A promise is worth that much to you? That’s… that’s almost nothing.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: November 18, 2023

Character: Laura Evans
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

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We’ve had our first murder attempt—at least, that I’m aware of—and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I was under no delusion whatsoever that this place was perfect. I’ve known from the get-go that there was nothing perfect about this place. We live in harmony most of the time, but we’re still a group of long-term survivors who are now living their lives to the best they can with what the world has to offer.

Of those survivors, mindsets might differ from one to the other. None of us were raised the same way. None of us grew up in the same suburbs, cities, or metropolises. We’re all different people with different ways of looking at the world. Of all those ways, I think that most of us understand that, at this point, our lives are meant to be lived to the very best of our abilities with what we have. At least, I know that nearly everyone I’ve worked with who is on security detail understands that the life we have now is meant to be cherished and protected at all costs.

It doesn’t matter if the person you’re seeing does you dirty and decides to break your heart, you’ll have to forget and move on. No one’s asking you to forgive, though forgiving would work best for everyone, but really, moving on and leaving it all behind is your best bet, at this point.

I’m not the one who was first on the scene, but I came in as backup since we were closest. It was hard to wrap my mind around what was right there in front of my face, though. A younger woman—to me, she seemed younger but age has become oddly suggestive over the last few years, it seems—was being held back by a man who looked to be about her age and, on the ground, not very far from them, and bleeding in a way that was worrisome, a slightly older woman—a few years at most—whose hand was clamped tight near her neck.

It didn’t take very long for the wounded woman to be brought back to the bunker—and I’ve heard that she’s recovering great—and for the screaming woman to be taken into one of the cell-like areas for figuring out. I don’t want to think of it as questioning; she didn’t even really seem sound of mind. When I first stepped up, she was screaming about how worth near-to-nothing the other woman’s promises were. There was a lot more ranting and screaming than that, but the gist of the story that I did get is that.

I call this a murder attempt to try and just categorize the whole thing so I can eventually just put it away in a memory box and forget about it. I feel like the younger of the two women who stabbed the other one—with a very, very sharp rock—was attempting exactly that. She was trying to off the other woman. She might not have been in her right mind, but the fact that the rock had been carefully sharpened the way it had been, and that she’d somehow aimed so close to that one vital spot that would have had the other woman bleed out before any help could have gotten to her is worrisome.

I think that if it had just been a case of self-defence, or possibly just a somewhat unhinged woman attacking another out of the blue, it wouldn’t have been quite as bad? One way or another, this isn’t a good thing. I haven’t really checked in with the younger of the two women, nor the man, but I can only imagine that she was seen, and probably still is being seen, by a head doc at this point. We don’t have a whole lot of those left in the world, but we do have them, just as we have a handful of medical doctors too.

In a way, I think that I’m slightly in shock over the whole thing because I never expected it to happen. I wanted to see the positive side of our world as it would make the most sense. I wanted everyone to at least know better and to be able to comprehend that murder in any way, shape or form, is just not okay. There aren’t that many of us—not when you think about the world as a whole—and losing an inhabitant to a death like this makes no sense.

I know that death can happen in a lot of shapes and forms but this? This particular way? I’d like for it to be left far, far behind, lost, buried way deep beneath all the snow that changed our lives forever. I guess I was hoping for too much in the end.

Final Word Count: 808

Every dream I have becomes a reality and it’s becoming somewhat of a problem.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Laura Evans
Race: Human
Age: 33
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 908 words
 

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I’m more than aware that not everyone took well to the world ending. With that in mind, I’m also aware that it is possible that not everyone who did survive was sane of mind, to begin with. For the most part, as I look back to how things have been going since the snow took hold—an event that has plenty different names, at this point, but that no one seems interested in settling down for just the one single name—things haven’t honestly been so bad.

There has been the now-and-again odd one who would crop up, confuse everyone by their erratic behaviour and then they’d be gone again. I think most of us expect that kind of thing at this point. It was part of our lives before and even now, it seems to not have changed. While I was in the military—with my very professional and by-the-book haircut (who am I kidding??)—we still saw our fair share of these people. Even during training, it seemed inevitable, there was always the one that somehow slipped through.

It was worse while we were deployed, I feel like. That might just be because I was in a foreign place, and nothing felt quite right, though. I’m not sure about that one. It was a decade ago at this point, so I don’t think I want to spend too much time on that. It was a personal choice to enroll, one my parents had little care for, but I needed it in my life.

Despite the missing finger—something I know I could have asked the good doctor for help with as I’ve seen the miracles she’s performed for some of the others—I still help with what more or less amounts to security detail anymore. It still is who I am, in a way. It gives me a purpose and it keeps me moving. I don’t like being still for too long periods of time and that might honestly be one of the reasons why I enrolled in the first place. Anyway.

