The Frozen World
Silence.
The silence of the piano jolts the man from his zen-like daydream. Sighing, he realizes that his fears and troubles will soon come crashing over him like a throng of angry hornets. Clenching his eyes shut, the man tries to shut out all of his senses. But the voices begin:
-What the hell happened?
-That wasn’t fair!
-I don’t deserve this…
-Why was it them…
-damn, damn, Damn, DAMN!!!
As the voices grew louder and louder, the man screws his eyes as if to shut out all light, all sound, all life from his own sight. The thoughts continue to wash over him, to break over him as waves at the beach disintegrate cliffs into canyons, then…
“STOP!” a single voice yells. Whether it’s his voice or not, the man doesn’t know, but something has happened; all of the voices have indeed stopped. As he sighs with relief, he suddenly notices his computer. It’s frozen again, the mouse pointer on the screen won’t move, no matter how much he shakes the mouse and the file he was downloading has stopped completely. Groaning, the man reaches down to restart his computer and freezes.
Outside of his window, the world has stopped as if someone had pressed pause on the VCR. The smoke coming from the chimney across the street is frozen in mid air like some vertically challenged cloud. The kids from down the street are stuck in the middle of their game of King of the Mountain. The birds hang in the air as if suspended from some ceiling. All of this, the boy takes in and yet cannot believe the very sight before him.
A hobo is hovers in midair as he jumps down from his evening dumpster diving, a newspaper clutched in his hand, a joyous grin exposing his remaining jutting teeth.
Charlie, from the Chinese food shop, is stuck in the air on his bicycle. The handle bars which were previously spinning are now frozen. If he was to come down, he is going to crash horribly. But the man knew that his crash wasn’t from this landing…
“I must be dreaming,” the man says. As he pinches himself, he feels no pain. A tell-tale sign that this is a dream, and yet-
Suddenly movement in his peripheral vision snaps the man to attention. A single woman is walking down the street. Something about the woman makes his spine tremble. He wants the woman to go away. As he watches the woman moving through the timeless world towards him, he catches a glimpse of her face.
At the sight of her face, he yells and falls backwards. As he falls, the entire world around him fades to black.
Slowly opening his eyes, the man wipes the sweat and tears away absentmindedly. Why was he on the floor? What happened? Suddenly the memory of what happened to him begins to return slowly. Looking out of the window, he sees that time has returned to normal; that there is no woman in black walking towards him. He sighs heavily and returns his gaze to his computer screen flashing his completed download. What in the hell happened to him? Who or what was that voice? Who was that man? Why did time…? Realizing that questions were what started this whole mess, the man quickly pushes them from his mind.
“I need to walk,” he murmurs to himself, “Some time to clear my head. Something crazy has happened and I need to fix it. This was just a crazy dream.”
Speaking to no one in particular, the man realized that speaking it out gave him all the encouragement he needed to get his jacket, grab his keys, and head out the door into a world that only 30 minutes ago, he unknowingly stopped completely.
1 comment:
The final chapter (I wish)
I looked at the lifeless body at my feet of a young boy. I had seen him before, asking money or food or even a place to stay from me. I never gave him any of that. But now, what I wanted to give him I was unable to do. I ain't no medicine woman, I can't bring back the dead or anything, but I just wish I could have given him more stuff while he was alive. I remember when he left the sweet note saying he had broken into my house and stolen food. I normally would care but for some reason this young boy just didn't anger me.
He longs for what I am sick of. I am sick of life. I am sick of living. I never gave this boy anything even though he was much more pleasant than Alexander whom I gave everything to. "Alexander could be lying somewhere dead, too, for all I know," I thought. I called Oscar about the young boy named Fil; for some reason I felt like he would know what to do with a dead body...
I looked around and saw a strange looking man who I think goes by the name of Robert Yuras. It was pretty early, but this guy always was jogging around. I tried to never get too close to the guy considering he smelled like road kill.
I walked back up to the penthouse where Alexander was still laying in bed, beat up from the previous weeks attack on him. He was in such a pitiful state but for some reason I envied him. To not be depended on... to not have to get up each morning do stuff.. or at least act like you are.
Oscar said he was on his way over. I wish he was on his way to take away my body. I feel like I am waiting for something. Whether it is for God to open up the pearly gates or for the devil to kick me into hell... I could care less either way.
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