You’ve made this harder than it needed to be, I hope you know that.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Oliver Adams
Race: Human
Age: 31
Current residence: San Clemente, Ecuador
Final Word Count: 786 words
 

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The nightmare came out of nowhere. I’m not even sure if it really is from memories or just my mind deciding to do whatever it wanted out of the blue. One way or another, it was unpleasant and I’m just glad that I came to as silently as I did.

It’s been strange, being able to sleep whenever I want. I still mostly sleep at night, but I no longer have to live with the timer that had been attached to my medical issue. Since I woke up, I’ve given thought about removing the bracelet, but I’ve worn it since I was just oh so absolutely young, it seems like it might be whatever is left of my past that I’m somewhat clinging to for some reason; maybe it’s just time to let it go.

I do like being able to stay up late and look at the stars, though. It was beautiful the first time I did; it still is beautiful now and I love it most when Sasha is there with me. I feel safe when he’s at my side and I don’t think I would want to change that for the world—what’s left of it, anyway.

There have been some rumours that the Silencers seem to be fading, I don’t know what to think about that. The nearest orb to us is in Portoviejo though I know there’s one way far off at sea, but it is so far off that we barely see it; it’s like little more than just a small blip of light. It looks to be about the size of the sun as it sets in the distance. So it’s almost impossible to tell whether or not it has faded.

The nightmare, though, it still makes me shudder to think about it. I’d been sleeping so deeply. This is a thing I’ve had to adapt to, too. With the medical issues, I would just conk out at sunset, wake up at sunrise. I would be about as rested as a normal night of sleep, I guess. Now, I drift off to sleep, I dream, I wake up, I can nap, it feels different, and it took some adapting, but I wouldn’t go back.

I’m not even sure if it was a reflex or just the habit that we’ve all gotten into of keeping quiet. The need to survive the Silencers as they watch over us and take away anything that makes too much noise.

I don’t know that I remember ever actually dreaming before, not with the forced sleep. I might have, but I never remembered any of it. The few people I’ve trusted with my life, as far as being around while I slept, have all told me that I would sleep like the dead. Eyes not moving, breathing slow and steady at all times. A proper sleeping beauty, whatever that is supposed to be.

Gerard was in that nightmare. The man who abused this disease that kept its hold on me since I was born. He looked like the monster I felt him to be by the time I was saved from the situation, and he looked just so angry. He looked angry and yet his voice was oddly calm; I think that only made it all the more terrifying. In the nightmare, he told me that I had made everything unnecessarily harder than they needed to be, he truly hoped that I knew that and that he would need to punish me for my behaviour.

In a way, it’s not even his anger that got to me; it’s not his looks. It’s what he was saying. While I was there, the man was slowly trying to turn me into a very obedient companion for his use and while I slept… well his training took a more physical presence, and I would never have known about it had I not been essentially swept away from it all.

He lunged at me, in that nightmare. I think it’s that particular part that woke me up. It really might not seem like much of a nightmare, but, to me, it was. The sight of him while I was supposed to be in a safe place was terrifying. The sound of him just so angry that I’d gotten away was just icing on the terrifying monster cake. I never imagined that I would be afraid of this man, but, let me tell you, I was terrified of him when I left, and I couldn’t make it far enough to feel safe.

I know he’s gone. If he’s not gone, he’s so far away that I know he’ll never be around again and that’s what I set my belief to be.

You were meant for chaos. I was meant for love. How did it turn out so differently?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Oliver Adams
Race: Human
Age: 30
Final Word Count: 796 words
 

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You would think that with the light balls out there, there would be enough drama that people wouldn’t need more of it in their lives but I’ve been wrong before and it looks like I’m wrong again. In a ‘bid’ to get away from the bigger city area and hopefully to a quieter stretch of a place, where we could grow a bit more food and hopefully still fish, my friend has taken to checking out areas. When he finds a place, we take a day to pack up and plan a little and then we go. So far, these places have only been a few blocks away. At most, on a single day, we’ve walked maybe four hours but it was our biggest day and we covered a lot of terrain without meeting too many other people.

