A Matter of Time

Chapter 6: Adriana

We just watched a weird ad. I didn't even pay attention to that Tom Landlord guy afterwards. All I was thinking about was that creepy Anya Volte girl. I looked at Tyler's room. I looked at the lights which were once flickering, I looked outside to see a beautiful afternoon.. the trees, once violently swaying were now calm. Right when I thought everything would be okay, I looked at Tyler's alarm clock. Then, I gasped. The time.. it was 2:30 pm?! That can't be right! We've been here forever! It has to be at least 3 or 4 pm right?

"Tyler? Is your alarm clock working?" I asked.

He looked at it in confusion and then laughed. "Oh it must need new batteries." He shrugged as he squinted to see tiny screws on the back panel of the device. "I'll fix it later."

I heard a gasp from behind me. It was Ryan this time. We all turned to see him holding his phone in his hands. He was shaking heavily. Without saying a word, he slowly turned his phone around so we can see.

"2:30.." Corrine whispered as she read his phone.

"Haha we aren't going to the dentist!" Tyler chuckled. "Get it, 2:30.. tooth-hurty?"

We all stared at him in disbelief.

"Nows not the time for jokes Tyler." I said with a tremble in my voice. "I think your alarm clock.. isn't broken." I looked outside. "The power went out for a moment, maybe we should check if anything strange is going on downstairs."

Corrine shivered. "So many weird things are happening all at once.. like in the movies! Paranormal things happen and then one of the people in the group gets sacrificed and-"

Ryan cut her off. "There won't be any 'sacrifices' here Corrine. Those are just made up. Movies are fiction. We're living in the real world. That won't happen." Ryan tried to look calm, but he too, had a tremble in his voice.

"Well, I guess there's nothing else to do but check and see if my parents and sisters are okay." Tyler said. "Amy and Abby probably screamed their heads off." The thought of it made him smile.

"Tyler, this is serious. What if something bad happened while the power was out?" I said, concerned. "Your mom could've been cooking and then all of a sudden, flickering lights and darkness, she burns herself!" I studied Tyler's unchanging expression. "We don't want that!" I exclaimed.

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Lets check mom and dad and the sissies. I'm sure they're fine." Tyler opened the door out of his room and led us all downstairs. "See? There's dad reading the newspaper, and I'm pretty sure mom is in her bedroom with the girls working on some arts and crafts project."

I studied his dad, as he had a black and white newspaper covering his face. His legs were crossed as he sat in a chair, clearly focused and unmoving. Tyler knocked on his mothers door. No answer. He shrugged, and moved on to a door that was painted pink.

"My sisters share this room. You can probably tell by the bright pink door. As you can see, Amy and Abby are..." Tyler stopped and stared as he opened the door. There were his sisters on the carpet, frozen. They were practically statues. Amy, the older sister with long blonde hair was facing the wall as her younger sister Abby, with short blonde hair in pigtails, was braiding her hair. They were both very still.

"Hello?" Corrine said, eyeing them up and down.

"Are you two doing that mannequin challenge? That was soooo 2016. Get over it." Tyler teased. No answer. "You guys are trying to be funny huh?" Still no answer. Their eyes didn't move. They remained, unblinking. Tyler got down on the floor next to Abby and started tickling her. They were completely still as Abby did not react at all. "Abby is really ticklish... that's weird." Tyler began to look worried. "We need to find my mom."

We walked out of the girls' room to find Tyler's dad, still sitting in the same position as before. "Dad, where's mom? Is she here? Did she go to work?" Tyler asked. There was no answer from his father. "Shoot." He said, clearly worried at this point. "The only other place I could think of is the garage."

We followed Tyler into a hallway which led to his garage. I looked at Corrine and Ryan and saw looks of terror on their faces. Corrine looked shocked. Tyler switched on the light, and in front of us, was a white Mercedes car. In the drivers seat was a blonde haired woman in formal clothes. She had one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the device to open the garage. As like every other family member, she was still and silent.

"Mom!" Tyler shouted. He banged his hands on the glass windows of the car. He tried opening the door. "Are you okay?! What's happening? Can you hear me?" Tyler screamed. All was silent.

"Tyler we're in deep trouble." Ryan said, frustrated.

"No shiitake mushrooms Sherlock." Tyler replied angrily. He cupped his hands over his face and sighed. "What are we supposed to do? Everything is frozen, time has stopped, and we're just a couple of random helpless teenagers!"

Corrine looked at us with wonder. "Do you think the outside world is normal? Is it just Tyler's house... or has everything stopped?"

"Lets go find out." Ryan said as he walked towards the entrance of Tyler's house. We followed closely behind. Ryan stopped before the door. "I can't handle this." He stepped away, and I walked up to the door and opened it. We walked outside. I analyzed the scene around me.

"That car.. it's parked in the middle of the street." I pointed out. I looked up at the sky. "Those birds! They aren't flying, but they're still in the air!" All around us was stillness and silence. Trees were silent. People were silent. Vehicles were silent.

We all looked at each other in different looks of awe, confusion, terror, and wonder.

"Time... stopped." I said.