two beautiful babies came to be and if not for that on-off boyfriend, I don’t think that the two little ones would even be alive at this point. I’ve lost count of how often we’ve heard her scream at the little ones to stop crying, how she somehow seems to think that they’re pushing her ‘buttons’ on purpose and that they’ll regret it one of these days. These little things are six fucking months old. They’re not pushing any buttons. They’re just trying to survive at this point.

So yeah, I say she’s a new mother, but I don’t know that the term fully fits. I know I’ve been told that being a new mother is never really over, while some doctors say that it’s those first six to eight weeks post-partum and just, I’ve never had kids of my own, I don’t know that I ever will, even if I could but I still don’t think that screaming at your kids to stop pushing your buttons when they’re barely six months old is going to get you anywhere.

I really don’t know how I feel about her. I didn’t mind her at first, I mean, she was pretty much just ignoring the lot of us and barely even parenting her own kids, they’d run to us when they saw us outside and in the halls and I feel that we—as the building’s family, if you would—have been raising her little ones more than she has since she’s come here.

I know that the guy that drops in almost every day—but never spends the night, I see him come and go enough to be able to tell that much—is probably the only reason why those little ones are still alive at this point. I don’t know if he’s their father or not, not that it really matters all that much to me, but while I don’t know anything about him, I’m still just glad he’s around if it keeps the kids alive, then it’s a good thing.

We might have to do something if he stops coming around and doesn’t take off with the kids if he ever does. I don’t want things to end up going that far, but I’ll do whatever I have to if it does.

Final Word Count: 826

You don’t want to admit it, but I know you were trying to impress me.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: June 19, 2059

Character: Roxanne Gainsboro
Race: Halfling – Drow / Human
Age: 37, physically about 21
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I know that as far as most people are concerned, Tabi is just a fox. A maybe not-so-dumb animal that I’ve managed to domesticate except that’s not really so much how it happened. I found her with her leg caught in a wire trap when she was just barely a few days old. I brought her in to Faith who made sure she was fine, healthy, and all that and well, I just took the little kit in since it needed someone to watch over it while it did heal up a little.

She was still so young that I ended up bottle-feeding her for a pretty long while, though I know it was just a few weeks. Still. I guess we bonded over this and by the time she was old enough to be rehabilitated, I wasn’t really able to find it in my heart to let go. Don’t get me wrong, I tried. I took her to where she’d go through her rehab, I set her loose and… she stayed right by me.

That was the start of it all, I guess.

She’s a very smart fox, but she’s not my child. I’m not her mother, and we don’t have that sort of relationship that I’ve seen in quite a few videos of just before the world burned to its end. So many young adults calling their pets their sons or daughters and treating them as such. I can’t understand where it comes from, and I can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m sure there’s a reasoning behind it all but it still goes over my head. It’s part of the world’s history that we don’t really cover while in school.

Are there days when Tabi does something and there is a brief moment as though I feel that she’s trying to impress me? Maybe, but then I remember that she’s a fox and she’s driven by more basic things than I am. She might be smart enough for a lot of things, but I don’t know that she’s smart enough to think that if she impresses me, she’ll get something more to her daily treats than she usually does.

On that same point, I’m not saying I treat her like she’s just some sort of dumb, wild animal, she’s more than that, but she’s still a wild, albeit mostly domesticated, animal. Her teeth are still sharp and even though I raised her from the moment she was still a few days old, there will always be a chance that she might do something that would result in harm for myself or anyone else.

That’s one of the reasons why I don’t force her to stay inside when she doesn’t want to, or why I don’t lock her in the yard, or leash her down. If she spends a couple of days out of the house, roaming and doing what a fox does best, she does. Do I worry? Sure, I do, but she’s still a beautiful fox and there are things that she does that I can’t do anything about.

A few weeks ago, I was working on getting the garden as set for summer as I can manage. I’m not great when it comes to growing things from seeds, but I manage a bit better if I’m getting plants that are already at a certain size and planting those in the garden. As I was digging up the spots I’d placed, I noticed that she was digging more or less exactly when I was and, I’m not going to lie, it made me smile a little. I did praise her for helping me, even though I knew very well that it wasn’t exactly what she was doing.

I just took that as a good thing as it was happening, in prior years, she’d been doing quite the opposite and after several attempts at getting the plants into the dug holes and properly into the soil, I had to give up until she was distracted with something else. Last year, especially, she had it out for the flowers I’d gotten. I would dig, set them in, cover them… and Tabi would either be digging them out just moments later, or burying them down from soil that was just next to them.

