Latest / Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories / Exploring the Terrifying Consequences of Time Manipulation: Love, Shadows and the Ultimate Sacrifice

Transcript

Exploring the Terrifying Consequences of Time Manipulation: Love, Shadows and the Ultimate Sacrifice · Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories

0:11
Ever since I was little, I could always do it.
0:15
The first time I remember doing it, I think I was three, my mom
0:18
literally caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.
0:21
I saw her marching up with her scary angry mom face, and
0:25
suddenly I stopped everything. Mom stood there, still with her
0:30
angry face mid stride and with her mouth open terrifyingly as
0:34
she'd been right in the middle of yelling something at me.
0:38
Nothing moved, there was no sound other than the ringing in
0:41
my ears, and I just knew I'd stopped at all.
0:44
I felt it just sort of flex something in my mind and time
0:49
just stops. Once I was sure I was safe, I
0:54
quickly scarfed down my cookie and swallowed it up before
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putting on my most innocent face and letting time resume.
1:00
You know I told you no. I swear, Mommy, I I didn't take
1:04
a cookie. I licked the crumbs from my lips
1:07
as covertly as I could. Mom looked confused for a second
1:10
as she looked me over. Oh, I'm sorry baby, I swore I
1:15
saw a cookie in your hand. What are you doing near the jar?
1:18
I saw your hand on the lid, so I didn't completely escape that
1:22
one, but I totally minimized the damage and got to eat a free
1:26
cookie. That's sort of how I used it as
1:29
I grew up. I learned pretty quickly that
1:31
not everyone could stop the clock like I could.
1:34
I also learned there are limits. When time is frozen, it's truly
1:38
frozen. I can move about freely in a
1:40
frozen world, but I can't move anything.
1:43
People, objects, insects, and flight, all of them are frozen
1:48
in exactly the same spot as before and no amount of force I
1:51
exert can move them. I learned to be careful running
1:55
around outside when I ran right into a bumblebee and knocked the
1:58
wind right out of myself as it completely halted my excited
2:01
sprinting. The next thing I learned was to
2:04
wear thick shoes. When grass can't be moved, it
2:07
becomes a field of spikes. I'm pretty sure I could stab
2:10
myself with it if I tried hard enough.
2:13
With a thick pair of shoes I could carefully cross over a
2:15
Weld manicured lawn. The more unruly ones I stayed
2:19
away from. There are exceptions, sort of
2:23
like the cookie. I was holding it when I first
2:25
stopped time, so I was able to carry it with me and eat my own
2:30
clothes move with me too. If I tried to grab another
2:33
cookie, they'd have been like statues stuck to wherever they
2:36
were. Other people's clothes are like
2:39
that too, so I can't go undressing people while time is
2:41
frozen. Which I'm happy for in
2:43
hindsight, but we'll talk about how bad I was as a teenager in a
2:47
bit. For some reason, bringing
2:49
objects into frozen time doesn't apply to people I'm touching.
2:54
I can bring a cookie but another person I'm touching just freezes
2:57
up like everything else. I accidentally got my hand
3:00
caught in the folds of my mother's skirt once because I
3:03
froze time and it helped me like a vice.
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That's the first rule, nothing can be moved.
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The second rule is in order for time to start back up, I had to
3:14
be pretty damn close to where I was when I first froze time.
3:17
Otherwise it feels like it's hard to explain.
3:22
You know those video glitches on streaming services where it
3:25
hiccups and stops for a few seconds, but then it rushes to
3:28
catch up in the last few seconds of footage?
3:30
Sort of speed by? It feels like that in my brain.
3:35
Like I'm desperately trying to push forward and catch up in my
3:38
brain, but I literally can't until I'm back close to where I
3:42
was when I started. I suppose I could also say it
3:45
was like a skipping record, but I don't know how many people
3:49
would get that these days. I don't have to be in the exact
3:53
same position as I was at first thankfully, just close.
3:57
My mom says I had a tendency to dash away and that I was weirdly
4:01
fast at times, so other people might slightly notice some odd
4:05
visuals as I stop and start, but since I'm close to my original
4:08
spot it's nothing they can't explain.
4:12
I tried to show a friend once. I told him to watch an apple I
4:15
was holding. I froze time and set it on the
4:18
table, then started time again. He says to him it just looked
4:23
like I'd put it down really fast.
