This isn’t the sort of problem you can just ignore until you can’t anymore.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: December 7, 2023

Character: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 23
Current residence: New York City, New York
 

---

I wonder which team deals with the most drama, at work. In a way, I’m asking myself that question now, but in the end, I don’t actually want to know, not really. It’s a passing thought as I watch two people of the people who deal with moving stuff around on the sales floor to make it more appealing to the customers argue. I’m supposed to be counting out my register so we can finish closing for the night, but their rising voices are a distraction that I’m having a hard time ignoring.

I’ve only worked the closing shifts a handful of times in the three years I’ve been here. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here three years. It’s not the best job in the world, but it’s a job where they agreed to take me in despite my name and the rumours that go around about me. I’m not a recovering drug addict. I was a forced guinea pig. There’s a difference.

Since this store took me in, I admit that I’ve looked at a few other job offers for things that would possibly be less stressful for me, but I’m worried that they’d not even spare me a glance. This place isn’t so bad, Alice is still sweet and kind to me though she’s been gone for the better part of the year. She’ll be back soon, once she’s done with her maternity leave. She did come now and again since, showing off her little one who has such precious rosy cheeks and bright, curious eyes.

I’ve heard plenty try to warn her away from showing me said little one as though they assume I might do him harm. Even in this workplace, I am clearly not above being rumoured about and there is only so much I can do about it. I’ve learned to ignore it as best as I can, but it still hurts to hear.

When I finally manage to finish closing out my register, the man who has been replacing her while she’s on leave takes off with it and that’s that. The two other people nearby who had been arguing were still arguing. Something about ignoring problems until they can’t be ignored anymore and how whatever their current problem is, isn’t something that should be ignored at all. I don’t know. I just know that they started arguing even before the very last client had left and that felt all sorts of wrong.

I know that Alan is waiting for me outside, so I really only take a few minutes to sign all the paper bits I have to and then I’m off to get my coat, my not-quite empty lunchbox—I couldn’t eat much today, my head wasn’t in the right place and I’m surprised my register actually balanced out—and I’m out that door into the waiting arms of the one person I know I’ll always be able to turn to. Alan, Jayson and Elias; I’ve learned to trust these three people with my life.

They didn’t have to take us in when they did. I could have been left with my mother, but they took me away from the hell that had been my life and I have no real way of repaying them; I do what I can about that. I’m grateful in ways that can’t be put into words, and I just want them to know that I’ll hold on to that gratitude until the end of everything.

While I was younger and recovering, I still did what I could. I did my homework, I studied hard, and I tried to stay focused though it was so much harder back then. I’ve learned in the years since they took us in. I’ve discovered so much about myself, and I feel as though I’m someone completely new.

There are days when I wonder about just changing everything about me. I know Jayson could do it for me too. Change my name, change all my paperwork. I could change my hair and I could try starting all over again without my past hanging on to me like a ball and chain, but I don’t know that I could manage. I wouldn’t even really be able to convince myself that I’m someone different and doing all of these changes without moving to another place feels like it would make things moot.

The thing is, though, I don’t want to move. This place is home. It might be a bit too close to where I grew up with mom being a problem and all but it’s where I grew up and it’s where my small support system—and the people I’ve learned to love—all are. I can’t move away from all that, so I’ll stick with my current job, even though it’s been harder without Alice, and I’ll keep my head held high.

Final Word Count: 812

I’m trying to look like I don’t know what I’m doing and you’re kind of ruining that with your faith in me, you know?

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: May 13, 2023

Character: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 33
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

---

I think that, like everyone else, I am allowed my beliefs. I am allowed to think what I wish and what I might want. It wouldn’t be quite fair if that wasn’t a thing. The only limit to this, even if it is a self-set limit as I know a few others—possibly more—who don’t follow that particular rule in life, is that I’m not supposed to force my beliefs on anyone else.

