Each week, I send out a story via my email newsletter. Each story is around 1000 words, sometimes less, sometimes more. The stories are in a variety of genres: supernatural, thriller, sci-fi, horror, and sometimes romance, and all of my stories typically feature a gay protagonist.
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This is story number 28 of the series. Enjoy!
Frozen in Time
The ticking of the clocks had always been a constant in Nico’s life. Their steady rhythm marked the passing of seconds, minutes, hours. But on one fateful Tuesday morning, as Nico stumbled out of bed and fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, he realized something was terribly wrong. The screen stayed dark, refusing to display the time. Did he forget to charge it? Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Nico then glanced at his analog wristwatch on his dresser. The hands were frozen at 3:27.
“What the hell?” Nico muttered, a chill running down his spine despite the warmth of his cozy studio apartment. He flicked on the light switch, but nothing happened. The power was out. That might explain his phone but certainly not his wind-up watch.
Nico pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and ventured outside, heart pounding. The streets of downtown Portland were eerily quiet. No cars roared past, no pedestrians strolled by with steaming cups of coffee. The traffic lights at the intersection blinked a lifeless gray. Every clock in the shop windows lining the street displayed the same dead time: 3:27.
Nico’s breath caught in his throat as he realized the unthinkable: time had stopped. But how was that possible? And why was he the only one around to witness this terrifying phenomenon?
His mind raced as he walked down the deserted street, gripped by a growing sense of dread. His footsteps echoed disconcertingly in the unnatural silence. Whatever was happening went far beyond a simple power outage. It was as if the world had been plunged into a waking nightmare.
As he rounded the corner onto Main Street, he saw a figure in the distance — the first sign of life. His heart leapt with relief and he quickened his pace, waving his arms.
“Hey! Hello! Over here!” Nico called out, voice cracking slightly. But as he got closer, he realized with a sickening lurch that something was wrong. The man standing in the middle of the street wasn’t moving. In fact, he appeared to be completely frozen mid-stride, one foot off the ground, briefcase swinging at his side. His eyes were glazed over, staring vacantly ahead.
“What the ever-loving fuck,” Nico breathed, icy tendrils of fear curling in his gut. He circled the man cautiously, studying him from all angles. No breath escaped his slightly parted lips. He seemed utterly lifeless, like a wax figure.
That’s when Nico noticed other frozen forms scattered up and down the street. A woman pushing a stroller, motionless. A flock of pigeons suspended in the air, wings outstretched. An elderly man lifting a cigarette to his mouth, the tip unlit. The entire city was a vast tableau, frozen at 3:27 AM.
Panic rising in his throat, Nico ran back to his apartment and collapsed on the couch, mind reeling. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream, a vivid hallucination. But deep down, he knew with soul-chilling certainty that it was real. It’s like time had stopped for everyone and everything…except him.
Over the next surreal hours, Nico searched the silent city for any sign of life, any indication that he wasn’t completely alone in this nightmare. But everywhere he went, he encountered only the frozen and the inanimate. Phones didn’t work, the internet was down, utilities were kaput. Perishable food rotting in warm refrigerators.
“I must be losing my damn mind,” Nico said aloud, voice thin with exhaustion and stress. His words hung in the heavy stillness.
Returning home, Nico rifled through his desk drawer until he found what he was looking for — an old wind-up pocket watch inherited from his grandfather. He turned it over in his hands, studying the scratched bronze case. The watch had stopped long ago, delicate gears frozen in time like everything else. But as Nico watched in disbelief, the second hand ticked once, hesitantly, then resumed its steady circuit around the watch face.
Nico sank to the floor, scalp prickling. The antique watch, with its outdated, non-electric mechanism, was the only other object showing any signs of life. Which meant that he, and it, were now the sole markers of time in a world where time had ceased to exist.
But why? What cosmic joke or anomaly had rendered him alone in a frozen world? Nico had never been particularly religious, but now he found himself wondering if this was some kind of divine test or punishment. Maybe time hadn’t stopped at all, and everyone else had simply left —ascended to heaven or been raptured away. Everyone but him. But no, that was crazy…
Wasn’t it? Dizzying possibilities swirled through Nico’s brain. Maybe he was in a coma somewhere, trapped in an unending dream. Maybe he was dead already, a ghost haunting an empty world. Or maybe this was his personal hell, an ironic and eternal prison.
As the long, lonely hours and days dragged by, marked only by his working pocket watch, Nico felt the first stirrings of real madness creeping in at the edges of his mind. He talked to himself incessantly, craving the sound of a human voice. He rearranged his apartment obsessively, just to see something, anything, change. He screamed until his voice was hoarse, ran until his lungs burned, wept until no tears came.
When his food ran out, Nico was forced to scavenge from the frozen city, raiding abandoned groceries and restaurants for non-perishables. He felt like the last living creature in an empty world, a world where he could take anything he wanted…but none of it mattered.
“I just want to wake up,” Nico sobbed one night (or was it day? did it matter?), curled on his bed. He closed his eyes, listening to the soft, maddening tick of the pocket watch on his nightstand. “Please let me wake up…”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Then, abruptly, a different sound entirely—the cheerful blare of his morning alarm. Nico’s eyes flew open. Sunlight streamed through the crack in his curtains. His phone screen glowed, displaying the time and date. 7:30 AM. Wednesday.
“Holy shit,” Nico breathed, heart thundering. He leaped out of bed and peered out the window. Cars zipped past. Pedestrians strolled, very much alive and unfrozen. The clocks in the shop windows showed the correct time.
It was over. The world was back to normal…like nothing had ever happened. Had it all been a vivid, endless dream? A premonition? A fractured glimpse of a parallel reality? Nico wasn’t sure he would ever truly know.
With shaking hands, he opened the nightstand drawer and carefully lifted out the antique pocket watch, Half expecting it to be frozen at 3:27. But no—the second hand swept its steady circle, marking time in a world where time once again held sway.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
THE END