4:25
So I tried again. This time I threw the apple in
4:28
the air. Once it left my hand and rose in
4:30
an arch, it froze like the rest of the world.
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My friend just saw me toss the apple in the air.
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So I tried one more time. I picked up the apple, froze
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time, and tried to set it down on the other side of the room.
4:44
Thankfully I could still pick it up.
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I never did find a surefire way to convince people I could
4:48
freeze time. Not until I was older.
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Growing up with this ability, it was strange.
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I was a weird introvert already, and when you can stop time like
5:00
a deity, you sort of develop a complex and further isolate
5:03
yourself. I wasn't completely without
5:06
friends, mind you. High school was hard.
5:08
Puberty hit me like a freight train.
5:10
Despite my parents being wonderful people who taught me
5:13
about boundaries, respect, and consent, I made a conscious
5:17
decision to ignore a lot of that in high school.
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You can think of me as an abuser, A deviant pervert.
5:24
That's fine, I deserve it. I totally was.
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I consciously chose to find my way into women's spaces so I
5:31
could Ogle them while they were vulnerable.
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Locker rooms, bathrooms. My favorite was the changing
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rooms at the local pool. I can't open doors when time is
5:41
frozen, but the showers at the pool were only covered by
5:44
curtains. All I had to do was freeze time,
5:47
slip in and crawl under, and I could stare at my heart's
5:50
content. For two years I acted like a
5:53
Cretan but thought of myself as a God.
5:56
At some point I got old though or starters horn was way less
6:00
work or another. None of it was a real
6:02
relationship, which was the other thing I desperately
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craved. I just as soon not mentioned any
6:10
of my deviant behavior. But The thing is I have to.
6:14
I think that was the first time I saw it.
6:19
One time I got unreasonably angry at the most popular girl
6:22
in school. Head of the volleyball team and
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queen of our high school. She was pretty and she knew it.
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Lots of people hated her for it. She could be a little hottie at
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times, and I heard she could be really cruel to the other girls,
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but looking back I'm not sure where the vitriol came from.
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She made a harmless comment in class to something I'd suggested
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that wasn't really an insult, but I interpret it as such.
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Anyway, I resolved to see her naked.
6:51
In my mind, it was what she owed me for insulting me.
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I wanted to punish her for my own gratification.
6:58
I waited till after volleyball practice was over.
7:01
I waited until I heard the showers running.
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Then I pulled open the door to the girls locker room and froze
7:07
time. I slipped inside and caught half
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the volleyball team in the showers.
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I was probably glowering like a demented little freak for a
7:15
minute or two. Maybe I'd finally started to
7:17
grow up. But as I stood there among my
7:20
classmates, I came to a realization.
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They didn't look like the hot naked woman in porn.
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They weren't posing for the camera.
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They were scrubbing their armpits, and many of them looked
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nervous and scared to be showering publicly, even if it
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was among their team mates. They were a bunch of people just
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like me. Not only that, they were my
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classmates. The spell was broken.
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I just felt like a dirty intruder, and that was suddenly
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a lot less exciting to me. I turned to Leaf, hoping to
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pretend this never happened. And that's when I saw a shadow
7:54
on the wall. To this day, I have no clue
7:56
whose shadow it was. It was frozen on the wall like
7:59
everything else, but I was transfixed by it.
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Who was casting the shadow and why did it look so alien?
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I was utterly unnerved. So I hustled out of the showers,
8:14
unfroze time, and ran home scared.
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And feeling very, very dirty. And I should.
8:22
Somehow I shook off my terrible teens and became a more
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respectful person. Trust me, perverts out there,
8:29
women are so much more beautiful and sexy when they share
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themselves with you willingly because you formed a connection
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with them. I grew up, I got a job, I have a
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fiance now. It's been 10 years since I used
8:42
my time freezing ability for anything nefarious.
8:45
I'm ashamed of the choices I've made then.
8:48
I still use the power from time to time.
8:50
It's pretty handy at the few jobs I've had.
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It's also great for introverted nerds like me.
8:55
If I need to get away, I can just freeze time.
