When The Earth Stood Still

Adam learned he could pause time at 2:27 pm on a sunny Thursday in July. He knew the time exactly because the clock on his computer had stopped.

He simply begged everything –pleaded with it, really– to give him a moment.

And it did. 

Even his pen, which he had been clicking against his desk in barely concealed frustration at his block-headed, snub-nosed dunce of client, halted. 

Adam looked at it with astonishment, poised a half inch or so above the desk.

Then the absence of sound hit him. 

Where previously there had been a barrage of clipped speech -insults and entreaties-, overlaying the general clatter of an office, now there was only blissful silence. 

His gaze moved across the desk to his client, a broad man with a head like an ugly, misshapen boulder. This man’s mouth was open mid-yell. A bit of spittle, gathered at the corner of his lips beneath his bristled black mustache, waited. 

Startled, Adam got to his feet, upending his chair – which simply reclined back leisurely and stopped, as though propped up by invisible legs. A stack of papers he’d upset with his left hand shifted, but did not fall.

The windows of his office were wide and clean, and through them he could see the whole office. Outside things seemed to be much the same as they were within. Colleagues froze at the water cooler, hands over spigots and eyebrows raised in accentuation to some story, now untold. Others sat at desks, fingers poised on keys. Customers waited in line -perpetually- or leaned on teller windows. A man had a hand over his mouth to block a cough or sneeze that did not come.

Adam caught his breath. He’d seen movies. 

Slowly, an idea was starting to form.

But at first, he was cautious.

“Um, that’s good now. Time can start again,” he told he empty air uncertainly. At first it seemed like nothing happened, then there was a distinct feeling – one Adam couldn’t describe, but if you’d pressed him, he might have likened to a sudden loss of cabin pressure. 

Then there was chaos. The sound came back on, as did the movement. 

His client resumed his tirade mid-word, but was quickly distracted by the upending of the table and the stack of papers falling to the ground. The big man jumped, and, realizing that Adam was no longer before him, wheeled around.

“How in the bloody devil did you get back there? I’ve seen some tomfoolery in my time, but this place, I tell you –”

Adam tried it again. Just asked in his head. 

And again, the silence fell with the feeling of a “pop”.

He didn’t really think much after that. 

His feet carried him onward, out through his office door, the great double doors of the bank, and out onto the street. If he’d questioned himself, there would have been no doubt in his mind where they would take him, but for the moment, Adam thought of nothing. Instead, he walked he let the silence truly wash over him.

His destination was only a few blocks away, down narrow boulevards and wide-open lanes lined with oak and ash. It rose out of the ground in shades of drab gray, no different from any of the ones surrounding. The entrance was made of glass and it opened into a lobby, in which an employee paused, middle finger extended up his nose, in what had probably been a quick and discrete gesture.

Adam laughed and took out his phone for a picture, but it didn’t work. 

‘Oh well’, he thought, ‘there was no one to send it to anyway’.

He walked up a few levels of narrow, carpeted stairs before reaching another door, this one of dark wood. The hall smelled like cigarettes. The door was locked, but he had a key.

For a long moment, he stood in the doorway.

He let the darkness of the room envelop him before he flicked on the light.

That first day he sat on a long tartan couch, to the far right hand side –in an imprint that fit him perfectly– and tried to put on a movie. He found that it would not play. 

A few hours later, Adam made it back to work. He had made sure to reset the office before he restarted time, allowing him to get something of the upper hand in the situation with his client by feigning polite bewilderment at his sudden outburst.

“Are you feeling quite alright, Mr. Watson? There’s nobody behind you. And me? Well obviously I’ve been here the whole time.”

Confusion had even made him somewhat more pliant. 

But for many days after, in the early afternoon, Adam found himself walking the same way.

After the first one, he’d set to work. There were dishes in the sink and he washed them. A few opened packages of lunchmeat lined the shelves in the fridge, and he used them to make himself sandwiches for a few days. Everything else, he threw in the garbage and then walked the garbage down to the dumpster. 

The movement made him calm.

After a week, he finally made it to the bedroom. It took him another three days to begin the cleanup. But when he was done everything was fresh and organized. The thought of taking something had entered his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – not yet. Only the bed remained unmade, the sheets twisted, a few hairs on the pillow.

Overall, when he was done, it looked like a very nice place in which someone might live.

But still he came.

He sat, sometimes he talked, but mostly he just, was.

Then he would go back to work and pretend that all was fine.

His girlfriend said he was distant, his boss distracted (though of course, they both claimed to “understand”). People wanted to talk – or more accurately wanted him to talk. To get him to “express” or “feel” whatever it was he was supposed to. The only person that probably would have understood that all he wanted was some goddamn quiet couldn’t take his calls.

Then the day came that he knew would, eventually.

But still it took his breath away.

His key clicked in the lock and it rang hollow. The door swung open to an empty room. 

He hadn’t ever taken anything. 

And yet, even still, he came, mostly in the afternoons, when the heat of the day was getting to him, but also sometimes in the early hours of the morning, after another fight with Lilly. She would kill him if she’d known he’d left the house, but sometimes he just needed the time to clear his head. 

It was a hollow place, devoid of furniture. Often he would sit in the middle of the room. Sometimes he spoke. Sometimes he wrote. Mostly he just stared out the window at the frozen city and watched as nothing moved, like looking at a painting. 

His boss told him maybe he should take some time off. He spent more time sleeping on the couch. 

People suggested therapy and he told them he was fine.

A few weeks later, however, and he returned to find the remnants of life.

Boxes were stacked on the floor where there had once been a couch. Plates, half-un-bubble-wrapped, lined the counters. A mattress sat at the center of a floor where there had once been a bed with a dark frame.

For a moment, Adam hated them deeply.

Because that was a couch that someone important had once sat on. A kitchen in which someone important had once lived. A bed in which someone important had once died. Someone important that would soon be forgotten. 

For days, Adam did not restart time. 

For awhile, he left the apartment and simply walked. He didn’t know for how long. Did it matter? Long enough for the scenery to change and for him to panic that he was wholly and completely lost, but he was able to find a bookshop in a nearby town that had a local map handy. He left some money on the counter - too guilty to steal. He could have restarted time and used his GPS, of course, but he’d walked out in the middle of an argument with Lilly, and, though he could easily restart things after he’d completed his task -precluding her from every knowing that he was traipsing around in the middle of nowhere miles away- he was pretty sure she would leave him if he walked out while she was talking again.

When he finally returned to the apartment he had walked the place again before leaving. Catching sight of himself in the bathroom mirror, he started. His stubble had grown into a full beard. Apparently time did not stop for him. Interesting.

He would have to shave his face before he went home, and, absentmindedly, he opened the medicine cabinet. 

The shock at finding it –garishly– filled with feminine lotions and perfumes took the bottom out of his stomach. The same way it fell out every time he’d dialed the first part of a number and then deleted it.

He did not scream, but he wanted to. He did not cry, but he wanted to.

Later on, he would go to the store and get the necessities to return himself to right. He would go home and make up with his girlfriend, for now at least. He would fix things with his boss.

But for now, he walked floors he’d walked a thousand times before. He thought long and hard. He spoke aloud. He did finally yell.

He yelled at the silence for being silence. He yelled at the nothing for leaving him. He yelled at the empty room for being empty. He yelled at time for stopping but not moving backward. He yelled, long and hard, at the past. He almost, partially, forgave it.

Then he walked home through the warm and silent streets.