We sat down in the living room. I had brought some coffee in. I was surprised to see Aril drinking it, but apparently he had something of a taste for it, not to mention an asbestos mouth, given the rate at which he knocked it back.

After we’d all calmed down a bit — even Aril had looked somewhat on edge, which surprised me — I tried to explain what had happened, to the best of my memory.

It was strange. I couldn’t remember all of it. It was fading rapidly, like a dream. Was it a dream? No, of course it wasn’t, because both Aril and Alice had seen me disappear, and had said so.

Aril and Alice. Two people who didn’t belong in this world. My only assurance that what I thought had happened was real came from two people who shouldn’t exist.

“Are you all right?” said Alice. “You stopped in mid-sentence.”

“Oh, right,” I said, catching myself. “No, I’m fine, I was just… trying to remember.”

Alice gave me a funny look, but didn’t say anything else. I continued trying to explain.

There was darkness, definitely. And loneliness. A feeling of being nowhere. A feeling almost like I’d been completely erased from existence, but was still somehow aware. Perhaps existence had been erased from around me instead. I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

Something had happened to me. Someone was there. Who?

The memory was there, I could tell, but every time I tried to remember it in detail it was as if it was “hiding” in a dark corner like a frightened animal.

“Some girl came over,” said Alice suddenly. “She was looking for you.”

Laura? Was it Laura?

Wait. Laura was… was she…?

No, she couldn’t be. If she was here, then she couldn’t have been… but then she did disappear… but that wouldn’t make any sense, because this doesn’t have anything to do with her.

“No, it’s worth considering,” said Aril out loud, apparently reading my thoughts. Alice gave him a curious look.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked. “It’s weird.”

“Do what?” said Alice.

“Root around inside my head,” I said. “Him, not you,” I added, for clarification.

“Oh,” said Alice. “Right.” She looked a little confused. I realised that she still had no idea what we were talking about.

“Did you know the girl who came over?” I asked her.

“I thought I knew her,” she said, “but I couldn’t remember her name.”

“What did she look like?” I asked.

“She was pretty,” said Alice. “And about your age. I guess she’s a friend of yours or something.” She paused and gave me a rather childish smile. “Or your girlfriend, perhaps?”

I winced slightly.

“She is your girlfriend?” she said. “Oh, I was just teasing. But…”

“She’s not,” I growled. I was remembering the confusing sequence of events that had happened the last time I had seen her. Had that really happened? I realised it had come out a little more acidic than I had perhaps intended. “Sorry. No. She’s… just a friend. I think. That’s neither here nor there, really. You didn’t finish describing her.”

Alice rattled off a fairly vague physical description that sounded pretty much like Laura. I nodded. Hm. So she’d come back to see me? That was… unexpected. She was the one who had said she needed space and wanted to get away after… whatever had happened. But she’d come back?

I was confused. Very confused. And thinking about it wasn’t helping matters.

After a short silence, eventually Aril spoke.

“So,” he said. “It sounds like our friend is paying attention to you, at least. If it interfered with you to such a degree that you can barely remember what happened, it’s certainly taking an interest. So we apparently know how to attract it. Now all we have to do is figure out how to deal with it.”

How do you deal with “chaos” anyway? I had no idea. I was well out of my depth. I was only just coming to terms with the fact that I could apparently step between worlds. And, given what had happened, I was in no real rush to try that again.

Aril once again sensed what I was thinking.

“It’s a difficult question,” he said. “Logically, the way to beat ‘chaos’ is with ‘law’, but I’m not entirely sure how that applies here.”

I scratched my head. “Law,” huh? I wondered what that looked like. If “chaos” was a confusing mass of conflicting messages that didn’t make any sense and “law” was the opposite, then it must be a sense of being firmly grounded in reality, of being absolutely sure of the truth and sticking resolutely to it.

I thought once again about Aril’s words — my “weak connection” to this world. I wondered if that was the key somehow. If I could somehow strengthen that connection, then perhaps that would count as “law” standing against “chaos”. But how would I strengthen that connection? I had no idea whatsoever what a “connection” to this world even meant — although I had assumed that Laura’s sudden departure after the strange events had weakened that connection further.

Hmm.

“You could be on to something there,” said Aril. Damn him. Why couldn’t he have a conversation out loud like a normal person? “So we need to think about how you can strengthen your connections to this world to ward off the chaos. It’s something to try, if nothing else.”

“So basically you need to make some friends?” said Alice. “That doesn’t sound so tough.”

Of course it doesn’t sound tough, I thought. You always had friends swarming around you.

I was suddenly wracked with guilt at the wave of bitterness towards Alice I had just felt, but I couldn’t deny where it had come from. She had always been much more outgoing and social than I ever was. She had always had lots of friends, and was always spending time with them — going out at the weekends, having people over, having sleepovers at her friends’ houses. At least, I assumed that this Alice was the same as the one I had known.

Me, on the other hand… I had always found it difficult to make friends. Any time I even thought about talking to someone other than Laura, I felt choked up and unable to speak. My old problem tended to raise its head — I’d imagine talking to the person in front of me, then I’d imagine the conversations going as bad as it was possible to go, and then I’d walk away without actually having the conversation.

This was a silly way to be, I knew, but it was the way I’d always been. I’d never really trained myself out of it as a young child, which meant it was even harder to do so now. I’d somehow survived my entire school life without really having anyone close to me — apart from Laura, of course — and had come out of the other end relatively unscathed. Well, unless you counted all the terrible things that had happened since then. But I somehow doubted they were anything to do with me having friends or not.

Alice frowned at me.

“You haven’t said anything for ages,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Mm,” I said, absent-mindedly. I was still considering what we’d just talked about. It made a certain amount of sense. It was perfectly logical that the more people I knew — or who knew me — the stronger a “connection” I’d have. But the prospect of doing that terrified me somewhat. Wasn’t there another way?

“You don’t sound all right,” said Alice. “Are you worried about the prospect of making some new friends?”

I paused for a moment. There was no point in lying.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“Hm,” said Alice. “Perhaps I can help you out with that somehow.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well,” she said. “You go to college, right? Perhaps I should come along and try and help you meet some new people. People seem to like me. At least they did before they all, you know, disappeared.”

I nodded. It actually wasn’t a bad idea. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to sneak her into lessons, but there was nothing stopping her coming onto the campus at lunchtime and helping me make some friends. I didn’t want to come to rely on her, though. But I grudgingly accepted that I needed some help.

The big question was where to start. I wasn’t a member of any of the clubs or societies that ran, and I didn’t have any real talents that made any of them a particularly good fit. Also, we were already well into the term, so I figured that they probably wouldn’t want to take on new people.

This was pointless, I thought. There’s no way this can work.

“Stop it,” said Aril.

“What?” said Alice.

“He’s thinking about giving up before he’s even tried,” he said, tapping his fingertips together and turning to address me directly. “That’s a poor habit. You need to stop that.”

He was right, of course. There was really no rational reason for me to not give this a try. If the person I tried to talk to didn’t like me, then all I had to do was move on to someone else and avoid the original person. With so many people milling around the college each day, that surely wouldn’t be a problem.

Alice repeated almost exactly what I was thinking. I smiled at her. We were apparently on the same wavelength. That knowledge was comforting.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. Where should I start? A club?”

“A club’s not a bad idea,” said Alice. “It’s a good chance to meet people who like things you like. Plus you can meet several people at once. I know that might be a bit scary, knowing you, but it’s a good, quick way of getting to know people. And I sort of get the impression we should hurry a bit.”

“All right,” I said.

“So what club are you going to start with?” she asked, her eyes bright. She was enjoying this a little too much. But given that back in her world, joining a club and hanging out with people was something that was now impossible for her, I didn’t begrudge her the feeling.

“I don’t know,” I said, a sour expression on my face.

“Oh, cheer up,” she said. “What do you like doing?”

I considered this for a moment.

“Reading,” I said. “And writing.”

“So your ideal club is just ‘school’, then,” she said sarcastically. “I’m just kidding. Is there a book club or a magazine or newspaper or something? I used to help out with the newspaper at my school.”

“I remember,” I said fondly. “I used to like your articles.”

She smiled at me. I knew that the articles I read and the ones she wrote might not have been quite the same, given the circumstances, but it wasn’t a lie. Her school newspaper was a surprisingly professional production. It only came out about once or twice a term, though, depending on whether or not the club could be bothered. Someone needed to teach them about deadlines.

“I’m not sure,” I added. “That’s one thing to have a look at.”

“What about music?” she said. “You don’t play anything, do you? What about singing?”

