Weren’t you just saying you would never do that again and yet here you are, doing exactly that?

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: December 11, 2022

Character: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

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For a bare, short little while, I thought the woman had finally gotten the hint. Considering how long it’s been since she started the whole thing and how tight, her weird disillusion is clinging to her, I never thought she’d get it. No amount of my trying to get the point across to her or even Max doing his best with it, she wouldn’t let it go.

For almost two moons now—it’s so weird to be keeping track of things this way but it works well at this point for me—she’d not spoken a single word to me. We’ve crossed paths very often; honestly, more often than we usually did and that was one of the first reasons why I felt there was something wrong with the whole thing. I just don’t know what crossed her little bird-brain but one morning, I woke up and she crossed my paths almost five times just on that day. At most, I would see her once, maybe twice a week. Chance encounters more than anything else but starting on that morning, it was as though she was going out of her way to cross my path.

Except that she wasn’t greeting me when she crossed my path. She did spare me a glance, I could tell that much because I noticed her walk by me the second time and I watched her do it. She walked on by and stared at me through the whole, brief moment. It was as though she really was going out of her way to do this.

In a way, I felt a sort of weird relief. I didn’t have to hear her call me by that name that had nothing to do with me, but on the other hand, I now had to deal with her crossing my paths several times a day and just looking at me as though she could get some messages over to me without talking to me. It’s been a bit disquieting.

Still, I made my peace with that and I think I learned to ignore her because while I still could sort of tell that she’d been near me, I hadn’t really paid her any mind and I hadn’t had to hear that name that just wasn’t mine, no amount of her trying to convince me otherwise or not. In a way, I think I’d told myself that she’d possibly just finally understood that calling me by that name was pointless—I’d even started to no longer answer her, telling her that she had the wrong name—and that doing that was pointless.

Well, two mornings ago, after a full day of not actually seeing her—I can’t even put into words how good that day felt—we were right back to square one. We crossed paths around mid-afternoon, she called me by that name I think I’d partially forgotten and while it was nearly a knee-jerk response to actually react to her in any way, shape or form, I managed to mostly just keep on walking. I might have had a twitch of the shoulder and fingers, I know I bit my tongue but I kept on walking.

All the while, even as I remember turning a corner, in my brain there was a mantra reminding myself to keep my mouth shut and at the same time, a little voice in the back just sighing and frustrated because there she was at it again. Doing exactly the opposite of the last two moons. I really don’t know what’s worse. Seeing her in the corner of my eyes too many times a day or having to ignore her the once or twice a week she’s crossing my path and calling me by a name that doesn’t mean anything to me.

I refuse to break. I can’t. I’m seriously not about to do anything stupid but at this point, I’m to the point of actually finding one of the head docs to talk this issue over with. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the one who needs therapy in any way. It’s not my name. It’s not me. I’m not living in some disillusions. But when someone you see somewhat often—once or twice a week is better than several times a day, but still—is constantly repeating to you a name that isn’t yours, it starts to just sort of find a place in your very soul. I don’t want that.

I hate that whenever I hear that name, it catches my attention. It shouldn’t. I mean hell, back before the world ended and I did what I did for a living, all the little stage names—not that they were uttered often—that I had to deal with for the works in progress, they didn’t leave that much of a lasting mark on me, I recall having to be reminded of what the name was now and again because I’d completely forget it.

So yeah, I’m gonna have to do something about this at this point. I should have done it before but I’m a stubborn idiot.

Final Word Count: 849

I know you’re trying to hide it, but because you’re being so suspicious, it just makes it more obvious.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 34
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 778 words
 

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The woman is still at it. I just can’t believe it. I’ve even asked Max to see if he couldn’t do something about it because I still can’t bring myself to touch her for fear of breaking her to pieces since she’s so small and slight. Even with the talks he’s had with her, she still somehow seems to believe that I’m some dude she knows from who knows where.

That one part of all this that might be funny is that she doesn’t even try to spend any extra time with me, she doesn’t ask me any personal questions. Every time she sees me, she greets me with that wrong name, laughs when I tell her that’s not my name, and that’s the end of that. I’m well aware that the best option would be to just ignore her but at this point, I feel almost like Pavlov’s dog. I’m so damned used to hearing her call out that name that whenever I hear it, I react to it. I wish I didn’t.

