I know I’m a mess. You’d probably feel better if you admitted you’re one, too.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Current Date: July 14, 2023

Character: Bryant Poirier
Race: Human
Age: 34
Current residence: Spirit Falls, Wisconsin
 

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I spent a year free of him. A year during which not a single time did he show up. Now, I know he’s dead. He’s been dead for a decade, but I spent that decade living not so much in denial as I was living lost in an alternate world. I know that there are other words for this, but I don’t really want to think about those too much if I can help it.

After the last mild break, Toby stayed with me for a couple of days; I didn’t really let myself leave his side unless either one of us needed to use the bathroom, and even so. We finished fully clearing out the one room I hadn’t been in, in years—not since I’d moved in—and little by little, I turned that room into a sort of apothecary spot for us. In one of the empty homes—after talking with the proper people though I mostly let Toby do the talking—we found a table that turned out to be perfect. So many little drawers to put away things.

Now, I don’t know everything about herbal remedies, I certainly didn’t study anything on that front, but I know my flowers and I know which are good for what at this point. From the library, I did manage to find a couple of books about herbs, and it’s been a learning experience. I can focus on my own life now and not living that very life with the ghost of someone who hasn’t been there in too long.

There is still the rare day when I’m uncomfortable stepping into the room. It’s always that first step. I feel my heart hammering in my chest as though something in me expects to see him standing in a corner, mad as could be that I’ve entered his sanctuary when it isn’t his, it never was. It’s mine now. Once I’ve stepped in that first time of the day, I’m usually all right for a short while, I’ll take things as I can at this point, what else can I do, truly?

I did catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye a few weeks back, though. I’d been doing so well, the sight of him just there, dishevelled and looking as though he’d just gotten in a fight of some sort startled me. He wasn’t a fighter. Neither one of us had ever been. We were lovers—the term makes me scoff a little as I do remember what I had to do, to make it through my schooling, but that’s something else entirely.

I don’t know what triggered this barest of breaks. As I said, I’d been doing well, or so I felt I’d been. I had gathered so many flowers from the back field, I’d been separating them by groups to hang them to dry along the couple of rows of hooks that we’d set up along the ceiling for us to do exactly that. I stepped back down from the little step stool that I’d been using and there he was, just barely visible in the corner of my eye.

I might have only barely glanced at him, but I still heard his voice as though he was right next to me. He told me that he knew he was a mess—the sight of him that way, it made sense that this hallucination of his would say that—but that if I were to finally admit that I was one too, I’d probably feel better. I barked a laugh at this ridiculous statement, and I think that this is what pulled me away from sinking deeper into things.

Where had my broken and fractured mind come up with that? I knew I was a mess. I know I’m a mess. It hasn’t been that long since Toby has come into my life, and I take nothing for granted. There is the rare day when I wake up and I’m worried that he might not even be real but everything so far with him at my side has felt real.

He’s the reason I know that I’m a mess. That I’m broken. He’s why I know that the last ten years of my life were nothing but one big hallucination. He’s the reason I haven’t fully given up yet on everything and he makes my life feel worth living a little more every day. There are days when it’s easier and there are days when things are clearly more difficult but, as time goes by, I feel that with him at my side, all of those little fractures are coming back together. It’s no fast process; it’s actually slow as can be but I don’t think that there is ever going to be another way to think of this all, not in the long run.

You can’t go fast when you’re fixing up something that’s filled with so many tiny little fractures. If you move too fast, you’ll just shatter everything, in the end.

Final Word Count: 843

You’re telling me I’m wrong? You? Right.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Characters: Bryant Poirier
Race: Human
Age: 32
Current residence: Spirit Falls, Wisconsin
Final Word Count: 759 words
 

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I didn’t expect to ever see him again. Now, I don’t need to be reminded that he’s dead. I’m well aware he’s dead, and I think, that in a way, it is that particular fact—that I’ve started working towards fully accepting his death—that brought him to the surface. I had a small psychotic break, but Nebu’s presence was able to draw me back out of it.

