Frozen Time

Writing now seemed annoyingly impossible. He clutched his pen for hours on end into the night, yet no words had come. The blank paged mocked him with the emptiness that seemed to only exemplify his failure. In a fit of rage, he crumbled the barren page and tossed it over his shoulder, and one after another a small pile amassed in the corner.

Carter Reynolds often found himself in this state. Since a child it had been his dream to be an acclaimed writer; one who would be celebrated and the cause of effective change in thousands (maybe even tens of thousands) of people’s lives. Insecurity, unfortunately, did plague him. And though he ended up being a writer for an eminent magazine, he still found himself unworthy of the title. He had a half of page in the entertainment section, and every month he would turn in stories of fiction that aimed to gratify the imaginations of both young and old alike. Despite evidence of his slight success (he did manage to keep his job for 5 years now and even had the occasional ‘fan letter’ come into the office) he still felt he wasn’t where he really wanted to be in life.

If one were to ask his wisecracking best friend and coworker, John, he’d say that once Carter progressed from writing all his stories on paper like a caveman, he’d then see an uptick in creative ideas. One could say Carter was an oxymoron, being a writer without a computer. He revolted against the idea given he had a computer at work, and in a clutch after hours, he could walk three blocks to the community college and use the school’s library computers. If anyone would get him it would be his grandfather. He was an old-fashioned man whom he called “pops”, and he always held a bright outlook on life that, more often than not, was annoyingly contagious. His grandfather was the only one who constantly reminded him that it would only be a matter of time before he made it big with his writing.

The nervousness settled in, along with the excitability and anxiety that defeated him more frequently than he had liked. He was on a deadline at work, and if he didn’t meet it, the end of his career with Fresh Now Magazine would not just be a fear, but a harsh reality. He sat at his desk, his eyes fixated on the grains of paper before him. The ticking from the clock rang unusually loud in his ears, and that anxious feeling began to overwhelm him with each tick. All the crumbling and the tossing, the tossing, and the crumbling. He shut his eyes tightly and wished that it would stop. Abruptly the exasperating sound ended. He opened one eye in curiosity, and then both as he looked over at the old brown pendulum clock on the wall that hung just above the fireplace. It had belonged to his grandfather. Before he passed it was gifted to Carter and a point was made to “take great care” of it. Now it had stopped working. Carter looked down at his wristwatch and furrowed his brow. It had stopped too! “What the hell?” He mumbled under his breath. Confusion soon turned to annoyance; it would be against him to make this deadline. Now he couldn’t even keep track of the time. How much longer did he even have? An hour? Two hours? “Shit.” He cursed, and with a thwarted sigh he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.

Grabbing his phone, he looked at the time. 11:15 PM. He had 45 minutes to write 1000-3000 words and get it to his editor, and he had no idea of what he wanted to write about. He sat back down at his desk, took his pen, and told himself to just write something.

‘All the time in the world would still not be enough…’

‘It was only a matter of time…’

A few minutes passed and even with all the word scratch outs, he managed to get a full paragraph down. He wondered how much time he had left now, not confident that it was enough to finish. Checking his phone again, he scrunched his nose seeing it still read 11:15 PM. Carter jumped up and hurriedly headed into his bedroom to check the digital clock by his bed.

11:15 PM

Either he was going crazy, or time had just stopped altogether.

“Trudy!” He suddenly shouted. Trudy was his elderly neighbor who lived down the hall. During the time he lived in his apartment, she had become one of his favorite people in the building. Often, he would help her with her groceries, fix things, and had even joined her for dinner a few times. Maybe she could counter his crazy notion that time itself was at a halt, and the justifiable but bizarre reason behind all of this was that every clock in his apartment had just stopped. He headed out and down the hall towards Trudy’s door. He knocked and waited, but there was no answer. He knocked again; still nothing. He thought it was strange that she wouldn’t be home this late. As he lifted to knock again, he caught something in the corner of his eye that made him turn. “Mr. Banks?” Carter called out. It was another neighbor, but it seemed like he was completely frozen. Carter went up to the man to inspect closer. His eyes were wide, and he wasn’t blinking. There was no movement at all, not even with breath. There was that pesky anxiety again, rushing back with a forcible vengeance. Carter began to breathe in and out heavily, on the brink of a panic attack. What exactly was going on here?

Carter rushed back to his apartment and grabbed his phone. He quickly dialed his friend John, and the line began to ring. There was a small relief knowing the phone worked in calling out, and it was just the time on strike. The phone rang and rang, but no answer. He hung up and stared off into nothing for what seemed like forever. It then occurred to him how quiet it was. Usually just outside his window the city was loud; cars honking and people yelling. Carter went to the window and noticed that all those things were there, the cars, the people, but they, like Mr. Banks were motionless.

He ran downstairs and out onto the street. On the left there was a father playfully throwing his daughter up and she was frozen mid-air. On his right, a young woman walking her dog whose leg was up and ready to aim at the patch of grass in front of the building. Cars stood still, people stood still; even the cold breath that emanated from their mouths were stagnant.

It was all so surreal. A delusion perhaps? A hallucination?

After a few minutes of utter bewilderment, Carter went inside and sat back down at his desk, still reeling from what was going on. He accepted defeat and the fact that this had to be a dream. A very realistic and odd dream. Time had stood still, and it all seemed to have started with his grandfather’s clock stopping. It made him think of how much he missed his grandfather and wondered why this strange event couldn’t have happened sooner. If time had stood still the last day he saw his grandfather, he would have taken advantage of those moments and hoped that time was stuck forever. He definitely would have been more grateful. He began to imagine what it would have been like; the emotions, the tears, and all the things they would have done together. Before Carter knew it, his imagination had spilled out and the words flowed through his pen and right onto the paper fearlessly. He had pages and pages filled, and as he wrote the last sentence, he not longer felt panicky but a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Gathering his papers and grabbing his coat, he headed out down the street towards the school library. He made his way through the crowds of frozen people with more excitement than anything else. It was also extremely convenient given that after all that work, he was now hungry, and passed by a young woman who had become frozen just as she was about to take her first bite out of a deliciously juicy hamburger. Carter took it for himself and bit into it as he continued on his way.

Once he reached the library, he found a cubicle, typed up his story and emailed it to his editor. As soon as he pressed send everyone in the library were suddenly back in motion. He could hear people whispering, walking, and returning books to the shelves. He looked around a bit taken aback. Had he woken up from his dream? And if he had, how did he get here to the library? Did he sleepwalk here? Carter glanced at the time on the computer screen and saw that 11:59 PM quickly changed to 12:00 AM. He had met his deadline.

The next day his editor raved about the piece he submitted, saying it was a fantastic original story that included fantasy, time travel, loss, and true heart. The next week it was published, and the week after that a prominent agent offered Carter a book deal. Things had finally fallen into place. Carter stood in his apartment in front of the fireplace, watching as the pendulum clock ticked away, and smiled. “Thanks pops.” He whispered.