While doing one of the outside perimeter runs—always in pairs, though my pair of the day was an idiot more intent on flirting than not—we came upon one of the wanderers. I don’t know that I’m the only one that uses the term for these people. They’re the ones who clearly haven’t settled yet. The hub is big enough to house everyone if they were all to come back. I have a fair idea as to the number of people there were in the bunker and the buildings around the hub were plentiful enough, even without the use of the floors above a certain height due to lack of properly running elevators, to house everyone.

From what I hear of the others, there likely still are a good number of people still in other settlements. There are a good few who come back now and again, as though drawn back either by the rumours of what the hub has to offer or simply because they needed to move. The wanderers are the ones that just move from one place to the other, a bit like homeless folks would before. The main difference being that with money just not being a thing, homelessness is a personal choice at this point, not something you have to live with. If you really want a roof over your head, there are plenty.

This particular wanderer, she looked all right. She looked healthy, she looked well fed. She looked and smelled clean, too. It was just the camping backpack on her back that made me pin her as a wanderer. No one really wanders with something that big on their back anymore, not unless they’re going places. We didn’t approach her, not really. She came up to us as we were turning to follow the partial path.

I’d pegged her as being healthy in all senses of the terms, but once she was close enough to us to almost step in our way, I saw the wide-eyed look in her eyes that I saw far more often with the snow. It was in the eyes of the little group we were travelling with as we were trying to make it to the bunker. It was a little crazed but maybe not over the top.

Her voice was soft and raspy as she told us that she couldn’t fall asleep. She asked us if we had anything that would keep her awake. I did ask her why she couldn’t sleep, and she said that all of her dreams became reality. She didn’t elaborate. She only claimed that every dream she had became a reality and that it was becoming something of a problem.

I don’t know whether or not I believe in people being gifted. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts and other things like that either. The idea that someone might be able to dream things into reality falls into an area that is very grey for me, and I don’t dwell on it. I didn’t want any more details, and thankfully my partner for the day didn’t seem interested in flirting with the potentially unhinged one. We both told her that we sadly had nothing for her to keep her awake and we walked away.

Thankfully, I suppose, she didn’t follow us. She only started walking in the opposite direction, mumbling to herself.

You should look more impressed by my magic. I don’t use it for just anyone, you know!

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Laura Evans
Race: Human
Age: 33
Final Word Count: 747 words
 

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Children are the future. That’s something that my parents liked repeating a lot while I was growing up. Of course, that was while they were trying to plan out the whole of my life to their liking, married young, handsome husband, along with three or four kids—when I’d been their only child and when I asked them about it while in my teens, they said they’d never wanted more than just me. That seemed a bit of a hypocrite move on their part, honestly.

Of course, all of their plans went off to the wayside when I enrolled. That clearly wasn’t something they’d planned for but, for as tomboy as I’d ever been, they should have seen it coming. Not that I wouldn’t have been happy to settle down with a man and maybe have kids, but I needed to enroll, it was part of what made me come alive.

Looking back now, I think my being enrolled is possibly the only thing that saved my life. I travelled a lot due to things and had I never did what I wanted to and simply followed their life plan for me, I would be dead now. I’d be in the middle of another state, lost somewhere, possibly buried under feet and feet of snow. I imagine that maybe other small pockets of survivors have made it all over the states but I’m not holding my breath on them ever really making it this far.

Kids now, I suppose you really could say they’re our future. Though we can’t just wait on them to pick up the slack. We have to make sure there is a future to be had. It was hard at first, we were surviving more than living but now, well now I’d like to think we’re living. We’re not quite thriving but we’re doing well for ourselves and kids can have a mostly normal life. At least, normal by the standards of whatever it means to be alive now.

I found a little girl—I don’t know that she could have been much older than eight or nine, I don’t really know where her parents had been—who had been sitting near one of the shallow pools. She’d been playing with hand-made toys, little dolls that someone had lovingly carved out of wood. They were pretty. I stayed a few steps away, not really wanting to bother her since she seemed quite lost in her game. It gave me time to give her surroundings a long look, I’d been hoping to find an adult nearby but there was none.

I heard her exclaim—most likely to her dolls, I assume—that they should have looked more impressed by her magic. She didn’t use it for just anyone, after all! It made me smile. It reminded me of Felicia a little. We might not have been best of friends and she might have turned into a flat-out bitch when we entered our teens but she still had been something of a friend while growing up.

I watched that little girl for a while more. She didn’t seem lost; she didn’t seem hurt; she just looked like she’d settled there and was playing peacefully. It was tempting to ask her if an adult knew where she was—I learned quickly that people have lost most of their family so to assume that a child of her age could have potentially come in with someone else, though she likely had been born after the snow—but I refrained.

In the long run, I think I mostly just ended up taking note of where she was and reminded myself to check in on her a few hours later, and a few hours after that. I did check a couple of hours later and she still was very peacefully playing there. It was as I was finally getting ready to approach her that she got to her feet, saw me and gave me this sunny smile. She then skipped on down the path and I saw her enter one of the nearby buildings. I suppose that is that. I haven’t really seen her since but that’s okay.