The prospect of singing filled me with enormous dread, but I knew that the college had a decent choir. I mentally filed it under “possible” — one to fall back on if there was really nothing else.

“And sports?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Oh come on,” she said. “No sports at all? You’ll get fat and unfit.”

Her words stung a bit. I wasn’t any good at sports, and had always felt a bit excluded for my lack of skill.

“Hey!” she said, apparently seeing my expression. “I was just joking! Stop being so sensitive.”

She’d always been like this, joking around and light-heartedly needling me about various things. It was a trait that had always frustrated me back then, but now it was quite endearing, perhaps because I hadn’t been around it for so long. I felt a bit sad.

“All right,” she said. “Well, we have an idea. You should go to college tomorrow and scout out what clubs there are. Then when you decide to join one, I’ll come along and be awesome and help you make friends. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” I said, smiling.

Perhaps this would work after all. It wouldn’t be easy for me, but nothing ever was. At least this was doing something positive.

I felt myself filling with resolve. I looked at Alice and her eyes seemed to sparkle. I looked at Aril and he gave me a slightly bored-looking smile.

I felt strong.

“Whoa,” said Aril. “You’ve got quite a pair of lungs on you.”

I closed my eyes and balled my hands up into fists. I hope it reached him. Wherever he was.

Of course it couldn’t have reached him. That was ridiculous. I couldn’t shout between worlds. Could I?

No, that was ridiculous.

I felt Aril’s hand on my shoulder. It was cold.

“This will… work out,” he said. It didn’t sound overly convincing. “He’ll be back. I’m sure of it. He’s… special.”

I hadn’t heard him use this tone before. I didn’t like it. He sounded uneasy.

BANG-BANG-BANG.

What?

BANG-BANG-BANG.

Someone was knocking on the door. Both Aril and I froze. What were we supposed to do? I looked at him in the hope that he might give me some sort of signal. He looked back at me, but his eyes were blank. I half expected him to just vanish into nothingness to not deal with an awkward situation — it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that, for sure.

I was glad when he didn’t do that.

BANG-BANG-BANG.

Whoever was knocking on the door wasn’t going away. I grit my teeth and walked into the hallway, trying not to make a noise, or a movement obvious enough to be seen through the frosted glass. I carefully put my eye to the peephole and looked out.

There was a girl out there. I vaguely recognised her, but I couldn’t remember her name. Had I met her before? I didn’t know.

What to do?

BANG-BANG-BANG.

The sudden sound of her knocking again made me jump, and I bumped into the door, making a sound.

“Bugger,” I muttered to myself.

“I know you’re in there!” came the girl’s voice from outside. “Please open up. I want to talk to you.”

I wanted to shout back “no!” at her, but figured that would probably just confuse her. Better to take the direct approach?

I flung open the door and stood there defiantly with my hands on my hips.

“Leave this place!” I bellowed in my strongest voice. “Begone! Away! And never return!”

No, actually, I didn’t do that. It would have been fun, but also there was really no reason to. Also, who talks like that outside of books?

I did, however, decide to open the door — slowly and carefully rather than flinging it open dramatically, though.

“There you a–” began the girl. She stopped when she saw me. “What the fu–”

She trailed off. Obviously she knew who I was. I couldn’t remember her name, though.

“Alice?” she said. “Is that you?”

I nodded.

“But you’re–”

I smiled sweetly.

“No, never mind,” she said. “Um, can I come in?”

“It’s not really a great time,” I said. “Do you need something?”

“I was hoping to talk to your brother, actually,” she said, eyeing me warily. “But… I’m guessing he’s not here?”

“No, actually,” I said, a little more defiantly than I meant to. “I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

It wasn’t technically a lie. I didn’t know when he’d be back. I also didn’t know where he was, but this girl didn’t need to know that.

Where did I know her from?

“Oh,” she said, looking a little upset. “Sorry to bother you, then. I’ll… try again another time.”

“Okay,” I said brightly. “Bye!”

She turned around and walked away. I watched her leave. I felt Aril walk up behind me, though as usual he didn’t make a sound while he was walking. I just felt his presence. I also felt a sense of relief from him.

“Okay, that’s that dealt with for now,” he said. “Now we need to figure out what to do next.”

I frowned.

“Do you know who that was?” I said. “She seemed familiar but I just couldn’t place her.”

Aril scratched his face.

“She’s… hmm, how to explain it,” he said. “She’s important to your brother, though there’s something not quite right about her. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. We should keep an eye on her, though.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, looking down the path where she had just walked away. “So we let her go.”

Aril nodded. His usual confidence was nowhere to be seen. This whole situation had obviously shaken him up a bit, and it worried me. He was normally so calm and cool about everything, and for this to mess him up? I didn’t like it.

“We let her go. But we should keep an eye on her,” I said.

He nodded again. He didn’t seem to see what I was getting at.

“Should we perhaps follow her?” I said, spelling it out for him.

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yes. Maybe.”

“Come on then,” I said, pulling one of my brother’s coats off the hooks by the door. It was way too big but I didn’t have any of my own clothes here, so it was the best I could do. It was cold outside. I wasn’t about to go out in the cold without a coat.

I left the door unlocked so we could get back in later. I had no idea where the keys might be in this world, so rather than waste time looking for them I just left it unlocked. This always used to be a nice neighbourhood, at least in my world, so hopefully it was the same here.

Aril followed me out of the door and we set off down the path to follow the girl.

*

She’d left me. She’d made me feel safe, comfortable and warm — holding me, embracing me, kissing me — and then she’d left. I was all alone again. I was back in the darkness again. Where was I? Who was–

Suddenly, there was a bright flash, and I heard a sound. A rushing, roaring, whooshing sound that culminated in the sound of someone’s voice, distorted and echoey, like it was being amplified too much and blasted out of some speakers too small to cope with the sound. It was something that I hadn’t heard for a very long time. But it was something that I needed to hear — something that I hadn’t realised how much I had longed to hear.

It was something that gave me hope. Something that I knew would bring me home.

A connection. A weak connection, but a connection nonetheless. I could make it back. I could make it back. I could make it back.

I closed my eyes and followed the sound. I didn’t know which direction it was coming from or even which direction I was facing, but I could tell where to go. I knew what it was. It was calling me. It needed me. It wanted me.

I floated. I couldn’t tell how long for. But I could tell I was going somewhere. The actual sound had long since dissipated, but I still knew that I needed to continue onwards. Ever onwards. Follow the sound. Return home.

Where was home? Who was calling me? And why was I here?

My mind kept being clouded by strange questions and doubts, but I shook them off. I didn’t need to hear them. I needed to focus right now, to concentrate, to make sure that I got to my destination.

Home. That was where I was going.

Home.

I felt my feet land on solid ground. I opened my eyes, and I was back where I thought I should be. It took a moment to orient myself, but I recognised the open door, the shelves, the cold room in front of me.

I was back home. Back where I should be.

“Hello?” I called, my mind swirling back into place as if it was trailing behind my body by a few seconds. “Aril? Alice? Are you here?”

There was no response. I swallowed and looked around. How long had I been gone?

I closed the pantry door.  I walked to the bottom of the stairs and called up them.

“Alice? Aril? Are you here?” I shouted again. “Hello?”

Still no response.

This was the… right world, right? Doubts started to creep in. The questions started to slip into my mind through the cracks again. They were unwelcome, but the fact I was still alone was making it harder to fight them off.

I looked around the hallway. I saw that one of my coats was missing from the hooks on the wall. Oddly, that gave me a sense of relief. Alice must have taken it. But when? Where had she gone? Why? How would I find her?

It wouldn’t do to stand around here. I took one of my other coats down from the coat hook. I opened the door — it was still unlocked, presumably from when Alice had left — and walked outside. I fumbled in my pocket for my keys and locked it behind me.

Now what?

I walked down the path from my front door and onto my street. Which way? I couldn’t tell.

I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure why.

“Alice!” I cried out. I didn’t expect it to work. If I couldn’t see her, she probably wouldn’t be able to hear me, either. I didn’t like speaking loudly in the street. There was no-one else around, but I was still self-conscious about the neighbours looking outside and seeing me yelling to myself. I gave it one more try, though, louder and longer this time. “Alice!”

There was no response. I didn’t expect there to be. Why would there b–

I heard footsteps. They were running. Coming from — over there? Yes, there they were. And they belonged to–

“Alice!” I said, shocked. Part of me wasn’t expecting to see her again at all, let alone so soon. She flung her arms around me and nearly knocked me over as she ran into me.

