Do you ask every enemy you’re sword-fighting to hold you after, or is it just me?

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Current Date: November 20, 4023

Character: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 2778, physically about 27
Current residence: Aboard the CS Black Coral
 

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It feels strange to think that we’ve been back in space for two years at this point. Earth years, but still years. I know that time isn’t calculated the same everywhere but that’s fine. Though, in a way, I wonder if our calculations aren’t based on Inera. It was similar in size to the earth and while one full day as a whole was a little longer, it wasn’t all that different. The months and years differed though and I’m not sure if we ever truly adapted to that, no matter the decades we spent there.

This beautiful, gorgeous being in my arms has been an addition to my life that I never expected to happen. I don’t know that there is anything long-term happening here; I try not to think about it much. I live my life on a day-to-day basis, and I will hold him in my arms and cherish him at my side for however long I might have. I find myself discovering emotions I had not felt before, not even with… with the one who left and never came back. I know I cared deeply for him but, even for how short a time Jason has been in my life, there is something there and it does scare me a little. This is possibly why I have yet to say anything. It all feels too fast.

I don’t know what triggered the memories. We haven’t talked about my past though I think it is slowly becoming known information to the new addition to our crew, so to speak, that we’re all much older than any of them. It hasn’t made them bat a lash that I know of. We have so many lives we’ve lived through, in a strange way. We were made so long ago that you would think it impossible. When you take into consideration the earth-year during which we were born, if you know about Earth’s history at all, you would call the lot of us liars. Technology had certainly not come far enough along for that sort of thing, had it?

Except, it had. Thanks to Them, we were born. We were made, created. Our cores were based on different alcohols as though that made the most sense in the world. We were created to be fighters, to be monsters. I grew up with Rafe, Sin and Pieter. Tristan, the triplets, Adrien, Casimir who took so long to stabilize, and Zen were separated from us. They came into our lives little by little, but only after we had left the Earth. We can sense our own, I think is the way we look at this, and we knew upon meeting them that they were our brothers.

I had a strange dream just a few hours ago; a dream I can only assume to have been brought on from an old, partially locked away memory. The dream—memory—placed me on a battlefield of sorts and the clothing, as well as the fact that I looked so ridiculously young, helped in placing the general time and area during which this might have happened. That might be the one reason I feel this is a memory more than a dream.

I was possibly barely fourteen in that memory, but I knew how to handle a sword. The whole battlefield was a bloody mess, there were dead people everywhere and yet, there, by my feet, there was this slightly older man—barely, he could have only been eighteen and he would have been older to me—who was looking at me with slightly glassy eyes and begging that I hold him, even for just a moment.

I don’t truly remember this particular memory, but I know that it has to be plucked from my mind. My reaction, back then, hadn’t been what I think it would be now, but I was young, I was being forced into this war of sorts and I wanted nothing to do with it. In that dream, I asked the dying man if he made a habit of asking to be held after every sword fight that he’d ever had, or if I was just the lucky one. Thinking back on that now, makes me cringe; it feels like such a callous reply.

He died before even getting an answer out and I’m fairly certain I didn’t bat a lash at it all back then. If I think about it even just a moment more, I sort of wish I’d agreed to that small request of his. I’ve lived long enough at this point that I’ve been faced with death more often than I’d like to remember. The idea of someone dying alone, being stared at by some stranger; it’s terrifying. No one deserves that unless they’re a remorseless murderer and I’m sure that most of the people who were part of that war just didn’t know any better. They were forced to fight just like I’d been.

Going back to sleep after that wasn’t an option but I was reluctant to untangle myself from Jason, so I might have just settled a little closer and willed myself to relax a little.

Final Word Count: 862

Sometimes I get this all-encompassing rage that’s always directed at you, but then I remember your very frightening friends and I have to let it go.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Foreign Songs – Trip Around the World
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Human
Age: 39
Current residence: Stirling, Scotland
Final Word Count: 767 words
 

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There are a couple of new teachers at the school and I’m honestly not quite certain how to handle them. From what little interaction I’ve had with them, they’re not bad people. They’re just… different. Their beliefs of certain things are a little out there for me, but I don’t judge people for what they might or might not believe in.

