Every part of me wants to believe what you’re telling me, but logic says not to.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Grégoire DeForest
Race: Human
Age: 32
Current residence: Manta, Ecuador
Final Word Count: 754 words
 

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I’ve never really been one to listen to rumours; then again, most of my life has been spent mostly while focused on my own person and the rare friend I’d ever made. That last rare friend I’d had was Chael and, well, that didn’t work out in the long term. I still don’t know where he’s at and if he’s even alive anymore. I’m not interested in walking all the way back up north to figure what out. I’m content here.

If there is one thing that I do also try to do, most of the time, is to live with a logical mindset. I know that the appearance of the Silencers sort of threw a wrench into that, but I still like to focus on what does make sense and what is logic. Looting empty houses for things that no one is actually going to have any use for? Not logic.

As is, I’m sure that some people would care to tell me that it’s not so much logic as something else, this little mock-code I live by, but I will call it what I want. I still spend most of my time alone. It took me a long while to open up to Chael and that’s because we’d come from similar pasts. Just a couple of weeks ago, someone walked past me, their shoulders brushing mine because somehow the sidewalk wasn’t large enough and it spooked me. My heart was in my throat, and I felt like I was going to be sick.

The only thing that I managed to do to calm myself down? Logic told me that I was all right. That they’d just passed by; that they weren’t out to hurt me. That they wouldn’t come back to end me. It took a lot more time than it should have but, eventually, I’d managed to calm down and finish making my way home. That’s the one thing that still frustrates me as far as my sort of panic attacks are concerned though it does make sense, they happen while I’m outside, while there are potentially others out there and I don’t need them to see me this way to try and help me.

It only makes matters worse.

But you know, that one thing where other people are the reason for these attacks is also why it’s stupid but logic that yeah, I don’t get them while I’m safely in my home.

Recently, I’ve heard rumours that I want to believe but my logic leads me to the other path without any questions. Some people are beginning to claim that the Silencers have begun to fade. Until I have absolute proof of that fact, I can’t even let any hopes be raised. Not that it would change much to my life. I mind my own business, I’m quiet, I keep to myself, and I rarely bother others. About the only time when I’m around others is when I roam a little because the day is beautiful, or because I’m going to the little marketplace to get food.

It’s been strange, getting used to that. Before, when you were short on food, yeah, you had to loot, though most of the places where the food items were taken had been abandoned by others, so it seemed mostly fair game though it never felt right, to me. I suppose I’m a bit too much of a lamb in a way.

There’s a market, though, in this area. There are several fishermen—and women—that have these sail boats and they take them out onto the water and bring back fresh fish. So most meals do have fish to it and that, I have to admit, has taken some getting used to. For years, I’d been living off of canned food and it wasn’t always great.

Beyond fish, there are the countless different types of fruits that grow around this place and growing vegetable is something I’ve given a try and while it wasn’t exactly easy, I’m proud to say that I’ve managed my first small harvest just some weeks ago.

Life is… different here. I’m happy that I managed to come all the way out here, even though it wasn’t in my original plans. Not that I really had a plan, but I guess I just did what I’ve done best all of my life. I ran away. I ran away from my father, and I walked away from Chael. It’s all right, though. I like this life here well enough.

It’s just as likely that I’ll blame you for everything that goes wrong. It’s the kind of person I am.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Grégoire DeForest
Race: Human
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 723 words
 

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It’s been eighteen months and still Chael has not come by though that may be difficult now. I suppose I should have expected it. Then again, I don’t know that I could have prepared for it either. The Silencers changed us, there’s no denying that, I just refused to be his scapegoat. Every time something went wrong, he would get angry, he would blame me, I would apologize, it was unhealthy. When I told him that he had to step back and realize just what he was doing to me—to us—and I walked out, since we’d been living in his apartment, I expected him to maybe come back a week or three later but he never did.

