When did you get so angsty? Ugh. This won’t do. Step one: let’s open all the windows.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Current Date: August 26, 2023

Character: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 39
Current residence: Hampden, Maine
 

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It’s been more than seven years—almost eight—and he still haunts me. The ghost of him isn’t as common as it used to be, but you would think that after so long, I’d finally have moved on. I guess I’m a lost cause. A lost cause who refuses to get to know the very few neighbours he has left. Most of the community got eaten up by the Silencers and quite a few others left when it was clear that the Silencer nearest to us was really gone. I still have my doubts about that, but I’ve let out a few yelps since and I’m still here.

I feel like I’m now living in a ghost town. I’m not about to move elsewhere. I don’t want to. It gets fucking cold in the winter, but the house has a wood-burning stove and I’d found it weirdly charming when I’d bought the house. I never thought I’d have to make use of it but look at me now.

Of the seven thousand or so people that were here when I moved in a year before the Silencers landed, I think that there are about a dozen of us left. So yeah, this place is a ghost town and clearly, Jaden’s ghost thinks it’s a perfect place to haunt.

On most days, I’m actually doing pretty fine. I somehow manage to catch fish out there, I grow some of my veggies, some of the other houses had fruiting trees and I make the best of what I have with what I know. I don’t often open up the curtains to the house, not at the front, in any case. I guess I don’t want people to know I’m there. Most of the fresher air comes from the back anyway and there’s a pretty good fence around the yard, so I’m less wary about opening up the curtains and the windows.

I hadn’t done any of these things over the last two days, though. I’d been feeling pretty low and, yeah, stupid me not eating wasn’t helping my case much, but I just felt emotionally exhausted for no reason at all other than my brain likes to do what it wants fairly often. And at my lowest point, while I was flopped out on my bed, telling myself I should wipe myself down and maybe get my hair washed, he came to me.

Now, I know he didn’t come to me. I’m sure the Silencers took him, and he’s been long gone but in my tired, possibly slightly hallucinating mind, he was there. He looked disgusted with me, and I couldn’t blame him. He complained that he couldn’t believe how angsty I’d gotten—I was not, was I? I was feeling depressed more than anxious—and that clearly, this behaviour couldn’t do.

The first step in his fix-this-depressed-guy plan? Open all the windows.

For some reason, that disgruntled me enough to get me out of bed. I don’t know if it was the thought of the windows being opened or just the fact that he was calling me angsty. I wasn’t. I was feeling low and not taking good enough care of myself, but I wasn’t being angsty. Though I know the general definition of the word and what people thought it meant, are two very different things. I can’t remember that he’d ever even used the word before, so really.

He was gone the moment I got out of that bed, too. I stumbled and nearly fell on my face from lack of energy at that point. My vision went hazy around the edges and I just sort of sat on the floor of the house while I breathed slowly, waiting for that bullshit episode to pass. I did force myself to open up some of the back windows, I opened the curtains a little just the same.

I took the time to get water into the tub, just enough for a workable layer and I sat in that cold water for a while before I did any scrubbing to get the filth off of me. My hair would have to wait, I didn’t even really have that kind of energy. First, I had to get clean, which I did. Then I had to manage to eat something—I still had some jerky I’d made a few days before I’d started slipping. I drank some rainwater that I’d managed to filter, and I sat in the sun for a while.

Most of the time, I’m doing actually really good. I just have the brief days when I just can’t function anymore and I wish my brain would do something other than torture me with the sight of the one man I wish had never left my life, especially not the way he did. I think it’s the lack of closure that’s doing me in, at this point.

Final Word Count: 816

I’m not ready for this to come back and bite me. I know it will.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 37
Current residence: Hampden, Maine
Final Word Count: 778 words
 

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Some rumours are going around that the Silencers have been fading. The one nearest to our city is some miles away and they’re usually so big that you can see them from pretty much anywhere but ours still was somewhat far enough that we really only see some of the illumination from it. That and I’ve been doing my best to ignore that thing for as long as it’s been there, so you could say I try not to pay attention.

It certainly was never close enough that we had to use black-out curtains at night but still just close enough for a faded sort of night light for those who were on the closer edge of it. I’m on the other end of the city and while I did have some extra light in my room at night, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I expected it to be for the folks who lived so much closer to it.