I think that I’m probably on the fence about their presence at the school because of their beliefs, and because of the fact that one of them approached me not even a week in after they had been hired—a husband and wife, I believe, one is a teacher, the other works with the administration—and straight up told me, while trying to look me in the eyes—a feat considering their head barely comes halfway up my chest—that sometimes, they got this all-encompassing rage that was directed my way. Only my way. As though something in me would trigger them.

Then, they exhaled and told me that even when that rage took over, they would then remember my very frightening friends and they would let go of that rage.

Now, I think I’ve pointed this out before and I’m pointing it out again; I’m the furthest thing to a social butterfly you’ll ever find. I need my peace and quiet. It’s not because I’m good at preparing gatherings when people ask for my help—and avoiding these gatherings at all costs—that I have a group of friends, let alone frightening friends.

I’ve been here for years, and I don’t know that I can really call anyone in my surroundings, my friend. Most are interesting enough acquaintances. Some I do get along better than others and sure, once or twice I’ve gone with them to these outings they do to ‘build up trust’ between everyone but that’s about it. I think that spending all of my life on the move, thanks to a skittish mother, has kept me from being able to form that particular part of myself. I have a hard time accepting the idea of friends.

I have my brothers. They may be scattered all over the globe, but they are my friends and I know I rely on that in times of absolute need. Not that there really has been any of that lately and that’s all right too.

These two, I just don’t know what to make of them. They make me uneasy. Then again, I think that being approached by a stranger and being told that you bring rage into them is a little disquieting but, in an odd way, I’m more baffled by this supposedly frightening friends thing.

I haven’t spent enough time around them to really pick up on much of anything, as far as they’re concerned, but I’ve heard some of the other teachers who talk about how they’re into the paranormal, and believe in the supernatural, and claim that the place has ghosts and all of that nonsense.

Now, again, I don’t judge people for believing in what they want, but no one is going to start me believing in these things. Spirits? Possibly. Lingering dead, I suppose I could believe in that, but I don’t think there is a single higher-power or really such things as vampires or demons or anything else.

So, whatever it was about, this little claim of theirs that I’m surrounded by very frightening friends, it’s just whatever, at this point. It’s been bugging me for a couple of weeks but I’m about to just let it all go. I don’t like this kind of statement staying with me for too long. What good does it do me to try and think too much about something someone tries to claim they know about me when they don’t even know me, nor have they ever actually actively spoken to me before?

If it came from rumours of whatever sort, that’s also a fairly potent case of whatever. People can say what they want about me. If they want to talk behind my back, they can. Most don’t, though. They know that I’m just one hard worker like everyone else. I’m that one guy who’s good at planning gatherings out. My brain is wired into that, I guess. It’s all right.

Some of my students have mentioned to me that they don’t feel all that comfortable with the new teacher either. At this point, I’ve mostly tried to tell them that it was a case of the person being new and that they would adapt but I’m keeping an eye on it.

Do I even want to ask why you painted my nails while I was sleeping?

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 2 776, physically about 27
Current residence: Aboard the CS Black Coral
Final Word Count: 861 words
 

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Getting used to a new AI is difficult. Not so much because it misbehaves, it’s quite the opposite, in a way. I’d been so used to having to argue with my AI and having to make sure that things were as they should have been that I’d long since stopped thinking that it wasn’t normal behaviour to have to fight and argue with the thing.

So when we first got back off the planet with the CS Black Coral, I fully expected to have to repeat myself several times just to get things going and yet, it went so smoothly that I was wary. It took me almost a week to realize—remember mostly, I think—that this no longer was a faulty, argumentative AI. This one, which I’ve nicknamed Star and it seems to suit it, has offered not an ounce of issues since we’ve taken back to the skies. It rarely even uses the holographic three-dimensional displays, as though aware that it might drain some of the ship’s power, though I doubt it would.

I asked Gabriel if he was willing to make a pit stop in the programming of the AI, just to be sure all was as it should have been, and he told me that it was all as good as it would ever be. We’d been given an AI that was part of the newest and most up-to-date branch. I wasn’t going to complain.

A bigger ship also did mean that we were going to each have more room for ourselves. There no longer was any need to bunk together though that had mostly been the case of the triplets. Still, each room had been set in very close quarters to one another and they hadn’t been very big. Now everyone has their own room and en-suite bathroom and there hasn’t been any fussing about that.

