The time I froze the world

Let me start by saying that I wasn’t always a good guy... and well, nor am I entirely one today. But then again, who am I to judge?

Without further ado, no annoying long introduction until I get to the point, no “once upon a time,” without stretching a phrase to its limit until something gets explained, well, hold your breath, ta-daaaaa (see what I did there?!): I CAN STOP TIME! Like, literally! I can freaking stop the time from moving up or down or sideways or any direction you might think it takes.

That’s my thing, my so-called superpower. Only that for me, growing up, nothing was “super” about it. It was just normal living. I honestly thought that everyone was capable of doing something similar. How should I have known what “super” meant when I didn’t even know what “normal” was?

The first time I noticed it, I must have been 3 or 4. It was my birthday. My mom brought out this amazing cake with some scattered candles spreading a pale light around. I was a sugar-addicted kid, and the sight of all that cake, just for me, made me drool. Then my mom slipped. The cake flew in the air. I gasped. And there it was - the whole tongue-exciting sugary confection stopped mid-air. There could have been a few seconds, not more than five, until I exhaled, and the cake resumed its doom. I didn’t think much of it. For all I knew, every cake would have reacted in the same way, faced with an inevitable outcome.

Now and then, similar glitches popped up. A cat about to scratch me stopped just before its claws slashed a painful mark on my leg, a stumble that froze everything around me except my falling fate, a favourite toy decapitated by a revengeful brother, everything that might have spurred out some strong emotions was freezing up in a time hiccup.

I don’t know if I should tell you now, but I guess you’ll find out eventually (not like me, who figured it out the wrong way – but I’ll get to that later). There’s a catch to my powers. The time stops only as much as I can hold my breath, and these freaking powers get, let’s say, “rebooted” every 5 minutes or so. In plebeians’ terms, I can’t, for the love of God, stop the time two breaths in a row. Yeah, I know, a bummer! Don’t ask me why, that part I haven’t figured it out myself.

My mom told me that my heart stopped at birth, and the doctors struggled to bring me back to this world for a while. So there you go, keep that as an explanation if it pleases your need for reasons why.

For a while, I used to be a mere spectator to the time stopped, waiting for everything to continue its movement. They kind of freaked me out. I remember asking my mom when I was 5 or 6 why things were stopping, but I guess she took it as one of those “magical” child interpretations of stuff around them. I was incapable of explaining to her that something was off, and she was incapable of understanding that something was amiss.

Even now, looking at photos from those times - me, my mom and my brother - makes me wonder how the heck I moved through life without her noticing something. And my father... My father was out of the picture. Like, literally. He wasn’t a very photogenic guy, so most of the time, he was the one behind the camera. Then he died.

It was at his funeral that I became aware of my ability to move around a frozen time frame. I must have cried or something, and I took a deep breath while wanting to get closer to my mom when everything stopped. And then I took a single step. Or two. Probably two. When everything resumed, I freaked out an aunt who saw me disappear. But, in hindsight, after she made the cross sign a gazillion times, she must have thought that her eyes were playing tricks on her due to the pain of losing her brother – my dad. But, again, I repeat, I had no clue that whatever was happening to me was in any way different than what others were experiencing.

As a kid, I inherited my father’s “good looks” - it got better over the years, though - so, somehow, I ended up being a preferred target for bullies. Well, at least I’m blaming it on that. At first, every first punch was frozen for a few seconds in the air before it landed on my face or stomach. Then, after the realization that I could actually move around, I started avoiding them. The first ones only. Usually, every bully’s miss triggered their anger, and inevitably, the outcome of every fight was more brutal than the one before. For that reason alone (plus heck knows what else) I hated school and dreaded walking into my tormentors’ playgrounds.

It took me a few good years of beatings and frozen moments in time, plus a few other attempts to explain to others that something was off (that included some not-so-pleasant visits to a shrink) until I realized I was special (well, in my interpretation of those days - a freak).