Anyway, all that because people are claiming that the one nearest to us has been fading, little by little, and I would like to call bullshit. I’m sure these things are permanent and until I see it completely gone, I’m not going to do a thing about it and, even then. If ‘our’ stupid little not-rapture ball of light is gone, it doesn’t mean the next one over some hundreds or thousands of miles away isn’t still there and ready to snatch up people. Maybe it’s a temporary dormancy, maybe it’s… well who knows what the hell it might be.

So many people seem to be getting excited over the idea that the Silencer appears to be fading. I refuse to let that hype get to me. I’ve got nothing really keeping me here, even with Jaden long gone. I still see glimpses of him everywhere in people that look nothing like him, and it hurts. I hate it. I’m still not going to rejoice if I notice, one evening, that our invading night light is gone. I’m not going to scream at the top of my lungs in happiness, that’d just be asking to be taken, even if there is a vague possibility of quite the opposite happening.

Even if I’m not really happy with my life—other than the fact that yes, I’m alive, I’m sober, I’ve been clean for longer than I thought I ever would—I’m not ready to die and you won’t see me hopping around and dancing everywhere when that night light just disappears if it even does disappear.

I mean, you have to think about all sides of this thing, or it’ll come back to bite you. It’s not because you can’t see something that it’s not there and it can’t take you. I’m not that desperate for my life to change again to take these chances. Call me a coward all you want. If that’s what it takes for you to leave me alone about going to check out things, then that’s fine, I’m a coward.

Not that anyone would even bother trying to get me to join them to check it out. After I’ve moved it, I know that I made no effort whatsoever in getting to know the people. I’d lived here for about a year before the Silencers landed and I still don’t know the names of my neighbours. Not that it matters at this point, all the houses around me are empty, the closest one is about six houses down the street.

I’ve heard the rumours about how, in bigger cities, people just turned to riots. Silent riots, but riots. Thieving, killing, stealing. Here, in this quiet little slip of a community, town, city—whatever you want to call it, it’s not big—people have actually been helping one another through it all as best as they could. I might not have bothered to make friends with anyone, but I was never excluded from things when they gathered in silence. Clearing out the homes of those that had been taken, bringing all nonperishable into the community centre where you could go if you really needed something.

From what little time I spent there, most people were really well behaved, they only took what they truly needed, leaving the rest to others. In the years since the Silencers have landed, I know that quite a few have turned to trying to grow their own things and some have managed far better than others. To these people, I tip my hat.

I’m still not going to join them in any type of celebration the moment they think that the Silencer is gone. I’m not that stupid.

I had hopes of leaving this all behind me. You keep dragging me back into this world.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 35
Final Word Count: 701 words
 

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I miss Jaden.

There, I said it. I avoided saying that since the day the Silencers took him. I avoided thinking about it at all because I would have thrown myself into the nearest ball. Though I suppose that the whole story needs to be explained because it’s just one of those things.

I don’t remember what tore us apart. Just that, one day, after some eight years of being as clean as I could ever be, I woke up to an empty house. I still don’t know how he’s done it. I’m such a light sleeper that unless he gave me a sleeping pill—and the thought still makes me shudder to this day—I would have woken up the moment he’d shifted to get out of bed.

I looked through all of the rooms, I searched high and low for a note, I dug through the computer, I looked into what access remained of his things—we’d shared most everything, including passwords—but he’d cleared out all of his saved passwords and he’d logged himself out of all the usual sites. It’s like he’d wanted to disappear and, well, he had.

It took some time for me to be able to gather my wits and myself. I packed up my clothes, I packed up a few belongings, I got it all in my car—we only had one car, so how had he left?—and I talked to a real estate agent about selling the house as was. It was clear, sure it was lived in, but the furniture was mostly all new and just, everything was fine and swell with it. I told him that I would get in touch with him when I made it to my own final destination and that was that.

I landed in a small community a good distance away from the big city—I drove and drove some more until I nearly ran out of gas—and the house was sold in six months. I received a cheque for the amount it had sold, minus his commission and that’s been that.

It’s been my life since then. I’ve lived peacefully here. Or well, as peacefully as I could. At first, I felt like I was catching glimpses of him everywhere. It kept me awake at night. I was trying to leave everything behind but the memory of him kept dragging me back exactly to the spot I was trying to leave behind. It was not a pleasant experience, to say the least.

