I know you’re still mad at me. Isn’t there something I could do?

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Into the Dark
Current Date: February 26, 2024

Character: Eis Frigus
Race: Demon – Ice
Age: 80 446, physically about 21
Current residence: Munich, Germany
 

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There are times when I wonder just how long the drama at my brother’s work has been going on. That’s not to say there isn’t any drama at my own, but a lot of my work now gets done from home, in a secure office, and I don’t see what few coworkers I have all that often. A blessing, if you ask me. I’ve never truly been a people person; much preferring to be on my own when given the chance. I don’t mind mingling, but it gets tiresome very quickly.

I do go into the work office once every other week when we receive new samples that need to be analyzed right there on the spot and then uploaded into the system. It has been my job to do that for decades at this point and I don’t mind it. It means that the job will be done up to my standards and if there are mistakes, I can blame no other than myself—there have been no mistakes made so far and I am not about to begin.

In a way, I believe that the main issue at Feuer’s work began with the issue from two years ago, give or take. That video feed from the security office that the guard decided my brother needed to watch for some reason. That video should have been sent to HR—a dated term that I’ve never fully understood, as though somehow humans are the ones who came up with it and were the first ones to have a resource office for the workers—for them to deal with and that would have been the end of that.

I know that my brother never did anything with that video feed, other than have it forwarded where it should have gone in the first place, that is. The whole thing had nothing to do with him but I’m well aware that he ended up having to deal with some repercussions following the whole thing and I do think that this is wholly unfair to him.

The worker and visitors both were banned from the building, the job was lost, of course, and the security guard was met with so that he would follow proper procedure; at least, that’s what I got from Feuer once he had calmed down enough from his emotions of that day. The main issue that is still ongoing, even now nearly two years later, is that somehow, a rumour began that there had been a sex tape leaked and that my brother had something to do with it. I think that one of the main reasons he still has his job is that one, he’s been working there since the very beginning of the whole company, and two, well, they know him better than that. His colleagues are all full of shit—some of them, more than others, I suppose I can behave—but his bosses know better than to listen to rumours.

All in all, there are days when my brother just comes home absolutely exhausted in a way he shouldn’t. While his job can be stressful, I know how he is when he is stressed out by his job, and this is more than just work. I wish I could do something about it but there is very little I can manage. My best option is to not get involved, no matter that I wish I could do something.

On the days he comes home just looking so mentally and emotionally wrung out, I’m reminded of a time when we were just so much younger and we would have disagreements; it would eat at us until we caved in, talked it out and got over everything but it wasn’t instantaneous. One of us had to go to the other, apologize and make up. It wasn’t always enough either. We could apologize to one another but there would still be tension in the air and quite a few times, I remember that, depending on who had apologized, we would go back a second time, a bit later, with that bit of knowledge that there still was something wrong, that we still weren’t fixed, if you would. There was often an extra step we had to take.

We might be old enough to have seen civilization come to be what it is now, but we still have emotions that need to be considered, we still have to be mindful that we’re not mindless monsters that some people still somehow believe us demons to be. We deserve as much care and careful thought as anyone else out and about.

My brother is possibly the only person I will go out of my way to truly, deeply apologize to when it comes down to it. I am willing to apologize to others if I make mistakes, but once the apology is made, if they are still frustrated after the fact, that is on them. I need my brother to know that our relationship is one of absolute trust and this is a two-way street.

Final Word Count: 844

If you think that was cringy, just wait. I’m sure someone will outdo that.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Into the Dark
Characters: Eis Frigus
Race: Demon – Ice
Age: 80 444, physically about 21
Current residence: Munich, Germany
Final Word Count: 802 words
 

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Science isn’t always clean and neat and tidy. Most of the time, science is very far from that. Though the type of science I focus on tends to be mostly clean as it usually is studied through the help of microscopes and other such tools but that is just one of those things. Computers have made leaps and bounds and I have witnessed it all nearly from the beginning. So, most of my data now gets fed into databases and I do my figuring out part of things while staring at a computer screen.

I’ve had to get glasses some years back, not so much because my eyes needed them—very grateful for my regenerative DNA—but thanks to the odd effect the blue light had on my vision. I know that there are programs and applications that can change the tint of the screen you are looking at, but I often need my screen to be calibrated just so, especially when I compare samples, side by side. These glasses help with that without actually truly changing the colour of the screen.

Some months ago, Feuer came to me, asking me if I had anything I could offer to help him while dealing with someone. That he comes to me for help is somewhat rare. He can read others just perfectly fine on his own but, now and again, I guess there is just that one person that baffles him and he does come to me then. Not that I’m of all that much use, I can read others, but nowhere near as well as him but I suppose that I still have my use whenever he’s baffled.