8:59
I can just freeze everything and go sit and stare at the sky for
9:02
a few hours in absolute silence. My fiance believes that I can
9:07
freeze time now and here's how we devised this test we could
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do. She wrote things onto a post it
9:13
note and placed it face down on a glass table while keeping her
9:17
eyes on me sitting across the room.
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She'd tell me she was ready and I would freeze time, crawl under
9:22
the table and read what she wrote before returning to my
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seat, unfreezing time and reciting what she'd written.
9:30
She'd tried to talk to me and do other experiments but I declined
9:33
and she respected that. I just wanted to live my life.
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So we did. And that brings us to now.
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Something has changed. About a month ago, I froze time
9:45
in the middle of getting yelled at by my boss.
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I spent some time telling him where he could shove his
9:50
citations and screaming obscenities before wandering the
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office for a time. I grinned when I saw I'd frozen
9:57
a Co worker in the midst of playing a game of solitaire when
10:00
he was supposed to be working. I stopped to look out a window,
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staring at the frozen world outside, wrestling my anger
10:07
under control and preparing to return to my boss to let him
10:10
finish his tirade. I walked past my solitaire
10:14
playing friend and when I glanced at his computer screen I
10:17
noticed something was off. It was turned off.
10:21
At the time I kind of just assumed I'd mixed up Co workers,
10:25
so I sort of ignored it. When I got back to the boss's
10:29
office, I saw his coffee mug was turned in a different direction.
10:33
When I'd frozen time before I could read the writing on his
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coffee mug. No one cares, Work harder.
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Yeah, he's that kind of jerk. Now from that same position, all
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I saw was the black of the other side.
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This guy keeps his mug face out to remind his underpaid
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underlings that they should be doing more for him.
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And also, I freaking saw the writing when I froze this
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moment. Why couldn't I see it now?
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I couldn't move the cup or anything, So what else could I
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do? I resumed time and let the idiot
11:05
keep yelling at me. He made sure to turn his cup to
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tell me to work harder as I left the office and out of curiosity
11:12
I checked in with my solitaire friend.
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This computer had crashed. Poor guy lost a really important
11:18
report he was working on. He had to redo it.
11:21
Not sure why he was playing solitaire.
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I convinced myself nothing was wrong, that I just made some
11:28
mistakes. Someone else was playing
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solitaire and I just imagined I'd seen the words on the boss's
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coffee cup. But things like that have been
11:37
happening more frequently. Some things I could easily miss.
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Every time I freeze time now, I'll notice something at home.
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My toothbrush will move or a book will be Askew on the shelf.
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I was driving myself nuts with it.
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I kept trying to convince myself I was just being paranoid.
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Nothing can move when time is frozen.
12:00
Nothing but me. But last week, something
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happened that's never happened before.
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I froze time so I could wander around outside.
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The frozen town proper is just sort of fascinating.
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I was strolling along and all of a sudden there it was.
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A freaking noise. There was never any noise
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before. Even my own feet made a no sound
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as I walked about with the time frozen.
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But I heard it clear as day. Thump.
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It echoed out of some alley. I've never been so scared in my
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life. Time was frozen.
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I'd wandered through the statues of frozen people, going about
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their day thousands of times. It had always been my space, my
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sanctuary. But now something else was here,
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making sounds. How could anything make a sound
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if time was frozen? I ran.
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I bruised myself on a floating mosquito as I weaved through the
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frozen crowds. I'd never been afraid of the
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frozen people before, because I knew they couldn't do anything.
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But now any one of them could have made the noise, maybe
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somewhere only pretending they were frozen.
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Who made that damn sound? Finally, I made it back to my
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original spot. I stood there panting, trying to
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start time back up so I wouldn't feel so alone.
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But for a brief moment I couldn't move it.
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I glanced around with a sense of growing dread.
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That's when I saw something else move around the frozen
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cityscape. It was only a shadow, just a
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flicker of some dark shape. It wasn't human.
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Its limbs were long, its head almost looked like an egg, and
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there were white empty half circles where eyes ought to be.
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Just wave voids. It was the same shadow from the
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wall of the showers all those years ago.
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Somehow I knew it. It wasn't frozen this time.
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Our eyes met. Then everything started moving
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and the shadow vanished, started screaming right in the middle of
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the sidewalk. I refused to freeze time ever
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again. I hope that whatever that thing
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was, I left it trapped in that frozen moment.
