Ever since I was little, I could always do it. The first time I remember doing it, I think I was three. My mom literally caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. I saw her marching up, with her scary “angry mom” face, and suddenly, I stopped everything.
Mom stood there, still with her angry face, mid stride and with her mouth open terrifyingly, as she’d been right in the middle of yelling something at me. Nothing moved, there was no sound other than the ringing in my ears, and I just new, I’d stopped it all. I felt it. I just sort of flex something in my mind, and time just stops. Once I was sure I was safe, I quickly scarfed down my cookie and swallowed it up, before putting on my most innocent face and letting time resume.
“You know I told you NO!”
“I swear mommy! I didn’t take a cookie!” I licked the crumbs from my lips as covertly as I could. Mom looked confused for a second as she looked me over.
“… oh. I’m sorry baby, I swore I saw a cookie in your hand. What are you doing near the cookie jar? I saw your hand on the lid?” So I didn’t completely escape that one, but I totally minimized the damage and got to eat a free cookie.
That’s sort of how I used it as I grew up. I learned pretty quickly that not everyone could “stop the clock” like I could. I also learned there are limits. When time is frozen, it’s truly frozen. I can move about freely in a frozen world, but I can’t move anything. People, objects, insects in flight, all of them are frozen in exactly the same spot as before, and no amount of force I exert can move them. I learned to be careful running around outside when I ran right into a bumblebee, and knocked the wind right out of myself as it completely halted my excited sprinting. The next thing I learned was to wear thick shoes. When grass can’t be moved, it becomes a field of spikes. I’m pretty sure I could stab myself with it if I tried hard enough. With a thick pair of shoes, I could carefully cross over well-manicured lawn. The more unruly ones I stayed away from. There are exceptions, sort of… like the cookie. I was holding it when I first stopped time, so I was able to carry it with me and eat. My own clothes move with me too. If I’d tried to grab another cookie, they’d have been like statues, stuck to wherever they were. Other people’s clothes are like that too, so I can’t go undressing people while time is frozen (which I’m happy for in hindsight, but we’ll talk about how bad I was as a teenager in a bit). For some reason, bringing objects into frozen time doesn’t apply to people I’m touching. I can bring a cookie, but another person I’m touching just freezes up like everything else. I accidentally got my hand caught in the folds of my mother’s skirt once because I froze time and it held me like a vice. That’s the first “rule.” Nothing can be moved.
The second rule is: in order for time to start back up, I had to be pretty damn close to where I was when I first froze time, otherwise, it feels like… it’s hard to explain. You know those video glitches on streaming services, where it hiccups and stops for a few seconds, but then it rushes to catch up and the last few seconds of footage sort of “speed” by? It feels like that in my brain. Like I’m desperately trying to push forward and catch up in my brain, but I literally can’t until I’m back close to where I was when I started. I suppose I could also say it was like a skipping record, but I don’t know how many people would get that these days. I don’t have to be in the EXACT same position as I was at first, thankfully, just close. My mom says I had a tendency to dash away, and that I was “weirdly” fast at times. So other people might slightly notice some odd visuals as I stop and start, but since I’m close to my original spot, it’s nothing they can’t explain.
I tried to show a friend once. I told him to watch an apple I was holding. I froze time and set it on the table, then started time again. He says to him, it just looked like I’d put it down really fast. So I tried again. This time I threw the apple in the air, once it left my hand and rose an inch, it froze like the rest of the world. My friend just saw me toss the apple in the air. So I tried one more time. I picked up the apple, froze time, and tried to set it down on the other side of the room. But then I couldn’t start time again. Objects like the apple had to be close to their original position too. Thankfully, I could still pick it up. I never did find a surefire way to convince people I could freeze time, not until I was older.
Growing up with this ability… it was strange. I was a weird introvert already, and when you can stop time like a deity, you sort of develop a complex and further isolate yourself. I wasn’t completely without friends mind you. High school was hard. Puberty hit me like a freight train. Despite my parents being wonderful people who taught me about boundaries, respect, and consent, I made a conscious decision to ignore a lot of that in High school. You can think of me as an abuser, a deviant, a pervert, that’s fine, I deserve it, I totally was. I consciously chose to find my way into women’s spaces, so I could ogle them while they were vulnerable. Locker rooms, bathrooms, my favorite was the changing rooms at the local pool. I can’t open doors when time is frozen, but the showers at the pool were only covered by curtains. All I had to do was freeze time, slip in, and crawl under, and I could stare to my heart’s content. For two years I acted like a cretin, but thought of myself as a god. At some point, it got old though. For starters, porn was way less work. For another, none of it was a real relationship, which was the other thing I desperately craved. I’d just as soon not mention any of my deviant behavior, but the thing is, I have to. I think that was the first time I saw It.