When we first picked up the ship, I wasn’t quite sure yet on the proper size to get. Rafael did help with making a final decision and I wasn’t quite sold on how big the new ship was but, no pun intended, it has grown on me. I can appreciate the size of it and the fact that I still don’t need any extra crew to help with the piloting though everyone does their parts and I think that this is the important point of things.

With all that being said, I can’t lie and state that there still haven’t been a few small issues here and there but, you know, I think these are inevitable. They are small things that are usually resolved quite quickly. Someone too tired to finish up their dishes. Someone forgetting something somewhere. Someone eating something they shouldn’t have. Small things.

The latest, in a string of small but amusing things, came from the triplets. More aptly, it happened between Robin and Vardan. I don’t even know where Vardan got the polish from; it must have been from one of our pit stops as I don’t even really recall him wearing any, not that I tend to pay attention to that, I admit. So it’s quite possible that he’s worn nail polish for a long time, and I just didn’t know. I doubt he would have found any on Inera though—at least not on the continent we were on.

It was early morning, at least as per the ship’s clock and we were coming up on a planet with a star that served at its sun, so we actually had some amount of sunlight coming in. Not everyone gets up at around the same time and no one expects that of anyone else either; but once I made it to the mess, there these two were. Vardan was busy drinking what I can only assume was a smoothie and Robin was looking at his hands. It took me a minute of studying them both to understand what it was all about.

Though, to be fair, it was mostly Robin turning to his brother to ask him why he’d painted his nails while he’d been sleeping, that made me realize. The colour on his nail was red, but it wasn’t an in-your-face colour, it was oddly subtle for being red, it suited Robin. Vardan’s answer was a simple shrug but there was an amused smile on his lips, even as he sipped from his glass some more. I figured I’d possibly ask him later, just to be sure that everything was fine. Folks not sleeping isn’t exactly a good thing when there’s only so far you can go before you’re back in the same area again.

The ship is big, that’s not an issue. There’s an exercise room, there’s an entertainment room, there’s the green room. There are a lot of places to be, but I need to make sure that everyone is doing fine, physically and mentally.

Turns out, he’d just been a little restless and Robin sleeps like the dead, it was done out of tired amusement more than not and, just a few hours later, Vardan was conked out and deep asleep.

In the long run, we’re all right.

You can’t see it now, but I’m glaring at you. Threateningly.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 2774, physically about 27
Final Word Count: 719 words
 

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When Rafael first brought up the idea of us leaving this planet, this home that had been ours for more than a decade, I expected more of my siblings to want to stay. I expected perhaps one or two to agree with the idea that seemed so completely ridiculous. This place is our home. Certainly, the villagers still don’t fully trust us and I suppose that after more than a decade, this is somewhat ridiculous but still.

The only ones who openly argued his idea were Pieter and myself. It’s not surprising on Pieter’s part, he has so many books here that leaving any of them behind would seem like blasphemy but Rafael did say that we could pack up as many as we could in crates. He has a point, we have room in my ship for the crates, we have room for everyone to bunk but it’s not made to handle all of us for long periods of time.

So when I brought that up and he said he knew, I wasn’t sure what to think. It was only later, when it was just the two of us together, that he told me that he thought that, just perhaps considering the age of the ship, it was maybe time to upgrade. That took the breath right out of my lungs just then. I’d gotten this ship years ago, it was old, yes; it still functioned just fine, even if it was finicky. I knew my brother meant no harm by the mention but it still hurt and I stomped away.

It was once back in my room that allowed myself to weigh the pros and cons of his potential idea. I needed to be by myself to do this, free of anyone else looking over my shoulder. I needed to be alone so as to not be swayed by anyone or anything else. I could have thrown a tantrum; I could have pulled the nearest star that serves as this planet’s sun off its axis but that would have been childish behaviour that would have served no purpose whatsoever, so I didn’t.

Instead, I paced my room for a while before I escaped to the very place that would be our home for the next however long, if we all came to agree with the idea.