It took a lot of negotiating to get him to agree that we had to get moving. That while this place was good because we were pretty high up and people weren’t fond of going up and down all the stairs, how reserves and that of the other apartments on our floor had grown to near nothing and we had to go down and back up these stairs every day now. It was our safety or the exhaustion that would cling to our bones, so we opted for safety.

Usually, we’d leave just fifteen to twenty minutes after the curse had relinquished its hold on me so we could maximize our time outside and we’d settle into our temporary shelter for a day or two while he scouted other places. I wish he’d let me scout out with him, he always comes back before dark but he’s been giving me these looks that just make me shut up about things and stay back. While he’s gone, though, I usually do manage to check ‘out’ into the nearest store that’s by our location and I find us a few more things to add to our meagre reserves. You have no idea how tired I am of canned food but it’s all there is left.

As we move closer to the water but further away from bigger civilization points, I’m left to wonder about what happened to the people who were on the water when the lights came. Those who were on boats that had sails likely could have made their way back but what of those in those huge containerships that only move with electricity in their bellies? What about the people on those sorts of station things that are way out there? I think about the oddest things, I know. I’m aware that if the containerships couldn’t be anchored, they’ve likely been pushed around by the currents and might very well have crashed somewhere and that’s that but still.

A few days ago, I realized why my friend and roommate was so adamant about my not going with him as we made it to a location where a woman was seemingly waiting for us.

I’m not going to go into details but seeing as my current room is right next to theirs and they don’t always wait until the sun has set to turn to their ‘relaxing’ activities, listening to their hushed and held-back moans, groans and other sex noises is not pleasant. I’ve woken up more than once curled in the opposite corner of my room as their sounds remind me of things I would rather forget.

This morning, however, the lovey-dovey couple seemed to not be doing so well, they were each on their end of the little kitchen we call home and I felt like an intruder. I don’t know what happened between them and I wasn’t going to ask. I did faintly hear them hiss-arguing back and forth the day before, just before the sun began to set. Something about chaos and love, how it should never have happened but how they couldn’t get enough. All of it was confusing and I didn’t even want to think too much about it. I mean, I know I ended up falling asleep somewhere mid-argument.

How can you even hear people hiss-argue through walls? You’d think they wouldn’t be that thin. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. These two better make up because curse or not, if I have to deal with angry but hushed sex noise, I’m just going to pack up and leave. He’s always softly reminding me that maybe, one of these days, even with the lights, I’ll find someone to call my own and I’ll be able to make better memories but no one in this world would want to deal with my curse and likely not take advantage of it, so I’m not even holding my breath.

They stole our hearts.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Project: Lucifer
Characters: Oliver Adams
Race: Human
Age: 29
Final Word Count: 612 words
 

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When the lights came, everything changed.

I’m not even sure if it’s fair to put it so simply but I don’t know how else to look at it. When it happened, I was asleep. That being, it happened at night and without the sun, there is nothing to wake me. Such is my curse—though it’s a weird medical issue and not anything that has to do with magic in any way. I know there are others out there who just fall asleep randomly and will sleep for a while, it can range from short hours to much longer time spans, is what I’d read.

In my case, however, it’s very timed, I was the first doctors had ever seen back where I grew up and in this place, before the lights came, I had only seen one doctor and he’d also never seen anything of the sorts. Everything in me shuts off when the sun just finishes dipping below the horizon and sleeps relinquishes its hold on me when the first rays come. It’s why I moved here, closer to the equator.

In a way, I suppose I’m lucky, I know when it’ll strike but it still is an unpleasant thing to have to live with.

Sure, when the lights came—I hate calling them by the name everyone else does, even though it’s been years—the way the sun rises and falls like clockwork didn’t change but everything else did. A lot of the survivors around these parts went feral, so to speak. They went with the ‘better’ option of looting others in the dark of the night and trying to create a sort of high-power monarchy of sorts.