I’ve heard of it. I’ve probably seen it done before I was sent off to live in the ward when I was still just a child. I don’t remember that particular part and that’s fine, I’ve made my peace. At times, when I discover something new, I wonder to myself if I was aware of these things before and I just forgot them, like so much of my life after the accident.

I know, though, that when you think of the word belief, most people will very much so think that all you’re talking about is religion but there is more to beliefs than religion. There is more than whatever god you might think is out and about and whatever devil might be around the corner to balance out, I guess, what said god you believe in might be doing. I don’t know. As someone who spent years of his life lost in his own head, believing he was an angel, I’m not the greatest person to ask about beliefs because I don’t even know what I might, or not, believe in.

There are things like the belief in others. You can have faith in yourself or in someone else that they might be able to achieve something and this is where my mind has been stuck most mornings. I don’t like it when my mind finds itself drawn into these sorts of loops, I end up being unable to really pull myself out of it easily and I tend to need Alan’s help. Not that needing his help is bad, but there are days when I would like to be able to function normally and not like someone who is still somewhat firmly attached into the past.

All of this because I crossed two boys earlier; they couldn’t have been much more than very young teens, not much out of their preteen years though I suppose I could be wrong. Not that it holds much importance. The point is that they were arguing, if that can really be considered arguing. If it can be called arguing. I don’t know that it really was but I don’t know that I have other words for it.

They were trying to build something, or, in any case, it looked like that to me when I walked on by, and the one trying to put whatever it was together kept on shaking his head at the other boy. Something about how he—the one putting the whatever together—was trying to look like he didn’t know what he was doing and that the other boy was kind of ruining that with all the faith he was showing. I guess it made me smile. I don’t know that I’ve really heard anyone use the worth faith recently.

Maybe that’s why my mind is stuck in this particular loop. It’s not a loop I like being caught in but I guess that there are worst things out there. Things that would keep me lost much, much longer, as it were. Faith, beliefs and whatever else that is out there that could be linked to religion… they’re not dead things. I think that faith—a word with a few different definitions—is a good thing. You have to believe in others; you have to believe in yourself. The word doesn’t have to still be around due to the fact that it can have religious connotations. Don’t ask me how I know that word, it’s just there, in my mind, and yes, I know what it means.

I’m not stupid. I’m just a little broken and yet, I guess I’m not all that broken because I don’t think Alan would still be around if I was broken in a bad way. I have my bad days, but I have a lot more good days than I do bad ones, so that’s all there is to that and no one’s going to tell me that I’m too broken. I’m just not. We’re all how we are and that’s it, in the end. The world has changed a lot of people and we’re just going to keep on being who we are, broken and unbroken mixing together. We’re all that’s left, in the end.

Final Word Count: 779

You two manage to get into trouble so often, it’s better to assume you’re always up to mischief.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Current Date: September 17, 2057

Character: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Angel – Arch Angel Gabriel
Age: 93, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

We’ve had a small family of chipmunks live in the yard this summer. We made sure they couldn’t get places they shouldn’t have been in but, for the most part, we just left them to their devices. I know that chipmunks are usually quite solitary, but this was a mating pair, I saw the two of them together at the near beginning of the summer and, a quiet month or so later, we had six or so little ones born.

Not that I saw them being birthed and not that I saw them either until they were ready to come out of the burrow, so my timeline is probably off but when I say that they were born, I mean that I saw them beginning to come out of the burrow where they’d settled. Little troublemakers, the lot of them.

Now, that’s also just my view on things, I’m fairly certain that they weren’t really being troublemakers and they were just being adorable little youngsters but two of them seemed bent on causing a lot more chaos than the others. How could I tell them apart? Essentially speaking, I couldn’t, not really. But two of the lot always seemed to be stuck together like glue and they were always trying to get places that it was clear they couldn’t get to just yet.