After closer to six months, I packed up my few things and I moved again. I’m not going to deny that being on the constant move for close to six, maybe eight months was not what I had planned. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the wandering, I think I could handle that just fine, but I don’t know that I had been prepared to go to sleep hungrier than usual because I couldn’t forage for food; or well, the places where I had stopped to forage didn’t really have anything left in them. When I could forage, I packed up extras and it weighed me down but it kept me from going hungry.

I just walked, I think. I had no real destination in mind. I kept as far from the Silencers as I could but that wasn’t always easy and I ended up climbing mountains that I hadn’t thought would be in my path, I could have tried to detour them but that would have doubled my walking time and, by the time I realized I was going up, my provisions were also pretty slim. I know I’m somewhere near Ecuador now, I’ve found signs everywhere. There’s this little place called Manta that has a good population, not huge but not village-small either. I think it’s nice.

The people are friendly enough and a pair even helped me find a little house that had been abandoned but was in good condition. It’s been odd to no longer be talking. I mean, it took me months of walking. Sure, I’d stop here and there for a week, maybe two, give my feet some resting time but I didn’t stay much longer. I’ve been here for a couple of months by now. I don’t really have any regrets about the move I did to get here. Not that it was planned, that’s not the point.

Do I miss Chael? I don’t know. About as much as I might miss being blamed for everything that could have gone wrong in someone’s life because it certainly felt as though that’s what was happening in the long run. It’s why I told him we had to take time apart. Sure, I didn’t expect that time apart to turn into what it did but that’s okay.

I might not be very outgoing but I refuse to let someone else turn me into a punching bag. I don’t care if that punching bag is emotional, mental or physical. It’s the one thing I’ve sworn to myself I never would do again, never. It might take me some time to get to the point where I can safely say claim that I know exactly what to look for but that’s fine.

I see this place as a bit of a start-over sort of thing, I mean, that’s why I walked the distance, right? To get away. There isn’t a Silencer very near, as far as I can tell. The nights actually get dark here and that feels so oddly good. There was a Silencer only some miles off from where we lived, back up there, it didn’t get very dark at night, it got dark to a point, because I say ‘some miles’ but it was more than just that, but we could see it in the distance. It was bright enough that night felt like dusk most of the time.

Night here feels really dark and I don’t think I’ve slept so well in years. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m alone or because it’s dark or anything else. I don’t really care. It’s okay.

I’m getting tired of this same routine, where you get mad, I say sorry for something I didn’t even do, and then you ignore me for days on end. Go away and don’t come back until you know what you’ve done wrong.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Grégoire DeForest
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 580 words
 

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I wish I could go back to the way life was before the Silencers. Though I imagine that everyone still alive to this day wishes they could go back to living the life they had before the Silencers.

Maybe I’m just frustrated with life in general right now but things had been going so well with Chael. Almost six years as friends, four as something a little more, though we’d only really been ‘active’ in any sexual way for the first two of them. I never actually thought I’d ever be able to open up that part of myself to someone else. Not willingly.

Now the Silencers, I can’t even imagine how few people might still be sexually active, I mean, these things are drawn to anything even just somewhat above a whisper, so I don’t know how quiet, or not, sex can be. I’m not interested in knowing about it. I mean, we were both pretty quiet but that dwindled back to nothing when the Silencers came.

We both came from battered pasts. Sexual assault was what drew us together into the world of friendship. We learned to trust one another and we learned to slowly trust others together. Some people would maybe try to claim it was a match made in heaven or something and I would have just found that to be absolutely dorky. I don’t even know if anyone was aware that we were together since we weren’t really big on public displays of affection.

Anyway.

For a few months after the Silencers, we were managing mostly well, we were surviving and handling things as they came but the more time passed, the more frustrated Chael would become. He’d get mad, I would apologize for something I hadn’t even done and he would then ignore me for days. That ugly cycle would repeat every few weeks and it truly turned out to be exhausting for me to have to deal with.

So I gathered my courage, squared my shoulders and, while still keeping my voice low, I told him that we had to spend time apart and we couldn’t pair back up together until he could understand that he was the one in the wrong, that all of these reasons he had for being mad at me weren’t even valid and that none of this was fair for me.