My AI is old; she’s frustrating to deal with. Even when Gabriel had first looked into it, he had said there was nothing to do. The personality was so deeply imprinted that the only thing I could do was either reset it completely—with no proof that it would actually work—or just deal with it. So I’d decided I was going to deal with it.

The thing is, on the last trip, she’d refused to keep the auto-pilot active and we’d nearly crashed into another ship—a big one, a deep space cruise ship—and I knew just then that this couldn’t end well. I can’t pilot this ship constantly and while I trust my brothers to pilot just as well, it still is my ship. It might be why I was and still somewhat am reluctant to leave this planet.

On that particular trip, I told her to cut it out but she just told me that if I wanted to fly, I damn well could do it myself. I threatened to shut her off and she told me that I couldn’t see it—I’d disabled her holographic abilities as it was sucking the energy out of the ship’s system—but she was glaring at me, as threateningly as my own threat of shutting her off had been.

Looking back to that particular trip—and all the others before that during which there had been issues—I suppose that Rafael’s idea to upgrade into another ship might not be such a bad thing but we’d have to find a good place for that and I might just know the place. This doesn’t mean that I’m agreeing to the idea of leaving this planet but I suppose that it might not hurt us to take a break. We’ve been here for a long time and we’ve lost so much in the recent while that time away might just be what we need.

I guess it’s down to convincing Pieter.

Yes, well, I may have planned the party, but the true enjoyment comes from not attending it.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Trip Around the World
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Human
Age: 38
Final Word Count: 642 words
 

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I don’t mind most of my colleagues. I like most who just let me have my peace of mind but the ones who try to step on my toes, I have no qualms about setting them straight. I’m the type of person you could almost forget is in the room until I step forward because I like peace and quiet but I’m no wallflower.

One of the things I’ve realized, over the years, is that I’m good when it comes to planning things. I’ve lost count of the number of colleagues who’ve come to me because they needed help with something or other, mostly to get it off the ground, but in the long run, I’m the one who ended up preparing everything from start to finish.

I was doing it for free at first, I mean, they’re my colleagues, it makes sense, but after someone abused the system, as it stands, I started asking for a small fee and most of the time, that fee is barely more than a coffee or something from the little bakery that’s not far from this place. At the most, this costs people something like fifteen bucks and for work that could have cost them so much more, I feel like it’s not asking for so much.

What only one or two of my colleagues have noticed, however, is that I don’t attend these parties or these gatherings. I don’t like surrounding myself with the people I work with for longer than I have to because I’m just a private person. You go to one party and everyone starts thinking that they can ask you questions about everything that’s going on in your life but that’s not really true.

One person eventually asked me why I never really went to these parties. I’d put so much effort into the planning, after all. I think I just sort of shrugged and told them that yes, I’d planned the party—though it hadn’t been my idea at the start—but true enjoyment came from not attending these very parties. The puzzled look on their face was well worth it but they didn’t ask for clarification and I didn’t offer them any in turn. There was no need, after all.

I had to grow up quickly. As the first-born in the family with a mother who was more interested in keeping her legs wide open instead of taking care of her kids, I helped raise my brothers, much as Rafe helped raise them to and so on. Each one of us has done his part in the raising of the kids, except for the last three.

The gap between their births and that of Tristan was big enough that most of us were in university by the time they were born. Now, we’re scattered all over the globe but we still keep track of one another and we all get together several times a year. I know that Adrien and Casimir are absolutely miserable with mom, but she’s yet to really do anything to endanger them; there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

Mom being mom, trying to talk to her about these things would get us nowhere. She’s centred on herself, though she’s managed some progress over the last few years, but she still spooks too easily and worries too much without realizing that her worrying is absolutely pointless.

Would I give mom five stars for being a great mom? No. Sure, she’s kept all of us alive but we kept ourselves fed. We kept ourselves clothed. We taught ourselves most things through homeschooling until we were good and ready for university. That the youngest three are going through regular schooling and not homeschooling is a major thing all on its own but all of this, I could go on forever. I won’t, though.

