That was so mean. I love it. Let’s do it again!

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Azariah Novak
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 773 words
 

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Has the behaviour of children changed so drastically in the last twenty-five years? Looking at this group of young children—they couldn’t be much older than ten, maybe twelve—it was the one thought that went through my head as I watched them play back and forth. Maybe it’s just the fact that I grew up in a much smaller place than this, even if our population here is limited. I grew up in a place where everyone knew everyone, and a lot of kids ended up marrying that high school sweetheart they had.

I remember watching kids playing tag, I remember watching kids run around the playground, climbing bars, impatiently waiting for their turns on the swings. I know that a lot of what could be played as a child when I was young isn’t really a possibility anymore but it’s strange to watch kids sort of… I don’t know that I can call this pranking one another, but from where I’m standing and the fact that I’ve been half-watching one another, they almost seem to be playing some kind of game where they end up being mean to one another, not to say cruel because that might be a bit much.

Someone in their little group ends up blindfolded and the rest of the group hushes after the blindfolded one has been turned around a handful of times. They, instead of playing something akin to blind touch and go or blind hide-and-seek, each of the kids on the outer circle will take their turn either tripping the blindfolded person, shoving them, or poking at them with a stick; it just, I don’t get it.

The thing I’ve realized, though, is that the kids don’t even seem to really mind? Yeah, they stumble, they fall, they get back on their feet, a little winded at times but once the blindfold comes off, they’re laughing and expectantly waiting their turn. I know I heard one exclaim that this game was just so mean; I fully expected them to leave the circle of friends after that but no, the exclamation was finished with a happy statement about how they’d loved it and they totally had to do it again. I just don’t get it. I don’t.

It isn’t as though I want to watch these kids do whatever it is they’re doing. At times, it just so happens that I’ve settled not far from where they are and the rest is somewhat history, as they’d say. The kids roam mostly freely, I don’t think they really understand what it is to settle in just one place and stay there. At times, I feel as though it’s because an adult in the area where they were possibly saw the types of games they played, got on their cases and possibly just told them to go play elsewhere if they weren’t going to be able to play nice.

I’ve had that happen to the small group of friends I had while growing up. We had been playing in the very quiet street not too far from where one of us lived and an older man, someone not even related to any of us but who lived on the street, pretty much came running out of his house, chasing us away, yelling about how we were all being by far too noisy and we had to keep it down.

Looking back, I don’t know that I can say we were really being noisy; we were just kids playing kid games and those kid games might have been rowdy at this, but I don’t think that we were being excessively noisy. Maybe I’m just wrong, I don’t know. It’s one of those things; it goes back so far that I don’t fully remember all the details and, as was, I know the friends in question that I had back then didn’t last very long.

It’s not my place to tell these kids whether or not they can play in the general area they’ve settled in recently. It’s not my yard, even if they’re not very far from the garden that belongs to our building. They’re not really doing anything that could be considered illegal, even by the standards of our old lives. They’re just kids being kids and if none of them complain about the types of games that they’re playing, who am I to get in their way to tell them to stop?

Our world had changed, I don’t think there are two ways of looking at it and kids will be kids; they need to play, they need to explore, they need to discover things.

I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but you’re not. You’re actually making everything worse.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Azariah Novak
Race: Human
Age: 33
Final Word Count: 719 words
 

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On certain days—days when migraines get the better of me though they’ve become rare as I’ve only had two in the last two years—there is a little voice inside my head that tells me that no one is worth anything. That little voice tells me that they’re all terrible people and that I should just leave them all behind and never come back. I know what that little voice is trying to get me to do and I’ve learned to tune it out but, when it crops up in the middle of migraines that force me to settle for surviving for the twenty-four or so hours they last, it’s hard to ignore it.

I’m not going to lie; I used to have some suicidal tendencies. I’ve never gone so far as to try to take my life though I’ve pondered it often. I’ve even had surfacing thoughts when I failed the entrance exam into the firefighting force. It had been all I’d wanted but I just couldn’t do it. I was depressed and I think that it’s my depression that led to the migraines. I don’t know that for a fact but it feels as though it would be about right for everything.

As was, I didn’t know what to make of that little voice, not at first. I mean, I’ve heard ‘samplers’ of audio files that people have put together to simulate schizophrenia and it was never really like that, not really. I also know that it’s not the only thing that defines that illness as what it is—used to be? I don’t know anyway, I’m no doctor and it’s only ever been that little voice and it isn’t all that common, not anymore, anyway.

When I was younger, I think I mistook that voice for an imaginary friend. It was fun at the beginning. It ended up not being quite as fun when I realized how negative that little voice used to be. As a teenager, I’d learned to ignore it; it would tell me ugly things about other people but I wasn’t a very social creature so I guess that it didn’t have much of an effect on me, beyond my general mood.

I used to tell people that the girl I dated while in high school didn’t last in our relationship because we’d been friends since we’d been in diapers but it’s a little more than that. No, I couldn’t get it up when we tried to fool around, that was one of the reasons she left, the other was that this little voice inside of me was just telling me such ugly things about her, I couldn’t function.

After my parents had died and I moved into the bigger city and met the twins, that voice seemed to quiet a little. I think that being possibly around more people who seemed to want me around quieted whatever was at the source of that very voice. Now, it only pipes up when the migraines do and, as I’ve mentioned, they only crop up once in a blue moon. I’ve had about one a year since the snow has started.

It hasn’t changed its tune, not really. It still isn’t a good ‘friend’, it still tells me ugly things. At times, I try to tell myself that it’s just trying to make me feel better in its own twisted way—by the idea of ending it all—but it only ever makes things worse. So I’m actually really glad that I seem to have outgrown that voice. I mean, that’s what it has to be, right? I don’t know what it is and I think it might be a little too late in life for me to start worrying about it.