Since I had first been drawn out of the long-term break, for lack of a better word, things had been mostly okay. I still had a hard time really being able to tell what was real and what wasn’t. I don’t know if I can call what I’ve lived through for that decade something to do with psychosis, it’s hard. I’m no doctor and while I have actually spoken briefly to one of the two, I believe, remaining doctors here still in the community, neither has the necessary knowledge to make a judgement call.

As is, with Toby around as often as he is—and he does help me stay anchored much more easily than anything else could have—I hadn’t expected another break. It was mild, but I think that my brain, in a way, possibly wasn’t ready to let go of the past completely.

I woke up that morning, it was quiet in the house, it had rained most of the night and the studio-room was open and airing out still. I hadn’t had the heart to close that door since it had been opened that first time and the scar on my arm—as though I needed another one—is a reminder that he has long since been gone from my life.

When I walked past the opened door, I had to pause. When I looked inside, I saw it as I had been seeing it for the past ten years. A desk on the far side near the window, my once partner there, sitting by that desk and drawing away with a charcoal smudge on his cheek, much as he’d been when I first had met him.

I shook my head, how could I not? This wasn’t real and I knew better. I couldn’t bring myself to back away when he got up. He looked so angry. I’d rather not remember that he started to berate me for entering his room and that I’d been wrong and that we should have moved out by then and just, my mind was having a field day with this one.

I say it as though Nebulosa’s presence is the reason I was drawn away from the delusion that was happening in front of me, but it was the sound of her. She was out back and neighing for attention because, usually by that point, I’d already gone out to see her. It was the sound of her that shattered everything. Just as I’d been gathering up my courage to tell him that he had no right to tell me I was wrong, he wasn’t even real.

As everything shattered, well I stumbled back and thankfully made it to the bathroom. Poor Nebu had to wait for a short while more before I was outside and giving her that extra morning feed and vitamins, I always give her. I had to rinse out my mouth and brush my teeth a second time when I was done in that bathroom. I stepped out through the back door to get to her, that time around. I didn’t want to cross that open doorway into what was currently an empty room.

I don’t need my mind trying to drag me back down to hell, that’s actually the very last thing I want. So I’ve been avoiding that part of the hallway all day so far and I’ve done well. I know I can’t avoid it forever. It’s stupid of me to go outside and around back and outside again back to the front when I need something from my bedroom only to then need to head back to the kitchen.

I’m probably just going to need Toby with me for a day or two, mostly for my mind to settle again. We’ll walk the empty room; I’ll know that there is nothing in there just yet and that will be that. I know that there still are plenty of fractures in my mind. Those will likely never heal but so long as I can stay anchored, I can begin this healing thing again and I’ll be able to better tell what’s real and what’s not.

Your eyebrows are going to fly off your head if you raise them any higher at me.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Characters: Bryant Poirier
Race: Human
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 1011 words
 

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My mind hasn’t been in a right place, not since the fog lifted. Ha. Not since the fog lifted. That sounds like a double-edged sword and I know it is. I know it’s not… I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore. There isn’t even anyone I can turn to, to talk to about this, so I can try and make sense of everything that has been happening in my life as of the last decade.

A decade, has it really been this long? Has my life since my attempt been a disillusioned lie so I could will myself to survive through it all? It doesn’t make sense. How could my mind create something just so complete and keep me in that false loop for so long? I should be in shock, I think. I should be in tears and screaming and thinking about running another blade down my wrists over the scars that have faded since the last attempt but I’m not.

I think I’m still trying to process the fact that the last ten years of my life have been a lie.

When the fog lifted, Blanche mentioned that maybe we should try getting out of Spirit Falls and see what there was left out there of the world. There were other places out there, after all. One of them had to be a place for us to settle down to again, right?