So that she behaved as well as she did this year was worth a few praises. I’m well aware that she wasn’t trying to impress me, tempting as it might have been to believe. That’s not how these things work, after all. I’m also not going to argue my beliefs on that front, I know there are some in the community who see their pets as more than just pets and that’s fine. I’m not judging. Just let me do my thing, I’ll let you do yours.

Final Word Count: 801

I was never going to let you give up on me. Not then, not now.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: June 18, 2059

Character: Uriel Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 34, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

The dream-entity that somehow had found its way into my VR setup has been amiss since that day. For the first while following that day, I jokingly told myself that I had somehow trapped it in virtual reality. It helped ease something in me, for just a little while. Mostly because I knew very well that this was unlikely. From the get-go, I’ve never actually known what this entity was.

All it has ever been, from the very beginning, was a foggy presence now and again in my dreams, never much more than that. It never harmed me, it never caused me to harm myself, and all it ever truly did was confuse me far more than anything else.

The thing to keep in mind is that it has always been that thing in my dreams. Up until it showed up in VR, dreams had been at its base and that was that. It didn’t even show up all that often, just often enough to cause issues, if you would, but that is about it, really. When it showed up that last time I ever did bother with VR, a little more than two years ago at this point, I think I might have panicked a little. Not in a flail, run around, heart going a mile a minute way, just, in my head, I guess.

So that it hasn’t come back to see me in my dreams for any reason whatsoever since then has been strange. I’m still telling myself that it’s nothing more than a sort of brain fog more than anything else. Maybe it just got bored with being in my dreams. Maybe there was something more interesting in the VR and the whole system. Maybe none of it has been real and it’s just my brain making things up for me to find some interest in my dreams. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I should have just left it be.

I mean, it’s technically what I did, but, at the same time, not really?

I am a fairly curious person, mostly when it comes to particular things. Most of those things are old and lost languages because I just love working on deciphering every single little thing about them and I love being able to figure out the details of things. A single symbol can mean so many different things, it depends on the person, in the long run.

Anyway, don’t ask me why, I wouldn’t even be able to explain it, but just a few days ago, I went back into the system, and I loaded the archived file from my last visit into the virtual reality set I’d done. Not my first, but certainly my last and I just haven’t even thought about going back. I guess that even years down the road, I was still curious about the symbols I’d found on those ruins and my notes didn’t seem to do them any justice.

The fog wasn’t in any of the video archives. I wasn’t in any of the audio archives either. It’s as though I was talking to myself from beginning to end as it was there. I still remember it being there. I am not the type of person who will talk to myself—or answer my own questions. Or even really just argue with myself.

That unsettled me a little. I never thought to find any real means of checking if the entity was real or not. Then again, I had only ever seen it in my dreams, so checking on that front was a little harder than anything else. Our dreams aren’t recorded, not unless we’re at the clinic and wearing all of the gear. Considering how rarely it was ever in my dreams, going for recording sessions on that front would have been moot.

So that it wasn’t there in the archives for the VR unsettled me a little, but I did what I could about it: I ignored the fact and focused on what I’d been watching these files for. The symbols on the ruins.

Last night, after days of being focused on the symbols and not the fog—I’ll be honest, once I got focused on deciphering the symbols, the rest was history—it came to me in my sleep.

I was not ready to see it crop up the way it had, and I would have much preferred that it stayed away.

Especially when in its soft, ever-low, but somehow almost somewhat menacing voice—something it had never really had before—it told me that it was never going to let me give up on it. Not then, and certainly not now. I woke up with a slightly startled intake of air, I stared at nothing in the darkness of our bedroom, and I might have needed more time than I wish I had to settle back to sleep.

If I think about it at all, it was almost five when I closed my eyes properly again and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even really midnight when I woke with a start. I have no idea what I did just lying there during those hours, I have no real memory of that time, but Gus hasn’t said anything, so I’ll let it slide for now.

Final Word Count: 885

So, uh, you never did tell me why you needed a bodyguard.

