<\/p>\n
He set up a barricade on the Beltway. He\u2019d 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\u2019d 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\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s way in the trees beside the road. Now, so many years later, the Beltway was a surreal sight. Clumsy piles of junk \u2013 his barricades \u2013 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\u2019s children and pets, and a few particularly beautiful women, sitting ever watchful and ready to witness the most dramatic automotive accident in history.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d done other things, too. Some he wasn\u2019t proud of. Sex had always been an elusive thing for him. Something he felt disconnected from. But that didn\u2019t mean he wasn\u2019t filled with lust and desire. Who isn\u2019t? That\u2019s human nature. Over the years he had stripped many women. He\u2019d touched them, and even been with a few. It shamed him. He\u2019d 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? <\/p>\n
He liked the ones on the train. He was consumed by guilt and drank for days afterwards, but he\u2019d always go back and find one on a train car. He\u2019d never return to the same car. Unable to stand the sight of what he\u2019d done. But there were hundreds of train cars and thousands of commuters. He\u2019d walk through tunnels and clamber through the doors on either end of the train. When he unfroze them, they\u2019d be hurtling through the tunnels and, suddenly, all the doors would be open, and there\u2019d be naked girls covered in cum in almost every car.<\/p>\n
Terrible, isn\u2019t 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\u2019s absolutely nude and creampied. Awesome.<\/p>\n
Five years ago he killed a man. Ganon Rich. A childhood bully. His twin brother, Merrick, couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Of course, he hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Ganon wasn\u2019t the last, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, okay,\u201d Allison said to the reproachful eyes of the president, \u201cHe wasn\u2019t the first, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
The murders began in the first year. Now a quarter century ago. He\u2019d 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 \u2013 also childhood bullies \u2013 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\u2019s lit cigarette in her mouth. Nothing would combust whilst frozen, but she\u2019d better be careful when he released the world. Maybe she\u2019d survive, eh? The choice was hers.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d 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\u2026 There\u2019s 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\u2019d burst into flame. All in the blink of an eye. <\/p>\n
Awesome.<\/p>\n
The President didn\u2019t approve. He never did. He was Allison\u2019s conscience and Allison knew it. So, sometimes, they fought.<\/p>\n
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! <\/p>\n
The President, sometimes, would sulk. He\u2019d go quiet for days. Or longer. That\u2019s when Allison would travel. He\u2019d get on his bike and just pedal out of town. <\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t delusional. He didn\u2019t go and sulk until the President called him. He knew the President would never call. Could never call. He\u2019d just needed to travel, that was all. Follow the instinct \u2013 Go West, Young Man! \u2013 and get civilized, as his dad used to say. Actually, his dad called heavy drinking \u201cgetting civilized.\u201d 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 \u201cit was time to get civilized.\u201d He\u2019d drink in front of Discovery or the History Channel and, overall, wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
The world was at his mercy. He\u2019d 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 \u2013 Allison Tucker \u2013 the man with a girl\u2019s name \u2013 allow it.<\/p>\n
Allison would get angry sometimes. There was no clear reason why. It wasn\u2019t like something would set him off and he\u2019d go ballistic. He\u2019d just be riding along and he\u2019d see someone or, occasionally, see a crime frozen in progress, and he\u2019d 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\u2019d spent all his years hunting for criminals. And he\u2019d murdered them. They\u2019d be in the middle of their crime but, when the world unfroze, they\u2019d fall to the ground dead. Mutilated. <\/p>\n
All these things for when he unfroze the world. But it had been so long, and he hadn\u2019t yet had the desire. And he wondered if he ever would.<\/p>\n
After all, he had a companion. A real one. One that moved and lived and seemed untouched by his power. The Shadow.<\/p>\n
The goddamned Shadow.<\/p>\n
He first saw it 25 years ago, when all this started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[254,405],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serials","tag-frozen","tag-serials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1275,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/1275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}