“You heard!” she said. “You heard!”

I wasn’t really sure what she meant, but I was happy that she was pleased to see me.

Wait… “you heard”? Had she been the source of the sound? My connection?

“Yes,” I found myself saying, almost automatically. “I heard, Alice. Thank you for bringing me back.”

“I want you to try something,” said Aril to me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve crossed over to the world Alice here came from,” he said, waving his hand in the general direction of my sister, who was presently wandering around the top floor of my house looking at everything, presumably trying to work out how things differed from her world. “But you know, that’s not the only other world out there.”

“Right,” I said. “You said something about… other worlds existing on a ‘continuum’ and the world Alice is from being ‘closest’ to this one, right?”

“Yes,” said Aril. “It’s also the last world that our chaotic friend passed through. What I’m interested to see is what’s going on in the next world. His next target.”

“The next one?” I asked curiously. I knew already that there were other worlds out there, of course — infinite possibilities, infinite worlds, presumably — but I’d always been drawn to the one Alice had come from. I hadn’t seen a hint of another one, but presumably if I was able to make use of my new… abilities, I’d be able to do so. Assuming there was a “gate”.

I thought about this for a moment.

“But wait,” I said. “The reason I can go back and forth to Alice’s world is because of the gates, right?”

“Yes,” said Aril.

“And the gates are a result of this chaos thing messing things up, right?”

“Yes,” said Aril.

“So if the chaos thing hasn’t been to the next world, there won’t be any gates, right?”

“Yes,” said Aril.

How infuriating. Say something more.

“You’re correct,” said Aril. “Which is where I can help you out a bit. I don’t have the energy to pass through myself right now, but I can create a temporary gate for you.”

I nodded.

“All right. What am I looking for?”

That was decisive. When did I become so assertive? I could feel Alice’s eyes on me. They were displaying something like surprise… or was it admiration? I couldn’t tell.

“Nothing much,” said Aril. “You won’t be able to stay long. But take a look and see if things are… all right there. We’re only assuming that our friend hasn’t paid it a visit yet, of course. It’d be nice to know if we were right.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

“Right,” said Aril. “Now, we should probably find a place that wouldn’t be too obtrusive for you to suddenly appear. Just in case…”

I shivered slightly at the thought. Alice seemed to be just fine with what had been going on, but I couldn’t guarantee that the incarnations of my family from another plane of existence would be quite so accepting of all this.

We eventually settled on the walk-in pantry in the kitchen. I didn’t keep it particularly well-stocked these days, as I tended to just put stuff in the fridge or freezer, but that meant that there was enough room to stand in there.

“Okay,” said Aril. “I’ll try and open the gate there.”

Aril clicked his fingers and what looked like a holographic display appeared from the back of his hand. He tapped some floating virtual buttons and there was a momentary flash, but as usual I couldn’t see the gate.

“Go on,” he said. “Step on through.”

I tried to recreate the way I felt and what I did when I stepped through into Alice’s room before.

“Go for it!” I heard her voice say behind me. “You can do it.”

I closed my eyes, grit my teeth and made my mind go blank. I felt oddly relaxed as I stepped through the doorway of the pantry.

Darkness.

It was all black. I opened my eyes, but it was still dark.

I reached out in front of me for the familiar pantry shelves, but I didn’t feel anything at all, not even a breeze as I moved my arms. Were my arms there? I couldn’t tell. This world just seemed to be… absolute nothingness.

Had I come to a world where everything was all over? Had I come to a world where existence had simply stopped? If so, how was this place — if it was even a place — even here? And if there was nothing here, presumably I was in the darkness and vacuum of space, but I was still alive.

Wasn’t I?

I felt like I was alive. But I couldn’t feel anything. Because there was nothing to feel.

I wanted to call out, but something stopped my voice from coming out. Was it the lack of air? No, because if there was no air, I’d be dead. I was still alive, right?

I felt like I was alive. But I couldn’t feel anything. Because there was nothing to feel.

This was loneliness. This was absolute nothingness. This was being isolated from everything I had known, everyone I had ever loved.

Somehow I found them hard to picture right now.

Why was I here? What was I doing?

Who was I?

I… didn’t know.

I floated — floated? — around, though there was nothing to see that gave me a reference point. I couldn’t tell where the “gate” I had come in from was any more. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t feel anything. Again, my thoughts turned to the question of my own existence. Was I alive?

I felt like I was alive. But I couldn’t feel anything. Because there was nothing to feel.

I thought I should be more scared at this strange situation. I thought I should be more worried. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t relaxed, either. I just… was. A consciousness floating in the void. Swirling nothingness in some further swirling nothingness.

Suddenly I felt another presence, though I still saw nothing.

I didn’t like the new presence. It seemed threatening, but still I felt nothing.

It seemed like it was mocking me, laughing at me. But still I felt nothing.

I tried to ignore it, tune it out, but it felt like it was following me around. If I could see anything, it would have been following wherever I was looking, like something stuck in my eye. But there was nothing to see. There was nothing here. I was all alone, apart from this strange presence. I didn’t even feel like my own “self” was here.

I wanted to come back. But to where? To what? To whom?

Where was home? Who was I? Who was waiting for me?

I fell to the ground with a thump and realised my eyes were closed. My back hurt. I’d fallen onto a solid floor.

Wait, I thought. A solid floor? Feelings. Pain.

I opened my eyes and looked up. It was still dark, but I could at least see where I was now. I recognised it. This place felt familiar. Was it… home?

I unsteadily got to my feet. Yes, this was familiar. I reached out for the door in front of me and opened it. Inside were some shelves, but they were all bare. It was cold inside. It felt like this place had been deserted for a long time.

I closed the door.

Where was I? Was this really home? It looked like there was no-one here. Should there be someone here? Something lingered at the back of my mind. Someone was waiting for me. Who was it?

“Hi,” came a voice from behind me. I span around. She was standing in front of me. I knew her. I remembered her.

“Laura?” I said. “Yes, it’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me,” she said. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

I didn’t feel safe in this strange place, but the girl — Laura — was a comforting presence. She was important to me. I was important to her. We belonged together.

Did we?

Yes.

Was she the one who was waiting for me? Something at the back of my mind made me unsure, but that feeling was rapidly fading.

Laura stepped forward and put her arms around my neck. She embraced me tightly, and kissed me passionately on the lips. It was a nice feeling. I didn’t want her to let go.

“I won’t,” she whispered to me. “I won’t let you go.”

I knew that she wasn’t joking. And I was happy. I closed my eyes and let the pleasurable sensations of her lips meeting mine, her tongue exploring my mouth, wash over me. This was happiness. This was companionship. This took the loneliness away. I was safe, and no longer alone.

I felt my “self” slipping away, but I didn’t care any more. This was the place I wanted to be, the place I wanted to stay, and nothing was going to change that.

*

“Shit,” said Aril.

“What?” I said. I felt bad. It felt like there were spiders crawling up my back. I really hoped that there weren’t. It was just nerves. But something seemed wrong.

Aril stayed quiet. I didn’t like it. I spoke again.

“What?” I said, a bit louder.

He still stayed quiet. That wasn’t like him.

“Come on!” I said. “Tell me! You’re going to have to eventually.”

He paused, and turned to look at me. The creepy feeling on my back started up again.

“We may have a problem,” he said. “He’s… gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” I said. The spiders on my back felt like they’d doubled in size and got twice as hairy.

“Exactly what I say,” he said. “He’s gone. I don’t know where he is. He went through the gate and now… nothing.”

“Then get him back!” I said, louder still. I really didn’t want to shout at Aril, but I felt I probably would before long. “Please!”

“There’s no getting him back,” said Aril. “Wherever he’s gone, he’s going to have to find his own way back. Because he’s not where he should be.”

“What?” I shouted. “But he was…”

“I know,” said Aril, interrupting me. It annoyed me a bit, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say anyway. “I’m sorry.”

I just stood and looked at Aril, then at the open door of the pantry, then back at Aril again.

I’d lost him twice now. I’d lost my brother twice. It wasn’t getting any easier. How was I supposed to deal with this? How was I supposed to deal with meeting my brother who I thought was dead, then losing him again? How was I supposed to accept this? How could I get him back?

I felt my eyes filling up with tears. I wanted to just fall down and cry, but I tried to hold back the feeling. It was difficult. My lip trembled and my knees shook. But I didn’t let the tears out.

I needed him back. He’d saved me from that terrible, awful, lonely world of nothingness. Now I needed to save him. How could I save him? How could I get him back? How could I find him?

