Time Flies When You're Having Fun Ch. 1
I can make time stand still.
Yes, it's just that simple. Well, okay, maybe it's not as simple as that. In fact, even I don't have all the answers yet, and I probably never will, but I'll explain to you what I do know.
It all started a few years ago. While I was alone at home one day, I went to the fridge to get a cola bottle. The surface of the glass bottle was wet and it slipped out of my hands. In a reflexive motion, I held my hands up in the air, waiting for the container to shatter at my feet.
But I never heard anything. The bottle had just frozen in mid-fall, a couple inches from the floor. At first I just stared at it, not knowing what to think. I got down on the floor to get a closer look at the bizarre phenomenon. I touched the bottle with a finger, and as soon as I did, it fell the rest of the way to the floor, not breaking, just clinking and rolling around a bit.
I was freaked out, of course. I picked the bottle up and placed it on the counter. It seemed perfectly fine. I figured my mind had just played a trick on me. After all, how could what had just happened happen? Sort of dazed, I went into the living room and switched on the TV. I looked out the window and saw a bird hanging motionlessly in the air. That made me realize in a hurry that it wasn't over yet. In a panic, I switched off the TV and stared at the stopped bird. I looked down the street to where a man was walking a dog. They weren't moving either! I was really getting worried. Had the whole world stopped? What if nothing ever moved again? I continued to panic for a bit, until finally, everything started moving again, as if nothing had happened. The bird sailed away, and the man kept on walking the dog. But something had happened. I was sure of it.
I tried to reason it through. Apparently, I had caused everything to stop completely when the bottle fell, but time had then restarted on its own. The bottle had stopped in the air, but then continued its fall when I had touched it. The TV worked when I turned it on. How long had time stopped? I needed to test it again.
I picked up a tennis ball and tossed it towards the ceiling. I raised my hand to stop it, and again, time stood still. I was scared, but also intrigued. Maybe I was starting to realize the possibilities of this incredible discovery. The watch on my wrist still ran, and I watched as the second hand went around the dial. When the ball finally fell to the floor, about seven minutes had gone by. So there was my answer: This strange power lasted seven minutes each time, as far as I could tell.
I messed around with the weird new skill over and over that day. It was so hard to believe that I needed constant reassurance that it was real. I went to sleep that night thinking about how I might use the power the following day.
I woke up after eight hours according to the clock on the wall, but it felt like quite a bit less than that to me. I didn't understand why that would be at first, but then I thought of the time stoppage of the previous day. Suddenly it hit me. All the minutes I had borrowed from time had to have been taken back again while I slept. That's why it hadn't felt like I had slept enough. I was rather shocked by this but then realized that it was a good thing it worked out that way. After all, if I didn't give the minutes back to the universe (or whatever), my age would get thrown off after a while, plus there would be jetlag. Ugh, well, let me tell you, after that, I didn't try using the power for quite a while. It was all just way too creepy.