For as long as she could remember she could pause time. The movies made it seem like a really helpful trick. You could use it as a jokester. Pause time and move people around into funny positions. Make them hit themselves in the face with a cream pie! Or you could use it as the foundation for your superhero powers. Move a bullet so it didn't kill your partner! Tie up the bad guys and have them ready for the police. Great fun! Great use!
It didn't work that way.
At least not for her.
She could pause time. Make it halt. Sit in a moment. The best she could do was use the time to think of something to say. Give her brain a chance to catch up to her mouth. She couldn't move herself, let alone anyone else. The most she could do was shift her eyes around, but she couldn't even turn her head to see what was next to her.
Just shift her eyes around and think.
Which, she had to admit, was handy during tests in school.
She could think of a funny retort to someone who thought they were more clever than anyone else. Even though that was limited. There were still way too many times that she thought up the perfect response later on the drive home.
She had never met anyone else who could do what she could do. She thought she had once. But it turned out when her friend had talked about reliving a moment over and over she meant in memory.
But what she did wasn't really reliving the moment. It was freezing a moment. Preventing another moment from starting. Enjoying what had happened, or trying to control what happens next. But not really reliving anything. Just living it.
She still looked for others like her. She thought that maybe she would recognize a shift of an eye sometime while she had a moment frozen in a crowd. Though she had never felt frozen by someone else. Even if there were others like her they probably were all singular. The same but alone. Freezing their own moments, not aware of others who were freezing theirs as well. That thought actually bothered her a lot. Even though she froze people and moments and knew nothing happened to them, she couldn't shake the feeling of discomfort that someone else could be doing the same to her. It didn't stop her from continuing to do it, but it did bother her if she thought about it.
She had no idea how long she could hold a moment. She thought she had held one for hours before, but since time didn't pass there was no way to tell for sure. She wasn't holding her breath during those stretches so it wasn't however long she could do that. She just wasn't breathing. Her heart didn't beat. Her lungs didn't fill. But her brain still worked. She wasn't sure how a brain with no blood worked but she suspected there were a lot of people out there in the world with brains starved for nutrients, those people that would starve a zombie.
It had happened once while she was sleeping. She woke up frozen in her bed. Only able to move her eyes. Other people suffered from sleep paralysis, which seemed similar when they described it. Except for the fear. They were terrified of it. She was used to it. That and time passed during sleep paralysis. Only they were frozen. Not everything else. As soon as she was aware that she had done it in a dream she just stopped and time move on. Something that someone with sleep paralysis did not have the power to do, which she agreed would be terrifying.
She thought that people who meditated were seeking to be like her. To freeze everything and just have a moment of stillness. A respite in the face of a world that just keeps going all the time. She thought that they would be very jealous of her if they knew she had been born with the skill. No practice needed. No special mat, no expensive retreats, just her and her moments of time.
Memory worked the same no matter if she froze a moment or didn't. She knew she had frozen time one Christmas morning. Held on to that feeling of anticipation right before you started opening gifts. That wonderful moment of fullness. Everyone laughing and happy and looking forward to the day ahead. The moment of wondering what was under the tree. What did you get? Would everyone like what you got them? That feeling of pure joy. She had held that one Christmas for a long moment. Tried to soak it in for longer. But when she thought of that Christmas later the memory did not pause. She did not get those extra moments to relive again and again. It moved as all memories did. A feeling and a thought, images moving quickly. And eventually even the knowledge that she had held that moment became a doubt. She could hold a moment, but she couldn't stretch a memory.
When the last round of chemo failed and there was nothing else that could be done she had wondered how many times she had stretched a moment with him. Their first kiss? Their wedding day? The birth of their son? Had she? She couldn't remember anymore. Her memories moved quickly. All of the years they had had together tumbled together in her mind. She could stretch a moment, but not a memory.
So she would hold this moment. This one, where she knew his heart was failing. Where she knew he was about to breath his last. She would hold his hand in hers and freeze time.
She didn't know how long she could hold a moment, but she was determined to find out.
Writing prompt:
Write a story about a character who can pause the passage of time.
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