Stop pretending to be incompetent. I know you better than to believe that.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Gréagóir Mac Naoimhín
Race: Halfling – Angel (felled) / Demon (risen)
Age: 34
Current residence: Los Angeles, California
Final Word Count: 732 words
 

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It’s always something when a colleague—the few people I keep in touch with often enough so that the curse can’t take hold—claims to know me better than I know myself. I had a bit of a yelling match with a colleague just a few days ago and it still makes me shake my head when I think about it. Not that I yelled, not really, but I gave him such a stink-eye that he was very much tail-tucked-between-his-legs when I was done with him.

Most of the people I work with—though I mostly work by myself, in a way—are contacts that are usually overseas or across the continent. I keep in touch with these people either through email, phone calls or video calls though I’m not a fan of the latter. It is, however, through the latter that I had my discussion with the one guy in question who somehow really did think that he knew me better than I knew myself and I still can’t help but roll my eyes at the idiocy of it all.

To be able to keep the business successful, I do need to make sure that these people do remember me and that means that I have to make up excuses to get in touch with some of them once three or four times a year just to make sure the curse doesn’t kick in. It’s not always fun but it is a necessity of life. I wouldn’t want to have to go through the trouble of getting these people to trust me all over again when I’ve been dealing with them for years.

Lucio is rarely fun to deal with. He’s a grumpy arse most of the time and when I told him I was likely not going to be coming back to Europe after my trip to America, he started acting even more like a complete idiot. I let it pass, at first. He could throw his childish little tantrum as he wanted, it didn’t change things. I have more business here in the states than I did back in Ireland, let alone in Italy. Not that I’ve completely dropped my overseas contact, that would have been stupid.

Now, Lucio, about a week ago, got on my case about one particular piece that he thought I should have gotten but didn’t because I didn’t see the point. It hadn’t been worth the effort to try and get it but somehow, he tried to argue his case stating that I just hadn’t known what I’d been doing and that he knew me to be far more competent than I’d acted and well, long story short, he sounded as though he somehow was my boss and that didn’t fly so well with me in the long run.

A contact that I only keep in touch with as a bare little ‘just in case’ telling me to stop pretending that I’m incompetent because I didn’t want to acquire a piece that wasn’t worth it isn’t a good contact to have. I’ve been tempted to stop keeping him up to date on things and I might just have to. It was satisfying to see him look so chastised, though. It was well deserved.

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t yell. I just quietly got on his case for the way he was acting and the way he thought he knew me better than I knew myself. That was the end of that, and he didn’t even try to contact me a second time once all was said and done. That’s usually something he’s prone to doing. We’ll conclude a meeting about this or that and not even ten minutes after the call will have been over, he’ll be calling me again, claiming that we forgot to discuss that one thing or this other one.

I do get that he’s older than most of my other contacts and that he’s had a long life to live already but it hardly gives him an excuse to behave like my boss, let alone my father—a man I’ve never known. I don’t need someone looking over my shoulder and telling me how I should run my own business because they think they know me better than I know myself. I am not incompetent, I’m just picky about what I pick up and what I leave behind.

You left everyone and everything behind to—what? Become this?

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Gréagóir Mac Naoimhín
Race: Halfling – Angel (felled) / Demon (risen)
Age: 33
Final Word Count: 672 words
 

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When I was younger, there was this one boy I was friends with. He was in the usual neighbourhood and we spent time together now and again. As we grew up, of course, we spent less and less time together and, by the time I had long since left the nest, we no longer spoke. I still remember that he had big dreams, however. He’d talk about how he’d be the biggest reporter the world had ever seen. He’d travel the world and bring back news that mattered.

It was a good goal to have in life.

When I’d last seen him, before we truly lost touch, he’d even found an internship in a local news station and he loved it, I told myself that it was possible that he would make a name for himself and indeed travel the world and make it a better place in his own way.

So when we crossed paths just a few months ago, I was baffled to find out that he now worked as a janitor in a school. Now, I’m not dissing people who have to clean up after other folks, it’s a hard job to do but I still remembered how big his dreams were and how much it was clear that he wanted to make it out there in the world, not stay in the small little place we were at when we were young.

Just the same, of course he didn’t remember me at all—as my curse dictates—but it was hard to watch him do something that, it was clear, he didn’t care to be doing. It left me to wonder just what had happened to him. Had I been normal, I knew I could have walked up to him, I could have tried to draw him into a conversation to ask him what happened but I couldn’t very easily just go up to him and ask him about it, I was a stranger to him.

Tempting as it was to assume that somehow, he’d just decided to fuck off and leave everyone and everything behind to become a janitor, I told myself that it wasn’t fair to assume that he’d just let it all go. There likely were more than valid reasons to the fact that he looked like he was almost fifteen years older than he should have been. There were likely more than valid reasons for the fact that he wasn’t a big shot reporter but I might never know those reasons.

Or so I told myself but I found out, a few weeks later as I was still in the area and talking to Mari every single day during my stay away, that his life really had taken a hard turn just a few weeks after I’d last seen him. Though some of it is based on rumours, the rest came from a mostly reliable source but, as I’d learned it, within the span of the same month, he lost his mother to a drunk driver—his father had never been very present—and somehow, he learned that his girlfriend at the time was pregnant and wouldn’t be giving up the little one for anything in the world.