My judgment doesn’t reflect theirs. Don’t punish them for something that isn’t their fault.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Trip Around the World
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Human
Age: 37
Final Word Count: 714 words
 

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I had an experience with a professor that reminded me of a day with my mother when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. I haven’t thought about that professor, let alone that day with my mother, in years. I suppose it came back up to the surface because just a few days ago, I felt like I was made to relive that day all over through a colleague and I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

For some reason, certain people who generalize a lot seem to generalize everything. If one black man is a thief, then all black men must be thieves, if someone from a Middle Eastern country is a terrorist, then everyone from there must be terrorists. These people. I’m not like that; at least, I try not to be. I know that I generalize about things now and again—my current kids not listening, thus all kids being little brats that don’t listen—that sort of thing. If I ever generalize and catch myself doing it, especially ‘bad’ generalization, I know I tend to go quiet about it.

That particular experience, though, it was something different. I don’t know how else to put it. Especially with that particular professor. He had a bit of a racist side to him and it wasn’t all that rare that he would go on small rants about things being particular people’s fault because none of them were smart enough or because they were all lazy, or well, you get the idea. On that day, though, we had a guest speaker and everything was going well enough until the professor said something that made our guest speaker stop short.

It’s like someone had turned a switch. One moment he’s talking away, animated, his eyes bright and his love for the subject just so clear, and the next he’s hastily packing up his things and preparing to go. Now, you have to understand that we’d worked hard to be able to have that guest speaker come to us and the professor being who he was, had more or less ruined it with just a few words.

Thankfully, words so happened to be the man’s main weapon and within seconds more, he had apologized, told our guest speaker than his thoughts on the particular subject were his own and not ours and that perhaps, to the end of the lecture, he would be better off stepping outside of the hall and letting the guest speaker go on interruption-free. It took a few more minutes of quiet discussion that was too low for any single one of us to really be able to understand before our professor was on his way out of the hall, reminding us to stay a few minutes after our guest speaker had departed and that was that.

The rest of the lecture went by without a hitch.

A few days ago, a colleague was talking to the mother of one of the kids he supervises and he let one small, but oh so stupid comment slip. The look on the mother’s face was one of outrage and I’m the one who had to come in to the rescue because my colleague hadn’t even noticed the change. I don’t think he realized what he said but it had been the wrong thing to say. A statement that had been absolutely racist and it even made me feel bad and that’s saying something.

I stepped up to the pair, excusing myself from my chat with the kid in question and I stepped in. I told my colleague that I would take over and he left, confused. I then turned to the mother, explained to her that his beliefs and judgment of things didn’t reflect our own and that we weren’t going to treat her child any differently than we did the other kids. I swore up and down to her that he would be treated like everyone else and that I would be taking him into my team so that my colleague wouldn’t be near him unless absolutely necessary.

Thankfully, she agreed to the idea and I now have myself an extra student because my colleague is an idiot. The kid’s been a charm to work with, though, so I can’t complain.

Those scars, those beauty marks, those stretch marks, those freckles—all of these things are a part of you. A beautiful part.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 2 773, physically about 27
Final Word Count: 621 words
 

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A lot of people seem to believe that since I’m built like an Adonis—and I’m not even boasting right now, I was just made this way and at times I wish I wasn’t—that I’ll turn my nose up at the sight of scars, beauty marks, stretch marks, freckles, all of it. Anything that might disturb the ‘natural’ beauty of a body.

I don’t know where they got that idea, really. If they took a moment to really look at me and not just fawning and falling over themselves in front of me, they would realize that I’m not perfect. I’m not without my endless scars, freckles and even a few stretch marks from when I grew up too quickly for my own skin.

The freckles aren’t all that easy to spot, my skin is so evenly gold everywhere that you lose sight of the freckles, it’s a little easier to spot them in the winter when I pale a little since I don’t spend as much time outside as I do in the summer. The scars are more visible, though, I’ve been in a lot of fights over the years and not all of them were in my favour. Most of them are surprisingly well healed though some have left deeper markings on my skin, I don’t mind.

In the general sense of the world, I believe that everyone is beautiful. We’re all different; we all have that one thing that makes us who we are. I might be weird about this since I much prefer the presence of men at my side than that of women but the sight of a pregnant woman, during most stages of that pregnancy, is just absolutely beautiful to me. It shows me their strength.