We stayed a little while, we waited on scouts to return and when they did, it was with the mention that anything in a large radius around the town looked as though it had been abandoned for a hundred years. I didn’t feel safe leaving but Blanche was all up for a new adventure. I was unsettled by the idea and every time he tried to make a ‘pro’ point versus all my ‘con’ points, he would tease me that my eyebrows were going to fly off my head if I kept on raising them the way I was at what he was saying.

That day is one of the last days I ever saw him.

I remember going to bed one night after we both said we’d sleep on it. We’d already set out to do a deep cleaning of the house so we could maybe decide on what we were taking with us if I let myself be swayed into leaving. I didn’t like the idea but Blanche had this way about him.

When I woke up, I was alone. That as a whole wasn’t all that unusual, he tended to wake up early and spend time in his little art studio. I didn’t go looking for him, I tended not to. Instead, I moved to the living room where we had set several boxes that we hadn’t looked at in what felt like years—most likely since we’d first moved in.

Near the top of the box, I found my medical bracelets from my time in the emergency room; I found my bracelets from when I’d walked myself into the psychiatric hospital.

I found an obituary.

I dismissed it at first, not wanting to read it, finding it a little creepy that Blanche would keep something like this since it wasn’t something I’d do, but then I tried to think back and I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning that he’d lost anyone, especially not around the same time these bracelets had come to be part of my life. Maybe I was the one who’d put it there.

So I reached for it again, I inhaled, held that breath and then exhaled. I turned the obituary over and, dated months before I cut my wrist open, there was Blanche, staring at me. Cause of death? He’d been run down by a drunk driver.

At first, I thought that was just a seriously cruel joke and, as the internet was no longer a thing, I couldn’t double-check but I know that I spent way too long staring at that obituary.

I don’t know how long it took for things to start slowly falling into places. Denial was strong but, at the same time, my mind would bring up just tiny little things that I was blocking out for the last ten years.

Ten years.

Ten long, long years.

Doing the dishes and noticing that there was only one of everything when I knew he’d eaten with me. Doing the laundry and noticing that all I was pulling from the dryer were my things.

I found the paperwork for the house—that took me two weeks to bring myself to try and find it. There was only my name on the paperwork. Just my name.

All of the art I thought I would find in his studio? It wasn’t there. That room was so dusty that I choked on it when I first stepped inside. He didn’t like me going in there to at least keep it dusted. Looking back now, I suppose it was my mind’s way of keeping things in place to keep me alive.

I don’t know.

I guess that it was losing him without being able to say goodbye—we hadn’t spoken in a few months, as I recalled, before I’d done the thing—is what broke me. My mind just filled in the blanks.

At this point, I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. I don’t know if the fog was real, I don’t know if my life here is real, I don’t know what to anchor myself with, to find what is real and what isn’t.

The thing is, I’m not feeling suicidal at this point, otherwise, I might just be tempted to tell myself to just cave in and let it all go, but I’m just feeling really lost and confused, not much else besides that. Maybe I’ll find something. Maybe.

Since the fog has lifted, my life has been painfully lonely but I’d rather be lonely and be anchored in some type of fragmented reality than be stuck living in a full-on fantasy.

I thought about turning over a new leaf, you know?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Characters: Bryant Poirier
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 616 words
 

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I have some regrets about this new leaf and I wish I could turn back time, but I can’t. Then again, this new leaf wasn’t so bad at first, it was actually pretty perfect, or so it felt like. It was a new start in a whole new place and Spirit Falls was just the perfect mix of small-town and not-so-small-town to be just right. Then again, as I told myself, so long as I had Blanche with me, I could go anywhere and do anything I set my mind to, he was my anchor into this world, I’m not going to lie, he still is my anchor.

This wasn’t even my first time turning over a new leaf. The first time I opted for that particular turn of phrase to mean something about my life, I had been in the hospital. I don’t even mean the time when they had to keep me sedated and on IV medication while I was getting better and my wrists were healing up, no. It was during my short stint in the psychiatric side of the hospital.