As it turned out, it wasn’t even so much for work as it was something one of his colleagues had done and he was trying to understand why it had happened at all. There was my brother, confused because some woman had done who knew what with another man on the team and it had been caught via the security system.

I’m not sure why it bothered him so much. I mean, I understand that it was unsettling, the man dealing with the cameras used the word ‘cringy’, Feuer told me, but I suppose that it was because he’s so used to people behaving in the best of ways if you would, that this behaviour had been completely out there. You have to understand, my twin works in public relations, for the most part, the people he has to deal with are mature enough to know better and few seem to have the potential to do stupid things like the pair that was caught in the man’s office.

A woman—who had come to see him about something—spanking the man, who is the colleague of Feuer in question, hard in the latter’s office and then, of all things, well that’s a bit crass but let’s just say they got down and dirty but in a role reversed sort of way where the woman still was in charge. How or where she managed to hide that thing she used on the man while they had their little romp in that office is beyond me.

In the long run, I think that what bothered my brother more than anything else, was the fact that, so he states, the security guard told him that if my brother thought this was cringy—I assume by his reaction to the feed, can you blame him?—that he could just wait, he was certain someone else would outdo that.

All I can assume is that the security officer was new on the team. Things like these aren’t supposed to come back our way, at least, they shouldn’t be coming back up to Feuer. He’s not at the very top of things in that office of his. He has very little to even do with the human resources team. In the end, it was more the fact that the security officer decided to bring up the romp issue to my brother, who in no way, shape or form, was even supposed to look at the feeds unless it concerned him, instead of bringing it up to the HR team who have had to deal with things like this before.

After he told me of the somewhat sordid—to me—sounding event, I spent some hours with him just watching videos online of cute little things. It tends to take his mind off of things. Now, I have no issues with whatever it is that people wish to do with other people, especially not in a sexual manner. So long as both are consenting, they can do whatever they might wish, but doing these things during work hours, in a public place, right where there are cameras? That makes no sense.

You told me to go! You don’t get to be mad that I did, because you pushed and pushed. There’s only so much a person can take.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Into the Dark
Characters: Eis Frigus
Race: Demon – Ice
Age: 80 443, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 653 words
 

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It took close to a year before my brother opened up to me about why he had somewhat closed himself off from me, why he’d been morose for months on end. He would tell me that I couldn’t understand it; I was someone who’d never had love at my side, after all. He was wrong on that count but that is part of our lives that I do not discuss with him as it was a trip through a different time and reality, we’ve both agreed to that.

The thing is, I do know the pain of loss but I let him believe I don’t as it isn’t worth the argument. Had it not been for that, he might have opened up sooner to me, perhaps more willing to tell me why he’d been as he had, though I’d still had a pretty good idea.

When he told me that the young man he’d been seeing for quite a while had left him, I almost let slip an ‘I told you I knew’ statement but I bit my tongue and kept it to myself.

He told me that just a few days before he finally opened up to me, the young man in question had come to him and they had talked. It had ended in another argument and fight that had truly sealed their separation; no matter that it had been some nine months already since they’d parted way. All I could understand from his broken-hearted ranting and sobbing was that the young man had told him to go. He had pushed and pushed for Feuer to go, though my brother is stubborn and stayed as long as he could.

The thing is, and I know this is as true as it can be, but people can only take so much of being pushed away before they do leave.

What I understand of the whole thing at this point, as well, is that somehow this young man blamed my brother for leaving and that’s why he stayed away as long as he did. Brooding, angry and frustrated. Perhaps he thought Feuer would chase him, find him and beg him back. When that didn’t happen… well I guess the rest is history, so what’s the point?

Since that fight, I’ve seen life come back to my brother’s eyes. A misunderstanding that lasted nearly a year is something that takes far too much out of anyone and I wish that kind of thing on no one. For too long, I could do nothing for my brother except manage to pull just the bare hint of a smile from him when he would call me in to help him with particular clients because he couldn’t read them.

Mind you, this happened more and more often since the whole ordeal because he was closing himself away and it made reading the clients very difficult. I’m not really surprised at how everything turned out. When you close yourself up to your own emotions, it makes it very difficult to be able to read someone at all. I’m just glad that he’s finally had some closure. I’m mad that it took this long but I can’t do a single thing about this.

Now, well now I fully expect to hear him talk about some other good-looking young man who will catch his interest. Will he let his heart be swayed so soon? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that desires of the flesh will make him more than willing to share a few nights.

It’s been so long for me, as far as that is concerned, that I’m not even sure I remember what it feels like. I suppose I could let myself be swayed into physical distraction but I don’t know that they really would do me much good. My heart still longs for one I cannot have and will never have, after all.

