Welcome to Between Two Worlds.
A 12‑chapter story, revealed weekly.

Chapter 1 – Crossroads

It’s Friday. Nathan knew it without thinking, simply because this time he was woken by the alarm clock. Normally he wakes a few minutes before it rings. He was half standing when he fell back onto the bed. With his right hand he started scratching lightly the back of his head, then his left bicep, and finally his pecs while standing up, dragging his feet to the bathroom.

Now all dressed up, he came down the stairs trying to fix his loosened tie. In the kitchen he went straight to the fridge. He picked up the bread, the turkey ham, yellow cheese, and a long red bell pepper. Each movement was clear, precise, and rehearsed. The way he cut the bell pepper, the yellow cheese, and the turkey ham that stuck out from the bread slices, and how he packed the sandwiches into his old leather bag. He gathered the leftover cuts with his fingers and ate them while placing the bread and ham back in the fridge.

He closed the door, his slightly crooked door that needed more force to keep it shut, and went to the parking lot. He could bet it wouldn’t take long until his Italian neighbor greeted him. For Nathan, it looked like this neighbor was jogging all day with his dog. For some reason, he couldn’t recall a day going to work or coming back without meeting him jogging. Some neighbors said he was a househusband, which didn’t seem far‑fetched considering Nathan had seen his wife maybe twice since they moved in, eight or nine years ago.

Surprisingly, the Italian was nowhere. Or so he thought. As soon as he put his hand on the handle to open the car door, the dog was already sniffing his leg, making him jump a little.

“Buongiorno, Natalino! This is a mattinata meravigliosa!”

“Morning. Sure. See you later,” he answered quickly, pushed slowly aside the dog, and jumped into the car. He drove away showing a rehearsed smile, without waving back to them.

On the way to work he barely paid attention to the road. He knew it better than he knew the neighborhood’s layout. That’s why it was so easy for him to notice a stopped car where it shouldn’t be, or when a billboard was changed. Or even subtle things like fine blue hairlines on some billboards.

When the day ended, he felt the week’s toll. The tiredness wasn’t because of today’s work. He knew that. It was just the buildup of doing things that must be done and not what he liked to do. On top of all, it wasn’t even 5 p.m. and these winter nights came too soon. Going to work when it’s dark, coming back when it’s dark. Not exactly the recipe for an uplifting mood.

If only he could find a parking space closer. Wishful thought. He still had to walk a little through the night until he finally reached home.

As anyone who walks the same thousand steps every day, he rarely paid attention to the way from the parking lot to his house. He’d walked those narrow streets between houses so many times that soon his footprints would be permanently visible.

In his mind he started planning the evening dinner. He recalled what was in the fridge and in the pantry. With this information he was planning the evolution from raw ingredients to dinner. But that thought had to wait a little, as the flicker of a streetlamp made him stop. He arranged his coat a bit so the light‑cold wind wouldn’t reach inside, and for a moment he stared blankly at the streetlamp. It flickered again, silently, then went still. He turned to leave, and only then did it flicker once more, this time brighter, with a sound like an electrical discharge humming through the air. Then darkness.

“It was time,” he thought, pushed his hands into his pockets, and started moving again. He navigated with just a bit of light from the clouded moon and his internal GPS built from going home this way for so long. He was just thinking that the next streetlamp wasn’t far.

“Here you are,” he said with a smile. But it happened again… the bright light, the electric humming, and then… darkness.

“What the… No matter. Tomorrow I’ll have a chat with the administrator. I think he needs a push to deserve the money he takes from the tenants every month”

He was almost home, and he now knew how his dinner would be. Almost home… just the last right turn and here… it… was?

The house was there, but different. Strange… different. A strong electric humming came from it, and it looked to be enveloped in an eerie blue-light smoke… or field. The kind of image most people would run from. But him? He was too tired and too hungry to let anything ruin his plan. Besides, for some reason he felt no fear, and in a very inexplicable way it felt expected… normal. So much so as a déjà vu.

“This… How come it feels that I’ve seen this before?”

The last 15 or 20 meters to the little gate on the old wooden fence were covered far slower than normal. He was holding back his eagerness to reach home and start his usual routine. But he could feel there was nothing to fear in opening the gate. And he did. While fixating on the blue‑light field covering the house, he slowly moved toward the door.

The sudden “Evening, neighbor!” from the Italian across the street made him flinch.

“Evening…” he said, watching the Italian to see if he reacted in any way. But nothing. The man’s house looked completely normal. The Italian was in a T‑shirt and shorts, pretty light for the cold weather. He pushed the garbage bag into the bin, closed the lid, then closed the gate and, right before going inside, waved casually.

“So, he can’t see it. I’m pretty sure that if he could see this… this…” Nathan was waving randomly his hands towards the house, “he wouldn’t ignore it. Just me then… OK” he said, shaking his shoulders.

With the keys in hand, he debated. Not whether he should try pushing his hand through this blue field, but how it would feel when he does. Yet his hand moved unhindered through it, and he could swear it would feel at least tingly, maybe cold. But… nothing. All seemed extraordinarily normal. So normal that, considering also the neighbor’s non‑reaction, he asked himself, “Have I start losing it?”

He turned the key and pushed. The door didn’t move. Of course. He had forgotten it was stuck. Again.

