Parallel - Not My World

• Bethany Thiele, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2010

I don't quite like your world. Earth, as you call it. There is no adrenaline rushing through you each day as you attempt to make your way to school, without being incinerated. No cyclonic winds rushing through your hair as you eat your lunch. No Acid hail or purple fire. It’s not quite like my world.

In your world, Antarctica still exists. All species are not yet extinct; Humans can live safely and peacefully. Everything seems abnormal here, almost the same as my old world yet very different. I found my friends, my mum and my dad. In your world they are still alive, in my world they were not. In my world I was still alive, but in your world I am not.

Some people are here. Twice. I see them with each other. At first I thought they were clones, coming to kill us. I was looking for mine then realized they couldn't be clones. They were not evil. They are just like us. Human and real in every way. They were us and at the same time not us. I knew I wasn't in my world so it must be theirs. There must be two. Exactly the same but, yet, different. They are parallel.