That’s a bit of a problem for me, I think you can imagine why. Most people tend to wake up when someone comes barging into their home—even as silently as possible to not draw in the light’s attention—to steal stuff but I don’t, I can’t. Thankfully, I don’t live alone and no one has tried to come all the way up to our floor yet but that’s because we live pretty high up and electricity is a thing of the past; that too has changed a lot of things.

I tell myself that these things, they didn’t only steal our sounds, they stole our hearts. They stole what was good in so many of us. They’ve brought us the ugly survival instincts that were dormant, deep below the surface and turned a lot of us into ugly creature intent on surviving at any cost.

We’ve discussed things, we’ve talked about moving but we’d have to keep an impossibly close track to the daylight hours, find shelter before the sun would go down. That would eat up some time and I know that my friend is worried about not finding somewhere in time. He’s also worried that these new predators that were once people we knew, people we’d crossed in the streets, might be everywhere.

I don’t know why but I think that not everyone has reacted to these things the same way. I think that somewhere out there, there still are plenty of people who still have their hearts, people who would rather work together to ensure that everyone lives as long a life as possible. We’d just have to find those people.

My curse is what’s slowing us down in making a decision. I’m a useless lump, literally so, when the sun’s down and I don’t want my friend to have to watch my back endlessly if we were to go on the road. We’ll have to find a way, that’s all there is to it.

I made some mistakes, sure, but you don’t need to hold me to them for the rest of my life.

Timeline/World: Modern Monotony – Ticking Clocks
Characters: Oliver Adams
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 568 words

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How I wish I could turn back time and never go down that path ever again. I was by far too innocent by then, though I’d dare say stupid, but I know differently now. I was so sheltered, due to my issue—an issue that still plagues me to this day and baffles doctors—that I just didn’t know any differently from what I do now.

Sure, I knew that trusting strangers was a bad thing but the man seemed so kind. He’d helped me out in my time of need, it would have been in poor taste to not be thankful for that, wouldn’t it have? I don’t know anymore. I just know that I’m glad I’m away from that and I have no desire to ever be anywhere near that kind of thing ever again. Ugh. The thought still makes me shudder, just, gross.

I know that some people enjoy that, but I don’t. Not now that I know better. It’s just creepy to imagine the things he’d do to me while I was out for the count, unable to wake again. That there is my issue. I have no control over it. The moment the sun is done setting, my body gives out on me, my mind blanks out. I’m asleep and can’t be woken up until the following morning when the sun starts shining again. It’s a weird thing, it’s frustrating but it’s what I have to deal with and I make the best of what I can with it.

I suppose that’s why I moved to the equator a few years ago. It isn’t perfect but I have more or less twelve hours awake and twelve hours asleep. I can time myself better and I can be home when I need to be. I haven’t been caught out of my bed as the sun went down in quite some time, never once since that first time, to be quite honest.

Now, a friend who wasn’t much of a friend, back then, is the reason why I’m out of the situation I had been in for almost two years. Two years! How he got me out of there is fuzzy and I haven’t asked him, though he’s always bringing it back up. Usually as a joke but it still smarts now and again when I haven’t had the best of days. My life isn’t the easiest, not with this curse over my head but I make the best of it, it’s all I can do.

Being at someone’s beck and call for sexual favours wasn’t quite the way I was seeing my life go but he went at it so smoothly, mostly while I was asleep, that I don’t think I ever really noticed it happening until it was in full swing. I would likely still have been right there with the man if my now-friend, then-not-so-much-friend hadn’t saved the day somehow.

I’m grateful, I am. I just wish he’d stop bringing it up, even as a joke. At least he looks contrite when I remind him of how much it hurts me to think back about that time. I still have dreams—nightmares?—about that time and thanks to my medical issue, there is no waking to get away from these particular memories until the sun shows itself again. It’s not pleasant, but what can I do, really?