Mind you, I walked myself in. My medical doctor at the time had told me that it was likely the best option, especially considering what I’d told him about what had led me to the ugly decision I’d made about slicing my wrists open. It took me a lot of time to actually decide that I was really sick enough to need help and just going once a week wasn’t going to be enough.

I don’t recall exactly how much time I spent in that particular hospital but I walked out the way I walked in, free, with my head held high enough.

I didn’t have Blanche in my life back then and I don’t want to blame his lack of presence for my weakness though I have this feeling that if he’d been with me, I might never have left myself fall so far but that’s no fault of his, it’s still all on me.

The decision we made to move to Spirit Falls was a joint one. We looked at the surrounding cities, we looked at little homes here and there, we looked at job opportunities, too. Moving somewhere else when you didn’t know if you had any chance of finding a job wasn’t exactly the best move in the world, after all. We visited a few places, we checked out several homes and it was this one that called to both of us.

I found a job that, while not the best job in the world, still is a good enough job and I liked it enough and so did Blanche. We have a garden at the back, we have nice neighbours, the whole world felt like it was settling into a nice, comfortable spot until the fog.

That fog has changed our lives; I’m not going to deny it. There are things that roam at the far edge of the fog at night. During the day, I have yet to witness anything. Like many others, we’ve tried driving out. We only tried once and it terrified us enough that we haven’t tried again. I know there are some people who have tried from all angles, from all edges; they always end up right back where they started, or more honestly so, at the opposite end of where they started up.

I’ve heard rumours of a few deaths that might not have been accidental and it breaks my heart to think that some would seek that end. It might be a bit hypocrite of me to think of it that way but I can’t help it, not really. This was supposed to be a new leaf, a new beginning, but it’s turning out to be a lot more than that, now.

We’ll still be here then.

Timeline/World: Wings of Freedom
Characters: Bryant Poirier
Race: Human
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 560 words

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These words were probably the reason he still was alive. The ugly scars on his wrist a testament to the hell he had gone through before but most people didn’t see these scars as strength, they saw these scars as a weakness and something to shake their heads at.

‘It takes strength to cut.’ His shrink had told him. ‘It takes strength to put that blade to the skin, to press down and cut, facing the pain that will come with it, the raw rush of emotions that come through as your life seeps away.’

He hadn’t felt very brave or very strong when he’d applied the blade. It had been a bad moment in his life and he had felt painfully alone. His time at the school had come to a close and while he could have likely found something to keep him going, the lack of Blanche’s presence in his life had made him miserable and all that seemed to have been left for him was to return home. His time at the school had felt pointless. His mind had been in a really dark place with the sickness that had coursed through his system and he had had a hard time coming back up from it, aware that remnants of it had been what had drawn him deep into the depression.

Shuddering a little, he lowers the sleeve back over his arm and looks up to the back of his companion’s head, a little smile tugging at his lips. His life had been hard but their paths had crossed again. It had been promised to him but he hadn’t wanted to believe it, not back then. Not when his mind saw darkness and death everywhere, not when he was sure the sickness that had been eating away at him would do so completely and leave him a husk. He’d forced Blanche away, he hadn’t wanted anyone to see the ugly thing he would turn into and yet…

…here they were again, together after more than a year apart. It didn’t feel like almost a decade ago that all of this hell had happened. One some days when his mind went to dark places, it liked to remind him of the feel of the blade against his skin where he had hesitated in his cut and the scar was uneven, jagged a little around the edges. It was short enough, however, and it was likely also one of the reasons he hadn’t bled out and had been found before his time had been over. He was grateful for that. He hadn’t been back then but he was now.

He tips his head that little smile turning into a slightly amused grin as Blanche wipes at a smudge of charcoal from his face. This reminds him of how they met and warms him from the inside out. It had been an interesting meeting and there are days he longs for how it was back while they were in school and yet not. The things he had to do to make sure he could cover some of his costs still remain clear in his memories and he’s left that behind now. A steady income has found him by means of a just barely stressful job and he doesn’t hate it the way he’s aware he could, so all is well.