Timeline/World: Story – What?
Current Date: June 17, 2024

Character: Aidan Krón
Race: Human
Age: 36
Current residence: Lake Charles, Louisiana
 

---

A few weeks ago, I was at a wedding as Cody’s plus one. It was for the friend of a friend that I personally had never met, and that he hadn’t seen in some years, but he’d been invited, and it was just one city over, so we went. I didn’t really know what to expect, even after Cody had given me a bit of a shortened story on the couple getting married.

The dress code was black-tie. Something that had never really been a thing for either one of us and required being fitted. It seemed as though the bride and groom both were adamant about that. The idea of going to such a formal wedding sat strangely in the pit of my stomach but I did my best to not let it show. I let Cody do most of the leading on that front and things turned out fine.

Mostly fine? I don’t really know. It’s not that things turned out badly, but there was a misunderstanding of sorts once we made it there and I was nearly not able to go in with him.

I think the misunderstanding stemmed from the fact that the couple and their families were very old-fashioned, and we were the only couple that didn’t fit within the heteronormative views of, well, everyone else present. We didn’t argue the point, we didn’t fuss, we simply introduced ourselves as childhood friends to not draw extra attention to ourselves though we still wore our rings.

After the wedding had concluded and things had settled into the reception itself, we were approached by the groom—the friend of a friend. He smiled at Cody, an amused smile that turned my stomach just slightly and asked him when he had started needing a bodyguard and stated that he was rather curious to know why he needed one as well. I’m fairly certain that the man in question knew very well that we were in more than just a work relationship, but Cody handled it just perfectly well and I let him.

Never you mind that I wanted to deck the guy because I felt as though he was making light of a situation that did not deserve it, but it wasn’t my place, we were just guests at this wedding, and I technically was just that plus-one. We didn’t stay for the meal, I was uncomfortable around so many people looking our way curiously and I was going out of my way to keep my hands to myself. I wanted to hold his hand in a bad way.

I’m not one usually for public displays of affection, but when I’m unsettled in some way, which I found myself fairly so on that front, I seek closeness to him, and that closeness usually comes in the shape of my holding onto his hand until we’re home. Then we settle somewhere, and I can seek the closeness I crave.

It never fails to make him smile a little, even if that smile is often tinged with a little bit of sadness. All of our lives, I’ve always been the one that people saw as the white knight. The one to turn to when they needed help with something. I don’t know that people ever stopped to think that yeah, sure, I have my vulnerabilities too, though I hide those better than Cody wishes I even would. He sees through me most of the time anymore, though. He knows that while I can act tough more often than not, there are things that do unsettle me and things that bother me in ways I can’t begin to explain, and, well, during those times, he’s the one I turn to.

I don’t think it’s weak of me to not want to open up my emotions to anyone other than him. At least, those emotions. He’s the one who managed to get me to open up that first time, just some years ago, and I trust him with that part of me in ways I know I can’t really trust anyone else.

We stopped on the way home for fast food. Though I don’t know that pizza counts as fast food. Normally we would have gone for burgers, but considering the dress code that had been required for the wedding and how expensive the tuxes we both wore were, we didn’t want to chance anything. We got the pizzas, we placed those in our thermal bags, got home, pizzas in the oven. We got changed and before long, we both were just boneless in the living room, flopped on the couch, carefully chowing down on pizza.

It’s rare that we eat in the living room, but when we’re both just a little on edge or emotionally drained, we go that route, we set up a movie or a show we probably already know by heart and we eat whatever it was that we got on the way in and we more or less vegetate for a few hours until we feel better.

In a way, I don’t really regret going to that wedding, it was beautiful to watch as it happened, but I think we would have likely been fine with not going either. The more I think about it, the more I’m trying to see the positive to the whole thing. If the guy wanted to think of me as a bodyguard, I’ll take it.

Final Word Count: 904

What did I tell you? You mean everything to them. Don’t forget that.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Musing Thoughts
Current Date: June 16, 2024

Character: Xue Lei
Race: Muse – Thoughts
Age: 271, physically about 26
Current residence: Green Bay, Wisconsin
 

---

Not all who call upon the need of muses are bad people. It is usually quite the opposite. Most who call upon muses seem to be aware that we are not there for their pleasure, we are not there for their amusement. We are there to offer them the inspiration they are missing; we are there to offer them that little nudge that gets them back on track.

Some are just not as self-aware, if that is what it is supposed to be, and a few have been outright banned from the ability to call a muse forth. The banning is rare. In all of my years, I have heard of it happening at most six times here, on the North American continent.