So he did what he thought was the only thing he could do. He married her, he helped raise the little girl—who, by the way, looks nothing like him and he must have realized that but I remember him being too willing to help others still—and he has a mostly dead-end job because some girl wanted someone to take care of her while she raised a kid her whore-ass couldn’t remember who the father was.

I feel bad for him, I do. The thing is, it’s not my place to do anything about it.

So once I was done with my business in this place, I told myself to preferably not come back here unless I absolutely had to. The sight of him after knowing he had such big dreams, it’s heartbreaking.

This needs to work out.

 
Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Almost Timeless
Characters: Gréagóir Mac Naoimhín
Race: Halfling – Angel (felled) / Demon (risen)
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 647 words
 

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I have long ago stopped worrying about people not remembering me if they don’t see me within a certain span of time. It doesn’t even have to be about seeing me with their own eyes, it can be a phone conversation, it can even be a text or an email, something that will draw their fading memory of me back to the surface for a little while longer.

I worried more about this while I was younger. If you met me from a decade ago, you’d have seen just how much it worried me to be forgotten by people I deemed important to me. I was constantly going out of my way to make sure none of them forgot me and let me tell you, it was a seriously exhausting venture. I even tried to find means of getting them to remember me permanently, I was so sure it was going to work out but then I realized just how stupid the whole thing was and I let it go.

Of course, I still worried about being forgotten, especially by those who really did mean a lot to me and it was only a couple of years later, when I met one particular person who more or less changed my life, that I realized that all of my efforts were moot. It was my curse, it’s in my blood. I’m not even sure why it’s happening at all besides the fact that it comes from the tangled mess that is my bloodlines.

I realized that everyone eventually forgets you, it just takes longer for most people and my memory fuse is very short as far as everyone is concerned. I think I can go maybe six months before someone’s forgotten me completely at this point, I don’t know, I haven’t tested it and I’m not interested in testing it.

You have to realize, as a child, coming across someone I had befriended but hadn’t seen for a while and not be recognized, it hurt. At first, I thought they were pulling my leg but as it happened several times over in the course of one year, I started to wonder and I started to ask questions. No one could really answer me, besides the fact that it was likely due to my bloodlines but that’s about it.

When I realized what was happening, I think I got pretty happy with myself. I could play tricks on people and they wouldn’t remember me later on. That was fun. Of course, when schooling started, it was different. I think that’s when I started to worry about people forgetting me.

Not that any of it really matters anymore, not at this point. I’ve found my one; I don’t think I’m letting her go. I keep in contact with the people who are the very most important and they’re all within easy reach so that’s one less thing for me to worry about.

My life is what it is. I don’t know that there ever will be a catch-all solution to keep people from forgetting me and I’m not going to start to fuss about that. If they forget me, they forget me and they’ll get to meet me all over again once it’s time, if it’s time. Being forgotten doesn’t diminish my importance as a living, breathing person. I think that’s one of the things I learned from the man who changed my life.

I think, in a way, by being afraid of being forgotten, I was also afraid of not meaning quite as much to people as I could have meant. I mean, think about it. When you forget someone, it’s usually because they didn’t leave that much of a mark on you or because they were mostly insignificant. That can be a blow to someone’s self-esteem, really.

But I’m fine, so I don’t mind. Not anymore.

That’s not the face of someone who should be surprised. Who told you?

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Almost Timeless
Characters: Gréagóir Mac Naoimhín
Race: Halfling – Angel (felled) / Demon (risen)
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 515 words

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As the one whose bloodline makes him one of the Forgotten, I am no longer surprised when too long passes since I’ve last seen someone and when we meet next, they have no idea who I am. Only one, maybe two are immune to this and I’m not even sure how my brother’s husband manages. I suppose it might come from the bond they share, I don’t know.

This little curse, as it is, has proved to be useful now and again, of this I can’t actually complain. Being forgotten by people who should not have met me at all became easy, all I had to do was stay a certain amount of time away and voila, no more memories of me, of what was, of what might have been said. In other cases, it’s a little frustrating. There are people I need to keep in touch with so their memories will remain intact, but forcing myself to come up with a valid reason to at least call these people is frustrating. I’m not an outgoing soul, at least, not once you get to know me. The outgoing thing is a huge front.

I’d rather be the type to fall into the background, unseen and unheard other than by the people who really mean the world to me, the people I consider important.

Recently, I paid someone a visit, I hadn’t seen them in a couple of years and by then they should have long since forgotten who I was. It only takes a short while, a few weeks really. Usually, when I step into little shops like these, they’re always surprised. I suppose it might come from the snowy-white skin… the white hair… the little slip of a white snake who liked to sleep in my hoodie most of the time—mind you, that snake is not the one I first came to be here with, this one stays home now, he’s far too big for these wanderings—but there was no surprise from the shop owner when I stepped inside, only that warm, familiar greeting.

I had to wonder how he recalled and then I did remember that Naoise came to this place far more often, he was constantly bringing us little bits and pieces from here. It’s likely he might have kept the owner aware of whom I was, it tends to work, they don’t have to talk directly to me or see me, just being reminded of who I am, so long as their memories are jogged a little, they will remember. I don’t know if I was disappointed or not that I had been remembered. It was a strange sort of feeling in me and I don’t know how to put it into words.

Until you’ve been forgotten by the vast majority of the people in your life because you don’t see them at least every few weeks, you can’t really understand what it feels like to not actually be forgotten, I believe there is some sort of elation that comes with this remembering and I do like it.