Even their mother, from what I’d seen of her earlier in the season, hadn’t attempted any of the almost circus-trick like acrobatics these two were trying to manage. It made me smile a little and somehow, my mind supplied that if their minds had been built differently and they could reason like us, their mother would have likely been exasperated about how they got into trouble so often that it was better to assume that they were always up to mischief.

Before too long, some of them had scattered. Four of them still remained in the yard but they each seemed to have their own spot. The pair that I’d always seen together defied all odds of what little knowledge I had of chipmunks and still remained together. You’d have thought they were tied at the hip.

Now, I didn’t spend endless hours just watching them, but I did catch glimpses of them often enough while I was sitting in the yard or settled on our porch swing that it almost felt that way, at times.

I can’t say I was overly startled or surprised when, at one point, a small bird of prey came down from the sky and swept one up from the tied-at-the-hip pair. These little things, like most other small rodents, have plenty of predators out there and predators from the sky are plenty present in our community. I suppose it’s a good thing that only the big cats roam freely and the smaller animals that some have taken in as their own are usually walked with company and not left on their own. Not that I’d worry that much if I had a small dog or cat that roamed my yard, but I’d still keep a partial eye, just to be on the safe side.

I lost track of the other half of the mischievous pair after that. Possibly so because I didn’t really know what to look for since I’d been just so used to seeing the two together and I couldn’t really tell the rest apart from one another but that’s all right. There are predators out there and nearly everything is somewhere in the food chain.

In a world that might be different from this one, I’m sure that we wouldn’t be at the top of the food chain. At this point in our lives, I know where we stand in that chain because of how we behave but Stars know that millions and millions of years ago, the ones who roamed the earthen realms had dangerous predators everywhere and survival was not a given.

Even now, outside of this protective bubble that we call our home, there are things possibly much bigger than us that roam, hungry and feeding on whatever is out there with them. If they were to make it through the protective shields, they would create havoc. They would be hunted down and dealt with, but in any other situations, if we weren’t as safe as we are and we were just another community trying to make the best of what we have, it is highly possible that we would lose plenty of our own in however many attempts we would go through, to deal with it.

Taking for granted that you’ll live your life until the end of all time seems like a foolish thing to do, as far as I’m concerned. I live each day to the fullest and I enjoy that day. You never know what might come your way. Perfect and safe community or otherwise.

Final Word Count: 814

You always find something to argue about. It’s not worth my time.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 32
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 787 words
 

---

I don’t remember much of my childhood. I have faint memories of a brother and yet, I’m not even sure if he was real. I believe he was. He is the reason why I landed there, at the ward. Isn’t he? I have memories of being very up high—at least as far as my child’s mind remembers—and I remember falling. I remember the terrible pain along my shoulder blades, and I remember feeling as though locked memories are unlocked.

To most, I’m sure, I am little more than a broken man, an insane one. That is where I spent my late childhood and teen years, after all. I know, in a way, that my then-belief that I was an angel was completely out there. On certain days, I still wake up with the faint notion that I have lost my wings, hence the scars on my back, but I think that most of me has come to terms with the fact that this is a delusion. Something my mind cooked up to explain the fall and the constant pain in my shoulder blades from the healing wounds. I still do believe in the potential of angels, demons, ghosts and possibly supernatural things. I don’t often talk about it, but I still do believe in it.

Of the memories that have come to the surface recently, there is one of a boy I believe to be my brother. I don’t know whether he is real or not. I state I have memories of what was before the ward, but I have no way of checking whether or not these memories are real. I don’t know that Alan ever had any access to my medical files as he was there only for art purposes, so he wouldn’t know either.

Someone had to be paying for my stay, right? Someone had to have decided that this was where I belonged and certainly, spending years in a psychiatric ward is not free, so I had to have at least a parent somewhere and if I had a parent, maybe this muddled memory of a brother is not a lie? These things are hard to focus on; they were from so long ago that none of it is clear at all.