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But who the hell knows, if I freeze time again, maybe it will
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be in the next frozen moment waiting for me.
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I don't think it's safe there anymore.
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My sanctuary is gone, but it can't reach me here, right?
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Well, I'm not too sure. My fiance is now convinced our
14:36
house is haunted. She says she keeps seeing a
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shadow man staring at her. Her possessions keep moving,
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toiletries, Knick knacks, some of her clothes.
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I tried to tell myself it wasn't the egghead.
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She thought it was a stalker at first.
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I rolled with that and started watching out for other clues.
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But then she saw the white eyes. She shrieked when it happened.
15:00
She said she saw them at the foot of our bed.
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It happened again the next evening.
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We spent the day distracting ourselves in the evening,
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brainstorming ideas. Eventually she left to take a
15:11
shower while I looked for shadow figures online.
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Minutes after I heard the water shut off, I heard her scream.
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I froze time and ran to her. By some miracles, she hadn't
15:23
closed the door. She dressed herself after her
15:25
shower so I was able to run right into the room.
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And there she was. She dropped her towel and was
15:32
recoiling in terror. She stood there, frozen, reeling
15:36
away, about to fall backwards. I followed her gaze.
15:40
There was an egghead shadow. It wasn't a shadow anymore.
15:44
It stood there in the room, a living, shadowy mess in a
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horrifically humanoid shape. Then it turned and looked at me
15:52
with its empty white voids. That wasn't frozen.
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The next thing I knew, I couldn't move.
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I was as frozen as my fiance, but I was still aware.
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I could only watch helplessly as its shadowy limbs shuttered to
16:05
life and it skulked towards her. They walked behind her, out of
16:11
my sight. I heard it rummaging around and
16:15
a minute later it could move again.
16:18
I'm was still frozen. Scoured the house for that
16:21
thing, but I could find no trace.
16:23
What the hell had it done? I returned to the bathroom and
16:26
stared helplessly at my fiance. She was going to fall.
16:31
She had slipped when she saw that thing.
16:33
I moved towards where I saw the egghead and that's where I found
16:37
the pair of scissors. It sat right where the woman I
16:40
loved was going to land. I tried to move them, but of
16:46
course I couldn't. I tried moving her, but I
16:49
couldn't do that either. I spent hours just trying to do
16:53
something to this frozen moment so my fiance wouldn't lose her
16:56
life the second I started things up.
16:58
I even tried taking off my shirt to put between her and the blade
17:01
to minimize the damage, but I couldn't start time back up
17:04
without my shirt. I felt so utterly helpless with
17:12
nothing else to do, went back downstairs to restart time and
17:16
sprinted up to the bedroom to aid my terrified fiance.
17:20
I already had emergency services on the way.
17:23
I found her crying on the ground in an alarmingly large puddle of
17:26
blood. She'd impaled her wrist on the
17:29
scissors. She's in recovery now.
17:32
I acted fast enough that they managed to save her.
17:36
They closed the artery and she's receiving donor blood.
17:39
That thing put the scissors there.
17:42
I know it. I tried to kill her.
17:45
It's been 3 days since then, and in that time three different
17:47
people have died mysteriously in our town.
17:50
Bizarre accidents. One in a million chances that
17:53
people could die in such bizarre ways, but so far we've had
17:56
three. An older woman stumbled in such
17:59
a way that she fell forward and the pens from a pencil cup went
18:03
straight into her eye, straight through her brain.
18:06
A man stepped out of his pool and tripped over a misplaced
18:09
pool float and landed on his fuse box in such a way that he'd
18:13
been electrocuted. Apparently it needed servicing
18:16
that nobody knew about. A teenage boy on a skateboard
18:20
was thrown into the street when his board smacked into a toy on
18:23
the sidewalk that nobody could identify.
18:26
He'd been hit by a car. That'll happen in the last two
18:29
days. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I
18:33
don't think so. I'm not sure what this thing is
18:36
or where it came from, but it has control over time more than
18:41
I do, even, and it seems to enjoy killing.
18:45
I worry that I'm the one who called it here, somehow.
18:49
As far as I know, it's still out there.
18:51
I'm going after it. I have to try and stop it.
18:54
They might come back for the woman I love.
