A short story
The Day The World Stopped Still
Out of time and space
The day began just like any other. I woke up to discover that my wife had already left for work. A hot coffee and slice of hot buttered toast was ready and waiting for me on the breakfast table. As I sat down to begin to eat I felt a sudden itch on my lower right leg. I reached down to investigate and could see where I had been bitten by some sort of insect. There was a reddish rash and a small swelling with what looked like two bite marks in the centre. I sat back up and thought no more of it for now.
After breakfast I went outside for a smoke of my first ciggy of the day. As I sat on my porch stool I suddenly began to notice something very strange. There was a distinct lack of any of the usual noises, the soundtrack of natural life. There was no birdsong, no swishing of leaves in the breeze. In fact, there wasn't any breeze at all. And yet, the tree branches looked like they were frozen mid sway.
I looked across the farm field next to our little home to the main road, about 500 metres away. I could see a couple of cars and a motor bike stopped still. There wasn't any of the usual noise of traffic. Then for some reason I tilted my head back a little skywards only to see a large aircraft stock still just below the clouds which also showed no signs of any movement. At this point I became to the alarming conclusion that the world had stopped still. Everything was frozen in time and space. I got up and went back inside.
The first thing I did was text my wife with the message "Are you ok?" After five minutes I got a reply "Yes darling, I'm fine. And you? What's up?" However, as I didn't want to alarm her I simply said all was good and I would see her later. I sat a minute or two trying to figure out what was going on. Either I had lost my senses or something very disturbing was afoot. I reached down and rubbed my insect bite a little then went back outside. Something had changed.
Everything was still frozen, but nothing was where it was before. The tree branches had returned to their more vertical position. The cars and the bike seemed to have moved along the rod a little from where I had seen them before. And as I looked up at the aeroplane I could see that although it was still frozen it was now banked over to the right and the cloud formation had moved on a little too.
I went back inside and went and sat on the edge of our bed. I could see a fly suspended halfway across the room. I could have easily swatted it had I the mind, but I am a firm believer in the concept of live and let live. I stood up and went to have a closer look at the fly. Suddenly I saw a droplet of blood suspended just below the fly and it occurred to that this was the insect that had bitten me on my right leg. What I was seeing was a droplet of my very own blood suspended in mid-air.
I sat back down and and stared at the floor deep in thought. For some reason I recalled reading somewhere that the reason you can hardly ever kill a fly when you try to swat it is because the fly can see your swat loaded hand moving in slow motion towards it long before it ever arrives. In this way the fly can easily escape the thwack of the swat long before it ever reaches its target.
Over the course of the next half an hour I did a few things to try to figure out what exactly was going on. First I turned on the tv and was amazed to discover that everything being transmitted appeared to be normal. I then went back outside and got on my bike. I cycled to the end of the road to see everything was still frozen, but things had moved a little from their previous positions.
I cycled on down to the local shopping mall and it was the same story, on the road, in the carpark, inside the supermarket. Nothing was moving. I saw shoppers frozen mid stride, check out girls holding products in mid air as they stared vacantly at the customer being served. The whole experience was so unnerving I ran out and jumped back onto my bike to race back home. Just as I set off I couldn't help but notice a strange looking man in a black suit across the carpark who seemed to be watching me. As I pedalled as fast as I could I realised that although everything appeared to still be frozen in time and space, the two cars, the motorbike, the aeroplane and clouds, the branches of the trees, all had moved a little from their previous positions. What's more, when I got back inside the apartment I discovered that the fly had somehow reached the window and the droplet of my blood had reached the carpet and stained the wool fibres a little.
I sat back on the edge of our bed and slowly came to the realisation that the world had not stopped at all. It was simply that my perception of the world had slowed down almost to a standstill, perhaps as a result of the insect bite. Whatever the fly had injected into my bloodstream had effected a molecular change which put me totally out of synch with the rest of the world. Upon realising this I became quite alarmed that I might be trapped in this state forever. Or my lovely wife might come home and find me frozen in my new time zone and presume that I had died and would bury me. That was one scary thought I can tell you.
Fortunately I was still able to think my way through a problem at my usual speed and jumped up off the bed put a plan into action. First I caught the fly and placed it in a transparent cubed container. Then I got a pair of scissors and cut the blood stained carpet fibres and put them in another container. When the evidence was finally secure I sat at the kitchen table and wrote my wife a note.
"Darling, I have been bitten by the venomous fly in the plastic container, next to another container with my infected blood in it. If I am not awake when you get home please don't be alarmed. Simply get me to the hospital department of allergies and tropical diseases as soon as possible and hope that they have an antidote. I am not dead darling, I am simply trapped in a different time dimension. Love you. Kisses."
I then went back to our bed and lay back in a horizontal position and drifted off to sleep. That was the last thing I remember doing in 2021.
It was spring 2022 and I slowly came to in a hospital isolation unit. My wife was sat next to me and I saw a tear start to gently roll down her cheek.
"We thought we'd lost you Liam darling. How do you feel?"
"I feel a little weird, but I'm ok darling." I whispered.
I turned my head to the right to look out of the hospital window and everything was moving at it's normal speed. Cars, aeroplanes, trees and people, all going about their normal business in the usual way. I was elated to have made a full recovery from whatever had infected me.However, one other little detail I noticed was what appeared to the self same man in a black suit I'd seen at the mall. This time he was stood on the far side of the hospital carpark looking across at my bedroom window. I looked away a few seconds to give my wife a reassuring smile and when I looked out of the window again, the man was gone.
The doctors told me that I had been bitten by an insect never seen anywhere before across the entire planet. Apparently the government had gotten involved wanting to explore the possibilities for using the venom for all manner of things, especially as some sort of biological weapon that could give them some advantages, such as early warnings of pre-emptive strikes from their enemies abroad. I hoped that this would mean that being able to fend off or avoiding destructive strikes, such as a nuclear bomb attack, would at long last bring world peace to reign on this highly troubled planet. Just imagine being able to pluck a nuclear bomb from out of the sky as it hung suspended in mid air, just in the nick of time.
As for me, all I wanted now was to rest and try to get my life, whatever was left of it, back to something like normal. Just at that moment a nurse arrived with a hot coffee and a slice of hot buttered toast. That will do for starters, I thought to myself.