I’ve been around just one woman who’s been through multiple pregnancies at this point and I know that it’s not always easy. I know that it takes strength and I know that at times, she was so exhausted by it all that she’d have preferred to stay in bed, she mentioned it a few times, but she still got out of that bed, she still went about her day as usual, or as ‘usual’ as her worrywart husband would let her. So sure, those stretch marks she still shows, those scars, those freckles, everything. They make her even more beautiful than she might believe to be.

The world where we grew up, it was a world where perfect beauty—the unmarred kind, the kind where there was just so much make-up applied on that you lost track of the person underneath it all—was seen as a necessity to get anywhere in life. I saw it happen as seasons, years and then decades passed. It was ugly, let me tell you.

On this planet, the standards of beauty as just so much different. Then again, these people are a little ‘backward’, compared to Earth. Comparing timelines, in a way, I’d have to say that these people might be closer to medieval times than anything else. I know that beauty still was a known concept back then and I’m sure it is now but no one that I’ve met seems to be focused on that. They just go about their day like everyone else, they just mind their business, they sell and exchange their wares, it feels easier to be myself here than it ever has been anywhere else.

That might be why I don’t really feel in a rush to leave, even if some of the people in the nearby villages don’t trust us yet. Never mind that we’ve been here for more than a decade but there’s nothing we can do. This is our home.

They were riding with us.

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 2 772, physically about 27
Final Word Count: 578 words

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Stowaways are rare. They are not impossible but they are so rare that I admit, now and again, we don’t really do a sweep of our ship before we take back to the skies. Not that we take to the skies very often but still often enough. We’ve had a few natives as stowaways at the beginning, not that we ever took to the skies with them. They’d only ever entered the ship out of curiosity or out of a dare since so many of them were frightened of us. I can’t begin to explain how that always felt, to see those eyes widen as we walked by them, terrified we might harm them when we hadn’t, not yet, not ever.

Sure, it was possible that someone else had landed here before us and had done them harm but it was more likely that they just were afraid because we were different.

On our last trip though, our stowaways were different and none of us really expected to find them. We’d done a clean sweep, at least, one that would have revealed anything ‘human’ sized within the cargo hold or anywhere else on the ship. Even the AI told us we were clean and her sensors hadn’t picked anything up. We’d also been keeping all the hatches and entry points closed so we hadn’t expected anything.

We were almost halfway to the meeting point of this particular trip when the sensors did pick something up, when their soft chattering came to be heard. It was low and I’m sure a lot of people would have let it be, thinking it was the ship but I’ve been travelling in this ship and fixing her up for so many years that I know every sound she makes and this wasn’t a sound of hers, it was something else.

It wasn’t hard to let our pilot handle the flying—we were using an easy pathway that was mostly clear of debris—so that we could go and investigate the sound.

As it turns out, our stowaways were so small that it took us until we were almost at our destination before we found them. I still don’t know how our AI didn’t sense them; they were tiny little balls of flying fur, so to speak. What I suppose would have been close enough to bats back on earth. There were three and all three fit in the palm of my hand. They were settled in the room above the one leading to the core of the ship so it’s always warm, that might very well be why she didn’t sense them.

None of us still can explain how they got into the ship at all. We’ve done a thorough check up once we’d landed back home again to find out just where they could have slipped in but we just haven’t found anything or anywhere. After we’d emptied the hold of our new cargo and checked everything over a few times, we did go back to the not-quite bats and I’m the one who carefully brought them back outside. I settled them high in a tree, far from sight and out of most dangers and we’ve seen them now and again a little so we know they’re all right.

We haven’t had any extra passengers since that one time but we’ve become a little more thorough, a little less complacent about assuming we were free of extra visitors and stowaways.

Everyone knows that talking to the dead is a very bad idea.

Timeline/World: Riverside University – Trip Around the World
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Human
Age: 34
Final Word Count: 566 words

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I don’t know if I believe in the afterlife, if I believe in rebirth, ghosts, the paranormal.

It’s a little hard to believe in these things when one sibling’s life works centres on science and just working out how things exist, function and all. Though I suppose there could be a little bit of both, some supernatural, some after life, some science.

In the long run, I think it’s mostly a case that I don’t really believe in one higher power having created us all and watching over us all? With the war and the rest, it’s hard to think that anyone could let that kind of thing just slip on by without helping, I guess. Some see their ‘almighty’ as someone who just watches, let us learn from our own mistakes but obviously this isn’t really working out so well for a lot of people, so that really may be just why I have these thoughts on the subject.