The memory seems to place me at an age where I was old enough to have conversations though they weren’t very clear conversations from what the memory seems to state. Even back then, I wasn’t a very wordy child. My maybe-brother, on the other hand, is a chatterbox in that memory. He talks and talks and talks but none of what he says seems to matter much.

The one thing that I do remember from this maybe-memory, is that, at one point, somewhere in the midst of all the talking he’s doing, he turns to me, huffing and pouting and complains that I always interrupt him when he’s talking. He tells me that I’m always finding something to argue about and that he doesn’t like it and doesn’t make him want to keep on talking to me.

This, of course, baffles me, as through the whole scene that had just happened, I hadn’t even said a single word to him. I don’t know if maybe I was different as a child, before the accident. Was I a chatterbox that never could shut up or is my mind fractured to the point of not even being able to tell that maybe the memories were switched around and that the complaining words should have come from the mouth of the quiet one?

I am more than aware that there isn’t much I can do about the whole thing. Whether it is a proper memory or something my subconscious has decided to make up, I know that it is only there to confuse me and draw me back into my quiet, lost-in-thought self and I try hard to not fall into the pit. It isn’t that I like talking to others much, but I have come to dislike getting lost in my own thoughts and completely losing track of time. It has taken more years to make it as far as I am, and it isn’t very far at all.

I don’t want to go back to how I was before. I don’t need to be that broken young soul. I don’t want to start talking to everyone, but I want to at least be able to focus on what surrounds me whenever I want to and not only when my mind decides that it’s the best way to go about things. I know that I will never be in perfect control, but some amount of control is better than none at all.

Why do I need to be the one to apologize? It was your idea!

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Angel – Arch Angel Gabriel
Age: 91, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 752 words
 

---

There are soapsuds everywhere and I wonder who will cave in first. It feels so rare that I let go in such a way. It isn’t as though I am stuck up and I refuse to have fun but there still are certain limits to that which I tend to allow myself to try. Once in a blue moon, I will seek out Seraphiel or he will be the one to seek me out and we will playfully sneak away like naughty children planning on terrorizing our parents. Though that truly has nothing to do with how things happen, of course.

Normally we take trips out to areas that remind us somewhat of what home used to be like or we go for long flights to stretch out our wings. It feels good to be able to do so in a way where we both leave all behind, coming back to the world as we know it long hours later, well-worn, and exhausted. We need these escapades, I believe.

This last outing, though, I don’t know whose idea it was though I likely would playfully blame him while he would blame me for it. I’m not even sure how the paint came to be added into this not-so-strange grooming session we had. It might sound like an odd thing but, trust me, wings and feathers do get dirty over time and a simple shower is not always often enough. There needs to be care put into the washing of these and once a week or so, I steal Alan away from whatever he’s doing, and I head to the bathroom for a long, long time spent in our shower.

But again, once or twice a year, I do get together with Seraphiel and we find ourselves a good natural spot and we help one another out with a very thorough feather scrubbing. Usually, we’ll use the means that nature has offered us as cleaning agents and it does the job just perfectly fine but this time around, there was soap involved.

Soap.

I tend to bring out the soap for the shower, a special one that does sud up quite nicely but, on that same note, washes out very easily because drying soap between feathers is an unpleasant sensation. I think that, in this case, the so-called soap was a natural option that tends to be found near the area where we were at but neither one of us was expecting it to sud up quite as much as it did.

He’s still giving me side glances, the look on his face says it all, this was my idea, I should apologize for the mess we’ve made but there is a quirk to his lips that make it clear he’s fighting off a grin. I know I’m giving him these exact same glances because we both went for the soap, we both used it liberally and, well, the result is as it is now.

I know that the little lake at the base of the short waterfall will clear up of the suds since they are of natural ingredients, but it still looks like such a mess at this point, it looks like someone put dish soap in a fountain and the thought makes me shake my head a little, I have such a hard time understanding why anyone would do that and I’ve seen it happen a few times.