I couldn’t work it out. My eyes were stinging. I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream.

So I did. Just one word.

I hoped it was enough.

The first task Aril set me sounded simple, but ended up being significantly more challenging than I think either of us thought. Due to my supposed “weak connection” to this world — a connection which I felt could have only been weakened by the disastrous and inexplicable encounter with Laura — Aril theorised that I should be able to make use of the “gates,” as he called them, without having to wait for the times when they were at their “widest.”

Each gate was seemingly different in the times it expanded and contracted — that would explain how I had passed through ones in the middle of the day at school and yet the one that was seemingly in Alice’s doorway only opened at 2:30 in the morning. As it was nowhere near that time, we decided to use that very gate as a means to test the theory.

Aril gave me an overly-technical explanation of how he passed between worlds, but it went right over my head, and it involved some sort of technology from his people, anyway. I figured that if I was one of his group of “Crusaders” I might have had a clue what he was on about, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t.

He sighed at the bewildered look on my face.

“Look,” he said, “it’s basically down to willpower. You have to let go of the world you’re leaving and reach out for the one you’re heading for. Your body will follow your will.”

I still didn’t really understand, but I was at least willing to give it a try.

I opened the door to Alice’s room and peered inside. It was just as it always was — empty and devoid of life. I looked around the frame of the door and didn’t see anything unusual — of course I didn’t, why would I? — and grit my teeth ready to make an attempt.

“Focus,” said Aril in a low voice. “You can do this.”

I clenched my fists, though I wasn’t sure why, and closed my eyes. I pictured walking through the doorway into Alice’s room as I had done in the past, and seeing her sitting up in the bed.

I opened my eyes. I was standing in Alice’s bedroom. There was no-one here. I turned around. Aril was leaning against the wall casually, shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “Try again.”

I walked back out of the room and tried again.

Let go, I thought. I don’t belong here. I want to be with Alice.

I stepped through the doorway, and again nothing happened.

“Clear your mind,” said Aril. “You’re trying to reach out for another world, not for your sister. Your sister exists in this world still, too, as a concept at least, so wanting to be with her isn’t going to help this.”

I nodded, stepped out of the room, closed my eyes and blanked my mind as well as I could possibly manage. Then I walked through the doorway again.

This time I felt a strange sensation. It was like the uneasy feeling I’d experienced the very first time this had happened to me, but this time there was a strange tingling all over my body, too. It felt oddly pleasurable in a perverse sort of way.

Then I felt a “bump” as I collided with something, and a voice that I recognised. I fell forward and onto something soft and sweet-smelling.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” said Alice. “Where the fuck did you come from? And also, get off me!”

I opened my eyes and pulled back from whatever I had fallen onto. I saw bare skin and a bellybutton. I immediately blushed and stood up hastily, turning back towards the door with a sickening feeling in my stomach.

I heard the sound of Alice frantically putting clothes on behind me as I gazed out of the doorway. Aril was nowhere to be seen.

“You know,” she said, her voice sounding a little calmer now, “I do appreciate these little visits, you know that, but at least when you were coming at predictable times you were less likely to walk in on me getting dressed after a shower. You may be from a different world or whatever, but you’re still my brother, so it’s still weird.”

“Yes,” I said, mortified. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said with a slight laugh. I felt her hand on my shoulder. “You weren’t to know. But I’m surprised; what are you doing here now? It’s normally the middle of the night when you show up.”

I sat down on her bed and gestured for her to join me. I explained about the conversations I’d had with Aril, and about our attempts to make use of my… strange properties to help sort out the whole situation. She seemed to take the whole explanation in her stride. I guess Aril was right; her inner strength and ability to deal with unusual, strange and terrifying situations was something else.

Something was bothering me, though.

“Um,” I began, not quite sure how to raise it. “I’m… sorry about earlier.”

“Earlier?” she said. “What about earlier?”

“In the bathroom,” I said. “When you… you know, saw me.”

“Saw you?” she said with a laugh. “I think seeing you in the bathroom probably would traumatise me, but no, that didn’t happen. Did it? I don’t think so. I think I would have remembered that.”

It was strange. I definitely had a memory of her creeped-out face looking disgusted at me kneeling naked on the floor, but apparently she did not. But then Laura had no memory of what had supposedly happened between us, either, so perhaps it wasn’t so unusual. Was this the power of chaos?

“Forget it,” I said. “Too many strange things have been happening to me lately. It’s getting difficult to keep track of them.”

There was something else, though; something else that had been bothering me for a while now and I hadn’t had the chance to ask.

“Alice,” I said. “There’s something else I wanted to ask you.”

“Shoot,” she said.

“When I first… appeared to you, it sounded like you were calling out to someone, as if you weren’t surprised to see a person in your room. But if what you and Aril have told me about what happened here is true…”

“Oh, that,” she said casually. “Yeah, I thought you were Aril. He’d been paying me regular visits since all this stuff started happening. I thought I was going mad from loneliness at first, hallucinating an imaginary friend or something, but it started happening too often for me to dismiss as just something my brain was cooking up. Unless all of this is a hallucination or nightmare that either or both of us is having. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it?”

She laughed half-heartedly. I did the same. It didn’t seem very funny. I sort of wished that was actually what was going on, because that meant it would all go away and life would go back to normal once the root cause was dealt with. I started to think that was sort of true anyway — but no, even if Aril and I were able to deal with the chaos thing, that was never going to bring Alice and my parents back. And it wouldn’t bring this world’s me back to Alice, either.

But Aril already knew Alice and had been visiting her? Somehow this news didn’t surprise me, but I sort of resented the fact that neither of them had told me prior to this point. It seemed like something that might be a big deal. But apparently it wasn’t. I bit my tongue before I made a sarcastic comment at Alice.

“So,” she said. “What now? You’re here, and I think this is the longest you’ve managed to stay without getting pulled back against your will. What’s the plan?”

The first part of the plan was to get me into a situation where I was able to pass through these “gates” more easily without having to rely on them opening and closing. Beyond that, Aril had had a few ideas about how to proceed, but I wasn’t sure I quite understood them just yet.

“I need to talk to Aril,” I said. “Now that I can apparently do this, I imagine he’s got something terrifying lined up for me to do in order to attract this chaos thing.”

“Probably,” said Alice. “If I can help, let me know, though I’m not sure what good I can do from here.”

“Hmm,” I said. “You’ve come through into my world before, though, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I’ve no idea how that happened or if I could do it again.”

“Can I try something?” I asked.

“Nothing weird,” she said.

“Does passing between planes of existence count as ‘weird’?” I said with a slight smile.

“These days? No, sadly,” she said.

I stood up and offered her my hand. She seemed to know what I was thinking, and took it. I closed my eyes, grit my teeth and willed myself back to my own world as I pulled her through the doorway. I felt the oddly pleasurable tingling sensation once again, and a slight giggle behind me confirmed that Alice had felt it too. When I opened my eyes, Aril was still leaning against the wall, looking rather bored.

“Ah, welcome back,” he said. “Not so difficult, is it? I’d say you’re a natural. And hello to you, Alice. Hope you’re well.”

“As well as can be expected,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about us sooner,” she added, giving me a sheepish look.

“It’s fine,” I said. I gave Aril a sour look, but he said nothing. “So what now?”

“Well, actually, you might have done us a bit of a favour by bringing Alice here,” said Aril. “You’ve sort of upset the natural order of things. She’s not supposed to be here in this world; she shouldn’t exist. I’d say that probably qualifies as something that might attract the attention of a chaotic entity, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh,” I said limply. “Right. So, uh, what do we do? We fight it?”

“It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid,” said Aril. Of course it isn’t. “In its current state, there’s no guarantee it’ll want to show itself directly. It’s already messed with you once, so it might lay low for a little while. There’s no way to know for the moment.”

“So that doesn’t really help us that much,” I said.

“Perhaps not,” said Aril. “But in the long-term, it’s more likely to be attracted to this thing that shouldn’t be here–”

“I have a name,” interrupted Alice.

“–and try to use that as a focal point for any future chaos it intends to sow in this world.”

“I still don’t understand why it’s doing what it’s doing,” I said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s because you’re thinking too rationally,” said Aril, “too like a sentient, living being. What we’re dealing with here is not like a human; it’s a primal force that exists only for a single-minded purpose. While it may come across as malicious, it’s simply doing what comes naturally to it. Unfortunately, ‘what comes naturally’ coupled with its own innate power is a spectacularly dangerous combination.”

“Yes, I get that,” I said. “I just wish we could get this over and done with.”

