You punched them? For me? Wow, when’s our wedding? I’m thinking June.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Templum
Current Date: September 16, 2022

Character: Morael Teague
Race: Human
Age: 139, physically about 14
Current residence: Trenton, New Jersey
 

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It’s hard to keep track, I think we’ve started to do so on each of our birthdays, but we do it for everyone. Over the last two or so years, the four of us seem to have aged somewhat physically. A small part of me is still terrified that we’ll continue aging until we catch up with our mental age and if that’s the case, I’m done for.

I’m the only one who’s grown up some, but I suppose that I was the only one who’d still been young enough to be stunted. I honestly think the other three finished growing up on the island. I know that I’d noticed that with some of the other boys that had been taken to the island. Maybe I’d just been too young when I’d been taken. I don’t know how it all works and I don’t really want to know either. The only thing I’m interested in knowing is if that aging will stop.

I feel as though my life has just begun. I’ve allowed myself to wrap my mind around the idea that I might not look like a ten-year-old kid all of my life and I want to be able to appreciate this sort of thing a little more if I can help it. I want to be able to roam and not have to deal with people giving me weird looks because I’m too young to be roaming on my own.

By their accounts, I now look like I could be maybe closer to fourteen and I’ve actually grown almost four inches in the last two years. If there was pain associated with that growth, I didn’t feel it. I think I felt so much pain while on the island that I’m now just sort of used to it and milder pains don’t really get to me.

The downside to that is that we had to upgrade pretty much all of my wardrobe. It was somewhat costly but with every birthday, they gave me more items that were a little too big for me, as though they expected me to keep on growing. It is both sweet and a little strange. I spent so long just being their watcher. Being the one who explained things to them while they were on the train, being taken to the island for the mental and emotional torture they were about to go through.

Friends…

Having friends wasn’t really a thing I expected to ever have and yet, here we are.

A few days ago, while I was roaming, peacefully so on my own with no adult hovering or giving me side looks, I stumbled upon a scene that made me scratch my head a little. I still don’t have that much contact with the outside world, not in this way. I do my job through the computer where people don’t have to look at me and wonder how someone so young got the job or knows so much.

I assume that a small scuffle had happened, there were teens scattered over the sidewalks, a few murmuring away as though no one would hear them, some being held back by others but, in the middle of what I assume had been the fray, there were two still. A younger boy—he honestly looked my age, so perhaps he was near fourteen too—and a just slightly older one. Sixteen, seventeen maybe.

The younger boy was wide-eyed looking at the older one while holding a tissue up to what seemed to be a bloody nose. He mumbled a few words, cleared his throat and then, a little more clearly but still surprisingly soft, he asked the other teen if he’d punched the other idiot for him. He looked so surprised. Then he brightened up, as though he’d just made the best discovery in the world and while giggling, of all things, he asked when the wedding was.

The older teen actually blushed at this whole thing and while that confused me to a point, I suppose it might have meant that he liked the younger one? I’m not sure. I suppose it’s one of those things that I haven’t really been truly exposed to and I’m not used to yet. I don’t know that I ever will.

I mean, I look like I’m fourteen, give or take. Even if I were to suddenly find myself desiring the presence of someone at my side—which, I don’t know, not after some hundred and twenty years locked as a ten-year-old on hell island—I don’t know that I’d have all the knowledge I might or might not need to deal with everything that would accompany that desire but, you know, whatever happens.

One day. Then the next.

Final Word Count: 795

Can’t say I was prepared to feel emotions this early in the morning.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Templum
Characters: Morael Teague
Race: Human
Age: 138, physically about 12
Current residence: Trenton, New Jersey
Final Word Count: 783 words
 

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They know how loathe I am to be reminded of my mental and emotional age versus my physical age. I am stuck in the body of a ten-year-old. It was the age I was when I was taken to the island and it is the age I am now stuck at and have been stuck at, for the past hundred and twenty-eight years. It is a frustrating part of my life. If you think about it, I feel as though I am not unlike that vampire girl in that one movie.

It hasn’t been that long ago since I first discovered movies. On the island, movies were things of impossibilities and, well, at ten, back when I was born, silent movies were just barely beginning to take their place in theatres and as I was very much so a nobody, an orphan no one wanted, films were certainly not something I had access to. So movies, televisions, books, all of these things were not part of my life as I reached the tender age at which he took me away and none of these things were available on the island.

That is one thing that I’m not certain how to think about. How newcomers, those that came closer to the era of technology, handled the island and its lack of anything relating to that. It had electricity, it had running water, it had music but most of the time that music was classical and unless they came with their own players—something that confused me to no end for so long—they had no access to any of these things either.