Not exactly helpful to the cause is the fact that his wings and mine still have some suds caught between the feathers but the general area near the waterfall’s end where it lands into the lake is pretty much frothing. I don’t really care for the idea of leaving this place with soap still in places, it will dry out uncomfortably but there is little we can do but wait it out.

Wait it out or just maybe try to get some of the densely packed suds out of the way while we finish rinsing up. Either option would possibly work but I think we’ll have to wait until one of us caves in. We’re both trying so hard not to laugh just now and the fact that the suds are still piling up is only adding to the situation. There’s not much we can do though I think I’ll just try to waddle back in and scoop some of the suds away, it might help a little. I don’t want to go home still with soap in places there shouldn’t be any.

You saved me. Let me repay you somehow. How do you feel about origami?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 20
Current residence: New York City, New York
Final Word Count: 789 words
 

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I didn’t think I’d last working as a cashier at the store but I’m still there. It’s been six months and I’m still here and people actually seem to mostly accept me as I am; or, well, I guess I should say that the other cashiers have taken well to me but the teams that I have very few interactions with seem to just not care and they avoid me at all costs.

It was frustrating at first; I’d be heading into the little room where we all can have our breaks and our lunches, and I’d get these almost hostile looks from some of them. I’ve learned to ignore them, and I even made a friend from someone else on my team at the registers. Most of the cashiers are nice if a little aloof but Alice has turned out to be a gentle and patient soul and whenever I have an issue and she’s not far from me, she comes to help me. Not that I’ve had much need for help past the second month of my stay here.

As I understand it, though, Alice isn’t so much a cashier as she’s like, one step above me in the hierarchy. She keeps an eye on the others and checks in whenever there might be a need for any reason. She’s nice with everyone but does offer a bit of tough love for the ones that seem to need it.

I remember, perhaps on my second or third week here, I’d found a small spot to settle during my lunch hour because the other teams were scattered over the rest of the table, making it impossible to settle anywhere if you weren’t part of the cliques and as Alice came into the room, she rolled her eyes at the scene—at me, I thought—and came my way. She just gave me this smile of hers that lets you know that everything is going to be all right and she told me to come along, she had the perfect spot.

That perfect spot so happened to be a picnic table they have at the back of the building for employees to use. I didn’t even know it was there.

I think that this was the first time that we’d ever actually sat down together to talk. I wasn’t really sure at first, I mean, I don’t exactly have a great history with being able to spend time around anyone, so I didn’t really know how to act.

In a way, I didn’t really need to say anything. I let her do most of the talking and it was fine.

She told me that it didn’t matter what others thought, whatever had happened in my life, it was just one of these things and people were judgmental, I couldn’t let them get to me. After that, she mostly just sort of seemed to get lost in her own memories, telling me about how Ross—the store manager—had taken in her, much in the way they had me. How she’d had issues at home, and she just was trying to get away. Her whole life was in a bad place back then and Ross just sort of sat her down the way she was doing with me now and they talked.

Eventually, Alice said that Ross had more or less saved her and just out of the blue, feeling as though she had little else to offer, she actually offered to teach him how to do origami. It was that one thing that had been her ‘escape’ from everything back there and she still remembers the way his eyes had lit up.

She laughed at that point, she laughed so hard she almost had tears streaming down her face and I just waited for her to calm down, curious as to why and, eventually, she told me that no amount of trying made it work, Ross just couldn’t fold anything to save his life and even his paper airplanes were terrible. It did make me smile a little.

In a way, I guess you could say that it reminded me that not everyone out there is perfect. We all have our issues, and we all have our own ways of coping with these issues. That the other teams still give me the cold shoulder now isn’t something I pay much attention to anymore and while the job has its stressful moments, at this point, most of the clients have been pretty nice. One did bring me to tears once, but they came around to apologize a day or so later. I hadn’t expected that.

So really, this job might not be perfect but it’s something I can do.