I don’t know when exactly I figured out that emotions were a good trigger for the time stops, but somehow I did. YAY, me! So, the only logical thing was to get me into situations where things were escalating - bullies, cops, fights with my brother, you name it. Some kids saw my skills of avoiding punches as “ninja skills,” so bit by bit, the bullies started avoiding me. And guess what?! – with a bit of fast-forward – I ended up bullying the bullies a while later. Again, YAY, me!

The realization that time stops as long as I keep my breath in was another story. It was when I exhaled in a women’s bathroom and got caught red-faced under a stall that it occurred to me the extent of my control.

You know the feeling when you realize you have power over everybody else? Of course, you don’t! You’re not me. But let me tell you, it feels amazing, like playing God with the whole humanity. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I have in me the traits to become an evil genius, but I do enjoy playing with the line that people often hide behind – common sense.

I was telling you about the shrink... He got into my mother’s head the idea that I’m suicidal, with tendencies to control or do harm to others, on my way to certain death. I got fists of medicine shoved down my throat, and for a while, I was as numb as a cucumber forgotten on a counter. He managed to make from me a vegetable that he saw as the perfect candidate to fulfill his dreams. He used to crave recognition from his peers, so the best way to do that was to invent a new system of diagnosis. Who was the ideal guinea pig? You guessed it! My brother! - Kidding. Of course, it was me. The whole mumbo-jumbo was based on tests on eye movement, the reaction to a stress ball thrown at me, and short and painful needle inserts in the back of my head.

Luckily, my mom got tired of feeding me pills (or she just didn’t want to pay for them anymore). But that freaking shrink carved a deep mark in my childhood. I dreaded going to see him every Monday. But, with all the stress and fear of him, a good thing came out. Every time I saw him, my emotions spiked, and time froze. It was around the last ten visits that I also realized that I could move more around the stops, so I started moving things around his cabinet. First, a chair, then flipping a painting, drawing a monster - what I thought was a cute kitten - on his desk, dripping blood samples on his chair, opening all his cabinets, or getting a pen stuck up his nose.

Conclusion? He thought the place was haunted (or believed I was the devil), and soon after, he turned extremely religious and lost his license because he started treating other patients only with holy water.

With the bullies, it started on a quieter note. First I was taunting them until fists started flying in the air, then once the stops occurred, I was planting a wedgy on them that was making everyone cringe shortly after.

Oh! I forgot another element of surprise to my abilities: whatever I was touching joined me in my time bubble, with a small twist - as long as they were inanimate objects. Humans, animals, and insects got stuck in the stops no matter what I was doing. I could strip someone naked for all I cared, and they wouldn’t have moved a muscle (which I did with two of the bullies - well, I dropped only their pants). Then I started adding a touch of cruelty to my revenge. For one kid, I put red dye in his ears- imagine the freak-out moment he had when time resumed. He was immediately sent to the hospital with tests over tests getting him to fear for his life worse than a prisoner on his last walk.

For others, I pulled the chairs under them, I opened their flies, wrote nasty messages pretending to be from their friends, you name it. I loved it, and I was laughing all by myself at night, planning mischief and using the drop of adrenaline, which was spurring the stops, to my advantage. I loved it to the point of living only for those moments. The school became less important in itself, but rather the lab in which I could experiment. And experiment I did.

Now, I’m certain that you’ve read at least once the title. Who the heck would read a book without checking the title first or a synopsis? But there’s no synopsis here. I’m not in the mood to write one, so if you want to find out more about me, suffer like I do writing these freaking lines.

And yes, I’m stuck. I froze up the whole majestic-useless-good-for-nothing world. It got caught up in one of those bubbles that seem carved in some type of precious metal that nothing can cut through. I’m stuck, and after doing whatever I thought might work, I got bored. Oh, I also passed the level of talking to myself, all those stages of grief. Been there, done that and have the stamps to prove it! I just got bored, so I decided to write to whoever gives a damn whenever eternity would stop being eternal. I’ll put down on paper what I think might get me to figure out clues from my life I must have missed. Clues about me and my freaking awesome superpowers – that you don’t have! :)

Where was I? Oh...true, I can read what I already wrote. It’s not like you could remind me anyway.