Anyway. I could go on forever about how things were back then, but I feel as though leaving it all behind is in my best interest. I have tried and again to do such, but it hasn’t always been easy. The train going from the mainland and to the island and how I saw it change over the years, the buildings on the island though there never were any workers, there could be so much, but I feel as though talking too much about it would bring it all back.

Around my birthday earlier this year, each of them came to me, giving me a small thing to let me know that they knew of the date—how, I have no idea—and that it was worth celebrating that I still was alive and well. It was Gabriel, however, who took a very long look at me and told me that I looked older. Not much, but after knowing me as a child for the past forty-odd years, he said that I definitely looked a little older, a year, maybe two.

That confused me and I admit that I stared at him for a really long time, trying to read in his eyes whether he was trying to pull my leg though I knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t. So, with an odd lump in my throat on that early February morning, I went back into the bathroom, and I looked at my reflection. I had been ignoring the fact that my clothes had been fitting a little snuggly lately and it wasn’t because I’d gained any weight.

I stared at that mirror for so long. I was trying to notice if there was anything different, so I wasn’t really looking at myself so much as I was looking at everything around me. I usually never spent much time in the mirror, when you’ve seen your ten-year-old face in the mirror once, you’ve seen it enough.

It was Gabriel who joined me in the bathroom again, offering to, maybe, mark on the wall how tall I was because he claimed he had noticed that my clothing had seemed a bit short on me as well over the last few months. It felt like a childish thing to do but truly, it could help, right? Would spending time away long enough from the island allow me to grow up, to change physically? Would it ever stop? Would—and this is the part that actually terrifies me—it speed up my aging to the point where I will reach how old I am mentally? At that age, I doubt I will even be alive anymore.

I suppose that it will all depend. I have to take things one day at the time, but I admit that on that particular early morning, I hadn’t really been ready for the storming emotions that took me by surprise at the thought that I was aging up a bit.

In a way, maybe it’s not just me, though. Maybe they’ll age a bit too.

I’ve decided that I don’t need sleep. Not if I’m going to have those sorts of nightmares every single night.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Templum
Characters: Morael Teague
Race: Human
Age: 137, physically about 10
Final Word Count: 692 words
 

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They’ve started giving me weird, worried looks and I know that if they were anyone else, they would be calling me a zombie, at this point. I already don’t spend that much time in our common area but it still is enough time for them to be aware that I’m not exactly doing so well right now and that it’s mostly nothing I can fix, not really.

As of the last week, in a fit of absolute exhaustion, I decided that I wouldn’t ever sleep again. Quite childish, I’m aware. The thing is, though, and I don’t know what triggered them, but I’ve been getting nightmares about the island as of said past week and I’d rather not sleep if I’m going to be faced with these nightmares every single night.

Now, my rational mind likes to remind me that yes, avoiding nightmares is a good thing but no, not sleeping is not. I know that not sleeping is a bad thing. On and off for the first few months of my stay on the island, my nights were sleepless and I didn’t much care back then, I was ten, I was frustrated and I had no one to turn to. I know what not sleeping does to the body and the mind; I know I’m going to crash and, when I do, I’ll crash hard.

The nightmares lead to sleep paralysis and I don’t know how to handle that, beyond the basic freaking-out reaction. Usually, the paralysis fades after a minute or two but the horror it brings with its presence, the memories of my life on that island before I realized that I was essentially the safe one, it’s terrifying.

It makes me sick to my stomach to remember just how absolutely terrified I was at first. Then, as my innocence tried to take over and make me believe that none of the bad things that were happening really were, I let go of that terror and focused on bringing the lost ones to Him but eventually, even that innocence no longer was enough for me to be able to ignore what was going on.

The thing is that, to a lot of people, if they knew the story, they would just sort of shrug and claim that it’s not so bad. There was no sexual abuse going on at the island, all of it was just a mental drain until there was nothing left but an empty shell. That was why He wanted the lost ones. The ones who believed that there was nothing left waiting for them in life; the ones who were so low that no one would miss them. There were a lot of misfits on the island at one point and they all just disappeared into empty husks of what they were.

That the three who are now allowing me a place to stay have survived as long as they have is akin to a miracle to me. Though none of them stayed as long as I have, I’m the only one who was spared the visits, the draining, the horror. Gabriel did spend perhaps two decades there, to the decade that Shiloh has spent on the island. Wilde, thankfully, only had to endure a few years but I know that for anyone, it is a few years too many; I don’t blame any of them.

So if I can perhaps will myself to tell them why I am unable to sleep, we can get together and find a solution to the dilemma. I know that, over time, the nightmares will fade, as will the sleep paralysis but I still can’t wait that long. Without sleep, I will truly become one of those ‘zombies’ they might refer to me as and I’ll be a mess for the work I do. Never mind that the work itself is all online with no visual contact whatsoever or even any audio contact but still. If I am too tired to function, my work results will suffer just the same and I don’t need that. Not after they helped me get this job in the first place.