In the long run, it’s not like anything could come of it, could it? Most medications can no longer be made and I’m not sure about how good any of the medication that’s left from the old days is still good. I’m all right, though. If all I have to deal with is that voice once a year or so? I think I can handle it. I huddle away under the blankets, preferring suffocation to migraine and usually, within twenty-four hours, I’m back on my feet, so it’s all right.

There are legends.

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Azariah Novak
Race: Human
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 604 words
 

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“They’re rumours.”

“No, I assure you, they’re legends.”

“I’m pretty sure the two are the same.”

“I didn’t say they were urban legends, I say they’re legends.”

“Whatever, it’s all the same thing and it’s all fake.”

Exasperation tinged his voice and Azariah shook his head a moment, watching the trio argue back and forth about something or other. They’d already been talking when they stopped near him and he’d only caught snippets. He wasn’t interested in knowing more about what they were discussing, he only wanted them to go away.

Except they weren’t going away. One of them was beginning to gesticulate to explain his point but Azariah tuned them or; at least, he tried to tune them out but they were only a few feet away from him. Covering his ears would have done the job but he refused to show them weakness. It was bad enough these idiots still picked on him most of the time, he didn’t need them to notice him now.

That made his trying to move elsewhere to get away from them moot as well. He knew if they spotted him, they’d follow him. He only wanted peace.

“So what, they feed the bad people to the plants?”

“How does that make sense? Plants don’t eat people.”

“The plants eat people, they’re carnivorous! You know, like those Venus Fly-Trap things, just a whole lot bigger!”

The more they spoke, the louder their voice got and Aza shifted his weight just barely, moving further into the shadow, trying to will the pounding in his brain to lessen just barely so he could go back out there and make it back home. To hell with these guys following him, all he wanted was the darkness that could only be found in his and Riku’s bedroom.

The migraine pressed harder into his skull and he pressed the palms of his hands harder into his eyes, trying to at least will some of the light away. It was as much a culprit as the sound of everything around him.

Blessedly, the voices were getting softer and he forced himself to look up slowly, look at the trio as it finally began to walk away, still discussing the fate of the idiots who normally would have ended up behind bars for life, before the world had come to its screeching halt. He’d seen it happen, the ‘accidental’ shoving of people into these carnivorous plants. He was pretty sure it had only happened to some of the very worst people, that and by accident, of course.

Now that his surroundings were nothing more than the sounds of nature he was used to, Azariah forced himself to his feet, took a few steps and stumbled back down, emptying the contents of his stomach off to the side. Whimpering softly at the burn, he slowly moved back to a standing position, eyes squinted nearly shut as he moved as quickly as he dared—it wasn’t very quick—and made his way back to the familiar terrain that he did know with his eyes closed.

Once at the building—a small eternity later—he squeezed his eyes shut, climbed up to the proper floor and blindly made his way into the door he knew to be theirs. From there, he moved into the bedroom, barely remembered to take off his shoes and crawled beneath the covers, drawing them all the way up over his head to shut out all of the light. He preferred to suffocate in heat over the pounding of the migraine in his head.

Tomorrow would be a better day, he hoped.

Stop worrying about what will go wrong. It doesn’t help you in any way.

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Azariah Novak
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 609 words

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I have lost so much in life, in so many ways, that I can’t help but worry about the details of certain things. I was once told that it was my worrying that set the events into places that then lead to that loss but I would certainly like to call bullshit on this one. I can understand that it might work on some people but it won’t work on me. I’m a little pathetic on the side but I’m not that bad about things or that desperate.

This end of the world, where do I even begin? I was sure we were all going to die and I had come to accept that particular fact, we were even starting to run low on food stuffs because we’d been caught seriously unaware when it started and by the time we had gathered enough items, most places had been looted and the snow was starting to get high enough to be worrisome. Except the trucks started doing their rounds and I think we were some of the first ones who found our way to that underground place, it wasn’t too far off from where we’d been holing ourselves up.

Then, when the snow melted and we all tried this ‘fixing the place up’ thing, I felt completely useless. With my shoulder as it was, there was a lot I couldn’t do and I constantly worried that I would be nothing more than a lump that would be left behind. As it turns out, I’m not so bad when it comes to gathering stuff and I can manage relatively well. Berries, herbs, even helping bring back caught game if the animal wasn’t too heavy. I did find myself and it felt so good that I know I cried about it a few times.

These worries are a little less present now that we’ve mostly settled in, now that things are a bit more routine-like. Sure, I still get teased a bit for not being part of the ‘manly’ crews but I’m not the only one, most of the gathering crews I’ve seen are male-centric, at least around these parts but it might be because it does seem as if there are more male survivors, in our group, than female. Not that I’m going to say anything about that, it’s not my place and nothing I could say would probably make any sense, I’m just happy that so many have survived. It might seem like ninety-nine percent of the world died and it’s probably the case but we’re survivors.

Surviving is what matters.

I’d like to think I’m past this part of my life where I kept on worrying that everything would go wrong. I guess I was a firm believer in Murphy’s Law because it had happened so often in my life before that, that it only made sense that it would keep on going and happening and just generally making my life a living hell. It doesn’t matter which angle I take to look at it, I know that my life was a seriously shit sort of thing until I moved into this city. For a while it wasn’t so bad, then it went from okay to shitville, then a little back up and then, well then the world up and died, or tried to and just like that it also tried to take us with it.

Though really, by now, things really are better, we’re doing well, the general ambient temperature is warm and humid and it’s nice all around, except on those nights when it feels like everything is a sauna but that’s a detail.