Stopped Time Novels & Stories

“If you want to get out, listen to me. Give me what I want, and I’ll bring you back. Otherwise…” He snapped his fingers. “Otherwise, what?” She sounded impatient. “Get ready to spend the rest of your life here.” He placed his mouth near her ear. “Right, I forgot to tell you, but when we enter the village of Jave, all time stops. It will be as if we never left Neon.” Her eyes widened at the mention of time stopping, but then he kissed her on the nape of her neck, sucking on it like a vampire. “Just where are we, Nathaniel Underwood?”

Friday, 23:30: “Beep, hello 001. It's 23:50, the counting system will close in ten minutes, please complete the count from 1 to 120 if you want to continue” Again? The clock is out of time but there are rules, it's wrong every three days. I sighed, counting again. Saturday, 21:05: Beep. 1.2..3..120. Day Eight, 21:05: Beep. 1.2..3..120. Ninth day, 21:05: Beep. 1.2..3..120. Ninth day, 23:30: “Beep, hello 001. It is now 23:50, the counting system will close in nine minutes, please complete the count from 1 to 120 if you want to continue”

I hugged the frame tighter, pressing it to my chest as if holding her. And then, I began counting. Seconds. Every tick of the clock. Every shallow breath. Each one felt longer than the last. The seconds dragged into eternities, stretching until I thought I’d lose my mind. My heart hammered painfully with every passing moment. 11:50. 11:55. 11:59. And then… midnight. The faint click of the clock changing to 12:00 sent a jolt through me. My heart stopped for half a beat. This was it.

“Stop.” Lucas froze the display. “Go back three seconds.” He did. A tiny fluctuation appeared in the lower corner. Not data. Timing. The systems had synchronized for 0.0007 seconds. Every major subsystem. At exactly the same moment. I stared at it. “That shouldn't be possible.” Lucas leaned closer. “Why?” “They aren't supposed to share a clock at that resolution.” “They don't.” “Then why did they?” He didn't answer. Because he was already running the same question through his models.

The only way to get hold of the place was to pay Frantinos, the last option Nicolas had chosen to have his hands on the most precious business in the country. And as the day he had been working on for months stood at his doorstep, Donavan didn't feel ready. Something like a clock ticked in his head, as a warning of sort, only that it beeped incessantly to an extent of irritation. It started like an blur alarm tone that one think is playing in their dream but as the time passed, it became a painful reality, as if he was slowly waking up now. Its strangeness went far beyond the innocuousness of omen.

"Bro, I think it's time we let it go and say it's a freak accident." Jordan shook his head. "We can't give up yet. There's something we're missing." Just then, Bjorn's eyes narrowed. "Jordan, did you see that?" "See what?" Jordan replied, confusion etched on his face. Bjorn rewound the tape, and they both leaned in closer. The time stamp on the screen skipped from 2:00 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. "Someone erased the tapes," Jordan's eyes widened in realization.

“Offshore account. Transaction code BR-7743-X. She said it would happen at three PM.” James raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. He just adjusted his monitoring parameters and sat back to wait. The minutes crawled by. Two fifty. Two fifty-five. I tried to focus on other work, on emails that needed responses and reports that needed reviewing, but my eyes kept drifting to the clock in the corner of my computer screen. At three PM exactly, nothing happened. I felt relief and disappointment at the same time. So she'd been wrong, lying or delusional after all.

But, suddenly, Seph looked up and saw that the clock on the wall had stopped ticking. The world froze that time, Seph guessed. The students around them stopped moving and the noise outside turned silent as everything seemed to halt. But, Seph saw on his mobile phone’s screen that the seconds and the minutes are changing. So, Seph found out that the world did not freeze. Just that, it slowed down.

She kept pushing the meals in but he wasn't responding. Dale yanked him to her chest and began to cry the loudest she ever had. Her tears soaking his Bonny face. Passer-bys ignored this claim instead they increased their pace to avoid getting involved in such a case. Dale left the kid and ran as fast as she could falling at intervals towards the rail station. The big clock stationed high up tells us the time was now twenty eight minutes after ten. The rail path was silent no voice was heard except for the tweeting sound the birds with rests at the edges of the large iron roof made.

I looked at him and, for the first time, he felt like a stranger. My hands curled into fists, and my voice came out hoarse. "I'm giving you one month. That's the last of it. Either you go public with our relationship, or I'm gone." He caught sight of my reddened eyes, went still for a second, then nodded. "Okay." For that whole month, he acted like we'd fallen right back into the honeymoon phase. He'd even hand me his phone on his own and say, "Look — nothing on here."