It wasn’t even a year after I moved here that the Silencers landed. As I hadn’t made much effort to actually really get to know the other members of the community, I don’t know how many were taken, though I know that plenty were. I saw how many houses were abandoned, I saw how many people were confused by the suddenly missing presence of loved ones and it only took us about a week to really realize what was going on. I mean, when you go out there, screaming the name of your missing loved one and some tendril of light and energy just whips in out of nowhere, barely touches them and poof, no more? That sort of tells you that screaming is out of the question.

That’s how some people claimed their death, though. I could see the despair in their eyes. I could see it as they stepped outside and just started screaming at the top of their lungs. Something that’s not necessary. Speaking at a normal volume is usually enough to get snapped up.

I think at least three-quarters of the community must be gone at this point. The whole place is just so empty, though people have kept on living, they have to.

We have to.

I think that’s why I say the Silencers must have claimed him. Jaden was quiet in his own right but he tended to not go down without a fight. I don’t know where he went, why he left, if he ever came back but… I tell myself that the Silencers took him; it’s easier than admitting that he left of his own free will without telling me anything.

I feel free. More than I ever have before.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 34
Final Word Count: 602 words
 

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The religious zealots came out when the Silencers—those big balls of energy that fell from the sky—lit up the sky and landed. These things took away so many people that I don’t think anyone knows how many are left alive on the planet. The EMP—that’s electromagnetic pulse for anyone not aware—that followed their landing took everything out. No more electricity, no more television, radio, phones, no more internet, no more running water, nothing.

No one knows if it’s just our state, or just the continent or the whole world. Though most of us assume that it’s at least the whole continent. We’ve had walkers, people who came from up north or down south and they said it’s the same thing everywhere. When the planes came down, it was absolute chaos and I’m glad I didn’t live in a big city. Not that smaller cities were any less or more likely to not be hit by these falling giants but I lived in a place that was a little off the grid and wasn’t often on any plane’s flight trajectory. I’ve heard the horror stories of thousands upon thousands of people dying when the planes crashed.

I lost count of how many people told me they thought this was the fabled rapture. If it were, your god did a poor job of taking you along and he’s doing it slow and steady since these Silencers are still there. They’re still reaching out with those energy-made limbs to snag up anything that makes anything louder than a certain level of noise. No one knows what happened to the exact landing spot. What’s going on inside these orbs? Are they portals? Is that really what the so-called rapture was meant to be? A portal to another world? I’ve seen people walk right into the orb and they just disappeared like they’d never existed, the way everyone else does when the limbs touch them. Not even their clothes remained. I know there was at least one alien movie like that, where people disintegrated and leave behind just their clothes.

Anyway.

A few days ago, some travellers came our way—I say our way but it’s my way really but I mean our way in the ‘in the direction of town I live in’ way—and they looked every bit the religious zealots that now seem to roam about trying to convert everyone into their new religion. A religion based on the Silencers and their worship of the—don’t quote me on this—Gods of Cleansing and Rebirth. They’re full of shit. Anyway. They claim they are so much freer now with the silence that surrounds us, they claim that they’ve never felt so free. That their gods are still cleansing the evil from the planet and that we should all bow down and just, there is so much ridiculous bullshit going on with their speech that I’ve been tempted, on more than one occasion, to find the nearest Silencer—and let me tell you, it’s quite a distance off—and shove the ignoramus morons into their so-called gods, see how they like it.

It really was tempting but I’ve refrained so far. I mean, even if I were to do that, what would it achieve? It would turn out that I’m some sort of murderer and I doubt they’d go without a fight. That’s the thing I’ve noticed with these idiots. Oh, their gods are almighty, all right, but approaching them? Speaking any louder than the now necessary whisper? They never would dare. So really, they’re not worth my time.

Help! Help me, please! Please, please!

Timeline/World: Fragile Lives
Characters: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 539 words

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Horror films are overrated. At least some of the ones I’ve watched recently, then again they were B-type films so just maybe it made sense that they’d be a little cheaper than most other things. I like to vary what I watch though. Asian horror films are interesting though some just make me cringe due to one scene or another that sets me out of my comfort zone more than anything else.