“There’s no quick fix,” said Aril. “I wish there was. But I believe that if we all work together, we’ll be able to deal with it.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. I put a hand on Alice’s shoulder, and she placed one of her own hands on it. I was grateful for the support. I knew this wasn’t “my” sister, but for now, it sure felt like she was.

I eventually calmed down, picked myself up and sat on my bed in my room. I didn’t move for several hours, trying to figure out what had happened. It certainly felt like all those things I remembered had actually happened, but then Laura seemed to think that none of them had happened. And yet she was still here… afterwards… so some of it must have happened.

I was so confused, and I was ashamed of myself for dwelling too much on whether or not I had actually had my first kiss and my first sexual experience or not. But it felt like it mattered. I knew it was an old-fashioned thought to have, but I wanted both of those things to carry some sort of meaning. Thinking back on it happening — or not happening as the case may be — I repeatedly remembered that strange feeling of detachment, like I was watching from the outside and not really… participating.

My mind wandered to the words that the strange shadowy figure had said to me previously. It had told me about a being of chaos, a being that it was pursuing and trying to stop. A being that had something to do with these strange… gateways, portals, whatever they were. It had sowed chaos through the previous worlds it had visited, and now it was trying to do so here.

The experience I had just been through certainly struck me as fairly “chaotic.” It didn’t make any sense. It confused me, it confused Laura, it confused Alice, and it threatened to tear us apart. It looked like it had already torn me and Laura apart, and I didn’t know what to do about that. We hadn’t really had a fight before; it was a new experience for me, and I’m not sure about her. If she was as alone as she’d told me, it’s entirely possible that she was in a similar state to me right now, not knowing what to do, wondering what I was thinking and how to resolve it.

I picked up my phone and scrolled through the “recent calls” list. Laura was the only entry. I stared at her name for a few minutes. What would I say? How could I possibly come back from that? How could I possibly make this right?

I was doing my old trick — mentally having a conversation in my head and assuming the worst possible outcome before it had actually taken place. It was the main reason I had so few friends, and I knew it. But it didn’t stop me from doing it. It was a habit, and no-one ever corrected me — largely because there was no-one who knew I did it. A vicious circle.

I closed my eyes and just tapped the screen. I would never get around to it if I didn’t try.

I raised the phone to my ear. After a moment, I heard it connect, and the ringing started.

Ring, ring.

No answer yet.

Ring, ring.

Still no answer.

Ring, ring.

She wasn’t going to answer me.

Ring, ring.

I didn’t blame her.

Ring, ring.

“Hi!” came her bright and cheerful voice down the phone.

“Hello,” I said hesitantly. “Look, about earlier, I’m sor–”

“Got you!” she giggled. “I’m not here really. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.”

A joke message. I smiled to myself, then felt a little sad when I thought that I might be one of the few people to have heard it.

I hung up before the message finished, waited a moment and then dialled again.

Ring, ring.

Please answer.

Ring, ring.

Come on.

Ring, ring.

Please.

Ring, ring.

“Hi!” came her voice again, and I recognised it as the message again. I hung up before the joke.

Of course she wasn’t answering. Why would she want to talk to me after that? After I’d said we’d had sex when she firmly believed that we hadn’t? Oh, Christ, I thought, that must have been fucking creepy. Ugh.

I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. How was I going to get out of this one?

“Hello,” said the infuriatingly calm voice, and I knew that the shadowy figure was there. I didn’t get up.

“Hello,” I said wearily. “I am not having a good day, so I hope this is important.”

“I know,” it said. “I came as quickly as I could, but I needed to be sure that it was… safe.”

I sat up at that word.

“Safe?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“I think you already know,” said the figure. “What you experienced was just a small taste of the chaos you can expect once our adversary returns to full strength.”

“Full strength?” I swallowed. I had just about come to terms with the fact that the peculiar happenings of the day could be attributed to the strange “chaos” creature, whatever it was. But knowing that this thing wasn’t at full strength, and could become more powerful?

“Yes,” it said. “Are you ready to help me out yet?”

I scratched my head and thought for a moment, then I looked right at my companion and spoke a single word in a tone more decisive and final than I’d ever heard myself use.

“Yes,” I said.

“All right,” said the figure, a little less impressed than I was hoping it would be. “Then we need to start formulating some sort of plan. But before that, I think we need to formalise our working arrangement with one another.”

It sat down on the bed next to me and raised its hand to my face. It felt curiously similar to when Laura–

No. It wouldn’t do to dwell on that now.

The figure touched my face with its long fingers, and I felt a strange sensation in my head. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it also felt strangely unnerving. Suddenly, without any words being exchanged between us, I knew that its… his name was Aril, that he was technically sexless but preferred to be referred to as a male when it was necessary, that he was a member of an organisation that referred to themselves as the Crusaders, that he had spent his life travelling between worlds tracking down interdimensional beasts such as the one that was apparently tormenting me now… and that he was afraid. I could feel that he was slightly ashamed of the last part, but he didn’t make any attempt to hide it from me.

“I assume you now know everything about me, too,” I said, feeling slightly dizzy as Aril released his hand from my face. “If you didn’t already.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ve been… keeping an eye on you for a while now.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically. But there was no point in getting indignant now. Aril’s existence was so hugely different from my own that it was almost impossible to contemplate what he must have been through, and for how long. If someone had just told me the stories I now knew, I would have laughed in their face at how far-fetched they were, dismissed them as science fiction. But after… whatever Aril had just done, I knew that they were true.

Aril paced back and forth a little, looking a little more at ease and less… “formal”, somehow.

“So tell me about this chaos… thing,” I said. “I don’t really understand. You said something about it not being at full power?”

“Yes,” said Aril, spinning around on one foot and turning to face me in an overly-flamboyant gesture. “Yes, indeed. It’s a worry. But it also means that we have some time, particularly if it keeps pulling little stunts like it did today.”

“You’re going to have to explain more than that,” I said honestly.

“Basically,” said Aril, “passing between worlds as we — I hasten to throw myself in the same category as that… thing — do is a rather demanding process. It expends an enormous amount of energy to do it right. And by ‘do it right’ I mean ‘not leaving holes in existence’ like you’ve been encountering.”

I nodded. It probably said something that I was no longer bothered by discussion of “holes in existence”, but I shook off the thought before I dwelled on it too much. Aril continued speaking.

“Basically, what this… thing has been doing is moving from world to world, sowing as much chaos as it possibly can, hopping to the next world to try and ‘hide’ while it recharges itself, then repeating the process,” he explained. “The last world it went to I believe you’re already familiar with.”

I nodded, and an image of Alice’s creeped-out face entered my mind for a moment. Then it was gone.

“So,” I said, “what exactly do you mean by ‘sowing chaos’?”

“Well it varies,” replied Aril. “Sometimes it sows the seeds of conflict between important people in the world, and then simply sits back to see what happens. Sometimes it messes with people’s minds around the world, making them believe things that aren’t true or making them forget things they ought to know.”

Aril paused for a moment and turned away from me.

“What it did in the last world was the worst thing it’s done yet,” he said. His voice sounded sad rather than smug for once. He didn’t elaborate.

“What happened?” I asked. I had a feeling I already knew, but I wanted to be sure, however unpleasant it sounded.

Aril didn’t say anything for a moment. I was about to ask the question again, but he turned round and looked me right in the eyes.

“It took an interest in your sister and the way she responded to chaos,” he said. “It started by killing the people dearest to her — not directly, mind — and gradually tried to drive her insane by, piece by piece, wiping out everyone else in that world.”

“Everyone else?” I asked, my mouth hanging open. Could something… do that?

“Yes,” said Aril, the sad tone creeping into his voice again. “It started by arranging increasingly-chaotic, inexplicable accidents. But as it saw the terror and horror in people as more and more awful things happened to more and more people, it started playing a more… active role.”

“But what has my sister got to do with this?” I said, an unpleasant crawling sensation creeping up my back. “Why is she still–”

“Well, remember that it initially took an interest in your sister and how she was responding to chaos,” explained Aril. “It turns out she was handling it well. A little too well. Her inner strength was infuriating it, frustrating it. It resorted to increasingly-outlandish measures to try and make her respond, but she wouldn’t — not in any way that satisfied it. Eventually, it made one last-ditch attempt to drive her mad — to make her the last person alive.”

“It can really do that? Just… get rid of everyone?” The thought was not a pleasant one. I already felt out of my depth, and this wasn’t helping.