All of this because some kid in a small little group I supervise brought up one of these Ouija boards a few days ago. I do mean brought up, too, he didn’t bring one along because, well, not something we have time to sit down and play with, I teach these kids about gymnastics and hard work, I coach them to get better, to focus, so maybe, just maybe they’ll have a chance at the Olympics, something I ended up not being able to even get to. That one is my own fault for pushing too hard when my injury hadn’t finished healing properly, so I did the next best thing, once I was out of school. I turned to teaching.

So back to this kid, I call them kids because most of them are half my age, even more in some cases but most that come to me usually are between fifteen and eighteen. So this one talks about that board, how they played a game with their friends a few days ago, how nothing happened… another one chimes in about how this is a terrible idea, how talking to the dead is bad, how they’re dangerous and just, he went on and on. Usually I don’t intervene in discussions like these, they can talk about whatever they might want during our breaks, so long as they’re respectful but I could tell this was about to get ugly, the discussion of beliefs like that, especially Javin, he’s a little high strung.

So I let them talk a minute or so more until Javin really starts to look like he’s about to explode before I step back in, let them know that it’s time to get back to the mats, the bars, everything. Break’s over. Everyone just sort of exhales, relaxes and let go, except Javin but I know it’ll take him an hour or so before he’s beyond the discussion. He tends to hang on for a while longer than the others.

I’m glad I only have these four kids to work with at once, any more and I couldn’t give them the focus I know they deserve from me. It was hard not to accept more from the list of interested people but I couldn’t do that to potential athletes. I know what it’s like to not be able to get your coach’s attention and it was the last thing I wanted for them.

You’re What?!

Timeline/World: Enter the Steam
Characters: Whisky Allaway
Race: Boozeling – Whisky
Age: 29
Final Word Count: 587 words

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When I was younger, meeting up with regular folks always was an interesting discovery. I think that mostly stems from the fact that we all had issues keeping just what we were to ourselves, despite what we had escaped from. I learned to keep my mouth shut about that quickly enough but we were such a mismatched group that people at times asked us about it all.

I remember that first time, I’m not even the one who spilled the beans, it’d been Gin. He was the youngest of us and still wasn’t altogether in tune with, well not telling the whole world about the fact that we weren’t human.

I’m not even sure I remember how we came to be and I don’t really want to ask, I’d probably get answers like unicorns and rainbows or some shit.

But really, Gin had been all of maybe eight by then and we’d been on the run for a few weeks at most. It had started as a trip out at sea just so we see the water since we had otherwise spent our lives locked up in windowless rooms, and it just went from there, we never went back.

We were approached by this young woman, I suppose she could have been a teenager more than a woman, she took in our mismatched appearances, all based on the alcohol we had been created from and Absinthe stood out the most from us but Gin with his snowy looks could get a few good stares too… and she asked us where we were from.

We all just sort of looked at one another and shrugged, since we didn’t even really where we were from. It was one of those things that father had never really told us. Not that he was our father, not by blood, but he’d been the one to oversee our well being from the start and he says he was also one of our two creators.

Gin, bless his innocent heart, opened his mouth and out came that we were on the run, away from a ‘home’ that didn’t treat us well and well, surprisingly he didn’t tell her we weren’t humans like her, but the simple fact that we were runaways kids didn’t sit well with her.

Her eyes went really, really wide and she started asking a thousand questions and wouldn’t shut up. It’s only when father finally came back out of that one building he had stepped to that he put an end to it all and corralled us back to our mode of transport, at that point, a not too big sailing ship but it was big enough for all of us without too many extras and we were able to handle it pretty well, I was happy for that.

Sure, it was a little lonely being out there with just him and my siblings, I missed the woman who had also been taking care of us but she hadn’t been able to join us. I had met a small handful of people since the time we’d first come out and already I was addicted to the chance of knowing others, to the change of being surrounded by more than just four walls and my brothers every few days.

It felt like a lost to ask and I knew it was, I don’t know where he was taking us but there isn’t much we could do about it but go along, I didn’t think they’d ever stop looking for us.