One time, I got unreasonably angry at the most popular girl in school. Head of the Volleyball team and queen of our high school. She was pretty and she knew it. Lots of people hated her for it. She could be a little haughty at times, and I heard she could be really cruel to other girls, but looking back, I’m not sure where the vitriol came from. She made a harmless comment in class to something I’d suggested that wasn’t really an insult, but I interpreted it as such anyway. I resolved to see her naked. In my mind it was what she owed me for “insulting” me. I wanted to punish her for my own gratification.
I waited till after volleyball practice was over. I waited until I heard the showers running, then I pulled open the door to the girls locker room, and froze time. I slipped inside and caught half the volleyball team in the showers. I was probably glowering like a demented little freak for a minute or two. Maybe I’d finally started to grow up, but as I stood there among my classmates, I came to a realization. They didn’t look like the hot naked women in porn. They weren’t posing for the camera. They were scrubbing their armpits and many of them looked nervous and scared to be showering publically, even if it was among their teammates. They were a bunch of people just like me. Not only that, they were my classmates. The spell was broken. I just felt like a dirty intruder and that was suddenly a lot less exciting to me. I turned to leave, hoping to pretend this never happened, and that’s when I saw a shadow on the wall. To this day, I have no clue who’s shadow it was. It was frozen on the wall, like everything else, but I was transfixed by it. Who was casting this shadow? Why did it look so… alien? I was utterly unnerved, so I hustled out of the showers, unfroze time, and ran home, scared, and feeling very very dirty (and I should).
Somehow, I shook off my terrible teens, and became a more respectful person. Trust me, perverts out there. Women are so much more beautiful and sexy when they share themselves with you willingly, because you formed a connection with them. I grew up. I got a job, I have a fiancé now. It’s been ten years since I used my time freezing ability for anything nefarious. I’m ashamed of the choices I made then. I still use the power from time to time. It’s pretty handy at the few jobs I’ve had. It’s also great for introverted nerds like me. If I need to get away, I can just freeze everything and go sit and stare at the sky for a few hours, in absolute silence.
My fiancé believes that I can freeze time now, and here’s how. We devised a test we could do. She wrote things onto a post-it note, and placed it face down on a glass table while keeping her eyes on me sitting across the room. She’d tell me she was ready, and I would freeze time, crawl under the table, and read what she wrote, before returning to my seat, unfreezing time, and reciting what she’d written. She tried to talk me into other experiments, but I declined, and she respected that. I just wanted to live my life. So we did.
That brings us to now.
Something has changed. About a month ago, I froze time in the middle of getting yelled at by my boss. I spent some time telling him where he could shove his citations, and screaming obscenities before wandering the office for a time. I grinned when I saw I’d frozen a coworker in the midst of playing a game of solitaire when he was supposed to be working. I stopped to look out a window, staring at the frozen world outside, wrestling my anger under control, and preparing to return to my boss to let him finish his tirade.
I walked past my solitaire playing friend and when I glanced at his computer screen, I noticed something off. It was turned off. At the time I kind of just assumed I’d mixed up coworkers. So I sort of ignored it. When I got back to the Boss’s office, I swore his coffee mug was turned in a different direction. When I’d frozen time before, I could read the writing on his coffee mug. “No one cares. Work harder” (Yeah, he’s that kind of jerk). Now, from that same position, all I saw was the black of the other side. This guy always keeps his mug face out to remind his underpaid underlings that they should be doing more for him, and also, I freaking saw the writing when I first froze this moment. Why couldn’t I see it now? I couldn’t move the cup or anything, so what else could I do? I resumed time and let the idiot keep yelling at me. He made sure to turn his cup to tell me to work harder as I left the office. Out of curiosity, I checked in with my solitaire friend. His computer had crashed. Poor guy lost a really important report he was working on. He had to redo it. Not sure why he was playing solitaire…
I convinced myself nothing was wrong. That I’d just made mistakes. Someone else was playing solitaire, and I’d just imagined I’d seen the words on the boss’s coffee cup. But things like that have been happening more frequently. Small things I could easily miss. Every time I freeze time now, I’ll notice something. At home, my tooth brush will move. Or a book will be askew on the shelf. I was driving myself nuts with it. I kept trying to convince myself I was just being paranoid. Nothing can move when time is frozen. Nothing but me.
But last week, something happened that’s never happened before. I froze time so I could wander around outside. The frozen town proper is just sort of fascinating. I was strolling along, and all of a sudden, there it was. A freaking noise. There was never any noise before. Even my own feet made no sound as I walked about with time frozen. But I heard it clear as day.
”THUMP.”