18:57
It's more powerful than me, but maybe I just haven't figured out
19:00
all I can do I'm sorry Delilah, I hope I'll be back soon.
19:09
For anyone who hadn't heard, my fiance claims he can freeze time
19:13
and that some sort of monster appeared from one of his frozen
19:16
moments. He's been missing for three
19:18
weeks now. I've been trying to find him
19:20
since I got out of the hospital. I guess he forgot that he gave
19:24
me his Reddit password. I finally found his story in his
19:27
farewell. His name is Sean.
19:31
He's a really sweet guy. We were going to be married
19:33
sometime next year. No idea that's still happening.
19:38
I didn't know what to think about the ability he had.
19:41
On some level I think I always thought it was some kind of
19:44
magic trick he could do. It bothered me a little that he
19:47
seemed to really believe in it though.
19:49
But the thing was, I could never disprove it.
19:52
I tried. I tried writing things on the
19:55
other side of the house before asking him to go read them, and
19:58
every time he'd look at me, smile, and recite what I'd
20:01
written word for word like he was just pulling it out of my
20:04
head. He even pointed out my spelling
20:07
errors one time that happened. He never let me forget if he
20:12
really could freeze time. I have no idea what he's doing
20:15
as a regular but successful office worker.
20:19
He works in accounting. If he could freeze time,
20:22
shouldn't he be employed by the military as some sort of super
20:24
spy? I don't know, I guess he'd
20:28
rather use it to spy on girls. God, is that true?
20:32
I was one of those volleyball players.
20:34
That's just creepy. He claimed it was because he
20:38
didn't want to do that stuff and I can respect that.
20:41
Not the locker room part, he just wanted a normal life.
20:44
He also said there were too many limitations.
20:47
I've clung to the idea that whatever he was doing, it wasn't
20:50
freezing time. That shouldn't be possible.
20:53
I mean, if he did, how come he can move through air molecules?
20:57
How can he breathe and process oxygen?
20:59
The physics makes no sense. It had to be some kind of magic
21:03
trick, right? For a while it was just a quirk,
21:07
but it started to get serious first.
21:10
He came home one day looking all kinds of flustered.
21:13
He told me he saw something after he froze, something that
21:16
moved. He said he started screaming in
21:19
the middle of town. I actually got a text from a
21:21
friend who saw it happen asking if he was OK.
21:24
So yeah, he definitely screamed in public.
21:29
Then he told me all about the egghead shadow.
21:32
I'm pretty good at reading people.
21:33
He was legitimately scared of something, but what could he
21:37
have possibly seen? If his powers were real?
21:40
It's even scarier. What could possibly move between
21:44
the frozen moments of one person and free flowing time?
21:49
Things went downhill after that, but you already know that.
21:52
I started seeing the egghead. I never got a good look, It
21:56
always was just a glimpse of an elongated limb in my periphery
22:00
or a shadow flittering by the doorway.
22:03
And it was all accompanied by a weird chill that would give me
22:06
goosebumps and make me want to panic.
22:09
Then things started moving. I'm telling you, I thought it
22:12
was just in a typical ghost story at first.
22:15
Or maybe I had some creepy stalker moving my things when I
22:18
wasn't looking. Then one time I swear a bottle
22:22
of perfume I was looking directly at vanished for my
22:26
eyes. It just blinked out of existence
22:31
and left me wondering whether it had even been there in the 1st
22:33
place. Sean said he couldn't move.
22:36
Things like that. So was it his egghead?
22:40
Then came that night, and that night I truly saw the egghead
22:44
for the first time. I saw it clearly, and it was
22:47
even worse than Sean described. It was reaching for me with
22:50
gangly limbs and elongated fingers.
22:53
Those white voids where eyes would be seemed to suck in the
22:57
air around them. And there was a mouth, just a
23:00
little Half Moon slit filled by the same white void as its eyes,
23:04
which gave it a freaking frowny face.
23:07
I screamed and fell and almost died when I landed on a pair of
23:10
scissors. Sean got me to the hospital.
23:13
I remember him telling me he loved me.
23:15
That was the last time I saw him.
23:17
He was in contact for maybe a week.
23:20
I kept trying to convince him to come home.
23:23
His responses got erratic. Then they stopped.
23:27
A day later, the egg had reappeared right in my face.
23:31
I stepped out of the shower and there it was.