I am not the one who has made our laws, or the one behind our birth and creation, I do not know why certain things apply and others do not, but one thing that I did realize quite early on in my years of taking care of this house is that muses seem bound to an area, so to speak. That area is huge, of course. In a way, it is as though we are bound to our continent of creation. This is hardly something I mind. What I’ve noticed, however, is that I have never had Muses from the Southern side of the continent in my home. It is possible that I am too far north for them, though I have had many muses from Canada coming through my doors.

With that in mind, I have heard plenty of stories from muses that have come from all corners of the area around the house. From Nunavut to Florida, with Hawaii and Texas in between, I’ve heard about just so many different things through different muses that I feel as though I’ve travelled my fair share without ever really leaving the house. One would perhaps consider it a boring existence, but it is not.

So the few banned individuals that have come to be in all of the continent—then again, there could be more as I really do get no news of anything beyond the borders of the United States, even though I’m well aware that technically speaking, Mexico is part of North America—is a very low number, a good thing in and of itself.

The latest addition to this list—of the older five, four are dead at this point though still kept on the list so a wary eye can be kept on their descendants, just in case—turned out to be a young woman living not all that far from this particular house. There is a reason for keeping at least always three to four bedrooms open at all times; they are used up in emergencies and this happened just three weeks ago. Within the span of these three weeks, I have had three muses all come to my doorstep, absolutely burnt out. All three had only been gone just about that one week and as one had come to the door, another one had left only minutes earlier.

They were all let to rest as much as they could but as much information about their location and what had happened was gathered. Three muses in three weeks, all showing the same signs of burning out, all coming from the same area, this is often unheard of and while I feel as though we didn’t get enough information to really get anywhere, I am in contact with another house-head who is far more inclined to technology than I am. Through their research, they found the source of our problem and through whatever power it is that allows us to ban some from being able to call upon us, the woman was on the blacklist.

The moment we finalized the ban, I was told that two other muses—a rare happening but not an unknown that someone might have more than one muse in their lives—showed up at the doors of other houses, showing the beginning signs of the burn out as the other three had. All five told us the same thing that had been repeated to them almost as a chant, a mantra of sorts. A reminder that they were the most important thing to that woman, that they couldn’t forget that. That the little pinches and cuts and hurt they were feeling were temporary but necessary.

Physical interaction with muses is rare, it takes someone truly desperate to be able to manifest that from us and that she was constantly managing that, and at such speed, it is fairly terrifying. There had to be something a little more than human to her but, at this point in time, I have no desire to figure out why. I’m sure we’ll get more information on her as time goes by and as she realizes that her demands for more muses to abuse will go unanswered.

I’ve never really managed to understand how some of our own world works; I can understand new muses coming to be if the need is absolutely present and there are no other muses to answer the call, I understand the use of our special doors to get to our calls just fine, I just wish that these worked the other way as well. I hate seeing exhausted muses just walking up to the door like normal human beings. If they can use special doors to head out, why can they not use them to come back?

A lot of things make no sense, but I do what I can with what I have.

Final Word Count: 937

It warms my heart when you call me a monster. Truly.

Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Iais’i
Current Date: June 15, 2619

Character: Zealot
Race: Iais’ian – Earth Tribe
Age: 29
Current residence: Almir, Taylien
 

---

I have made an enemy out of a man that others seem wary of, and I find myself uncaring of the detail. The child—barely a toddler from terms that I have heard for how tiny they are and wobbly in their wanderings—is huddled against me and the man in question is glaring murder but there is a sickeningly sweet smile on his lips as he looks at the little scene he’s created.

He coos something about how being called a monster warms his heart. I don’t know why he thinks I’m calling him a monster as I haven’t said a single word to him. I’ve never said a single word to anyone but Star and even those are uncommon. It might come from the fact that I am truly looking at him as though he was a monster—and he is a monster as far as I’m concerned.

This man thinks himself a noble, he believes himself to be above the rules and laws of our world and it seems as though everyone worries about being on the wrong side of things with him for as much as they look away whenever he does something that he has no right to be doing. I have only run into him a handful of times at this point, and I must be too old for him—or too scarred—because I am clearly invisible in his eyes. That suits me fine.

The toddler in my arms has begun to wail and I lift them up carefully into my hold, still glaring at the man in question. From the way he behaves, he seems to think that he’ll be able to get that very toddler right back into his chambers at any point he wishes. If I have to be the one to put a sharp blade into his heart, I will.

