The Other Side

Chapter 3: The world is dying

It had been two days since I met Alexandre and we have developed a close friendship. Of course, there were still things we didn't know about each other.

He is from France. He transferred to my school only a day before the apocalypse. According to him, the pills lets him speak any language for a day, which is amazing.

The history classroom was our home. We made beds out of pillows from all the couches we found around the school.

Our largest problem is food. We could cook food but we need ingredients for that, which we do not have. Usually, we hunt our food or eat berries we find.

I always let Alexandre kill our food because I could never do that. To kill someone is not really on my to-do list.

The electricity still worked so we could cook our food. Sometimes I burned it but if we could eat it, it was fine.

I sat at my desk, reading a book. It was a biography about some guy during the revolution 250 years ago. I don't even know why I read it. The book wasn't even that good, but it was the only thing to do so I'm not going to complain.

While reading, I heard something outside. It sounded like a tree falling.

I looked around and saw Alexandre staring out the window. He looked like he was scared but not at the same time.

"What's going on?" I asked. I stood up from my chair and closed my book while doing so.

He turned to look at me then smiled, "Nothing you have to worry about. Go back to reading your book now, ok?"

He looked back out of the window and got the same expression again.

I didn't want to just live here, not knowing what was going on, so I walked up to him and looked out of the window.

After seeing what I saw, I may have had the same expression on my face as Alexandre had. The thing I saw was truly frightening.

Water. I saw water everywhere I looked. Sure, there was some trees and house parts floating around but nothing else. The water was not like normal water, it was that kind of clear water you see in pools.

You could see everything and nothing at the same time. I could see everything under the water but the things underwater looked distorted.

It was some kind of sick mind play, made to traumatize everyone who looked at it.

I looked away. I realized Alexandre would have to do the same if he ever wanted to be able to get that sight out of his mind.

I covered his eyes with my hand and pulled him away from the window, back to my desk on the other side of the classroom.

"Oh... my... god," I said, "W-what was that water and where did it come from?... Alexandre?". At this moment, I was shaking in fear, remembering the distorted things in the water.

"That... That was the apocalypse," He said, laying down, "It's meant to traumatize those who see the water. But the I've come to realize that we, we who are still here, are immune to that. Though I recommend you to not touch the water. It might be poisonous."

"Wait... how are we going to get food now?" I stood up. The water made it impossible to find any living creatures anywhere.

Alexandre stood up as well. He grabbed my shoulders and made me look at him. "I hunted more food than needed yesterday. We should have food for two weeks if we ration it."

Hearing that made me calm down a little. "That's good... but after two weeks, what's going to happen?" I asked.

He tensed up a bit. "Well... I have to ask you to do something for me," he looked nervous when saying this.

"I've done lots and lots of research while you were asleep. There is two different dimensions right now. One is all perfect, while the other, this one, is dying. If we make the water disappear, this dimension is safe. Even better, we might even be able to make the two dimensions come together as one. In that case everything will be as normal," he explained.

That was a lot to take in at once. The only thing I could even say was, "Wow... that's... wow"

Feeling overwhelmed by everything, I sat down. So my mom was still alive? She was just in another dimension.

Tears filled my eyes and I couldn't do anything but cry. I just sat there, crying.

Alexandre didn't do anything because he, himself, began to tear up a bit. All the emotions I was feeling was a lot to him as well.

After a minute or so, I wiped my tears and stood up, "So we have to make the water disappear?" I asked.

He looked at me, "Yes, though I do not know how to do that yet. The water is called 'spirit-water'. We might have to train contacting the spirit world."

Two options: Talk to spirits or die. Worlds hardest question, though I'm leaning towards dying... nah, I'll go with talking to the spirits.

"How are we going to train then?" I asked because I didn't have a teacher or anyone that has done this before.

Then he got this dumb smile on his face and said, "I'm going to teach you to meditate".

Wait... what? Alexandre is going to teach me how to meditate. He hasn't done this before? Or maybe he has, and he's keeping all of his identity hidden from me. No no no... he's a newbie, just like me.

I felt as though I needed to ask him how he knew everything and asked, "How do you even know all of this?".

He just smiled and said, "I have my ways..."

Just by looking at him, I could tell that he was hiding something from me. I decided not to ask him because he obviously didn't want to talk about it right now. If the time comes, he might just tell me when he's ready to do so.

It was getting late and I began to feel tired. While laying down I wondered how I was supposed to save the world.