Alex Damien

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Expect the unexpected.

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Somewhere in a house in the small western European country of Belgium, a young man is peacefully sleeping in his bed until his alarm goes off.

"RRRIIIIINNNGGG"

Judging by his face, he is 17/18 years old. He has black hair and grey-blue eyes. His face is slightly square-shaped and therefore has a hard jawline, although there is still a slight babyface in it.

After a few arm movements, he finally gets his alarm clock off and sits up straight at the side of his bed. He is athletically built, you can see his muscles move smoothly and elegantly when he makes a move. He looks at the clock and sees it's 6 am.

"Eurgh, why did I have to get up early again today" 'Ah yes, today is my last exam before the summer holidays.'

He gets up and gets ready for breakfast. 'Fortunately, my mother is an early riser and breakfast is probably ready.'

On his way downstairs he comes across a sleepy 12-year-old girl who, with a straw half stuck in her mouth, is trying to drink her orange juice.

"Good morning Sarah, How is the drinking going?", I say with a smile on my face.

"Good morning asshole" she answers, and I start laughing. I like to annoy my little sister and try to do so as much as possible. Unfortunately, I hear my mother calling from downstairs that I should stop bullying my sister. Instead of making another comment, I go back downstairs and sit at the kitchen table. Why the kitchen table you might ask. I have no idea, even though we have a normal and good dining table in the living room, we always eat in the kitchen. Not that this annoys me or anything, I just find it a strange concept sometimes. I see a plate of Dutch mini pancakes already on the table and start diligently grinding the icing sugar over them so that I can start eating.

"How do you think the final exam will go?" Asks my mom while my mouth is full of food. After a few chews and swallows, I reply, "It should be fine, I've been studying and understand most of the stuff." "I hope for your sake then that you pass dear, you don't want to repeat what happened last year do you?" "No, and that's not going to happen, mother."

As you might have guessed, I've repeated my year. Although I did pass my major in sports, the science subjects were my end. Because of my diagnosis, I have a harder time remembering things and I don't understand the concept of the subject matter if I don't start studying early enough. I've had Savant syndrome since birth, which makes it difficult for me to understand things. In contrast to the understanding part, I can learn physical movements and techniques very quickly. So you can call me a prodigal Savant on the physical part. This is also the reason why I am majoring in sports. So why am I still studying science, you may ask. I do want to have the most choices when I go to university. This gives me a better and greater sense of freedom.

After dinner, I get up and grab everything to leave for school. I study at the Royal Atheneum Keerbergen. Just after I left, I hear my mother say, "Good luck Alex." "Thank you!" I shout back before putting in my earphones and continuing cycling with music. So my name is Alex, Alex Damien to be precise. Many people wonder why I have such an English name while living in Belgium. Although me and my sister were born in Belgium and are thus Belgian nationals, my mother and the rest of my family are from Great Britain. That's why our names sound so English.

My parents moved to Belgium with my grandparents after the 2nd World War. Two years after my birth, something happened between my parents which led to a divorce. My dad then moved back to the UK with his parents a few months after my mother became pregnant for a second time. Thankfully, he was not a heartless person and keeps sending money every month so that my mother can provide us with a comfortable life. Although I regret that I never really knew my father, I'm lucky that I don't have any memories of him. My mother never talks about him and don't get me wrong, I am curious to know who he is. It's just that I don't need a father figure. That's why I'm happy with how things are right now.

After more than an hour, I arrive at school. A considerable distance to cover every day, I know. Of course, I've got a good reason for it. This school has a fairly large domain for a secondary school. Although this is not the reason why I chose this school, it's why they have a large sports hall. It's the only decent and clean gymnasium of any school in the area. It also has equipment that is not worn out compared to the schools near my home. Fortunately, the sports teachers here also take sports seriously. Therefore, these are the biggest reason why I'm willing to cycle 2 hours every day.

I get off my bike and put it in the bicycle shed. On the way to the classroom where I will be taking my exam, I take off my earphones because I ran into some acquaintances from my class. We start talking about all sorts of things, but the main topic is whether we will pass the exam or not.

"I'm going to fail miserably." I hear from behind me. I turn around and see Peter coming in our direction at a jogging pace. You know that one person in class who always says he didn't do anything for a task or test and still gets the best results for everything. Peter is that person. This can sometimes frustrate me. Fortunately, he is a pretty chill person apart from that one thing. It's not that we're such good friends, but occasionally I like to hang out with him.

At some point, we arrive at the classroom and I sit down at my usual spot. After a while, everyone is there except for one person. Elise is the name of the girl who's always just on time, or should I say that she's always extremely punctual. It's also the only person I'm more interested in than the others due to her mysteriousness. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean it romantically. But truly in this school, nobody knows where she comes from. She has no contact with her fellow students, which has led to many theories about her origins. The most popular one is that she's an illegitimate child of the Prime Minister. Very farfetched, I know.

While I'm lost in my thoughts, in the corner of my eye I see someone enter the classroom. I look at my watch and see that it's exactly 8:10 am and I think to myself, 'Just as expected from Elise.' Elise has long and slightly wavy blonde hair, bright green eyes and a face as if God Himself had designed it. In short, she's immensely beautiful and looks more mature than most adults.

She takes a seat in front of me and everyone starts their exam. After a few seconds of trying to quiet my thoughts, I also start the exam that lays before me. I concentrate and start filling in the questions I know for certain, which were remarkably few. The minutes ticked by and before I realized it, we were already an hour and a half into the exam. Even though I only had half an hour left to fill in half of my exam, I wasn't too worried. Because of my diagnosis, I get extra time for every test or exam. Nevertheless, I tried to fill in everything as quickly as possible in the last half hour. Why, you may ask, well after the exam me and my family are planning to go to an amusement park. So I have to finish as soon as possible.

At some point, I hear the bell that signals the end of the exam, everyone except me gets up and leaves. Or so I assumed, Elise in front of me, Peter diagonally behind me and two other students remain seated. This surprised me a little, it was the first time that people other than me had stayed longer. After the short surprise, I started writing again to solve my last few questions.

10 minutes later I had everything finished and reviewed. I was about to hand it over and start to put my things in my backpack when the phenomenon started. All the sounds disappeared. The birds chirping, the pens tapping on the sheet of paper, the cars in the distance driving past the school. And that's not all, after I noticed that all the noise had disappeared everything suddenly took on a blue hue. Something was going on and I was curious what it was exactly. I walked to the window without noticing the teacher who was silently shouting at me.

What I see at the moment is the most unexpected and unrealistic thing I've ever seen. Very high in the sky, above all the clouds, I see the shape of a gigantic chain. The chain is fluorescent blue and is spread out in the air as far as I can see. Suddenly, the chain starts to vibrate and cracks appear on its surface. During these vibrations in the air, the whole world starts to shake and a global earthquake occurs. Everyone still in the room panics and hides. Peter tried to go out the door but it was blocked by a piece of debris that had just fallen from the ceiling. The fear started to work its way up, this was after all the first time I had ever experienced an earthquake. The thing is that although I was scared, the excitement about what was happening outweighed those negative feelings.

While I was trying to suppress my emotions, the phenomenon and the trembling got worse and worse. After a few minutes, the earthquake stopped and all sounds returned. I was surprised by the abruptness of this, so I started looking out the window again. The chain was still vibrating but now it's almost entirely broken and cracked.

While I was watching this, a tremendously loud sound like an explosion of some kind was produced. My ears start ringing and I see the chain above me falling apart. At that moment I became unconscious and everything became black before my eyes.