Not all of us are talented at, well, whatever you were just mocking me for. I wasn’t really listening.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 723 words
 

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I don’t like feeling useless, and yet, since I’ve graduated, this feeling has been a near-constant in my life. It’s not as though they’ve been pushing me to get a job; they know how broken my brain can get and there are scars in there that might never heal after the hell my mother put me through. I still miss my brother and on some days, the ache is so fierce that I find myself actually unable to get out of bed.

That only has started once I found myself without any schooling to focus on. I feel as though I have nothing to turn my attention to and it gives my mind so much time to think about everything that has ever happened in my life that there are days that feel like they might never end.

I don’t have any real talent, I can’t do anything with art the way Alan does; I’m not very good in the kitchen and you could even say I’m almost a disaster depending on what’s being prepared; I have tried making things with my hands and that didn’t end up very well for me. I don’t have any talent. I just don’t.

That particular thought left my heart feeling just so heavy when I finally came to that realization. I’m not even very good when it comes to computers that I’ve had to ask for help in getting my pathetic résumé all done up. There’s nothing on there so I don’t understand why I need one.

At the start of summer last year, I’ve tried and searched for any place that might hire me but I guess that my face and my rather unique name precede me; for the most part, these people only have half the story and believe that I’m a recovering drug addict and refuse to hire me. What they don’t know is that I wasn’t using these drugs; my mother was using me for a guinea pig and I could only suffer through it all. I have no addictions, only some lasting side effects that even linger a bit to this day but I do what I can and ignore them as much as possible when I feel them crop up.

It was only about a week ago that I was finally called back for a second interview for a small cashier job at a retail store. Now, I know the potential stress levels attached to the job but I’m tired of feeling useless and I need to find something to do with my life. I can’t let Alan do all the work, it’s just not right.

So I went back and it was a bit like a group thing but, as it turned out, it wasn’t even so much a second interview as a final meeting for them to finish noting things in. We were told about the store in general; we were told what would be expected of each of us, we were even given a tour, shown the areas we’d be expected to work in and all. It was meant to take most of the day. That’s what had confused me when I’d first gotten the call but I wanted this job so I’d gone with the idea.

When we all took a break for lunch, the other four new hires huddled up together as though they all knew one another and I could only watch from afar but I guess that it’s all right; that’s the story of my life. Eventually, one of them started laughing hard and telling another in the group that not all of them were talented at, well, whatever the mocking had been about, they hadn’t been paying attention. None of them turned to look at me on that subject; none of them paid me any mind.

In a way, I think it’s fine. From what I understood, I was the only cashier in this small group, three of the four hires would be working with the customers on the floor and the third would be working in the back. It was fine. I was fine.

I had a job and I was meant to start a week later and I know it’s going to be different from anything and everything I’ve ever known but that’s okay, I’ll adapt. I have to.

Go, go! Now’s our chance to leave them here.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Angel – Arch Angel Gabriel
Age: 90, physically about 27
Final Word Count: 758 words
 

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I have seen more than my share of shenanigans, most of them coming from children who didn’t know any better, of course. Was some of that behaviour from my own flesh and blood? Not half as much as I perhaps was expecting. Our little brood never caused much of a stir, at least, nothing worse than any others out there and most of my memories of shenanigans seem to come from what I saw of other families or, as it is, memories of my time up there.

Memories of my past life as it happened up there still come and go. I don’t have much control over them and I am more than aware that it could be worse than it really is. All in all, I’m more than a little glad that most of the memories that do surface have little to do with the war that I knew happened. The war that came so long ago. The war from another life. I still shudder to think of that war, though my memories of it are far and few. Seraphiel’s own memories of that time have trickled back slowly, as he’s told me, and he still stands strong against them. The scar on his back has healed better over time but I doubt it will ever truly be gone.

Some of the memories I see—mostly in my dreams—baffle me. Others often leave me with an amused smile playing over my lips and such is the case of the memory that has replayed itself through my dreams the night before.

