Do I look like the type of person who wants to sit here and listen to your problems, when I have so many of my own?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Cadeyrn Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 31
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 752 words
 

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Someone once told me that I was too slow. Another once told me that I was too trusting.

There are plenty of things that people might throw my way. I’ll listen to it all but unless it’s something I might actively be able to change about my person, I don’t try very hard to remember it, let alone do I try hard to remember the person who might have said the words. They do me no good, these words. They honestly might do me harm if I spend too much time trying to wrap my mind around them.

The stars know that I already struggle with keeping my mind on things like these, I don’t need more added to my plate. I do know that I’m different. I do know that I’m nothing like the others. I spent long enough in the snow, ready to be completely forgotten, that my brain didn’t take well to any of it. I’m told that I’ve lost a lot of knowledge and the doctor who took care of me while we were underground said that there was only so much she could do to help me and I’m grateful for that, whatever it really means.

I mean, my brain is broken, you can’t really fix that, can you? That would be like playing God and I don’t think that anyone here can do that. So, I don’t really mind.

It’s strange though, one of the things I do remember recently is that there was this woman who lives in the building who told me that I was by far too patient with others. She said that she’d been watching me for a while and that she said that if she’d been in my shoes, very often, she would have been telling a lot of people to bugger off because she didn’t want to sit there and listen to their problems when she had so many of her own.

I’m not sure why it stuck to my brain. I suppose it’s one of those things. It’s just so different from what I usually hear. I don’t think I have that many problems. I think—I know—that my brain’s wires are a little crossed and that there are times when I get lost in my own mind; but for the most part, I don’t think that I can claim I have many problems.

In a way, I don’t think it would be fair. I’m alive. I’ve survived the snow and that’s a big thing, considering how few others can claim the same. There are only a few handfuls of us left. Yes, I’m aware that this is downplaying the number of people still left alive but, compared to how many I’m sure there had been on the planet, the number of people left now does seem like a few handfuls, even if it is so much more than that.

The one thing that does bother me is that I never know for a fact when I’ve slipped away into my own mind. I don’t always realize this is what happened once I’m drawn back out of it or once someone throws me a rope if you would. These little slip-aways are never defined by anything. There is nothing that triggers me, there’s nothing clearly stating what might bring me back and while I’ve been told I look a little unfocused mostly just either standing or sitting there, it’s not always right there, on my face, that I’m no longer around, so to speak.

I have no control over that. Once I focus again, I can’t just go and tell myself, ‘Oh, I did the thing again,’ because I won’t even realize I’ve done it. I used to lose hours to this issue before but, as the years have passed—unless I just haven’t been told about it—it seems as though I’ve been able to stay in the here and now, so I take that as a small victory. It might not be the best thing ever, since I still do slip away in my mind, but it is much less common than it used to be and I have good people around me who keep an eye on me and keep me from slipping away too far.

The patience and love of these very people are something I know I will never likely be able to repay and so I do my best, every single day, to be as good a person as I might manage.

Of course you’re impressed; who wouldn’t be? I’m a catch.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Cadeyrn Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 721 words
 

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I suppose it comes as no surprise that I have a hard time understanding how most people think.

I’m sure that for most everyone else, this is a very simple thing, this ability to easily enough understand others and possibly what motivates them to act the way they do but I can’t do that. I don’t think my brain is wired well enough to manage that kind of task anymore and when someone approaches me to ask me for something, I tend to not think twice about the fact that they might have ulterior motives. That’s a new thing for me, that. Trying to realize that people might not have my best in mind.

A few days ago, I was just giving our windows a wash, something that’s simple enough and doesn’t really require much thought. I don’t really have a set schedule for it; I just do it when I notice that they’re getting a bit grimy. I scrub inside and that usually does it but every now and again, the outside panes need to be scrubbed too. Thankfully, we’re on the ground floor, though I know that, technically speaking, we’re on the third floor. The vines have eaten up what was the first floor and the balcony for the apartment next to us was turned into the main door leading into the building so that people could come in and out without bothering anyone.

I wasn’t really trying to listen in on their conversation but they were standing right by the open balcony that leads to the empty apartment that serves as a doorway into the building and that was just a few yards away. The girl certainly wasn’t trying to keep quiet, though the boy looked very flustered. I felt a little bad for him.

Maybe he was trying to confess, I’ve noticed that a bit with others around their age at this point. There’s a lot I forget but seeing so many younger couples recently seemed to have made its mark in my brain. She was preening and telling him that it was normal for him to be impressed with her, who wouldn’t have been? She was a catch. That made me pause for a few moments. I’d never really heard the saying before; if I had, I had no memories of it and I ended up asking about it a bit later on when I’d been done with my set task for the moment.

Mind you, the explanation I was given as to the meaning of the statement didn’t really clarify anything, though. She tried, bless her. I know she did but I know I must have stared at her just looking absolutely lost and we sort of gave up on trying to get me to understand. As is, I do get what a ‘catch’ is, in a general fishing sense. A catch is well, when you catch something. I just don’t understand how it’s supposed to apply to humans and potential relationship, my mind refuses to make the connection.