“Yes,” said Aril. “It’s horrid to think about, I know. But despite how awful what it did was, it’s actually given us a bit of breathing room. After it made its last ‘jump’ to this world to hide out and recharge, it was utterly exhausted. Wiping out an entire world of people is not, as you might expect, a particularly easy thing to do, so it’s significantly weakened at the moment. In this state, we could deal with it. Of course, we have to actually find it first.”

I sighed. “Let me guess. That’s where I come in?”

“Precisely,” said Aril. “For one reason or another, it has taken an interest to you and your family. Not just in this world. Not just in the other one you’re familiar with. But it always seems to start somewhere around your family. I guess you have to start somewhere, even with chaos.”

“All right,” I said. “So how do we go about finding this thing and dealing with it?”

“I have an idea,” said Aril. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

I knew that, without a doubt, he would be right. And I also knew that not going along with it would probably be a very bad idea. I took a deep breath, grit my teeth for a moment, and then looked Aril straight in the eyes.

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said. “For Alice. For Laura. Let’s do this.”

“That was a fun movie,” said Laura as we walked out into the daylight. “Not normally the sort of thing I’d go in for, but I ended up quite enjoying it. What did you think?”

“Yeah, it was good,” I said absentmindedly. I hadn’t really been paying attention. It was some sort of science fiction thing, presumably chosen for my benefit, but I just couldn’t get into it. My tiredness was getting the better of me, and it was all I could do to not fall asleep in the dark, even with the loud surround-sound explosions and rumbles reverberating all around me.

“Come on,” said Laura, tugging on my sleeve. “How about some food? I’m going to make you smile by the end of today, so don’t think you’ll get off that easily.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, not really listening. Her enthusiasm today was bugging me a little bit, but I humoured her. She was trying her best, after all, so I couldn’t be too bitter or annoyed at her. She couldn’t understand what I was going through, however much I explained the situation. I still felt self-conscious talking about it, even though we’d already discussed it in depth and she had seen proof with her own eyes.

She dragged me to some awful greasy fried-chicken place near the cinema, sat me down and, after a moment or two, returned from the counter with a bucket full of chicken thighs and drumsticks. Dripping with grease, they didn’t look particularly appealing, but they tasted pretty good, so I gratefully ate them. I could have probably done with something a little more nutritious given the crap I’d been eating recently — and some days barely eating at all — but for now, this tasted good.

“Wow, you’re putting that away,” said Laura with an expression that I couldn’t quite read — it was either her being impressed or disgusted with me devouring the chicken at a rate roughly twice hers.

I put down the bone I’d been gnawing on and looked at her with tired eyes.

“Feel any better?” she said.

“A little,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Still no smile though, huh? I meant what I said, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said, with a slight smile.

“Hey, there’s one!” she said gleefully. “That doesn’t count, though. That was more of a sneer.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little put out. I always found smiling to be rather unnatural when I was conscious of it, and comments like that didn’t help.

“Sorry,” she said, giggling. She was in a good mood. “Anything else you want to do while we’re out, or shall we just go and chill at your place for a bit?”

I could tell that I wasn’t going to get rid of her easily. I just wanted to go back home and sleep for about a week, but that wasn’t going to happen. I compromised and agreed that she should take me home and we should just “chill” for a bit.

We didn’t say much to each other on the way home, but I felt her occasionally glance over at me during the drive. She followed me in to my house, and then took the lead, taking my hand and leading me upstairs. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but there was an odd feeling in the air.

She led me into my bedroom, and sat down next to me on the bed.

“Laura, what–”

I was interrupted by her grabbing my face, pulling it towards her and kissing me.

My first kiss. I’d always suspected it would be with Laura, but I’d never considered the circumstances, or that it was a serious possibility, to be honest. But now it was happening, and all I could feel was a curious detachment from the situation, like I was watching it from outside.

Her lips were soft, and there was a pleasant scent about her. Her hands were clasping my face firmly but not roughly so, and the sensations weren’t unpleasant. I felt something stirring and immediately wished I hadn’t noticed it. Ugh, what if she saw?

She pulled away from me for a moment and looked at me with an expression I’d never seen on her face before. But before I could say anything or consider what it meant, she’d pushed me down on the bed and was straddling me. There was no way that I could hide my body’s excitement now. She was brushing against it. It felt good. But still I felt that odd detachment, that feeling like I wasn’t quite “present” while all this was going on. It just seemed to be happening, unfolding without any input from me. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

Correction. My mind wasn’t sure it liked what was going on, but my body sure did.

*

She climbed off me, her face reddened and beads of sweat visible on her cheeks. I collapsed back onto my pillow, panting like I’d just run for several miles.

So that was what it felt like.

I felt curiously unfulfilled. The feeling of detachment had only continued as she did more and more pleasurable things to me; the more erotic the situation had gotten, the further away I felt. She didn’t seem to care, though — she just carried on as if she had planned all this and was following a script.

Perhaps it was the tiredness. I had gone from having my first kiss to losing my virginity in the space of an afternoon. That should be a big deal. It was with my best friend, too. That should be a big deal, too. And perhaps it was. I just couldn’t process it right now.

She got up and went to the bathroom. I was left alone to contemplate things further, but just found myself wanting to close my eyes and fall asleep.

Sleep didn’t come — it would have probably been quite disrespectful for her to walk back in on me and find me snoring away after what had just happened — but I realised that it had been several minutes since she’d left, and she hadn’t come back. I didn’t hear any sounds coming from the bathroom, either.

I opened my eyes again, sat up and walked to the bathroom. The door was closed, but not locked. I still couldn’t hear anything.

“Laura?” I called. “You there?”

There was no response. I was starting to get a bad feeling. The feeling of detachment was slowly being replaced by a gnawing, uneasy sensation.

“Laura?”

Still nothing. I couldn’t hear her moving inside. Was she all right?

“Laura, I’m… coming in, okay?”

I opened the door slowly. It creaked as I did so — all the doors in this house creaked to one degree or another, but the bathroom was particularly noisy. Despite the noise the door was making, I still pushed it open slowly, just in case Laura wasn’t ready for me.

Instead I wasn’t ready for what I saw.

Laura was lying face-down on the floor, still naked. She wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, but it didn’t look good.

“Shit,” I said, racing into the room to be by her side. I tried frantically to remember the few things about first aid I’d learned in the past. I knelt beside her to try and work out if she was actually breathing or not, but I couldn’t tell with her lying face down. I reached out to touch her and turn her over, but as I did so, I was assailed by a feeling of absolute terror. It was only for a second, but it was enough to make me want to close my eyes and blot out the world.

I knew before I opened them again that the situation had changed. Sure enough, there was no sign of Laura’s naked body on the floor before me, and the light that had been on previously was now off. I stood up slowly and just stared at the floor.

The door creaked behind me and I suddenly turned around.

“Oh my God,” came Alice’s voice before I saw her. “What the fuck are you doing? Put some fucking clothes on!”

I frantically looked around for something to cover myself with and could only find a towel that wasn’t really big enough to cover me completely.

“Sorry,” I said, looking up at where Alice had been standing a moment before. She was gone. The light was back on. “What?”

I span back around to look for Laura’s prone body, but it was no longer on the floor.

What was happening?

“You all right?” came Laura’s voice from around the corner. I heard her footsteps, and then she was there in the doorway, fully clothed. I was still holding the towel around my waist. “Whoa, what are you…”

“I don’t know!” I yelled, a little more harshly than I intended. “I just… it all happened so fast! After we… you know… you went to the bathroom and you were gone a long time, so I came to make sure you were all right, and you were lying on the floor and–”

“Whoa,” she said. “Back up. After we what?”

I blinked. This was not happening. Or, more accurately, what I thought had happened had not really happened. Or had it? I certainly remembered it, and the current state I was in seemed to suggest that my mind was not playing tricks on me, but–

“No, come on,” she said, sounding a little more agitated now. “After we what?”

“You want me to say it?” I asked, my voice becoming meek. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re freaking me out a bit right now, if I’m honest, so I’d appreciate an explanation.”

“But we… you know…” Did she really not know?

“No, I don’t know!”

“We… did it,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush as I said it. What a ridiculous, childish way to put it. “We had sex.”

“What?” Her face contorted; she looked like she was laughing and incredulous at the same time. “We most certainly did not. I think I would have remembered something like that. What is wrong with you?”

Something was very wrong here.

“What?” I said. “You really don’t…”

“No!” she cried. “You honestly think that I would want to do that with you? Particularly with the state your life is in right now? I don’t think that would be the most productive use of our time, now, would it?”

Her words stung me. She didn’t need to be so cold about it.