The children that were in this dream-memory were some of the orphans that had come to us after a battle that had seen many casualties; those who believed that heaven was a place of perfection were wrong. There were battles and fights, there were smaller wars being fought, there were deaths.

Of course, when they first come to us, they are uncertain, their eyes are the size of saucers, they want their parents back but we cannot bring them back, their parents are gone. It is possible they will be reborn but it is impossible to know when, or even where. It hadn’t been unheard of that someone could be reborn as a mortal, or as part of our angelic group but only years down the road—which made us believe they might have been reborn to the human realm as well for a brief stint as was anyway.

Over time, these children settled into a routine, they began smiling again, their eyes brightened up once more and they continued on with their lives. They didn’t forget their parents, of course not, but they moved on. They played games together, the older ones often helping to look after the younger ones but, now and again, these older ones often tried to slip away from their responsibilities and this dream-memory was one of them. There was a group of five, three slightly older ones—late teens—and the two were possibly no older than nine or ten.

I remember almost vividly this scene, where the teens were huddled together, they were looking all around them in furtive glances and it was clear they were preparing on leaving the younger two behind if they could, to go do who knew what. I wasn’t far, but I wasn’t visible to them at this point. They didn’t do these things because they were mean, I can understand that teenagers would rather not be ‘saddled’ with younger children so they could have fun elsewhere.

I still can see when they’d made their decision to spring off while the youngest two were busy playing at the little park where they’d all been standing. I saw all three of them running off, laughing brightly, wind in their hair and the two children blissfully unaware. It wasn’t as though this place was dangerous and the kids were going to be fine but if they’d had to wander off and get lost, it would have been troublesome.

I recall waiting almost ten minutes before I settled on a bench, I relaxed. I watched the children and, when they were ready to go, we left.

The teens looked for them when they came back and I let them search. It was a lesson for them to learn. After a couple of hours, they came back to their housing to find the pair nestled for a nap. I don’t really remember what came after this situation but it’s quite all right, it’s in another life.

There is no amount of money you can offer me to get in that water.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 766 words
 

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People are still strange, and coming from someone who knows he isn’t like other people, I suppose that says something. During my stay at the psychiatric hospital, though I rarely was anywhere outside of my own head, I came across a lot of different people. Some were genuinely there to get better but others were there because it was clear that they never would fit in with society.

Ever since the incident with the strange man, I haven’t spent a lot of time alone though that’s not been such a bad thing. I was unable to actually really sleep comfortably for the longest of times, not even when I huddled as close as I could to Alan, despite the sticky humidity that some of the nights have brought to us. Most of the time, the nights are actually relatively comfortable, they’re just warm enough with a slight breeze, not too humid. On some of them, it even seems necessary to have a slight blanket because there’s even a bit of a chill that settles.

There is a memory that has surfaced recently but the settings are foreign to me. I don’t know if it’s from another potential life, I don’t know if it’s something I’ve seen here, I don’t know if it’s just my mind conjuring up memories that aren’t even real, but it’s strange, really.

The memory starts with a pool of dark water; I don’t know how I can tell that it really is water but my mind supplies me that it is, no matter that it looks nearly black. Near the water, a boy and a girl stand—I suppose it might be unfair to call them that as they look to be teenagers but the statement remains. They’re wearing shorts and t-shirts, the logos on the shirt don’t look familiar to me but there’s so much I’m not familiar with that this isn’t really surprising, not really. It’s hard to tell the time of the day because there is jungle everywhere around them, jungle not unlike the one that grows everywhere in this city now. Still, there clearly is light but is that light from the memory or light from their surroundings, I don’t know.

The girl gives the boy a little shove closer to the water and he stumbles, looking back to her, his eyes are wide and terrified as he takes back a step to get away from the water. I wonder how deep it is. It’s so dark that it’s impossible to tell, but just the same, I know that it could be crystal clear and the depth still could be hard to discern unless it was just a few inches deep.

