Frozen, part two

He set up a barricade on the Beltway. He’d frozen time at the tail end of morning rush hour. Lots of traffic, but all moving at a good speed. He built traps and walls through the line of speeding cars. Someday, when he unfroze time, there’d be mass carnage. One second everyone is driving along at 60 and, the next, bang! A wall of bricks and debris as high as their car is in front of them. There won’t even be time to brake. It was mean. He knew it was mean. Once, when he was drunk, he felt very guilty and took one of the barricades down. But, when drunk again a few nights later, he went out and did even worse things. He took one guy off of his motorcycle and gently set him, frozen in the same position, on the road. What would happen when he was unfrozen? Would the friction simply vaporize him?

He did, though, go through all the cars that would, potentially, be involved in a crash thanks to his barricades. He took out babies and children and pets and placed them well out of harm’s way in the trees beside the road. Now, so many years later, the Beltway was a surreal sight. Clumsy piles of junk – his barricades – were piled in front of random cars. Along the sidelines, as if they were an attentive audience waiting for a show, sat row upon row of innocent souls. All of Washington’s children and pets, and a few particularly beautiful women, sitting ever watchful and ready to witness the most dramatic automotive accident in history.

He’d done other things, too. Some he wasn’t proud of. Sex had always been an elusive thing for him. Something he felt disconnected from. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t filled with lust and desire. Who isn’t? That’s human nature. Over the years he had stripped many women. He’d touched them, and even been with a few. It shamed him. He’d often run when he was done, even through there was no one to shout out or give chase. How many women, after 25 years, would wake up to find his semen on their bellies? Or be standing in the park, or on the train, or in some public place, his cum spilling down their legs?

He liked the ones on the train. He was consumed by guilt and drank for days afterwards, but he’d always go back and find one on a train car. He’d never return to the same car. Unable to stand the sight of what he’d done. But there were hundreds of train cars and thousands of commuters. He’d walk through tunnels and clamber through the doors on either end of the train. When he unfroze them, they’d be hurtling through the tunnels and, suddenly, all the doors would be open, and there’d be naked girls covered in cum in almost every car.

Terrible, isn’t it? But it made him giggle despite the guilt. Just think about it. There you are, reading the paper, a fucking foxy bombshell standing right there near you then, literally in the blink of an eye, she’s absolutely nude and creampied. Awesome.

Five years ago he killed a man. Ganon Rich. A childhood bully. His twin brother, Merrick, couldn’t be found. But Ganon was a realtor. He saw the sign in Rockville, he tracked him down at his office. Frozen at his desk, shuffling papers. Allison walked right up to him and slowly drove a steak knife into his belly, ripping up and across like the Japanese in the Samurai movies. Disemboweling the asshole.

Of course, he hadn’t actually killed him. Even with his guts and intestines lying around his feet, Ganon was still alive. Technically. Whilst frozen. But what a sight whenever Allison choose to unfreeze the world.

Ganon wasn’t the last, either.

“Okay, okay,” Allison said to the reproachful eyes of the president, “He wasn’t the first, either.”

The murders began in the first year. Now a quarter century ago. He’d killed the Triplets. Pulling up to their ugly house on West Bexhill Drive in Kensington, MD. He threw a garbage can through the window, climbed in, and found the father and mother in the living room. The kids – also childhood bullies – were, of course, grown and gone. Allison had been in grade school when they picked on him and, unlike Ganon Rich, they were difficult to find and in other parts of the country (he did, eventually, find them and kill them). The parents were just as cruel, though. Stuck up yuppies. He covered the mother in gasoline and placed the father’s lit cigarette in her mouth. Nothing would combust whilst frozen, but she’d better be careful when he released the world. Maybe she’d survive, eh? The choice was hers.

The husband was a different story. It took quite a bit, but he went and got a woodchipper and dragged it back to the house, thanks to pedal power and the little cart he’d hooked onto the back of a bike. Plus, with all the time in the world, he could spend weeks setting it up. Slowly get the woodchipper in place, plug it in, turn it on, then drag Mr. Triplet and put him down against the blades. Nothing happening while frozen, of course, but, man, when he unfroze the world… There’s the gas covered Mrs. Triplet with the smoldering Camel Light in her mouth and her husband there in front of her sitting in a woodchipper. The vicious machine would scream to life and chop him to pieces. The cig would drop out of her stunned, cow mouth and she’d burst into flame. All in the blink of an eye.

Awesome.

The President didn’t approve. He never did. He was Allison’s conscience and Allison knew it. So, sometimes, they fought.

It was bad when they fought. Allison would pull out the racist card, too, because he knew it pissed off the President. You darkie motherfucker. A black man in the White House? No way!

The President, sometimes, would sulk. He’d go quiet for days. Or longer. That’s when Allison would travel. He’d get on his bike and just pedal out of town.

He wasn’t delusional. He didn’t go and sulk until the President called him. He knew the President would never call. Could never call. He’d just needed to travel, that was all. Follow the instinct – Go West, Young Man! – and get civilized, as his dad used to say. Actually, his dad called heavy drinking “getting civilized.” His dad would come home from work, mix up a gin and tonic before he even put his briefcase down, and then announce to the house that “it was time to get civilized.” He’d drink in front of Discovery or the History Channel and, overall, wasn’t a bad drunk. Mom lushed out, as well, but hers was a steady drunk carried carefully through the day. Neither of them ever harmed Allison. No snide comments or rages. Just simple, zen-like drinking. Escapism.

It was all about escapism. Alcoholism was probably a better solution. Allison knew that. The President agreed. Being a functional alcoholic was far, far better than freezing time. Stopping the world. Escaping like this was sadness. It was a pit of despair and loss and fear. Allison knew that.

But he had, after all these years, never thought about unfreezing the world. Not yet. He set everything up for a real showstopper when he did unfreeze the world but, so far, he was just fine being the king of kings. He didn’t mind at all sharing a room with the President and moving through the lives of strangers and his own life uninterrupted, and with ultimate power over everyone. Over life, and death, itself. He could be the man who brings missiles bearing down on the world. He could set a nuclear strike in motion and have everything go to hell. He could destroy six billion people at his whim.

The world was at his mercy. He’d dance through the streets and point into the faces of the wealthy people, the happy people. You, and you, and you, all exist because I allow it. Because I – Allison Tucker – the man with a girl’s name – allow it.

Allison would get angry sometimes. There was no clear reason why. It wasn’t like something would set him off and he’d go ballistic. He’d just be riding along and he’d see someone or, occasionally, see a crime frozen in progress, and he’d snap. His disgust at humanity would plow through him, and it would be as if lava were bubbling to the surface through some great caldera in his mind. He’d spent all his years hunting for criminals. And he’d murdered them. They’d be in the middle of their crime but, when the world unfroze, they’d fall to the ground dead. Mutilated.

All these things for when he unfroze the world. But it had been so long, and he hadn’t yet had the desire. And he wondered if he ever would.

After all, he had a companion. A real one. One that moved and lived and seemed untouched by his power. The Shadow.

The goddamned Shadow.

He first saw it 25 years ago, when all this started.