We also haven’t really heard anyone that seemed to be looking for her so, in the long run; I think it’s all right. She didn’t need saving or helping, so I let it be. It’s not always easy but it’s a matter of using your logic every so often.

Who are we ignoring?

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Laura Evans
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 554 words
 

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I was a really big tomboy when I was younger. I liked to play ‘boy’ games and I always would huff and pout when my mother tried to make me play with dolls. I would take them from her but more often than not, these dolls ended up being soldiers and medics and all sorts of ‘ungirly’ things and they’d end up as filthy as I was.

The couple who lived next door was good friends with my parents. They’d had had a daughter just a few weeks before I was born and they were dead set on making sure we grew up to be the best of friends. The issue that cropped up with that is the fact that Felicia was my polar opposite. Felicia was as girly as they came. She liked to wear princess dresses and make-up and play with dolls and… well it was doomed from the beginning but I tried, oh did I ever try.

Felicia tolerated me most of the time. When our parents would set us up on play dates, we’d mostly end up playing on our own side of things with our own toys but our parents just didn’t seem to see that when it happened. Not that I cared, I could play with my toys no matter where I was, in the end.

When we were old enough for school, we mostly went our own way. Felicia fit right in with the rest of the girly girls and I was somewhere stuck in the middle because I still was a girl and the boys didn’t want me in their ‘games’ and there just seemed to be nobody else. I became lost in my own little world more often than not.

High school proved something else entirely. When Felicia and her gang of bitches weren’t playing ‘pick a name in the hat to decide who we pick on’, they were doing the same but the name they plucked from their little bowl was the person they ignored and those days, oh man those days were heavenly.

On one of the days when I knew I was set to be on their ignore list, however, things changed. I might have been a tomboy all of my life but it didn’t mean I had issues with things like the colour pink or the idea of wearing a little lip gloss now and again. Just the prior weekend, I’d gathered up all my hard-earned mowing-the-neighbours’-lawn money and I’d gone to the hairdresser. I came out of there with my hair a soft pastel pink. I think I shocked a lot of people who were already calling me a ‘butch’ behind my back—or so they thought was behind my back but they weren’t very subtle about it. I didn’t care.

Here I was, the one tomboy in our grade, and I was stepping into the school with my hair the palest shade of blooming peony possible. I loved the sight of their slack jaws. I have no words to explain how much it amused me. Not that I cared much about what they thought but it still was something to just be able to teach them a lesson, as it were. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

My hair’s been pink ever since.

I got lost in the clouds, literally.

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Laura Evans
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 578 words

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My first air-drop was done during seriously poor weather. We lost two men from our twenty-something drop team due to the thick cloud cover and poor coordination. They dropped through the clouds, lost track of the markers on everyone else, got pushed way off course by the heavy wind and before they knew it, they were too close to the side of the mountain and no amount of getting their chutes out was enough to save their lives, both of them smashed into the side of the mountain at full speed. It was gory. I almost hit that mountain myself but I’d been just far enough that I was able to get away. I scraped along, really and dislocated a shoulder but I still made it to our rendezvous point mostly in one piece.

You would think that after an experience like that, I wouldn’t be so fond of airdrops or clouds but I still love both. Not that I’ve gotten many more airdrops after that first one; my last one happened just a few weeks before the snow started falling. I know they almost wanted to try and drop us one last time during that storm, so we’d be at the core of it, where the bunker was, but not a single plane could take off in that zero visibility so we walked. I lost my finger on that walk but now it’s back and it’s still an odd sensation. I can’t begin to explain how thankful I am. I’d learned to work without my pinkie but it’s part of who I am and I felt incomplete without it. I’m weird, I know.

Now clouds, we still have plenty of those, most of the time they’re the thick, fluffy type but now and again they’re closer to the storm clouds of before. We do get a few storms but nothing half as bad as things used to be and very much so no snow. The only way to get anywhere near the clouds is to climb the now-dormant volcano that’s a few miles out of the city border and I’ve done it a few times. It’s a long hike, I usually need to be out there for a couple of days to make it up there and back down. It’s nowhere near within reach of the clouds but it’s as close as I can get to them. I don’t climb often and I never climb alone but I love spending time up here, even if a few people think I’m crazy for getting so close to the volcano’s mouth.

I’m fine with being thought of as crazy, I don’t need these people to like me. I like myself just fine and Tyr seems to like me and my crazy just fine, so why would I worry about anything else? I miss the clouds, even though they nearly took my life the first time I dropped through them. I suppose that just maybe I like the sense of thrill that comes from being air-dropped or just being unable to see where I’m going for a little while, I can’t explain it. I don’t want to explain it. I can find other things to get my blood pumping and the one means that’s closest to me seems more than willing to do that for me. This kind of exercise to get my blood pumping leaves me—us both—sweaty, sated messes and there’s nothing better.