“I think I should go,” she said. “I’ll see you around. Sometime. Not for a while. Don’t contact me. I… need some space.”

She stormed off. I heard her go down the stairs, and shortly afterwards the front door opened and then slammed.

I fell to my knees on the floor of the bathroom. The towel fell to the floor, forgotten. I could feel the stress, anxiety, fear and confusion rise up through my body. I gulped a little as the tears sprang to my eyes, then simply exploded with all that pent-up emotion. I wailed and sobbed, and the tears wouldn’t stop flowing. I was a pathetic figure right then, but I didn’t care.

“You have a weak connection to your world,” the mysterious figure had said to me. It felt like that last connection had just been cut.

It was dark. The low murmur of the guy talking about some play on the radio was putting me to sleep — particularly when coupled with the hum of the engine and the pattering of the rain on the windscreen and the roof. It was fairly peaceful, but the back seat wasn’t very comfortable and I was starting to feel my usual sensation of travel sickness. I wasn’t sure when I started getting it, but it was always unpleasant. It just made me want to curl up in a corner and groan, and that’s not really practical when you’re sitting in the back of a car — not least because my mother usually told me to sit up. I found myself wishing she treated me according to my age. Legally, I was an adult, but she would never seem to quite get that into her head.

I closed my eyes. The car gave an occasional bump on uneven parts of the road, but the motion was mostly fairly relaxing.

“So, did you have a good time?” I heard my mother’s voice saying. “You look exhausted. Hope you didn’t spend all your time drinking and carousing.”

“No,” I grunted, in a vain attempt to try and close off the conversation before it began. I really wasn’t in the mood.

“So what was the best bit?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It was all pretty fun.”

I was going to think back on what had occurred over the last few days, but the bubbling feeling in my stomach wasn’t going away, so I just found myself thinking about that. Thinking about it didn’t help, of course, since focusing on it just made the feelings worse. The more conscious I was of them, the more I thought I was going to throw up. I tried to think about something — anything — else.

“Oh, come on, Jan,” said my father slightly irritably. “Can’t you see he’s knackered? Let him rest. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and I’m sure we can talk about it in the morning.”

“Sorry! Sorry!” said my mother in a mock-flustered tone, as if she had somehow offended me with her questions. “I’ll shut up.”

My father didn’t rise to her bait, and instead turned the radio up. Whatever it was the voice was talking about was terribly boring, but I was thankful for the distraction — both for my own gurgling stomach and from my mother’s incessant questioning. She never did quite know when to stop.

A few minutes passed, and no-one except the droning bore on the radio said anything. Eventually his programme came to an end, and it was time for the news. The radio gave the distinctive “pips” that signalled it was on the hour, and the newsreader announced that it was two o’ clock in the morning. I didn’t really listen to the bulletin; the smooth, soothing voice of the female newsreader washed over me and made me relax.

Patterns swirled behind my eyes. I recognised this as a sure sign I was tired. I knew that if I opened my eyes again, those patterns would still be there; hypnotic, washing over my vision. I focused on them, trying to make sense of them, and felt my consciousness slowly, gradually drifting away. I was falling asleep at last. Hopefully by the time I woke up again, we’d be home and I could just get into bed.

I don’t know how long I slept for, but I was awoken with a start by a sudden noise. It was my mother screaming. My eyes snapped open, but it took a moment for me to figure out what was going on. My mother was frantically grabbing for the steering wheel and there, in the driver’s seat, where my father should have been… was no-one at all. At least, that’s what it seemed like.

I blinked, and he was back again, wrestling with the wheel. But it was too late. The car was in a skid, and it was heading for the barrier at the side of the road. I didn’t know what was beyond it as it was still dark, but I had a bad feeling.

The car, which was still moving at a fair speed, crashed straight through the barrier and into the blackness beyond. I felt the world spin sideways, and I knew that there was a drop beyond the barrier. I didn’t know how big it was or how long we would fall, but I knew that we were probably not coming back from it.

My stomach felt like it was in my mouth as the car went into freefall, still spinning and rolling in the air. The world felt like it was in slow motion. I wanted to look around, to work out what was going on, but I couldn’t — I was being thrown around too much.

I couldn’t hear anything. I was sure my mother and father were both screaming in terror at the inevitable fate that seemed to await us, but somehow everything seemed to be muted; a silent, frightening world with no future.

The last sounds I heard were shattering glass, crumpling metal and the sickening crunch of bones. The pain that shot through my body left me in no doubt that at least some of those cracking bones were my own.

I blacked out. And didn’t wake up.

*

I came to on the floor of my bedroom. I was lying face-down with my mouth open; my tongue was covered in bits of carpet. I was breathing quickly and my heart was racing. I felt something wet on my face and wondered if I’d hurt myself in the fall from my bed, but I was too afraid to move. I just lay there motionless on the floor for a moment, trying desperately to tell my mind and body that what I had experienced was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream.

I closed my eyes and tried to take some deep breaths, but just ended up inhaling some dust and fluff from the carpet. I coughed a little, and the spasms were enough to “unlock” my body and let me move. Slowly, gradually, I pushed myself up off the floor and knelt up. My room was dark, again illuminated only by the glow of the clock radio. I looked up towards the source of the light, more out of habit now than anything. For once, it didn’t read 2:30.

That meant I couldn’t go and see Alice. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to right now, anyhow, but I was feeling scared and very alone.

I hauled myself up onto the bed and pulled myself back under the covers. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling.

That was a bad dream, I thought. The worst I’ve ever had. It felt so real. Like I was actually there. Like it was a memory. But it couldn’t be a memory, because…

Because that was what happened to Alice, and not me.

Except…

In Alice’s world, I was the one who had been in that situation. I was the one who had failed to come home that night. I was the one who had…

This didn’t make sense. Was that dream a work of my own imagination, or something else? Could it be a memory from that other world?

No, of course it couldn’t. I wasn’t from that other world, so how could I possibly have any memories from it? I certainly couldn’t have the memory of the moment that Iost my life.

It must be my imagination, I thought. It must be.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep until morning. All I managed to do was stare at the inside of my eyelids for several hours.

*

Once the sun was up, I groggily got out of bed and trudged downstairs to get myself some breakfast, which would consist mostly of a very large, very strong cup of coffee.

My phone rang while I was nursing the cup of hot liquid. It was Laura.

“You all right?” she asked immediately.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I growled.

“You don’t sound fine,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just didn’t sleep well, that’s all.”

“Oh,” she said. “All right. Hey, listen, you want to do something today?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want to go out and do something? I figured you could probably do with a change of scenery. Fancy going to the pictures or something?”

I hadn’t been to the cinema for probably a good three or four years. The people there annoyed me. I wanted to watch a film, not grit my teeth at people fiddling with phones, eating sweets noisily and laughing at bits of the film that weren’t funny.

“Yeah, all right,” I found myself saying. “Why not?”

“Okay,” she said brightly. “I’ll come pick you up in an hour or so. Be ready!”

“All right,” I said. “See ya.”

She hung up. I drained my coffee cup and put some bread in the toaster. I still felt exhausted from events of the previous day. It had been emotionally and physically tiring, and that awful dream hadn’t helped either. I still didn’t know what it meant, and was in two minds as to whether or not I should bring it up with Laura. After a bit of internal arguing, I decided that she’d probably get it out of me eventually anyway, so for a quiet life, I should probably just tell her. I would pick my moment carefully, though. No sense telling her before the film; she’d only spend the rest of it worrying, then.

“Urgh,” I said out loud to no-one in particular, leaning my head down on the table. “I’m so tired.”

I was no nearer to any answers on what the meaning of this whole “alternate existences” thing, and the strange figure hadn’t showed up again to offer any further explanations. I resolved that it would probably be sensible to try and forget about it all just for today, and to try and relax and have a good time with Laura.

I smiled to myself in spite of the exhaustion I was feeling. Yes, that was probably the right thing to do. I’d enjoy myself today, then we could worry about things afterwards. I’d earned that much. I deserved a break.

Unfortunately, I already knew for a fact that the moment you start thinking you “deserve” a break is the moment all possibility of actually getting a break departs forever.

“Hello,” came an infuriatingly calm voice, breaking the silence.

I looked up and was unsurprised to see the strange figure from before leaning nonchalantly against the doors of the supermarket. Escape was so frustratingly close, but so long as there was no power I couldn’t get out. I was stuck with… whatever this thing was.

I said nothing.

“Fine,” it said. “I’ll talk. You listen.”

It pushed itself off the door and stood up straight, then took a couple of steps towards me.