It echoed out of some alley. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Time was frozen. I’d wandered through the statues of frozen people going about their day, thousands of times. It had always been my space. My sanctuary. But now, something ELSE was here making sounds. How could anything make a sound if time was frozen? I ran. I bruised myself on a floating mosquito as I weaved through the frozen crowds. I’d never been afraid of the frozen people before, because I knew they couldn’t do anything, but now? Any one of them could have made the noise. Maybe some were only pretending they were frozen? Who made that damn sound?
Finally I made it back to my original spot. I stood there panting, trying to start time back up, so I wouldn’t feel so alone. But for a brief moment, I couldn’t move it. I glanced around, with a sense of growing dread. That’s when I saw something else move around the frozen cityscape. It was only a shadow. Just a flicker of some dark shape. It wasn’t human. It’s limbs were long, it’s head almost looked like an egg, and there were white empty half circles where eyes ought to be. Just white voids. It was the same shadow from the wall of the showers all those years ago. Somehow I knew it. It wasn’t frozen this time. Our eyes met, then everything started moving and the shadow vanished. I started screaming right in the middle of the sidewalk.
I refuse to freeze time ever again. I hoped that whatever that thing was, I left it trapped in that frozen moment. But who the hell knows? If I freeze time again, maybe it will be in the next frozen moment waiting for me? I don’t think it’s safe there anymore. My sanctuary is gone. But it can’t reach me here right?
Well. I’m not so sure. My fiancé is now convinced our house is haunted. She says she keeps seeing a shadow man staring at her. Her possessions keep moving. Toiletries, knickknacks, some of her clothes. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t the Egghead. She thought it was a stalker at first. I rolled with that, and started watching out for other clues. But then she saw the white eyes. She shrieked when it happened. She said she saw them at the foot of our bed. It happened again the next evening. We spent the day distracting ourselves, then the evening brainstorming ideas. Eventually she left to take a shower while I looked for “shadow figures” online. Minutes after I heard the water shut off, I heard her scream.
I froze time and ran to her. By some miracle she hadn’t closed the door as she dressed herself after her shower, so I was able to run right into the room. There she was. She’d dropped her towel, and was recoiling in terror. She stood there frozen, reeling away, about to fall backwards. I followed her gaze. There was the Egghead shadow. It wasn’t a shadow anymore. It stood there in the room. A living shadowy mass in a horrifically humanoid shape. Then it turned and looked at me with its empty white voids. It wasn’t frozen. The next thing I knew, I couldn’t move. I was as frozen as my fiancé, but I was still aware. I could only watch helplessly as its shadowy limbs shuddered to life, and it skulked towards her. It walked behind her, out of my sight. I heard it rummaging around. A minute later I could move again.
Time was still frozen. I scoured the house for that thing, but I could find no trace. What the hell had it done? I returned to the bathroom, and stared helplessly at my fiancé. She was going to fall. She had slipped when she saw that thing. I moved towards where I saw the Egghead, and that’s where I found the pair of scissors. They sat right where the woman I lived was going to land. I tried to move them, but of course, I couldn’t. I tried moving her but I couldn’t do that either. I spent hours just trying to do SOMETHING to this frozen moment, so my fiancé wouldn’t lose her life the second I started things up. I even tried taking off my shirt to put between her and the blade to minimize the damage, but I couldn’t start time back up without my shirt. I felt so utterly helpless. With nothing else to do, I went back downstairs to restart time, and sprinted up to the bedroom to aid my terrified fiancé. I already had emergency services on the way. I found her crying on the ground in an alarmingly large puddle of blood. She’d impaled her wrist on the scissors.
She’s in recovery now. I acted fast enough that they managed to save her. They closed the artery, and she’s receiving donor blood. That thing put the scissors there. I know it. It tried to kill her. It’s been three days since then. In that time, three different people have died mysteriously in our town. Bizarre accidents. One in a million chances that people could die in such bizarre ways but so far, we’ve had three. An older woman stumbled in such a way that she fell forward and the pens from a pencil cup went into her eye, straight through to her brain. A man stepped out of his pool and tripped over a misplaced pool float, and landed on his fuse box in such a way that he’d been electrocuted (apparently it needed servicing that nobody knew about). A teenage boy on a skateboard was thrown into the street when his board smacked into a toy on the sidewalk that nobody could identify. He’d been hit by a car. That all happened in the last two days.
Maybe it’s all coincidence… but I don’t think so. I’m not sure what this thing is, or where it came from, but it has control over time. More than I do even. And it seems to enjoy killing. I worry that I’m the one who called it here somehow. As far as I know, it’s still out there. I’m going after it. I have to try and stop it. It might come back for the woman I love. It’s more powerful than me, but maybe I just haven’t figured out all I can do. I’m sorry Delilah. I hope I’ll be back soon.