I was too young when I was first taken into a guard’s own chambers, it shaped me into the person I am now though Star’s patience with me had helped me learn that things are different when they come from a source of affection and with gentleness. I refuse to see another child go through what I did.

All I can do at this point is rock the toddler, wondering just where their parents are. I was just sitting quietly in the shade, wondering how to fill my day. I am still plenty limber, but according to most, I am now too old to be climbing up and down the cliffs though I still help fairly often. Otherwise, I now gather herbs and help with things that grow but I still have days during which I do not rock, something Star has to remind me of too often. My brain does what it wishes though I try my best.

Finally, I step away from the vile creature that believes itself a man above the law, a monster. The little one has quieted down against my shoulder and I’m trying to wrap my mind around how I’m supposed to find their parents. I know Star isn’t too far; I trust him more than I trust anyone else though some of the guards have managed to earn some of my trust and it is one such guard that I come upon when I finally leave the gardens with the toddler still in my arms.

He looks me over once, possibly not seeing the issue on that first look, but his head quickly snaps back my way and before long, the little one has changed arms. They whimper a little but a brush of fingers to their chubby cheek and a tiny smile from me seems to soothe them. The guard doesn’t need to know the story just yet, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to him anyway. Some of my trust he might have, it’s still not enough trust for my words, I wouldn’t know how to force them out anyway.

I do move my hands, though, a sign, I’m told it is, for two unspoken words. Bad person. I don’t know that the word can be changed for man, woman, or anything else. Instead, he just nods and holds the little one a little tighter and I know that the child will be reunited with their parents at some point. I just hope they keep a better eye on their little one from now on.

If they turn out to be incompetent, something will have to be done for the safety of the child but, at this point, that is completely out of my hands. I have to find something to calm myself down with as, otherwise, I know I will find myself plotting a bloody murder and Star’s mark on me will not stop me from being judged for doing something like this. This would also put him in a spot that I have no desire he find himself in, so I can behave myself.

I will speak to him later, however. He has to know. The far-from-noble vile creature that believes itself a man needs to be taken care of.

Final Word Count: 853

I’ve been flirting with you for three years. It’s about time you started to catch on.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: June 14, 2024

Character: Scott Quinn-Speziale
Race: Human
Age: 28
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

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Before I came back home from my final visit abroad back then, I’d been in a five-year relationship with a girl who strung me along. She promised me the world, told me I was her one and only and all the while, she was sleeping around. The crux of the situation was when one of her other boyfriends at the time—the word still tastes sour in my mouth, no matter how long it’s been—got jealous and decided to gang up on me with the rest of the boys and the beating I got from them was pretty severe. I lost partial sound in one ear, and I even nearly lost an arm.

I was naive back then, but I suppose I also hadn’t been giving her what she might have wanted. I’ve learned later on in life, with Lucian ever patient at my side, that I need to form a deeply emotional connection with someone before I feel any sort of sexual desire begin to arise and even though I’d been with her for five years, I guess that our connection wasn’t as deep as it should have been.

What I’m trying to say, I think, is that I might be a little blind to things that surround me. At least, emotionally speaking. Someone could be flirting with me and I wouldn’t even see it because, well, for one, I don’t wear this ring just because it’s the most beautiful ring ever—though I have to take it off when I’m not behind the desk at work—but because I have with me the only man I want in my life until the end of all times.

I don’t even know what to think of this situation; I’ve had to let a long-term worker go because his behaviour was at the source of some conflicts of interest, and I couldn’t have him around anymore. It’s not a decision I took lightly, I couldn’t. He’d been working for me for those three years but learning that he’d approached the business and sought to join the team solely for personal reasons makes my skin crawl somewhat.

All I can figure is that he got tired of waiting, maybe. What I can’t understand is that he’s seen the ring. He’s met Lucian on so many occasions that I’ve lost count. I’m not big on public displays of affection but every time I had a new recruit meeting Lucian for the first time, I always introduced him as the better half of my heart.

Do people just enjoy the idea of cheating or even breaking up long-term partners?

He told me that he’d been flirting with me for three years and that maybe it was about time I started catching on. I talked to some of the other longer-term guys on the team and none of them had seen anything, so I can only assume this was happening while I was one-on-one with him, which was just about every time I was handing out jobs that didn’t require the guys to be paired up.