My childhood and teenage years were a huge period of discovery or how my mom used to call it – rebellion. “Somehow,” I managed to pass all my classes, though nobody actually could remember what I knew or how well I did on tests. Truth be told, I might have used some time stops to change some grades here and there, enough to get me to pass unnoticed.

I figured it out. Why should I learn? To get a job? Then what? Bust my ass spending a lifetime locked in some cubicle when I could just as easily take whatever I wanted without any consequence.

Morality, you say? To hell with it! Yeah, according to your terms, I might be an asshole. So what? Where does your sense of good and bad draw the line when it benefits you? Isn’t that a subjective fixation, after all? We find excuses for everything, and all of us, I mean ALL OF US, push the limit when it affects or benefits us. Call it a defence mechanism; I’m not a psychologist to know.

But if the school taught me anything was how to control my powers. Well, -ish. It wasn’t the school that taught me, but rather, at the school, I realized how to trigger the time stops. And –ish, well, because I’m in the situation I explained earlier, not really a full control of my powers. Whatever! It is what it is; there is no point in putting myself down (I had a bunch of others trying to).

I guess I was about sixteen - seventeen when I could trigger the stops at my own will, no need to spark anger, fear, or whatever adrenaline juice I was craving. I could just concentrate and “Puff!” the time would take a break.

I did so many things that you might have them only in your darkest fantasies that I don’t even know where to start.

Do you know those smart-ass kids, the “populars” that make fun of everybody else? I cut their hair bit by bit, about a handful every day, enough to get them to think they were under some type of radiations or alien invasions. I loved the slow torture, the one that makes you think the world around you went crazy (well, it kind of did since I made their worlds like that). In the gym showers, I was turning their showers either super hot or super cold (and yes, of course, I pretty much saw everybody in the school naked).

It got exciting for a while, stealing without being caught, freaking people out when their things were disappearing, and getting everything I wanted without having to worry too much about money. But then people started being suspicious. “How the heck does a shmuck like me manage to always have the latest phone (albeit - no data plan), the best shoes, and the nicest clothes? Where did my mom get all that money? How could we afford it?”

What can I say? What teenager doesn’t want to flaunt a bit? And if some other kids managed to convince their parents to get something similar, by “fluke” they were getting broken in the same day – easily ripped, holes, slashes... you name it.

I got visits from the police a couple of times. They caught me with some PS4s and games that others were just dreaming of playing. I told them I got them as a present. They didn’t buy it, especially when those were reported stolen. I “admitted” then buying them from a guy in a back alley. They took me to show them the place. I did, behind my principal’s apartment (yup, I didn’t like that guy either). It took me a long breath to put one of the PS4s the cops had in their car on the fire escape next to his apartment.

Long story short, he got investigated and then later released for lack of evidence. I got all my things confiscated, and I had to write a statement in which I promised to be a model citizen. As if!

But, the whole business with the cops kind of forced me to get a job – to prove at least that I had an income to pay for all the things I got. Part-time, an eager teen, dedicated to school but working at the same time in one of the economy’s main gear – McDonald’s. I was doing the bare minimum, enough not to get fired. I got evaluated on how fast I was, and guess what? I made a burger in a record time of 42 seconds (plus a 56-second breath).

I chose, on purpose, a McD farther from school, but as Faith likes to fart on us, I got some colleagues showing up at the counter. They had a blast ordering me around – two guys and two girls. They changed their order four times, asked to make a complaint, and asked to be reimbursed for a pack of fries that were “a tad too salty for their taste.” I endured. I kind of needed that job, plus I didn’t really hate it all that much. I endured until they paid and got their trays filled up.