The girl quirks a brow, giving the boy a smirk, she’s taunting him, clearly. He rolls his eyes and, I hadn’t heard them speak yet, as though the whole scene had been muted, he tells her that there was no amount of money she could offer him to get into that water. Maybe that’s why my mind supplies me with the fact that this is water, no matter that it really does look black.

She laughs, her sound is clear and crystalline but there’s an edge to it, an edge of something I can’t place and it makes shivers course down my spine, I don’t like it.

When the boy turns back to the water, it is with a shiver of his own but then, almost in slow motion, I see her move, I see her place her hands on his back and I see her shove. Not just a small shove like the first one she did, no, this one is meant to make him tip over. At first, I figure that he’ll just stumble again and he does, but the momentum is such that he does tip over.

Still in slow motion, his arms flail on either side of him, as though trying to keep him standing but the motion is useless and he falls over. The scene is muted again from this point on because the boy falls into the black water but his mouth opens in a scream that I can’t hear, his eyes bulge as the water bubbles and within moments, either he’s gone under or the water has eaten him up because there’s no sign of him anymore. The harsh bubbling has faded and there is nothing left.

Nothing but the girl who looks smug as, with a small knife, she notches a mark on a tree and turns to leave.

I don’t understand these images and they frighten me.

I never expected to be left standing there in front of all those people.

 
Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Birds of a Feather
Characters: Kyioshi Preadon
Race: Human
Age: 18
Final Word Count: 617 words
 

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Some times, in my dreams, I still go to school, I still am part of the populace of teens stuck in an endless loop of learning until they’re old enough to decide if they want to continue on or not; until they are old enough to make up their mind about their future. Of course, those decisions are not always our best ones but most of us learn from these mistakes.

One of the dreams I’ve had a few times would put me on that podium thing, standing in front of all of the other students, about to be handed what, a rolled piece of paper that stated I’d survived this crazy jungle? I guess that’s what it is. I don’t really understand graduation things but I suppose that for a lot of students, this is the proof that they’ve made it this far and they want the world to know it.

Most of the time, in those dreams, I just walk up there, take what’s mine and walk back down with little fanfare or anything else. Once or twice, however, I would be walking up there, staring at my feet as I took the few steps up and suddenly, as I’d look up, I’d be on my own up there, no one else left standing, as it were.

I would turn my gaze back towards the front where everyone else was sitting and there would be a lot more people staring up at me than there had been at the beginning, a whole huge group that had easily tripled in size. I was alone, left standing in front of all of these people and I didn’t know what to do.

It’s at that point that the dream starts to differ a little from one time to the next. In one version of the dream, people start pointing fingers and jeering, something I’ve had to deal with while I was still going to school and hadn’t been pulled out for home-schooling yet. In another version, they just stare like mindless automatons, their eyes glued to my every motion.

Waking up tends to happen a few minutes—at least in dream time—after I’ve come up on the stage. There’s no jerking awake for me, I just sort of open my eyes and stare into the darkness of the bedroom. I give reality a few minutes to wash over me, to bring me back into the real world before I roll over, nestle some more and let myself drift back to sleep.

I suppose it’s a good thing that these dreams don’t affect me that much. There used to be dreams that would keep me awake once I’d pull myself free of them but these school-related ones never stay with me very long and I don’t remember that I ever go back into those very same dreams a second time after drifting off again.

A small mercy if anyone might ask me. I’ll be done with schooling in just a couple of weeks more at this point. I don’t really know about what I might do after that, though. There are not a lot of things I’m good at. Alan is artful, everything he draws makes me wish I had talent for something but I just feel like I don’t. I feel like I just spent so many years under the hold of the pills my mother shoved down my throat while I was her guinea pig that my life’s path was already selected for me long before I could decide.

So I might just mostly try to find a small job somewhere once I graduate. I have to be good at something, I have to.