I still feel sick to my stomach thinking that he somehow thought it was okay, let alone normal, to flirt with a married man, one who especially so seemed completely oblivious to it all. I wasn’t playing hard to get, McCoy, I wasn’t.

He thought that cornering me in my own office to tell me all of this and that he was getting a little antsy for a response wasn’t his smartest idea, but I guess it revealed a part of who he really was. I told him to leave his equipment in his locker, asked that he be checked before he was escorted out the door and that his final pay cheque would show up in his mailbox in a couple more weeks. I didn’t need more than that.

I spent the next few days digging through all of the archives I had of every job he’d ever been to. Be it on his own or partnered up. Thankfully, with the way my system is set up, every single file is in the computer and tagged both with the people who worked the job and the people they were working for on that day—or days, as the case has been for some.

I didn’t find anything client-side, but in his personal reports about the day, I found little things scattered here and there that made me rethink what I’d known of him. I feel like I’ve failed in some way, and I don’t like it at all. I don’t have time to re-read through years of files on everyone to try and see if I can’t spot anything else that might ring any warning bells but from now on, I’m paying more attention to the reports both from the guys and the clients.

It’s not that I don’t trust my crew—most of them are married, some with kids—but I feel as though this is something that I should have seen, and I know I’ll keep on beating myself over the head about it for a while. Lucian will find means to make me stop before too long.

He was one of my most recent recruits and he’d been in the team for three years. I haven’t had to look for anyone new in that long because I turn to temp workers the few times the need arises. I’m just not sure if I want to replace him, but I might have to. Having an even number of guys in all works best in the end.

Final Word Count: 931

I will always hate how I can never tell when you’re lying to me. It’s probably safer to assume you are.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: June 13, 2024

Character: Silvius Quinn-Speziale
Race: Human
Age: 24
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

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I had an ex-schoolmate, to not call him a classmate, on my chair just a few hours ago and I’m still wondering what happened to him. He used to be this ball of bouncing energy, he was always smiling, happy for the presence of everyone and he rarely ever said no to anyone. I know that a few people did try to take advantage of that while at school, but he had such a good circle of friends that they kept him safe from these very people.

I didn’t have as many interactions with him as I could have because he was a couple of years younger than I was, and let’s face it, I had more than enough on my plate to not really have that much time to devote to anyone else but the people in my own circle. It’s not that I’m full of myself, but I just had more than enough on my plate, and I never really had much of a reason to mingle with the younger groups, unless they were potentially causing issues for my family. Be it my blood-related family or my found family. For the most part, both are one and the same.

I did notice him, though. It was hard not to and once I graduated, that was mostly that. I mean, I’m not about to go out of my way to keep up with every single person out there. There were a lot of kids in that school, and it would have been folly to want to keep up with every single one that had ever stepped into the school while I was there. I’m no Superman, or whichever superhero you want to match with this foolish idea.

I don’t get that many ex-classmates or ex-schoolmates as clients. Which, you know, it’s just one of those things. I don’t mind, I know that the way I do things is fairly different from most other hairdressers out there, at least in terms of colouration, and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

He came in with a pretty girl, she sat in the little waiting room that’s just a few very comfortable chairs near the one wall that’s behind the workstations. She looked a little sullen as she came in. Eyes down and arms crossed tightly over her chest. It was as though she didn’t want to be there, and I think her presence soured the general mood. He’d been mostly bright-eyed when he stepped in, but when she sat down in the chair nearly directly behind us, his face puckered as though he’d eaten more than just a single sour lemon.

I tried to make small talk with him, but every time he would manage a single word, she’d breathe these annoyed noises and he’d shut right up. It broke my heart, honestly. At one point, the pretty girl—who was seriously ugly on the inside from what little I got to see of whatever it was that was happening between them—opened her mouth and had I known him any better, I wouldn’t have held back and I’d have thrown her out of the salon. I nearly did. It was just the two of them in there with me at that point, had there been others, I suppose I might have reacted differently. At that point, I felt that it was possibly his decision to stay with her, but I did slip him a card with a number to call when I was done with him.

The thing is though is that what came out of her mouth wasn’t said in any way that was overly harsh, it wasn’t spoken with a sneer, but it was just the words themselves, the fact that they seemed to come out of that ugly mouth of hers just so easily. Had she stood up to get into our personal space, I think I would have punched her, I swear.