23:34
Its flesh was like a black void, but its eyes were like empty
23:36
holes leading to pure whiteness, just like Sean described.
23:40
My body froze, but I was left aware as this thing took a
23:45
wobbly step before me. I couldn't move my eyes, I
23:49
couldn't breathe, I couldn't do anything.
23:52
Soon it was inches from me. I could taste it since I
23:56
couldn't breathe. I couldn't smell it or anything,
23:58
but it's rank metallic aura poured over me all the same and
24:03
stained my immobile tongue. It tasted like death.
24:07
I was forced to stare into its eyes.
24:09
I saw something in them, something in the endless white.
24:13
I'm trying to think of the words to describe what I saw, but I
24:17
can't. There was a sudden crash and a
24:20
whirl of noises. Suddenly I could move again,
24:23
just like the first time I fell on my butt.
24:26
No scissors were there to stab me this time.
24:29
When I finally got my bearings, I found the egg had gone and the
24:33
house empty. I wanted answers.
24:36
I found my way to his Reddit page and read his account.
24:39
I've been looking into things since the number of fatal
24:42
accidents keeps increasing. Does that mean Sean failed?
24:46
Time is still moving and bad things are still happening.
24:49
I was going to wait and hope that he'd contact me again.
24:52
The last text he sent me said I think I found it then nothing.
24:58
I went to the police and filed a missing persons report and all.
25:02
I've talked to his parents and friends.
25:04
I had to tell them I didn't know what he's doing, which wasn't a
25:07
lie but I still omitted the part about the time freezing shadow.
25:11
I can't stay quiet now. Something is happening to me and
25:15
it's growing in intensity. It started as a headache.
25:18
I figured it was just stress. I mean I almost died and my
25:22
fiance vanished soon after. My friends all think he stabbed
25:26
me himself and I'm covering for him.
25:28
That really sucks. So of course I'm stressed.
25:31
I wasn't particularly surprised when I felt it the first time.
25:35
It was almost like a scratching sensation, one happening inside
25:39
my skull. It both was and wasn't physical.
25:44
I almost felt like I could hear it for a few seconds.
25:47
It sounded like rusty metal being dragged against more rusty
25:50
metal, but maybe with a dash of something organic, a sort of wet
25:55
squelch. It lasted maybe 5 seconds and
25:58
then my head started to throb. Like I said, I thought it was
26:03
just a headache and ignored it, but it keeps happening.
26:06
It almost seems to happen at random times.
26:09
I haven't figured out a pattern yet, I'll just be staring into
26:13
space. I've been doing that a lot these
26:15
days and then all of a sudden I feel this scratching and my head
26:20
throbs. I didn't think it was anything
26:22
but stress until it happened. While I was moving.
26:26
I've never felt anything like it.
26:28
Along with the headache and the scratching, it felt like I'd
26:31
entered a cloud of molasses. I could barely move and as I did
26:35
move, it was way slower than it should have been.
26:39
That was when I started to suspect it had something to do
26:42
with Sean and that thing. I have no idea how and it makes
26:45
no logical sense. Is time breaking down around me.
26:49
Why do I even feel anything? If time stopped why would I even
26:53
be aware? As far as I can tell time is
26:56
just moving forward normally. I still don't know.
26:59
It keeps happening. The last time it happened my
27:03
nose started bleeding. It's been 2 days and he's gone.
27:10
I was in a frozen moment. At some point I was typing and
27:13
my computer keys just stopped working.
27:15
Then suddenly I felt as solid as steel and wouldn't move no
27:19
matter how I pushed. I looked around and everything
27:22
was frozen. It's just like Sean described.
27:25
Everything is frozen in place. It was raining outside.
27:30
The droplets were like little cold glass roadblocks.
27:33
I couldn't move them. So I was trapped in the house
27:37
and that thing was there. It looked different.
27:41
It wasn't as elongated and I swear it was trying to talk to
27:43
me, but it sounded like its voice was 1,000,000 miles away
27:47
or maybe a few moments in the past or future.
27:51
It didn't seem malevolent. It kept gesturing at me.
27:54
It's white eyes were in wide circles for a time.
27:58
It looked like it was mimicking the motions of writing something
28:00
on a piece of paper when it tried to touch me.
28:04
I swear something in the universe just broke.
