Library:The World on the Other Side

Prologue

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Date unknown, 20XX

W

allace Lane was a completely ordinary young man. He lived a quiet and mundane life in the heart of New Orleans in a small apartment which was sparsely decorated with no personal touches to speak of.

During the day, Wallace worked as an accountant in an office which was just an hour’s drive away. He spent his evenings watching television, and had a few close friends but no real hobbies or passions to remark on.

His appearance was equally unremarkable, he was of middling height and build with sandy hair which was always neatly combed to the side. He was clean-shaven, which gave him a boyish face that lacked any character, and when not a work seemed to always be dressed in a simple outfit of jeans and a white t-shirt as if he was straight out of a cartoon.

However, on one particular night, as Wallace drove home from work in his car, something felt off. The air was thick with an unfamiliar tension, and the streets seemed to be devoid of their usual evening bustle, as if the world had slid a few metres to the left and tried unsuccessfully to correct itself.

The sky was a deep shade of blue, with streaks of orange and pink stretching across the horizon, casting long shadows that danced across the pavement. The sound of jazz echoed faintly from the distance, adding to the surreal atmosphere.

Wallace couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. He briefly checked his phone, but there were no alerts or messages. He looked around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Despite his growing sense of paranoia, he drove on, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling.

Finally, he arrived at his apartment complex and made his way up the stairs to his flat.

The corridor was dimly lit, casting eerie shadows that made him uneasy.

He fished out his keys from the pockets of his jeans, his hands shaking slightly. As he unlocked his door, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. He turned around quickly, but there was no one there.

With a sigh of relief, Wallace stepped inside his apartment, closing the door behind him with a soft click and slumped into the worn armchair in the dimly lit living room as he felt tiredness seep into every muscle of his body.

He took a deep breath, relishing the familiar scent of his home, and let his head rest back against the chair's cushioned headrest. It was then that he noticed the silence. It was so quiet that he could almost hear the sound of his own heartbeat.

Wallace knew he should brush it off and go about his evening as usual, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was about to happen.

Wallace knew he shouldn’t dwell on some invented feeling reached for the remote control on the chair's left armrest and clicked the power button to turn on the TV. As the screen flickered to life before him, the urgent voice of a news anchor broke the silence of the room. Wallace fixed his brown eyes on the television screen, feeling his attention pulled in by the grim news headlines.

The anchor's voice grew louder as she began detailing the latest natural disaster and political scandal, and Wallace's eyes darted across the screen, each headline more depressing than the last, each image more harrowing than the one before.

Wallace felt a deep sigh escape from his lips as he sank further into the chair, feeling suffocated by the weight of the world's problems that seemed to be closing in around him.

With that thought, he suddenly yearned for an escape, a way out of this endless cycle of bad news and negativity. His mind wandered as the news anchor continued to drone on, and he found himself fantasising slightly of a world free from the constant stream of despair that surrounded him.

As the night wore on, the tension only grew stronger. Every creak of the floorboards made him jump even if it was just his footsteps, even the faint sound of motorcars outside his window made him feel like he was being watched. Despite his best efforts, Wallace couldn't shake off the feeling that something was wrong.

It was only when he saw the analog clock on the wall that he realized how much time had passed. He couldn't believe it was already so late at night.

He knew he had to get up early for work, as such, he switched off the TV and dragged himself to his bedroom. As he lay in bed, staring drowsily at the ceiling, Wallace couldn't shake away a feeling that he couldn't quite identify, but it made him feel uneasy nonetheless: It was a feeling that something strange was about to happen.

He couldn’t be more right.

Outside his window, a crow perched on a branch, watching his closed window intently. It didn't flinch even when a car drove by, or when a gust of wind rustled the leaves of the nearby trees. It seemed to be waiting, watching for something to happen.

Suddenly, a man appeared beneath the branch the crow was on, startling the bird into flight. The man did not look a day older than fifty, with scruffy grey hair and turquoise eyes that seemed to glow slightly in the darkness. He wore an old-fashioned frock coat and a top hat, giving him an almost dream-like appearance.

The startled crow landed on another branch further away and watched as the man pulled out a small, navy-blue paperback book from a pocket of his frock coat. He flipped through its pages for a moment, then looked up at Wallace's window.

The man's eyes than met with the crow's, and, without a word, the man closed the book and seemingly melted into the shadows. The crow soon followed, disappearing into the night.

Wallace did not have a clue of the strange visitor outside his window, but as he drifted off into an uneasy sleep, a sense of trouble lingered in his mind, as if he had just missed something important.

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