You can’t really catch other human beings, not in an emotional sense, I don’t think. Sure, you can catch them physically, keep them from hurting themselves if they fall but that’s just about all my brain can understand so I’ve tried to stop thinking about it but I know how my brain is. It’ll stay stuck in a loop on that for a day or two more and finally, after that, I’ll likely have forgotten all about it and that’ll be that.

For now, I just deal with the strange confusion that comes from the fact that I just can’t understand these things that seem so simple but are so complicated, as far as I’m concerned. I know I’m an oddity. I died out there in that snow and my brain isn’t at full capacity anymore and it will never be. I’ve long ago accepted that I have limits that are much slighter than anyone else’s but that’s okay, I deal with it all as it happens, what else am I supposed to do?

Trying to force my brain to understand things that are beyond its ability to grasp would be like asking someone to carry an armload of water from the lake back to their place with nothing but their arms. You can’t do that.

If you can find a way out of this, take me with you.

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Cadeyrn Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 508 words
 

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His mind, at times, takes a dip into the darker side and it takes some time to draw him back out. It isn’t common, not as much as it used to be when they first were taken into the bunker but once in a blue moon, something just grinds into a halt and there seems to be no way out, nothing for him to grasp his way back out of the darkness until it recedes back on its own.

The first few times he’d been on his own and there hadn’t been anyone there for him to spend the time with. He’d found himself just staring at the darkness and waiting, very patiently, until it left and he could go back to whatever he had been doing before that time.

He knows that time is unusual in that he might feel as though he’s been lost in his mind for hours on end, even days, but most of the time, these little blank out moments rarely last more than a few minutes. At the very least, that is the information he was told.

Recently, however, there has been a change. The term recently might best be used loosely as, if he were asked about it, Cade wouldn’t be able to tell when exactly ‘the other’ surfaced. It is a voice more than a face; it is soft and soothing most of the time. It almost feels as though someone is out there, holding his hand, telling him that he’ll be out of the dark before too long.

Cade recalls one of the first times the voice came, they had spoken, talked about the dark and what it was and, very clearly, he remembers that he had told the voice that should it find a way out of the dark, that if he could be taken along, he really would like that. He knows that there is likely something wrong with having a voice in his head but it isn’t a common occurrence and the voice has only been helpful and nothing more, in the few times it has come up.

He’s spoken to the one doctor he trusts about it and she did tell him that it was likely simply a sort of defence mechanism, a response from him mind against the dark, giving him something to hang onto while he waits for the light to surface again. The thought makes sense and he’s left it at that.

He calls the voice Malik, and Malik has been helpful so far. There have been no words spoken from him while the day is clear and his eyes can see far. There have been no words spoken at night either. Malik only ever truly comes when the darkness randomly sweeps its way over him and suffocates him, buries him deep until he claws his way right back out. He doesn’t like the dark but he knows that, after what happened in the snow, it is inevitable. That and his lapse in memory though those are different and for another day.

I tried okay?! Is that not good enough for you?!

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Cadeyrn Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 540 words

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I know a small part of me died out there, in that snow. I don’t even mean it figuratively, I mean it literally. I’m not sure which took more brain cells away. The fire that burned down the family house or my refusal to stay at the hotel with too many sisters about. I ended up on the street, mostly unconscious and buried under snow. If Ayva hadn’t found me, I wouldn’t be here. It took a while for me to become responsive again and for the longest of time; I didn’t really have any grasp of what was going on around me.

Every so often it’ll surface again. There will be mornings when I’ll have no idea as to what’s going on, where I am and what happened to the world. I tend to need a few hours to catch back up on what’s going on around me and by mid-day, my memory is mostly back, mostly. There always are blanks but the doctors said that the blanks are inevitable. She’s surprised I can be as coherent as I am most of the time.

So I have to admit that working around with everyone else isn’t something I usually do. I tried at first but the things they were teaching me, which were necessary for me to do the ‘job’ that had been set up for me, just didn’t click. My short-term memory isn’t great. It depends though, I guess. Some things will stick but others just won’t. Some will stick for a while before I forget them and others I’m just lucky I still remember to this day.

So I try my best. I do. The people I’ve disappointed by not being able to do what they deemed ‘simple’ jobs were not happy with me but what can I do, really? I am just one of many left with scars from the snow. Not all scars are physical, not all scars are emotional. The doc says she’s never quite seen a case like mine so I spent a good bit of my time in her labs before the snow melted. We’ve since then moved off to another site since there really was nothing she could do to help me.

We visit now and then, though. She takes note, asks me how I’m doing. She doesn’t prod me for answers to things she knows I can’t answer. She does a few scans, draws a vial of blood or two though that doesn’t help much with her research but it helps in making sure I’m healthy and just, we go back on our way after spending a night or so in the city itself.

It’s so different from what it was when we first left. The whole place, the secondary sites, the main site, everything, it’s different. Then again, you’d hope that things would change after years and people slowly beginning to resettle into some sort of routine. Doc seems happy to note that I can tell how much has changed since the first time. Between each visit, I can’t really tell but that’s something else.

I wish there was a ‘cure’ for my not-quite-illness but I know better. I’m just going to keep doing my best.