About four years ago my grandfather passed away. I wasn’t there since I live far too long away from him and my extended family.
He had personally left me some of his belongings and had them sent over. I asked my cousin to send them over and she did. They arrived about a week ago.
It’s a big box containing clothing, a Finnish dagger, a weird necklace, a note with time stamps on it and a stopwatch.
Now originally, I didn’t think too much of this. The clothing is originally Kurdish clothing, but the dagger isn’t. So, this didn’t make much sense to me since I never heard of any type of family relation with Finnish people.
Anyways.
I forgot all about it and two days passed. Then when I was walking through the hall in my apartment coming home from work, I noticed the box was closed. All the items I had taken out and left around me had been stored inside again.
This I didn’t think too much of since my girlfriend doesn’t like it when I leave stuff around and I thought that maybe she did this. But when I got to my desk, I saw the stopwatch. And it was running.
I was confused so I picked it up and stopped it. Suddenly, I hear sounds from outside, cars driving the busy streets we live around. It did startle me but when looking out the window I calmed myself down and thought that maybe I was simply just having another panic attack. I tend to not hear when I panic, I never lose my calm in my panic, but I just stop hearing sometimes.
I put the stopwatch inside the box and went back to my desk to continue working on a repository I had to finish.
About an hour later I finish my work and my girlfriend comes home. I asked her if she put all the stuff in the box again and she did. So that calmed me down.
But then she said, “what’s that?”. And I looked over from the sofa and she points to the box. I said, “well the box you put all the stuff back into?”. She tells me that she didn’t do that and that she had never seen that box before.
At this point I wasn’t sure if I had some sort of déjá vu, so I ignored it and continued the conversation with something else.
The day after that I spent working from home. I was alone during the day since my girlfriend works at the hospital as a nurse. I was tired and I got up from my desk during the day and thought that I would get some snacks from the local grocery store. But when walking by the hallway I see it again, the stopwatch was on the floor right next to my shoes.
I didn’t think much of it and picked it up and put in my pocket. I got dressed and got out of my apartment. Then I picked out the stopwatch from my pocket and looked at it, the stopwatch wasn’t running, and I pressed the timer, but nothing happened.
So, I thought “maybe it’s broken”. I put it back into my pocket and continued walking down the street. I noticed some rain droplets and I started picking up the pace because I didn’t want to get wet. But as I did the droplets seemed to slow down. And when I looked around the cars on the roads slowed down too.
I got scared and thought that maybe something was wrong, maybe we were getting attacked?!
But I had my hands in my pockets and felt the stopwatch shaking like a phone would shake when you get a notification. I picked it back out again and saw that the timer was now running but it looked slow.
And then the I just stood there, the busy streets full of cars got slower and slower, the rain got slower and slower, but the stopwatch picked up its own pace.
Then the stopwatch timer was going normally. At this point my stress is at its peak and I don’t know what the fuck is going on.
But I look up and the cars are not moving, the rain is suspended mid-air, I hear no other noises than my own thoughts and my own body.
I walked around and I slowly caught the rain, almost as if I were to pick up low hanging fruit.
The timer was still running. I thought “to hell with this shit”. And I just started walking towards the grocery store. When opening the door to the shop I noticed that it didn’t weigh anything. The people were stationary, non-moving. The cashiers looked more “down bad” than usual, guess the stop of time makes it easier to examine people.
I picked up two mars’ bars, a small coca cola bottle and walked up to the cashier.
Here I sort of just stand there. And for a moment I think “let’s just fucking not pay”. But I figured I had to.
I thought “well the only way to pay is to get this person moving again, so the stopwatch needs to stop it’s timer”. I picked up the stopwatch and stopped it.
In the very same moment as I did that, I hear a small startled scream from the cashier. I put it back into my pocket quickly as her reaction also scared me.
She said “sorry I didn’t notice how you came up here” with a nervous laughter to her voice.
I laughed a little nervously and said, “yeah sorry, my shoes aren’t that loud”. I thought that she would forget this since she was in fact looking down her phone before I got to her.
I paid for my stuff, put it all into my pockets of my long black coat and started walking out. But as I did, I kept thinking “wouldn’t it be fun to stress her again?”.
I stopped, turned around and made eye contact with her. She looks at me and smiles. I smiled back and pressed the timer on the stopwatch inside my pocket. As I did, I could see how her reaction became slower and slower. The final reaction that I see on her face is that of shock. And now she is frozen in time for me, just like everything else.
At this point I got a sense of control over my life. It felt weird but I also felt good knowing that I knew what I was doing and that it was working.
I walked out of the grocery store and walked the streets full of cars. Since none of them were moving I thought that it shouldn’t bother me.
I put in my earplugs and start walking towards an intersection. But when I try to use my phone, nothing happens. As I’m trying to figure out why my phone isn’t reacting, I continue to walk. I get to the intersection and in that moment that I look up from my phone a truck comes speeding into me.
The shock scared the living fuck out of me and I woke up. I get calmed down by my girlfriend as she tells me that I had a bad dream.
Everything I had just thought had did in fact not happen. But it felt too real. I couldn’t believe it was simply just a dream. But I put my head to rest and got back into sleep.
In the morning my girlfriend is getting ready to go to work. I kiss her goodbye and I get into the kitchen. But before she leaves, she comes into the kitchen and she says, “don’t scare people like that honey”. And she kisses me again and puts something in my hand.
I look down and it’s the stopwatch. And as I look up, I don’t see her anymore, but I hear the gentle closing of the apartment door. I look at the kitchen counter and see a book stabbed right throughout the whole thing, with the Finnish knife that also belonged to my grandfather. The book is completely white and thick. But I cannot take the knife out. It’s stuck somehow.
My girlfriend is Finnish.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what it means. She isn’t answering my phone calls and I haven’t used the stopwatch since.