This was the fastest I’ve ever died in a video game and I blame you for every bit of that.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Templum
Characters: Morael Teague
Race: Human
Age: 136, physically about 10
Final Word Count: 534 words
 

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Children are strange. I don’t know how else to put it. I suppose that this is one of those things though because I look like a child and I never will look any older than I do now. I’m screwed.

The only positive thing there is about my life right now is the fact that I don’t have to worry about keeping a roof over my head. I don’t have to worry about keeping food in my stomach; I don’t have to worry about ending up on the streets because the others found me.

I didn’t feel like it was such a great thing, not at first. I thought they were going to do me harm. I had been the one to bring them to the island after all but no, they offered me a room, they offered to create a sort of persona for me so I could do work online if I wanted to and that turned out to actually be helpful. I feel useful and I can’t even begin to explain how good that feels to me.

Back to the point and fact that children are strange. Taking one look at little old me who feels like calling children strange would likely result in people using that one saying about the pot calling the kettle black. What with being stuck in the body of a child, myself.

A few weeks ago, I actually let myself be roped into a multiplayer video game ‘tournament’ of sorts and most of the players were kids. Ages thirteen to eighteen, so I guess that’s more teens but still. One of the kids kept on dying pretty quickly in and was constantly complaining that this was the fastest he’d ever died in a video game and he was blaming every single one of us players for that. It seemed to amuse most of everyone else but before long, the game no longer held my interest and I logged out. I haven’t logged back in yet.

Though, I guess that in a way, it might not just be kids who act this way. I can’t understand this infatuation with video games, with shooting games, with most games that aren’t puzzles because I can play puzzle games and word games—on my own—for hours after I’ve done some work. It helps me relax in a way nothing else ever had.

I’m still not great with a computer either, that might be why I don’t care much for these games, they’re just too complicated for me. I haven’t had access to a computer for very long but I’d like to think that I’m managing pretty well, all things considered.

There still are days when I’ll be asking for help about this or that thing that the computer is doing or requesting, because I have no idea about what it is but that’s the extent of that. The others seem to know that I need to be on my own most of the time and they leave me be. We share the evening meal though, I don’t recall ever have that much going for myself and it’s actually pretty nice and I’d like for that to not actually change.

It’s like being back at the start where it all began.

Timeline/World: Templum
Characters: Morael Teague
Race: Human
Age: 135, physically about 10
Final Word Count: 609 words

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For over a hundred years I was his prisoner, the only one to truly know the depth of what made him what he was, yet the only one spared any visits to his chambers. Not that there was any sexual abuse going on, furthest from but his visits always left one feeling drained, feeling a little lost, feeling a little less like themselves. The lost ones came to Templum, the ones no one else would ever miss and I was their guardian, the one who made sure they got on and off the train in one piece, the one who showed them to their room, the one who knew all the rules.

Yet, my role was that of the innocent, forever locked in the body of a ten years old, since that was the age I was when he oh so gratefully took me in. I was grateful when he first did, it got me off the street, not so grateful when he took me to Templum and told me that my life had been forever altered. Even now, it has been close to twenty years since I was freed from his grasp, uncertain still as to which one of his latest victims actually broke through and managed to free us all and I haven’t aged. I’m still stuck in the body of a ten-year-old child and do you have any idea what kind of life that leaves me to lead?

I cannot work. I cannot go to school, not really. Without work, I have no money and without money, I cannot go anywhere. I cannot buy food; I cannot afford a roof over my head. Oh, certainly, I’ve heard it before. A ten-year-old, any family would love to have a ten-year-old to take care of. What do you tell that very family when, five years later, you haven’t aged a day, haven’t really gained a pound and will never do either of these things? They will wonder about what you are, likely scream ‘demon’ and send you running.

I’ve tried; it is the same story all over again every single time. Like being back at the beginning; I was on the streets, begging for food and he gave me hope but that hope died when he cursed me with this immortal body that refuses to age. I’ve also tried the ‘easy’ way out. The wounds healed quickly and disappeared altogether as though they had never been there, to begin with. Tenebrae had no use for a puppet whose strings it could cut on its own. He needed someone at his side in a permanent way and I fit the bill perfectly.

What about love, in all of this? I may be stuck in the body of a ten-year-old child but I have lived over a hundred years, I have grown and matured and yet there are things I will never know because this body is what it is. There is clearly no breaking this curse or it already would have been, for how long it’s been.

I am what I am. What I am will keep me from experiencing a world of things and in a way; it is as though he did end my life when he first ‘saved’ it. I roam, now. I wander and sweet-talk adults into letting me have a night or two at their places, a meal, a change of clothes. There is little else I can do with my life unless I find a magical place that will accept me as I am and somehow I cannot imagine such a place even exists.