Then I took a breath. Now, don’t get anxious; I didn’t kill them! I just placed their trays in a way that made sure that when time resumed, they spilled everything on top of each other. There’s a redeeming quality to a good laugh – for me and surprisingly for everybody else in there, except, of course, the four ketchup-coke-mayo-covered losers. Two weeks later, I was still making them regret their encounter with me - tripping them, misplacing their things, turning slowly one against the other. Easy-peasy!

I never had any friends. Not that I didn`t try, but I guess sooner or later they were freaked out by me and started putting some distance between us. Heck, even I would have been freaked out by me back then. I loved messing with people, and once you`ve done something to annoy me, you were on your path to slightly lose your mind.

I had a guy that didn`t hold the door while getting inside a building; for some reason, this always pissed me off – how hard is it to wait for three f_ing (Yeah, I’m considerate, I’m not saying the full word) seconds for someone else?! He did it once, but enough for me to feel the urge to give him a lesson.

So, for a week, every time he passed in front of the same building, I was placing a banana peel under his step. It was a major failure for him. A week of falling more or less in the same place, and always slipping on a banana peel. I saw him a couple of times approaching the building extremely cautiously, checking for bananas or God knows what.

However, 5 seconds later, he would inevitably fall. Then he started sliding on the concrete, you know?!, like a skater, not lifting the shoes off the ground. I tied his shoelaces. He fell and started shaking. For a while, I thought he had a stroke or something, but then he just let out this huge scream, full of frustration – my job completed.

On top of everything, I was a horny teenager… and adult. So I had my share of groping and checking everybody out, but then again, get your violins ready, it doesn’t get that interesting if you don’t get anything in return. It’s like taking advantage of a mannequin – all plastic. No kiss being reciprocated.

To resume – no friends, no girlfriends or boyfriends, no social life to make me feel connected to a so-called community. All alone and hated by everyone, all in my bubble, in my sorrow and with my thoughts of committing suicide.

Are you feeling sorry for me yet? Do you feel my pain? Really? Tough luck! I never felt the need to be a part of society, and I loved myself and my powers too much to contemplate death. I was delighted to be alone and take advantage of a world that placed itself at my feet, ready to be abused.

I’m lying — a bit. I did care about my mom. A lot. And, to some extent, about my brother too. But that’s a whole soapy story I’m not going to get into.

I kept my job in the food industry for about four or five years. I got used to it. It provided free food (not that I ever paid for any) and a sense of belonging that somehow I craved at a minimal level.

My mom died. Cancer. That’s the first time I really felt pain, a sort of pain that no medication and no running away can solve. I took my deepest breath ever just before she took her final one. I was there, in the hospital room, looking at a shadow of what she used to be and right there, I kept the time frozen for almost 3 minutes. I tried my best to keep her in this world for as long as my powers could allow – I guess at that point, I would have traded my powers for those of a healer, but in life, you get what you get! I must have cried. In all honesty, I can’t remember much. I just remember feeling powerless and useless, and I blamed the world for building itself heartless and cruel. I could even say I hated everyone.

I quit my job shortly after. Well, not really quitting, I just didn’t show up anymore. They must have thought I died, or something. I left home and started wandering, seeing the world, and taking small revenge on its futility. I stole cars and drove them till the gas ran out, I ate whatever I felt like and visited all the places people put on their bucket lists. I booked flights right below travel agents noses and joined cruises from one continent to another.

I got good at keeping my breaths in. Top record after a few more years of practice – 5 min and 32 seconds – enough time to rob a bank, align all people in a YMCA position and disappear without a trace. I did it for the adrenaline, not because I actually needed the money.

In five years, I managed to travel quite a bit and messed up with quite a few people worldwide. I had bar fights in Thailand, “revived” some dead people in Romania (well, I just got the dead out of their coffins), diverted some bullets in Ghana, made an orchestra conductor moon the audience in Germany, and made a few presidents poke their noses on live TV.