I’ve heard rocks make better counter-arguments.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Into the Dark
Characters: Eis Frigus
Race: Demon – Ice
Age: 80 441, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 631 words
 

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The man’s anger at the insult was worth it, if only because that very insult had brought forth the bare hint of a smile from my brother’s lips and Feuer had been in a sad mood for the past couple of weeks. I’d been doing all I could to get a smile out of him but I hadn’t expected that it was going to be my insulting of a not-quite client that would do it.

While we share a home, we don’t spend a lot of time together, not usually. We’re both busy with our own things and they’re nothing alike. My life has been spent focusing on science and his has been spent as a sort of public figure. Someone who will defend the rights of others but most of the time he’ll be dealing with those who are like us. Those whose life spans are longer than that of humans but now and again he’ll help mortals as well though it’s rare.

I have an idea as to why he’s been morose but he’s closed himself off to me as far as that part of him is concerned. I suppose he’ll want to state that it’s because I’ve never had someone at my side, not in the way he has and I don’t know how to deal with the pain of loss. I think it’s quite the opposite, however.

The reason I’ve never had someone at my side, as far as he knows, is that there was someone once, while I was in another dimension, another time slip, another elsewhere. That someone was a short-lived affair but it has left my heart in pieces and no matter that it has been so many, many years, I cannot bring myself to open my heart up to anyone else. Not when I still long for the one my heart originally sought. Still, those are details I keep to myself; my time away is not something we discuss.

So, I reason that he has recently lost the young man that had been at his side for a few years and I would understand that it might have left him feeling morose.

Now, back to the thing at hand, however: this was a joint meeting, I’m not sure why. Feuer had asked me that I join him in meeting this new client because he couldn’t get quite a proper read on the man. A rare feat as my brother has always been able to read just about anyone who came his way. He could tell just what they truly wanted and how far or not they were willing to go for it.

This man, as it turns out, is an absolute joke. There was nothing to read about him as he wasn’t worth the moment. He kept on trying to argue that Feuer help him for free because he was a friend, of a friend of, an old client. This thing with technology nowadays is that everyone thinks they know everyone else and everything believes they can give you ‘better publicity’… so long as you help them for free. It’s sad.

Feuer countered all of his arguments on the subject easily and I just ended up oh-so-quietly pointing out that rocks made better counter-arguments than the man. He got angry, stormed off, but I got a smile out of my brother and I think that this is truly the only thing that matters to me today. It was worth it.

Maybe, before long, he’ll let me back in to that side of his life but I’m not holding my breath. If all it takes is me insulting some of the people who come to see him—only those who deserve it, then so be it, that’s not too difficult.

Are those ghosts?

Timeline/World: Porcelain Lives
Characters: Eis Frigus
Race: Demon – Ice
Age: 88 441, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 529 words

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I have seen, heard and have lived through plenty in my life. A life that has seen time slide out of its so-called container and then back again. I have lived amongst my own kind as well as many other different souls. While I still share my home with Feuer, we do not spend much time together. Both far too lost in dealing with our own things. I suppose that might not be such a bad thing. I know plenty were afraid of what would come to be of us since we were so close while we were growing up, since we didn’t have many dealings with others beyond those who were teaching us what we needed to know as demons of our kind.

Most of my time is spent studying human things, though calling them human things seems unfair as they believe they are the ones who discovered these things but that is hardly the truth, as it stands. I study that which makes us who we are, I study how one small change in someone’s DNA can change their looks so drastically. I also study things that are far beyond human understanding but that is only mine to keep and cherish.

In my travels, I have met a world of different people. Some who did not believe in God or gods, some who believed, some who thought humans were the best and only thing alive that had enough smarts to be able to live the way they did. Others who believed demons were real but came from hell, others who believed in fairy tales, in elves, ogres and everything else. It is very difficult to know all that which inhabits this planet. There are so many of us and so many species mingling together and new blood comes to be. There will always be new discoveries.

Those who learn that I am, mainly in their terms, a scientist, are always baffled when they learn that I believe in the beyond. Certainly, science and its many fields can explain plenty of what goes on with the world but not all of its facets. I still believe in the presence of the soul, in the presence of the afterlife and in the presence of ghosts. I have seen and crossed many ghosts while out and about and while I have not discussed with them—language issues—I have watched them come and go, doing their own things.

I am not the kind of person who will try to sway your mind into believing something you have no wish to believe in. I trust that if you are meant to believe in the existence of something new, you will do so on your own. Forcing someone to believe something new or simply even just accept in its presence is no one’s prerogative but that of the person themselves. Believing in science, religion, magic, the paranormal or the beyond is really no one’s business but our own and no one should be forced to believe. This goes against everything that is but I know that there will always be idiots out there and nothing can fix that or change it.