Chapter 2 : The world stopped

James took his pants that he had thrown on the ground earlier and put them back on before running at full speed through the streets.

He ran for several minutes before arriving in front of an elementary school.

He immediately went inside and ran for a few more seconds before stopping in front of a classroom.

He entered the classroom and came in front of a little girl wearing a pair of glasses with short black hair.

Tears fell from her eyes, he tried to caress the child's hair but his hand went through her body as if she was an illusion.

"Kara! Kara!...."

"My little girl, please answer daddy, please talk to me."

He repeated his words for several minutes but received no response, looked at his daughter's face, gritted his teeth and left the class.

He went up to the top floor of the school.

In the corridor, he saw through the classroom window a young boy at the back of the classroom sleeping with a smile on his lips while a young woman holding a book in her hands stood behind him and looking him sternly.

"Will...."

Seeing his son, he breathed a sigh of relief and then sat down on the floor the corridor looking exhausted.

"What the hell is going on!"

"I have to find a solution! I am not dead! I am sure of that! I must find a way to free the children."

The fear he felt was instantly swept away as he thought of his frozen children.

Only then was the determination of a father left.

. . . . . .

Old-York Elementary School.

A week later in a classroom with a floor covered with foods wrapping.

James was sitting on a chair in front of the desk that was intended for the teacher with several books piled up.

"I can't find anything, should I go deeper into the occult?"

He murmured as he closed the book he had read before taking one of the bottles of whisky lying next to him.

His face was pale, he had dark circles under his eyes, and from his body emanated a strong smell of alcohol that could clear the nostrils of even the man with the most colds in the world.

He emptied the bottle of Whisky before leaving the classroom.

He left school and walked for several minutes through the deadly quiet town.

After several tens of minutes, he arrived in front of a library which he entered.

As everywhere else everyone was frozen, but James was already getting used to it, without paying attention to anyone, he walked around and picked up several books before going back to school and locking himself in the classroom.

He continued in this way, for several weeks, going back and forth between the school and the library, apart from that he only went out to look for food or drink.

As time went by, he became more and more frustrated, he read everything that could give him the slightest bit of information, sometimes fainting from overwork.

Unconsciously a year passed, James' hair grew to his shoulders, a beard began to grow on his face, his clothes were so musty and smelled of alcohol to the point where they could have made a cockroach vomit with disgust.

"I can't find anything! I've read all the scriptures about the apocalypse, I've read all the books about magic, physics, chemistry, theory about space and time available in the library, but I can't find anything I can't find anything!"

He threw the bottle of alcohol in his hands and looked at the pile delivered in front of him in despair.

"I'm sure there must be a solution! A way out of this frozen world! There must be a way! My kids, daddy will not abandon you!"

He gritted his teeth and stood up with bloodshot eyes, left school and walked to the library.

When he arrived he entered the library and walked through the building as if he were in his own home.

He searched the different sections of the library for several hours without finding a single book that satisfied him.

He then had no choice but to go to the foreign books section which was in their original languages.

He went through the different books and found more than fifty dealing with subjects that interested him, but apart from the cover of the book in English, he understood nothing of what was written in the different works.

Discouraged, he did not take any books and left the library, heading for another library in another neighborhood.