Near the beginning, when I tried to explain to her that she had the wrong guy, or at the very least she had the wrong name, she told me that I was being silly. She said that she knew I was trying to hide my past—which, while not fully wrong, still not right—but that somehow, I was being suspicious, and it was why it was just so obvious and that it was why she was calling me by my real name. She said that all I had to do was let it go and everything bad would finally go away and I would remember myself.

Lady, I am who I am, and you can’t change that. No amount of you calling me by any other name—for longer than you should—is going to change that. I’m not trying to hide anything, I’m not acting suspiciously and I’m certainly not making it obvious to everyone around that I’m someone I’m not. Seriously. It’s been going on so long that I think that if I didn’t have my head on straight, she might have started to get me questioning myself. I know who I am.

My own twin can vouch for me, even if we spent years apart. We’re still brothers and that particular little bit is certainly not going to change. We’re flesh and blood, you don’t change that. You can get away from it all you want, but we’re still twins and there are days when he knows old me better than I might have known myself.

Not that I’ve asked Randall to be part of this whole mess. I know how he is, I know how there are days when he’s still struggling a little with getting used to the touch of others. I wish I could take those memories away from him. We lived such different lives. I wish I could take the abuse he’s suffered away from him. Seeing him flinch when others come too close to him just breaks my heart.

Though I have no disillusion about the fact that if I’d been around, things would have been different. There are such high chances that even if I’d been around, he would have been put behind bars, that I know not to believe what my heart would like to, in thinking that I could have kept him from the horrors he’s lived through, in prison.

These are things of the past, in the end. They’re things that we’re leaving behind as best as we can, they’re things that are best left behind. Those things? Now those things are things worth hiding. They’re things to bury so deep that you don’t have a choice but to let it go. Whatever this woman thinks she knows about me? That’s something else entirely and one day, she’ll just have to let it go. I’m not moving because of her. It’s bad enough that we’ve changed our routine a little to accommodate her being around so that we don’t see her half as often as we used to.

At some point, something will have to give. I’m just not sure what that something is, but I really don’t want to move. I don’t want to have to change my life any more than I already have. I’m pretty sure that if I were to direct her to one of the rare head-folks we still have, she’d probably just feed them some bullshit story and I don’t have time for that. I’m just, I’m at a bit of a loss right now and it’s not a feeling I’m all that comfortable with.

You keep repeating that name as though it’s supposed to mean something to me.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 32
Final Word Count: 700 words
 

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It’s almost been a decade. How has it already been this long?

Snow, more snow, so much snow and then, bunker. Underground, artificial lights, close quarters, though the bunker, as a whole, was huge. It still felt suffocating. Then we were back up top and things were just so different and now, here we are. We’re not just surviving, we’re living a pretty good life, we’re strong, we’re nearly thriving, I’d say. We have food, we have a few good heads of cattle—don’t ask me where they came from or how they survived the snow—we have… well, I believe we’re doing pretty well for ourselves.

As far as living out here is concerned, I’d like to think that I’ve mostly kept a low profile—that being, I haven’t made any shows of pointing at myself and going ‘hey, I’m that one guy’, and I’ve just done what I could to help us survive as a whole. It was a major change to my life before but, on the same note, I think I needed that change. My life had been something else entirely and I was actually pretty happy to leave it behind.

I’d like to think that I have a pretty unique face. Between the colour of my hair and my general build and features, I’d never encountered anyone who even really looked much of anything like me—not even my twin brother does—so it’s been something of a confusing time when I’ve come to realize that someone, out there, might look enough like me to confuse this one woman who has been around for a little while.

Every time she comes up to me, she greets me by a name that I don’t know, a name that has nothing to do with me, a name that doesn’t even sound remotely anything like mine and I keep on having to tell her that she’s got the wrong guy. Somehow, she keeps on repeating the name as though it’s supposed to mean something to me and it just doesn’t.

Does she somehow think she might have known me in a past life? Does she somehow believe that I’m someone she used to know but under someone else’s name? I just don’t know. If I’m something of a past ghost for her, she doesn’t seem to show it. Every time she greets me, she does so all smiles and when I tell her that it’s not my name she’s using, she just smiles and laughs as though I’ve just told her the most amusing joke ever.

