Chapter 1 001

The year was 2001. Not a space odyssey by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a pretty colorful point in my life. It was later in the year – winter time. I'd always liked the cold air. It was fresh, invigorating. It felt like winds of change; as though bigger, better things were only a gust away.

I was just another 18-year-old in the twelfth grade. Unsurprisingly, that also meant I had teenage hormones that raged constantly and I was always caving into them. Aside from any pictures or videos I could've ever found on the internet, there were scores of pretty girls I found quite appealing at school. The combination of the two caused me to fabricate an endless array of fantasies in my head.

I couldn't help but let my mind wander during school, day in and day out. There was never a shortage of nubile girls my age sitting mere feet away from me with their lovely, warm bodies curved and filled out in the right places; my nose catching just a whiff of their different perfumes and admiring the attention to detail they spent grooming themselves...

To put it simply, I was pretty damn horny a lot. I fantasized relentlessly about the opposite sex. The only problem was they weren't interested like I was. I had the unfortunate designation of being a wild child throughout my childhood and into my teens, and I was indeed wild. I was also the complete opposite of the stereotypical female fantasy of a tall, dark stranger. I wasn't an honors student and I wasn't the captain of the football team – I was just a regular, short-ish blond guy. And so, I fell back on my imagination and did such silly things in my spare time as daydreaming and writing stories about them, which was complete and utter silliness. I knew there was simply no possibility of ever getting lucky with any of the many objects of my desire.

But then, one early Monday morning I woke up. It wasn't an amazing achievement; I'd done it many times before. However, that morning I noticed that I suddenly had a very odd superpower that just came out of nowhere. It was just a thing that happened. It wasn't something that could be explained with some sort of long, complex, meaningful plot or a fantastic backstory – it just happened. That's all there was to it.

I didn't know I even possessed it until that very morning when I was walking down the city sidewalk towards the school bus with my backpack slung over my shoulders. It was only a little chilly out so I had opted not to wear a sweater. I lived in a city right by the beach in a great apartment building, so the air always carried the smell of the ocean breeze no matter the time of day. The sun hadn't even come up yet, which always made me wonder why I had to get up before the sun did just to get to school. I was convinced it had to be some sort of torture.

But as I pondered upon such an important question as beauty rest, a very inattentive guy on a bicycle came out of nowhere and barreled straight towards me. I gasped and panicked, throwing my hands up to shield myself and brace for the impact when suddenly everything went very quiet.

I slowly opened my eyes, hoping I wasn't in the hospital. To my surprise, I was completely unscathed. The bicyclist, however, seemed to be completely frozen in place; as though time had stopped. I looked around with wide eyes – the world around me was completely motionless. The tree leaves stopped rustling, cars on the early morning street were at a halt, and that damn flickering street light finally stopped its flicker. Everything was just as still as the bicyclist was. However, I was not.

I calmly stepped out of the way of the oncoming cyclist and began to walk around. My jaw hung slightly agape in fascination as I curiously looked in all directions. I spotted a few people in the distance that were also stuck in mid-travel and the otherwise swaying tree limbs were stuck in a bent position. But the most striking thing to me was how quiet it was – utter silence. The only sounds I heard were the ones I was making. I couldn't help but utter my first words in sheer confusion. "Okay... what?"

I curiously touched the frozen bicyclist's arm. He was as solid as concrete. It was stunning and yet for some reason, it made perfect sense to me. "Did I do this?" I wondered aloud. "...How do I even turn it off?"

I slowly turned my gaze away from the cyclist, back in the direction I was headed and I began walking off toward my destination. I pretended as though everything was completely normal, my mind wanting to will time to resume. And so, just then, it did.

The sudden resumption of all sounds caused me to jump in surprise. I looked back at the cyclist, who just kept ongoing. He had sped towards me because he hadn't even noticed me. I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief.

While I continued my morning trek, I obsessed over how exactly I had just done that. I combed over all manner of wild theories in my mind from radioactive superpowers to me being an alien to being some kind of government experiment. I then imagined time being frozen again and suddenly, it was.

My eyes widened in amazement. When I imagined time resuming again, it did. I continued to test it several times, turning time on and off like a light switch. It brought an amused grin to my face as everything moved in slow motion like I was hitting 'pause' on a video game over and over again. I'd always been a pretty quick learner, even if I did hardly pay attention during my classes.

I reached my bus stop, where mostly everyone stood around like zombies, as was the norm. I never really cared about carrying on a conversation so early in the morning and I was paid in kind by the other kids. But still, I couldn't help feeling on top of the world right then, standing there and waiting for the bus with a big grin on my face. I knew this incredible new power was going to be awesome.

On the bus to school, as the sun started to peer over the horizon, I continued to use my new power for my entertainment. I found myself excelling quickly as I got used to it. I soon had it down to simply doing it with a blink of my eyes. However, that would have forced me to never blink if I wanted things to always stay the same, so it was only when I thought about it while blinking did it happen.

I amused myself on the bus ride, playing games with my power. I stopped time just to read people's license plates as people drove by, or to see what people were doing in their cars. It was endless fun to watch people sing, eat, yell at their kids in the back, or talk on these newfangled things called cell phones that more and more people were starting to own.

I then froze time just to look up at birds overhead but, when I did, something strange happened. I had somehow made it so that the birds were the only things that froze. It kind of sent me into a panic as I quickly resumed time for them before anyone happened to notice.