Normally, I think someone would have told that person to pack their bags and go but since we’d essentially been living in ‘his’ apartment, I just gathered my things in a backpack and I left. That was almost six months ago and I haven’t heard anything from him. I’ve seen him from a distance so I know he’s still alive but he hasn’t come to check on me, despite the fact that I’ve told him where I was going. I figured that it would only take maybe a week or two and we’d be back to the way things were before but I was wrong.

I suppose it’s for the best. I’m not going to let myself be thrown back down into the pit of despair I crawled my way back out of because he’s uncomfortable with the way the world had turned out to be. Not that I can imagine anyone comfortable in this world but we’re making it work. We might not be thriving, not with the need for absolute silence but we’re still living, we’re doing more than just surviving. So I’ll take that.

You showed me how to feel again.

Timeline/World: Modern Monotony – Far From Home
Characters: Grégoire DeForest
Race: Human
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 754 words

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Growing up with an abusive father made trying to survive out there in the world difficult.

I ran away when I was fifteen. My father loved me, he did. However, he loved me in a way that was unbelievably wrong. My mother knew. She knew from the start but she was a weak will sort of woman, one who couldn’t protect her own flesh and blood, even if her life depended on it. The physical and sexual abuse I lived through for almost ten years—I can’t recall exactly when it started, I just know I was very young—had its claws in me in an almost permanent way; I was always looking over my shoulder to make sure my father wasn’t around, I was always shying away from touch and from strangers and even friends alike, at least those who didn’t know the whole sordid story and none of them knew the dirty details.

My short story with Thomas when I was eighteen only made matters worse. In a way, I know he was only trying to look out for me, he was only trying to love me but it wasn’t a good way to love someone. The flirting was baffling, this, I guess, I didn’t mind. That one morning after a month or so when he showed up on my doorstep after he’d called me to ask why I wasn’t at work—my one day off in months—and I’d told him I was at home, that was frightening. He told me to stay put, I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was coming over. I told him no, I did, several times but he’d hung up by then so what could I do? I was still a twitchy mess so I showered, I got dressed—not wanting to be bared around anyone—and I waited, tense and uncomfortable.

He did come, knocked at my door and despite my better judgment, he did come in, he told me to get back to bed and I did and we ate breakfast in bed. In a way, it wasn’t bad; however, if you look at it from another angle, there was this guy in my apartment, feeding me because he thought he was doing me a favour after I’d told him no. It’s only now that I know I can point at it and say that it wasn’t all that different from how my father had acted in a way. Well-meaning but going about it in all the worst ways.

There were other issues with the whole Tom deal but I’d rather not get into them, I just can’t. The last one that made everything fall apart was when my father found me, somehow, I spent at least a couple of weeks that I can recall bound and gagged to a bed so he could ‘love’ me in any and every way he wanted. Sure, Tom found me, saved me. I couldn’t deal with it though. Not with being touched so intimately—sure, he was only brushing his hand through my hair trying to calm me down but I’d spent two weeks being raped, I didn’t want to be touched—and not being scooped up and held close while cops were asking me all the questions in the world to make sense of the situation.

I ran away again, once I was in good enough physical condition to do it.

That one trip, mostly on foot and a little by bus, took me almost all the way south from where I’d been, nearly at the border between two countries where I hide for a while. I did make a friend there, one who seemed to be as tentative about things as I was. Looking back at it now, it was a little funny about how we’d both tiptoe around certain things but it’s warming. We learned about things together, we had some similar experiences in our past and it seemed to help us bound as survivors. Together, with him at my side, we learned to trust, at least one another, we learned to live, one day after the other.

I’ve left all of my past behind and I haven’t tried to find any information about anyone, not my mother, not my father, not Thomas. This is my life now, I have someone at my side, someone I cherish and who cherishes me the same, we take things slow and it’s perfect and I finally feel alive again.