It has gotten to the point where it is a little exhausting—not that much, more like a mild frustration—but if she keeps this up, I just don’t know what I’ll do. She doesn’t seem like she has any mental issues of any sort. As far as I can tell, she’s just a young woman who clearly has an issue with keeping up with my name. I mean, I know it’s a mouthful for some people but it’s not that strange of a name.

At least, I haven’t started feeling any sort of ‘displacement’ issues or anything else. I don’t think that’s the right term, though. That thing where people just constantly using the wrong name for you start to make you feel detached from yourself or something, I don’t know. All of that psychological stuff goes way over my head but on certain days, when she greets me the way she does, there’s just this weird feeling about the name and I have to shake it off. It’s minimal and it doesn’t happen often but still.

I’m somehow still going to have to find means of getting that through to her, eventually. She’s so small and dainty that I don’t even dare touch her, I’m afraid she’d break. Not that I’d beat her up or anything else, I’d just like to sort of shake sense into her, if that makes sense at all. I’ve done it to Max a few times. It’s a gentle sort of shake, meant more to startle than anything else and I usually do that playfully with him anyway and just, this woman, I don’t know.

I don’t.

Get your disgusting puns out of my house.

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 613 words
 

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At times, I wish I could say that my childhood was a really difficult one, just so that I wouldn’t have to recall that I’m the only one who was relatively lucky. Randall didn’t have my luck, my own twin brother who landed in prison for something he didn’t do. It still makes me wish I’d seen it. It makes me wish that I hadn’t been so self-centred as to not realize that we were growing apart and that mom treated him differently than she did me.

There’s nothing I can do about the past, not at this point and I know that he doesn’t need me to protect him at this point in our lives. He’s changed since the snow, maybe even since before the snow but I can’t pinpoint that since I wasn’t with him. He’s still uncomfortable around too many people and doesn’t like touch but he still has changed and while I try to at least be around so that we can try and bond the way brothers should, I don’t make a pest of myself.

As I said, my childhood was easy compared to his. It wasn’t perfect, that’s furthest from the truth but it was an okay childhood. I was the first-born, though he came only a few minutes later. I was willful and a handful and mom probably just didn’t know how to handle me fully so she took it out on Randall because he was so much quieter than I’d ever been.

I spent a lot of time out with friends, learning to enjoy their lifestyles and just learning to be a little shit. That’s the kind of friends I had. The kind of friends whose parents weren’t very present either, so we could get away with a lot and it showed. Not all of my friends had filters when they spoke, mostly due to the lack of parental presence, so I tried to be that filter on the rare times I ever had friends over. It wasn’t an often occurring thing since mom worked an odd mid-night to late-morning shift, which meant she went to sleep in the early afternoon.

One time, though, I had this one friend over—though after that visit, I had to think twice about why I spent time with him—and it was early in the afternoon, mom still was working on preparing our meal for the night so all we’d have to do was reheat it and my friend, his name was Diego, I think, he just said something that really sounded all wrong and I still can’t even pinpoint where he might have heard it but mom got so, so offended. She told him to get his disgusting puns right out of her house and shot him from an ugly look that we both scrambled out. He was laughing but I wasn’t.

I’d never seen that side to my mom and it was honestly a little disquieting. I only spent a few more times with him after that but we drifted away.

It’s only years later that I started to understand that her behaviour on that day probably wasn’t far from what Randall had had to deal with most of the time at home, since he didn’t spend time out with friends because I don’t think he ever really had any. At least, not beyond the ones who got him in trouble and in jail. I wish I’d seen it all before. I still wish I’d been there for him but I really was too self-centred and I can’t change that.

I’m just glad he’s willing to give me a second chance.

I can’t believe you listen to elevator music. No wonder we call you the grandparent of the group.

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 533 words

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I don’t miss my old life, not really. I don’t miss make-believe sex with other actors also having make-believe sex for money. Though I admit that the porn industry was one that was under-accepted but it opened up the door to so many things, most of them very different from what we were doing on screen. No virgin can take a thick cock up their ass without either a lot of discomfort if not flat out pain or a whole lot of lube and plenty of time and patience with some stretching beforehand. Things that aren’t really shown in pornographic clips or movies.