One such particular film left me feeling unmoved pretty much through it all until there was one scene where a poor little cat—sue me, I’m a cat person—got its head pretty much popped off by a patio door being slammed shut by a ghost or evil entity. That single scene made me twitch and look away, I almost didn’t want to watch the rest of the film but I told myself I was better off at least finishing it so I’d be able to tell myself I’d caught the end and didn’t have to wonder as to it anymore. That film went into the ‘never the hell again’ bin.

This most recent one though, the kind of film where even from the start you’re rolling your eyes and wondering why you bothered but still watch it all because you just hope it’ll get better but it doesn’t. With the female love interest caught in a bad place just screaming, ‘oh god help me, help me!’ for way too long. Her head I would have popped off if I could have and sadly she made it through to the end of the film in one piece and mostly unscathed. That one also landed itself in the ‘never the hell again’ bin. At least they’re rented films most of the time so I can just update my little spreadsheet because yes, I’m a nerd like that I keep track of the films I watch, and mark that it was watched it was lame and I’d rather eat chicken liver—yuck!—than watch it again.

I don’t know why I like horror films so much. I’m the kind who gets a little spooked at night when I think I saw something walk out there in the distance, so you’d think that watching horror films wouldn’t do me any good but I don’t know, a lot of them are pretty good. Usually, it’s not even for the gore that I like them, I’m not big on gore, I just like the story, the setup. I guess you could say I might believe in ghosts and I just like paranormal horror type films.

Teens stuck on an island with no way off, disappearing one by one? Check.

An old but still active asylum where things aren’t quite what they seem? Check.

There’s a lot to like about horror films, it’s an actually pretty diverse genre, depending on where you’re looking and what you’re watching. That’s a bit like my pretty big collection of horror books, most paperbacks but when I find them in hardcover I replace and set the paperback in a box for safe keeping. Really, just give me good horror, not the B-film type, and I’ll be happy to devour it one way or another.

Pain

Timeline/World: Fragile Lives
Characters: Jacob Daniels
Race: Human
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 606 words

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Morpheus could recall the very morning when his life was turned around. He’d grown up with drugs, what could have been inevitable had obviously not been. His mother never could hide her things from him, even as a young child and his first time using drugs, he’d been all of about twelve.

Ten years later, he’d still been using, once a day just about but it was hard to tell if the effects those particular drugs had on him were normal, he was usually able to control his high, it made him more productive and as he had tried to stop before and had failed, he merely kept up.

It was two years later, celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday that things changed. A startling stab of pain somewhere not far from his heart had pulled him to a near literal stop. He’d been driving on his way to work when it had hit and the only reason he knew he was alive to that day was because the road had been pretty deserted, it had been too early for much of anyone else.

Still, the car had climbed up onto the sidewalk and had hit the side of a (blessedly) empty building. The car was wrecked to a point that it had been simpler to buy a new one instead of trying to get the old one fixed and several ribs had been bruised in a bad way, as well as a rather large list.. of small injuries scattered throughout him.

His stay in the hospital lasted all of a day, but it was enough. Though it wasn’t so much the stay as the results from tests run through him. Tests he went to a private clinic later on to be ascertained that the results hadn’t been skewered… they hadn’t.

Those results ended up one of those things he cannot recall properly from that particular time frame, all he recalls of it was a clear mention of ‘it’s you or the drugs’. He’d tried stopping before, it hadn’t done him much good, so with a more than heartfelt but difficult discussion with his companion, his best friend and his just about lover—Morpheus had long since been in love with Jaden but he’d never been certain that the feeling were reciprocated—he’d signed himself up into a rehab.

He managed to stay all over a month. By which time he still did crave but not bad enough, and the worst of the withdrawal shakes were gone. He could manage to get up in the morning and be mostly productive though exhaustion pulled at him in the early afternoon and a half-willing nap was almost necessary. He hadn’t wanted to turn to coffee to not create another addiction but now and again he turned to tea, it did offer a small boost, depending on the kind he took.

Now, eight years later, almost eight complete years sober, his life was back mostly on track. There were mornings where he still craved, days where he wanted to turn back the clock but he was healthier, a little less on the thin side of things, his eating habits were better and best of all, there had been no more heart attacks, or whatever it was that happened to him on that day to change his life. He hadn’t really asked the doctors and they had only told him that he was lucky to still be alive.

He was over needing an afternoon nap, though he was never in bed very late, unless Jaden of course had something prepared for them. Morpheus was all about those, they were the highlight to his days.