“Damn. I need to lift it a bit and shove it with my shoulder. And I was hoping to just push it and jump inside. Like ripping a band‑aid. But no… now I have to stand half inside this… whatever this is… just to open the door. No band‑aid for me.”

He took a deep breath, lifted the door slightly, and rammed it with his shoulder. He pushed far harder than needed and stumbled forward, falling inside. His eyes squeezed shut on instinct.

“Damn it! What the… I know my eyes were closed, but how come the light is on? I didn’t touch any switch.”

Yet the house was bathing in bright light. So bright it forced him to close his eyes again. He lifted a hand, waving it blindly in front of him, searching for the wall he knew should be right there. But his fingers touched nothing. Not the hallway wall, not the kitchen doorframe, not even the heater he always bumped into.

It felt as if the hallway had stretched around him.

He knew he couldn’t stay on the floor forever. He felt no fear. If he had to describe it, he felt closer to how a child feels when delaying opening Christmas gifts, knowing that once that’s done, the magic of waiting and wonder comes to an end.

He took a deep breath and counted: 3, 2, 1… and opened his eyes wide.

Then… surprise. Everything looked as normal as always. Until then he had that feeling that something would be different enough to surprise him. But the discovery was totally anticlimactic. The semi‑darkness of that hour, the weak moonlight through the living‑room window that covered almost the entire wall.

“What was all that about? Am I really starting to lose it? No. Too early… I heard Grandpa was almost 65 when the lucid dreams started, while my father… around 50 or so… Damn! If I could only know where he disappeared, maybe I could ask him. Fifteen years since he left, like a coward. But it’s OK. I don’t need him,” he said, waving his hand while slowly getting up.

He threw the bag on the floor and moved closer to the window. He tried to get a glimpse of the moon when the blue field came into focus. A short “meow” made him flinch. His old cat, old enough to have known his father, wanted to go to the backyard. It was their routine, nothing new. He opened the door to the terrace and watched him pass through the field like nothing was there.

“So… does this mean it’s only me? Then… the light I saw and felt was indeed there… not only in my mind?”

For a moment his knees felt weak, enough for his body to fall onto the couch. He tried to find a plausible reason for what he had just experienced, but nothing was convincing enough. A short but laud stomach growl reminded him he was hungry. His mind drifted for a second to the turkey‑ham leftovers, watering his mouth. But he couldn’t move his body.

Then… darkness again.

He was woken by his old cat meowing. He had forgotten he let him out, and the cat rarely stayed outside overnight. As on cue, he felt the urge to go to the bathroom, his hunger was noisy, and the cat was already impatient, sitting on his back paws, stretching on the terrace door as much as he could while meowing. He even imagined him saying, “Dude, did you really forget me outside? Let me in. I’m hungry.”

“Well, I’m hungry too, pal.”

As he stood up, he hit his toe on the coffee table’s leg, inevitably making him jump on one leg toward the terrace door. The cat entered while muttering something that surely wasn’t very nice.

That was the moment he saw the backyard. Everything was fresh green, and the little purple‑leaf plum was full of pinkish flowers.

“What? Today was supposed to be 2°C with a chance of snow… but this… this is the middle of spring.”

He stepped out onto the terrace, ignoring the blue field behind him. The air smelled of lime blossoms. He walked straight to the tree and broke off a small branch full of flowers.

“I think I lost it… definitely,” he muttered. For a split second he thought, “Is it somehow just my garden?” And the answer came fast with the lime‑blossom scent.

“This… this is no illusion. It can’t be. It’s really spring. But how?”

He ran to the entrance. Knowing how stuck the door was, he spared no force this time. The door opened effortlessly and almost hit his head. He went outside to the gate, trying to make sense of the surroundings.

The Italian had just come out of his house, surely in a hurry.

“Buongiorno, Natalino,” he said, rushing to close the gate. “A dopo! In a hurry now. Catch you later. Buona giornata!” He almost threw himself into the car and drove off.

“He was behaving like everything is as it should be. Nothing out of the ordinary… But still… how? What happened in the last months? My last memories are definitely from early December. Wait… he said ‘morning’? What time is it?”

He looked at his old wristwatch, the one of few things he could say for certain was from his father.

8:15? 

“This is so late…”

He rushed to the bathroom and managed almost half the things he needed to do. Dried hos hand with a towel and then smelled his collar.

“It’s OK… for another day.”

Before going out he ran to the kitchen, took a piece of bread, opened the fridge, grabbed a few slices of turkey ham, and pushed them forcefully into the bread. Closed the door and almost flew through the gate.  Then stopped.

He remembered the blue electric light, the field. He turned and… it was there. He was no longer surprised. It would have been if it was not there.

“I see… Oh… damn… I’ll be so late. The boss is going to kill me,” he muttered and ran through the narrow streets toward his parking lot. To his car. An old Volkswagen, left in his care since his father left.

As he approached the parking spot, he pulled out his keys and pressed the unlock button.

The car that responded by blinking its lights wasn’t his old Volkswagen. Not even close. He froze. Looked at the keys. They weren’t the ones he remembered.

He bent down and peered through the window. The small necklace with a clear crystal pendant hanging from the rear‑view mirror was there. Familiar, untouched, present. This strange car was his. No doubt.

Coming up: Chapter 2 – Puzzle