Through all of the ups and downs of that kind of profession, I can still admit that I had made a couple of friends or so with some of the other actors I’d done scenes with. Most were mainly acquaintance and just once in a blue moon we’d get together for drinks but now and again there was just someone I’d click with. One of these said souls was Goodwin. Everyone pinged him as the asshole of the group but he was surprisingly sensitive, he liked to take it more than give it and we paired up well in the times we had scenes together.

During breaks, we’d take turns with the radio and that was always the most hilarious of things, in the long run. Some would listen to hard rock, some would listen to rap, some country but Goodwin, Goodwin liked classical music, he liked the soft sounds of music without words and often enough he was teased for listening to ‘elevator’ music, called the grandparent of the group. I never really understood that particular mindset but that might mostly have been because I didn’t really know elevator music and I couldn’t understand how it would have anything to do with being a grandparent.

It’s through him that I discovered classical music; I found out that some of the slower, smoother pieces actually helped me fall asleep. It was a new sensation for me; I’d always had a little trouble sleeping for the odd dreams that would surface every now and again. When he left—he’d found another job elsewhere, something out of the sex industry—I was a little bummed, I felt like I was losing someone I could turn to though I’d never readily admit to it.

Though, of course, I wasn’t completely ‘abandoned’ by then, I had others I mostly saw as acquaintances but I also had Max who was becoming a quickly rising star in my life. It’s odd how quickly we bonded, I never thought I’d allow myself that much but it happened and I don’t regret a single moment of it. Of course, we’ve had our ups and downs, everyone does and we worked through them to the best of our abilities. The world ending, I think it gave us a chance at something else, a chance to try something new and while surviving wasn’t easy—and making it to a gathering point proved almost deadly for how far off we were—we’re alive today and that, yes, that is the one thing that truly matters, nothing else does.

Approval

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving the Earth
Characters: Mishkael Santos
Race: Human
Age: 29
Final Word Count: 549 words

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It wasn’t a big change, it was actually a relatively small thing but he wanted it to be perfect. He’d never, so far before in his life, had felt the need to make sure that someone else was happy with anything he did in his life.

He’d gotten into the adult industry because it was easy for him. He had the build, he had the looks and he could act without much of an issue. It wasn’t often that there was a moment of completion that really did feel good because it wasn’t staged but he could live with that, he still got to do one thing he appreciated and that made the job worth it for a while.

When Maxwell entered his life, things changed. His appreciation for his job dwindled though he figured it might have been more to do with the fact that it was getting boring and painfully repetitive. It was always the same thing in the end. He didn’t get much time to consider his life choices after that as the snow came and changed everything. Put an end to everything.

He reunion with his brother had been a little tense and somewhat unexpected but he cherished the facts that they could talk, even if they didn’t spend much time together. It had eaten at him to learn, somewhat though he didn’t have details, of what his brother had gone through his wrongly imprisoned.

Now that they were out and in the jungle, it wasn’t quite a case of everyone for themselves. While certain did go off on their own to do what they wanted but he’d settled into the mindset that perhaps being around others and being a useful member of society wasn’t such a bad thing, in the end. Helping with the lumber, the clearing out of buildings so they could live in, helping to build pens or other things that were needed, it had felt good to work with his hands. There had been a few cases of smashed fingers but he’d learned.

Now, however, he was looking at their bed, it had been just a basic, boring frame solid and high enough to only need a mattress and not a box spring but he’d hated it. It had been too plain, too boring, too lame. So he’d worked. It had been slow going because he was trying to keep it as a surprise but he’d worked on it any chance he got and now, well now he was done and to him it was beautiful. It looked like branches were becoming entwined at the top from the four posters he’d set up.

It was down on waiting for Maxwell to come back, to look at their new setup and to either love it or hate it. He was sure he would get a good, positive response from their new bed frame but there still was a slightly nagging thought in his mind that told him that maybe he should have said something before he started working, brought up his idea before all the hours spent carving, gluing and making sure the posters were perfect for the new bed. One way or another, he was done and he wouldn’t change it for the world, it had been worth all the efforts.