Frozen, part four

He figured he was drunk. Drunk to the point of dementia. His liver had blown up and poison was slowly seeping through his body. He pissed, then curled up on the thick carpet in the bathroom and slept. He slept for what must have been hours but, when he woke, it was still night. He checked his watch. Two in the morning. Hadn’t it been two when he got up to take a piss? He crawled to the bedroom and heaved himself onto the bed, rolling across the comforter and pulling it around him like a burrito. Then he passed out again.

And, again, awoke to the deep of night. 2am. And he was sobering, shifting gears into hangover. He sat and stared at his watch. The unchanging hands. He counted to sixty, and it didn’t change. He counted again. And again. Always 2am.

He went to the sink and turned on the faucet, but there was no water, so he poured out the last of the Ginger Ale, which looked like it had gone flat until he held it in his hands, and knocked back a handful of Advil. Then he sat in the darkness and stared at his watch.

It took an hour before he realized that dreams do come true in America, and he was in trouble.

“How’d I do it?” he asked the empty room.

Whether this was real or dementia, he had to figure a way out of it. He filled another glass with Maker’s and Ginger Ale. Recreate everything. Figure out how to start things up again. Lemon! He squeezed lemon juice into the drink and went to the couch. He sat and drank. A long night of drinking, a handful of Advil, and then hair of the dog. Maybe his liver really had blown up.

He finished the drink and rose, walking towards the bathroom.

What happened then? He remembered waking up on the bathroom floor and crawling to bed. Did he puke? Did that do it? The man whose puke stopped time? He went to the toilet and stared in the bowl, he pissed again, he looked at his watch.

The glass dropped! That’s it. He grinned, turned so he was standing over the bare tiles of the bathroom floor, then let the glass go. It fell, shattered, the sound strangely hollow and short-lived. Like someone quickly turning on a tape recorder then turning it off again and asking you to identify the sound. The glass shards stopped, some still suspended in the air. He dropped the glass that held his toothbrush with the same result.

He glared at his watch. Still 2am. Still forever 2am.

“Motherfucker.” He hissed.

And time woke up. His watch started counting the seconds again, the sounds of the night returned, the sink in the kitchenette started spewing water. He lurched back and fell into the bathtub gracelessly, knocking his head and tumbling back into darkness for some time.

But it wasn’t a dream. When he woke, he tried again. Motherfucker – freeze. Motherfucker – unfreeze.

Perfect.

He was ready to go home. After one final night of debauchery with his old English prof. They went out to his favorite bar and he froze time and got them all free drinks. He froze time everytime he had to take a piss. He froze time when he got a little too tipsy and the room started to spin. For two days, he slept off the booze and the pot, rested up, then he came back and picked up the evening right where he left off.

Along with his old prof was a student. A mousy brunette, about 20 and wide-eyed in that trailer trash sort of way. She was impressed by his alcohol tolerance. He took her home and fucked her that night. For her, the seduction took only a few hours. For him, he labored for three weeks to get himself just right. Including, for a few hours, fondling her and peeking under her clothes whilst she was frozen.

He left her without a word. No call. Nothing. He left her sleeping in the apartment and decided he’d freeze time for the entire trip home – four hours over the mountains and through the country. But his car wouldn’t start until he unfroze it, and wouldn’t keep going if he froze time again. He had limited control over simple things – food, drink, clothing. But he couldn’t get machines to work. He couldn’t get cash registers to open, for instance (and he tried many times on the way home). So the devil is in the details. He debated turning around and amending his wish, but figured it wasn’t worth tempting fate. After all, why would he ever want to freeze time for the long term? This was a skill that could make his normal life work out for the better. Never pay for groceries again, just walk into the bank and take what he needed, loot the video store and the book store. He had a long list of ideas.

As he approached DC, he became embroiled in traffic on 270, coming up slow on the sign that indicated the split on the Beltway. Virginia or Baltimore, make your decision…at 15 miles per hour.

He veered towards Baltimore, and his little apartment just a few stops down in Kensington. One of those affluent DC suburbs that make you want to stick a silver spoon down your throat.

He lived in the former slums of Old Town Kensington, behind Antique Alley and just a few skips from the MARC station, where his sad commute began and ended every single weekday.

When Monday came around, and what he was sure would be a largely unnoticed return to his meaningless job, he decided to bike into the city. He hadn’t ridden a bike in almost 15 years, but it is true. You never forget. But the body ages, and an eight mile ride took him about four hours of huffing and puffing. He froze time before he left, so there was no worry about being late. He had all the time in the world. He arrived at work, sweaty and exhausted, and decided he had to make a minor adjustment to his life. He had to get in shape.

He went home – another few hours – and showered, then he used some of his slowly accumulating fortune to hire a cab for the rush hour commute into the city. He was late, by a few minutes, but nobody seemed to care. As he expected. Five weeks out of the office and his co-workers acted as if he had only been gone for a day.

He let the day drag on. No point freezing a work day. No point adding any extra seconds to the monotonous hell.

When evening came, cold as the calendar switched over to December, he didn’t freeze time either. Why prolong these darker, longer nights?

Weeks went by, with only two instances of freezing. Once to liberate roughly $390,000 from a bank vault, and again to stock up on some winter reading. Roughly three days ferrying books back and forth from the Borders in White Flint in a backpack and, towards the end, on a little cart he found at the bike shop in Wheaton that latched onto the frame of his ten speed. The cart was made for a child, with a yellow plastic dome covering the seat where a baby would set. He modified it and opened it up to give him plenty of storage space. It wasn’t fun biking with that monstrosity behind him, but he got used to it.

For the most part, he spent the winter getting into shape. He biked for hours when he got home, and every weekend, and slowly built up his endurance. He also celebrated his newfound confidence. He could freeze anybody anytime he wanted. Where he had been shy and awkward, he now became dismissive and arrogant. The only free man amidst the prisoners of time.

With spring, and warmer days, he began to take more advantage of his new ability. In April, he froze those early warm evenings and lived them for weeks. He explored the museums on frozen Saturdays, pretending he was lord and master of the Smithsonian. He began to mess with people then, too. He pushed over a cop. He put people’s cars in park as they were frozen in mid-city maneuvers. He peeked up skirts and checked out tits. One woman was so stunning he just had to undress her, but he was careful to put her clothes back on.

He went into embassies and shuffled through classified files, and crept into the FBI building, and the CIA down in Langley. He went through Pentagon offices and looked for all the secrets. Like maybe there really was some sort of National Treasure scenario out there. He took a day off and, while Congress was in session, he went through the ranks of seats and took all of their wallets. 237 Congressmen lost their wallets in one day.

He stole upwards of thirty million dollars throughout April and early May. He drank himself into a screaming, giggling mess in the Mormon Temple and pissed, then shit into the baptismal fount. He fondled the President’s wife and, fueled by a stolen bottle of 50 year old Laphroig, he greased up his penis and slid it slowly into her ass. Thank the scotch, and he would regret it for the rest of his life, but he really got into it, forcing himself into her ass and squealing drunkenly.

And that was when he first saw the Shadow.