Full Stop - Part Two

Go back to Part One if you missed it.

This one's more of an experiment in updating a story for me - kind of fascinating, actually.

And here we go...

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Full Stop Part Two
A Short Story by Dianna Zaragoza
Based on 'The Day Time Stopped Moving' by Bradner Buckner

Joe left the restaurant-turned-haunted-museum at a sprint, darting around the corner to head for his car. He fished in his pockets for his car keys, but he came up empty.

Swearing under his breath, he turned back toward the restaurant – that was the last place he wanted to go back to right now. But he’d left his keys. He had to. It would take him almost a full hour to walk home from here, but it was only a ten-minute drive.

As he walked back toward the corner to head for the open window, he stopped. A horrible thought sprung to his mind.

His gaze wandered towards the highway, which ran in front of the restaurant about fifty yards out – first the side road, and then the freeway beyond that, and then the rows of apartment complexes after that –

There was no sign of any kind of movement anywhere.

Cars were set on the street, some poised to pass others, some making turns to go in and out of the parking lot where Sal’s Pizzeria sat on the corner. The restaurant was very visible from the street, and Joe could, in turn, see everything that was happening…or truly, not happening.

Because nothing was happening. And this nothing was really…something.

A man was stepping down off the yellow transit bus at the bus stop, his foot frozen in mid-step. Other pedestrians on the sidewalk stood with one foot up with all their weight bearing down on that foot. There was no way they were posing like that – gravity would take them down.

But not even gravity moved anything here.

He looked up at a nearby lamppost and saw a pigeon in mid-flight, looking at through its open wings were pinned to the blue sky.

Joe gave up on the car and started to run. He ran until his lungs and legs forced him to slow down and walk. At least he was back in his old familiar neighborhood by then, but familiar had a new normal.

It was a warm winter in Texas this year, and old dead leaves stood out like flags that didn’t wave on no wind. He didn’t feel cold like he normally did. He ran past two young boys on bikes that stood upright, but didn’t roll. He smelled a nearby barbecue, and looked to see a man in his backyard over a smoker. He could see the smoke rising from the top, yet it didn’t rise. It, too, did not curl away as smoke is supposed to do, but stayed put in one place, looking like a puff of marble.

He felt as though he’d run for hours, yet the sun stayed where it was in the sky. Finally he turned a corner, and saw his home at the bend of Yorkshire Drive.

He tried the front doors. Locked. He pressed the doorbell. No noise, and the doorbell stayed fixed in its place anyway.

Opening the side wooden gate, he came across his Rottweiler Cocoa, snoozing in the corner of the yard. She would not have stayed asleep if the door opened. He wished desperately to break whatever spell this was on him, that cursed him with motion in a motionless world.

Then he saw the kitchen window.

The curtain was open.

Joe walked on legs that felt heavier with each step. He peered inside.

The lights were off, and he couldn’t make out anything. No legs on the floor. No blood. All he saw was a light – a small blue light sitting on the counter.

“Emily! Emily!”

His ears sounded stopped-up, and his voice returned to him as a distant echo, mocking him. She was nowhere to be seen.

He slumped to the ground, his forehead pressed against the outer wall of his house.

He didn’t even try to get in his house. His world now was a world of death, where only he lived. He remembered his last thought. Something about a sandwich. How utterly random such a thought had been, at his moment of transition. What on earth had possessed him to pull that trigger?

He walked back around to the front of the house, feeling as if he were sleepwalking. He laid down on the front porch, and curled his body up into a ball.

Maybe, if he also didn’t move, he would feel more at home here.

A thought came to him from childhood Sunday School – purgatory? Some sort of middle place? Was that where he was?  Was this his punishment for killing himself?

His skin crawled with regrets. So many things he would have done differently, and now he’d lost all power to choose. He couldn’t affect or change anything; not even a blade of grass would move at his command.

Still, through all these thoughts of self-pity and pathos, he grew aware of a deeper feeling that he wasn’t really dead, though he had no way of figuring out the truth of this. Maybe he just wanted to believe it, and he did.

All he knew for sure was that he had a growing headache, and he felt sick. His parched mouth cried out for some relief.

He’d seen a truck stop down at the end of one road he passed, so he got up and went to see if he could get a latte or espresso if he could. Even just a black cup of coffee, at the very least.

 

 

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Where does he go from here? Find out tomorrow...