“Do you know where you are?” it asked in a tone that sounded slightly mocking. “Other than the supermarket, I mean.”

I nodded. I didn’t really feel up to saying much right now.

“So you’ve probably figured out that you’ve ‘crossed over’, right?” it continued.

I nodded again.

“While we wait here, I should probably explain a couple of things,” it said. “I mean, it’s not as if you look like you have anything better to do right now.”

It was true. While I was trapped in here, there was literally nothing else I could do. Well, I guess I could try and break the doors open, but I didn’t feel like my body had enough strength to heft anything that might break that thick glass.

“Fine,” I said, with a deep sigh. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. “Explain.”

The figure turned around and presented its back to me — proof enough that it clearly didn’t consider me a threat.

“We… have a problem,” it said after a moment’s pause. “And, from what I’ve been observing, you might be instrumental in fixing it.”

It paused and turned around again to look at me. I felt a chill as I felt those eyes on me.

“How to explain this,” it pondered, nibbling absentmindedly on a slender fingertip. “There’s a ‘boundary’ that stops all these alternate existences from crashing into one another and interfering with each other, you see. And in certain places, it’s weakening.”

I nodded dumbly.

“Most of the time, these weakened boundaries don’t affect anyone, as most people are firmly stuck on their own timeline,” it continued. “Their destiny is set, as it were. They’re secure in where they’re going, and where they’re going to end up — even if they don’t know it just yet.”

I blinked. What?

“You’re a little different, though,” it continued, looking through narrowed eyes at me as if it was trying to analyse me. “You have… a curiously weak attachment to your own world. The weakened parts of the boundary ebb and flow like the tides of the sea; when they’re at their widest, you have something of a habit of being pulled through, you see.”

I blinked again. This sounded completely unbelievable.

“Pulled through?” I asked. “Because of my weak attachment to my world.” The fear that had been gripping me was fast diminishing and being replaced with slight annoyance. I couldn’t tell if this mysterious, shadowy figure was just toying with me and trying to make me believe any old thing, or if it was really telling the truth.

“Yes,” it said. “I appreciate it all sounds very strange, but that’s really the simplest way I can put it. There is a lot more to it, obviously, but yes. The fact is that your connection to your world is weak, and this means that you often find yourself… paying others a visit. Specifically, this one. This dark, depressing, deserted…”

“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Why just this one? If these ‘boundaries’ are weak, why do I keep coming to this same world?”

“Several reasons,” the figure answered, scratching its cheek with a long finger. “One, you have some sort of attachment to this world as well as your own.”

“Alice,” I muttered to myself.

“And two — this is the complicated bit — all these alternate existences exist on a sort of ‘continuum’, and this world is, hmm, ‘closest’ to your own world.”

I said nothing for a moment. The silence hung heavily over us.

“So,” I said eventually. “Uh, so what? What exactly does all this have to do with me?”

“Well,” said the figure. “I’m still trying to work out exactly what your role in all this will be. But suffice to say your ability to ‘cross over’ between these existences is almost completely unique in the universe. In fact, I only know of two others who have similar capabilities, myself and my people excepted — we’re a… special case. One of them is that sister of yours you’ve been paying a visit to, though her ability doesn’t seem anywhere near as strong as yours.”

I blinked, but I wasn’t surprised to hear this. I’d seen her, after all.

“So who is the other?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” it said. “I don’t know. And that’s where these problems are coming from. We have a… rogue element, shall we say. They could be hiding anywhere, and they’re very powerful.”

“Powerful?” I asked. “How do you mean?”

“Difficult to say right now,” it said. “But know that they’ve already crossed through several possible alternate existences at will, and are currently hiding out in your world somewhere.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why are they doing… whatever it is they’re doing?”

“Chaos,” said the figure simply. “They simply desire to sow chaos. In their own existence, they revelled in the chaos they created; now, they seek to spread it through the other possible existences, one world at a time.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “Just to… sow chaos and mess things up?”

“The multiverse is a strange and mysterious place,” said the figure with a grandiose gesture. “Some beings have… purer intentions than others. Your people are complex beasts, filled with many different motivations. Others, like this creature we’re talking about here, are rather more single-minded.”

“And what about you?” I said finally. “Where do you fit in?”

“I just try and keep everyone safe,” it said.

The lights flicked on and suddenly people appeared around me. A security guard nearly tripped over me, cowering as I was in the corner.

“You all right there, sir?” he asked, offering me his hand, a curious expression on his face.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

I felt dizzy and confused. This was all a bit much to take in. Parallel existences? Beasts of pure chaos? Me having a “weak connection” to my own world? And that figure being a member of a “special case” race who apparently could jump back and forth between all these existences at will?

I took the guard’s hand and stood up unsteadily, and staggered out of the shop without any of the things I had come in to buy.

Outside, I took a deep breath and let the cool, crisp air fill my lungs. I leaned back against the wall of the supermarket and just breathed for a few minutes. Then I opened my eyes and started to walk home.

*

The walk had given me time to think and try to make sense of some of the things the strange figure had told me.

Okay, I said to myself. So here’s what’s happening. I have a weaker connection to my own world than most people, which means that I get pulled through weaknesses in the “boundary” between worlds when they ebb and flow in just the right way. The world that is “next” to mine is the one where Alice is all alone, and the main differences between that one and my own is that 1) Alice is alive and well and 2) everyone else has disappeared.

Alice also has the same strange property that she, too, can be pulled through these weak points in the boundary between worlds, though apparently less frequently than I do. And somewhere else out there is a being that enjoys sowing chaos who has already passed through several different existences, doing God knows what along the way, and is supposedly currently hiding out somewhere in my world.

Also, there is a whole race of what appears to be multiverse “caretakers” who chase miscreants like this chaos-sower between worlds and try, apparently, to keep everyone “safe”.

That about covers it, I thought.

It didn’t bring me any closer to an understanding of what on Earth it was I was supposed to do about all this though, and whether or not my sister had anything to do with it.

*

At 2:30, I paid Alice a visit as usual. She was unsurprised to see me, and it transpired she’d also had a visit from the strange figure. She didn’t know its name and whether or not it had a gender either, but she didn’t seem quite so uneasy about it as me. I guessed that she probably enjoyed having some company, whoever it might be.

The thought reminded me; she never finished her story of how everyone disappeared.

“I can’t explain it for sure,” she said. “It was just… after I got that phone call, I was really upset, you know?”

I nodded. I knew exactly how she felt.

“And then… the next day I went out to try and get some air and get my head together… and there was just no-one around,” she explained. “I went to the shop and there was no-one there. I tried to call my friends, and no-one answered. Little by little, the power and phones started going down, leaving most places dark. For some reason, the power’s always stayed on here, though. It’s like this place is a sort of beacon in the night or something.”

I frowned. I wondered if this “chaos” thing had deliberately set all this up. I raised the possibility to Alice, who seemed unperturbed by the existence of beings of pure chaos hopping between worlds and doing their chaotic thing.

“I couldn’t say,” she said. “If that’s really the case, I don’t really understand what it’s trying to do. I guess drive me mental or something? I’m sure there are far easier ways it could do that. I mean, you know, this situation sucks, and I spent a good few weeks doing nothing much but crying my eyes out, but in a weird way it’s not so bad. I’ve got food, I’ve still got water, I don’t have to do anything, and I get to see you sometimes.”

I admired how calmly she was taking all this. I thought to myself that if I was in her situation I probably wouldn’t be dealing with it anywhere near as well as she was.

“Hey,” I said. “I want to try something, and I think we should probably be quick about it. Come with me.”

I took her hand, pulled her out of bed and pushed her out of the door before she could protest. I went to follow her and was surprised to see her disappear before my eyes. I walked out of the door and she reappeared in front of me.

“Whoa,” she said. “Yeah, it felt weird the last time I did it, but it’s even weirder seeing you coming through like tha–”

She disappeared again. I looked back through the door behind me. The room was dark; the bed was empty. It looked like one of those “weak points” the figure had been talking about was over that doorway, and that it went through one of those “ebb and flows” some time between 2:30 and a little after 2:45 every night. Whenever the weak point… “closed” or whatever it did, we got pulled back into our respective existences — the ones we were supposed to be “attached” to.

I let out a wordless shout to the silent house. I staggered back into my own room and fell face-down on the bed. I was asleep again within minutes, my brain completely exhausted from the bewildering things it had been told. Inwardly I hoped that I would wake up in the morning and this would all have been a figment of my own imagination.

I knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. This was probably going to get worse before it got better.