28:08
I'm back in the hospital when that thing touched me.
28:12
I was wrenched back to my original spot on my computer so
28:15
fast and violently. I now have a concussion because
28:18
I think my brain bounced around in my skull somehow.
28:22
Nothing else is physically wrong with me.
28:24
I feel like the force should have ripped my limbs off.
28:29
I only have a theory on what happened.
28:31
I don't think that egghead was the same one I saw before.
28:35
I think this one was Sean and I think he was trying to
28:37
communicate. It's possible he's been trying
28:40
for a while and that's what that scratching sensation was.
28:44
I guess he figured out how to do different things with his
28:46
ability. Maybe he could even pass forward
28:49
or backward in time, but I think it took a physical toll on him.
28:54
I think that's why he looked like an egghead.
28:55
I don't know why he looked like a living shadow, but maybe he
28:59
like smeared himself across time.
29:03
Maybe the other egghead was someone else who tried to meddle
29:06
even more. I haven't seen anything strange
29:09
since I was frozen. There was however, one more
29:12
incident. Sean and an unknown man were
29:15
found dead in a local warehouse. Cause of death is unknown, but
29:19
both bore strange burns on their bodies that nobody could
29:22
identify. The police think they found a
29:26
genetic link between the unknown man and someone else.
29:29
That person is only 14 right now, but they've already got a
29:32
rap sheet. I went to identify Sean's body.
29:38
It was definitely him. He looks older than I remember.
29:42
I don't know if that has something to do with his powers
29:44
or not. He did have a beard that looked
29:47
way thicker than three weeks worth.
29:51
My fiance is gone. I think the threat is too.
29:57
Are there more? How far do their powers go?
30:01
I'm scared. I wish Sean was here.
30:05
Update I know I haven't posted yet, but I found something.
30:11
Sean left one last message. I'm not sure how it was sitting
30:14
on a table when I got home from the hospital.
30:17
It was where that shadow looked like it was writing something.
30:21
I've got it typed out and here it is.
30:25
Dear Delilah, I don't know why I can do the things I do.
30:29
I figured I was just a mutant or something, but I'm not the only
30:33
one. The first one I saw came from
30:36
the future. It learned how to turn back time
30:39
and it's wreaking havoc every time it moves something that
30:43
shouldn't move. I feel it.
30:45
It sounds like massive metal slabs grinding against each
30:48
other. Every time someone dies, it
30:51
becomes a cacophony. Whatever it's doing, something
30:54
is breaking. I figured out how to do new
30:57
things. It hurts.
30:59
The only thing that doesn't hurt is what I used to do, where I
31:02
just move around in a frozen moment.
31:04
Anything else feels like it's stretching me.
31:08
I think I understand now. It is stretching me.
31:12
It's making me exist in multiple moments at once in the same
31:15
universe. That's not supposed to be
31:17
possible. That's why my skin is fading.
31:20
That's why when I look into my reflection's eyes, I see those
31:23
white voids the other egghead was hiding in a single moment.
31:27
But then it came after you. I chased it away, but I was
31:30
following in that moment for what felt like years.
31:34
I think he was toying with me after all that time.
31:37
The grating sound barely fazes me, but I feel the effects
31:40
getting worse. I finally figured out how to
31:43
fight it, and I think I have it cornered.
31:46
I have it frozen in a moment, but I had to come back and try
31:49
to say goodbye first. I love you, Delilah.
31:53
The only way I can think to stop this thing will kill me too.
31:57
I wish I could spend my life with you, but it's better this
32:00
way. The fewer of us time
32:02
manipulators there are, the better.
32:05
I know that sounds like crap, but please understand.
32:07
I've seen the void beyond the egghead's eyes.
32:10
It leads somewhere outside of time as we know it, outside our
32:14
universe. I've seen the things there that
32:16
want to get in. I hear them talking to me,
32:19
trying to get me to meddle with time even more.
32:22
I won't do it. I'm sorry, Delilah.
32:26
I'm so sorry. Also, I'm sorry if I scared you.
32:31
I'm an egghead now too. Live your best life and don't
32:35
forget me. Yours forever, Sean.
32:40
I won't forget you, you idiot. I hate you.
32:45
I hate you for disappearing. I love you.
32:50
Rest in peace.