The little twat said that she hated how she could never tell when he was lying to her, and that it was probably safer to assume that he always was. I mean, what the fuck, lady? If you trust this man so little, don’t be around him. That reeked of gaslighting, and it just made me so mad. I can’t understand people like her who seem to thrive on that sort of thing.

This leads me back to asking myself about what happened to him. What happened to that circle of friends of his that he was never without? Did she somehow manage to push them all away? Did she find means to isolate him so she could break him, little by little? I know it’s none of my business. I know I can’t make it my business either, but that business card was burning a hole in my pocket, and I had to give it to him when he left. Whether or not he does anything with it is now out of my hands. I did what little I could do and if somehow, I’ve read the situation right, and he does reach out to that number—not that I’ll be made aware of it—I feel as though I’ll have at least done what little good deed I could manage in this situation.

Final Word Count: 881

You’re at the top of the list of people who have the most potential to ruin my day.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Current Date: June 12, 2024

Character: Jaeden Raynes
Race: Human
Age: 33
Current residence: Spirit Falls, Wisconsin
 

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I cherish every moment of sleep that I manage to get. I spent months after the fog had lifted being unable to properly sleep. There was this one nightmare that clung to the edges of my mind and would sneak its way in any time I so much as closed my eyes while not in the absolute daytime. Even then, my sleep was not comfortable, and rest was elusive.

Jonah has made me promise to stop trying to make it up to him. I have stopped but I still try to get a few things for him at the store now and again when I spot one of his favourites. They’re fairly hard to get, they’re a certain type of mushroom that only grows in certain conditions and it seems as though only one person in the community has managed to get these conditions right.

Some months ago, nearly a year at this point, I approached the person in particular. I had seen them drop off the mushrooms—some dried, some in a sort of pickling mix—and I figured that I could ask them if, just maybe, they were willing to tell me how it was they were managing to grow these mushrooms. Thinking back on the event, I would like to believe that I wasn’t rough with them, I didn’t demand, and I didn’t raise my voice. I just quietly asked if I could know how they managed.

They turned my way—I’ve never been able to tell if they were a man or a woman, they often even looked homeless from the way they dressed more than anything else to me but, what do I know, really—and just sneered at me. Now, mind you, I’d never even talked to them before. I might have crossed paths with them and did the thing where you nod your head a little in greeting but that’s been it.

I’m not one to say hello to every single person I cross, I’m not that outgoing, though of the two of us, I might still be a bit more outgoing than my twin. I don’t mind nodding a greeting to others in the community if they don’t look like they might try ripping my head off, but that’s about it.

Hell, I was even ready to offer to make them a pair of gloves. I checked more than once at the store and around, and I’ve asked, I managed to get my hands on a lot of cloth from abandoned places. I left plenty behind, but I still have more than I would need, so I’ve made stuff, and the gloves are easy to make. That sneer, though? That threw the idea right out the window.

Let’s just say that I was told by that person that I was at the very top of the list of people who had the most potential to ruin their day. And I’m just, well, okay then. What do you want me to say? I don’t know you. I don’t know what you think you know about me that could somehow ruin your day but it’s whatever at this point. I behaved. I bit my tongue, I didn’t offer any sharp retort though I know Ashley wouldn’t have been so kind, and just went on my way.

I would love to be able to know how to grow those mushrooms. I was tempted to even ask someone else to maybe ask the person in question. Maybe if it was someone else, they would get a better answer than I did. I didn’t ask anyone else, though. I figured I was better off just not taking any chances. I mean, if they dropped off fresh mushrooms, maybe I could have tried once or twice, at least, I figure I might know how to manage from there, they might not grow, but I could try, but everything that gets dropped off is either pickled or dried.

So, I just keep on bringing those in to Jonah whenever they’re at the store. I never take them all, since I figure that others might want them, but if they’re still there a week or so after I first dropped in, you can bet that I’m not going to waste an opportunity. I love how Jonah just rolls his eyes in exasperation at me when I bring them to him, but he eats them like they’re the best thing in the world ever and I’m glad to be able to do something like that for him.

It doesn’t feel like much, and I know it’s been years at this point, but he’s my twin and he was patience incarnate with me while I struggled with my sleep issues, so he deserves these treats as often as I can get my hands on them. It’s not as though he doesn’t do similar for me, but my own cravings are sort of harder to fulfill when it comes to food, and I’ve told him as such. I’m fine with not getting anything special.

Final Word Count: 841