CHAPTER 1
Frozen.
Completely and utterly freaking frozen .
One second the woman had been speaking. She had, in fact, been half way through the nice of have a nice day. Her mouth was still forming the ni of nice, the syllable was the last sound shed uttered before shed completely stopped moving. Her face had not gone slack, her hand had not dropped to her side, she had not fallen to the ground but simply become freaking frozen into this strange mannequin-like thing standing behind the counter. She stared unerringly at me, but it seemed as if she no longer saw me as I watched her unblinking, vacant brown eyes. Her eyes had never left me but I was certain she no longer saw anything anymore. I kept waiting for her to come back to life, to finish her sentence, to hand me my change, but as the seconds ticked into minutes I slowly began to realize that she was not going to move. Slowly began to realize that she was not playing some sort of sick, demented trick on me.
She had in fact suddenly, instantaneously, been struck completely immobile.
It was the oddest, most unnerving thing I had ever seen and all I could do was gape at her. I continued to stand there, not because I wanted to, no one in their right mind would want to keep standing there, but simply because I was shocked into immobility. I was not struck suddenly inert like the woman across from me, but I was entirely immobile with shock and horror as I gazed at her. I finally managed to close my mouth. Not because I was recovering from the astonishment that still gripped me so tightly, but because a little bit of drool had started to form at the corners of my mouth, and my jaw actually hurt from gawking at her for so long.
Though I managed to make the small movement of closing my mouth, I could not make any others. I could not drop the arm that was extended across the counter. I could not close the open hand still waiting in expectation of my change clasped within the womans hand. I had absolutely no intention of touching the woman in order to retrieve it either.
I didnt care how scarce money was nowadays, I was not touching her. And I would have to touch her if I was going to get it back. I would actually have to pry open her clasped fingers in order to retrieve what was mine, because it was becoming painfully obvious that the woman was not going to move again.
I shuddered in horror at the thought. I didnt know what that hand felt like, it was probably still warm because she had only frozen minutes ago, but in my mind it was cold and clammy. Even though she was still on her feet, even though I didnt know if she really was dead, in my mind her hand would feel as cold and clammy as a corpses.
A small spasm jerked through my extended arm, causing it to jump slightly. It wasnt the aching pain in my stiff arm that finally caused me to pull it back, but the fact that the small twitch had almost caused me to touch her. The thought was utterly repulsive to me. My arm fell limply back to my side, my mouth parted slightly again.
For the first time in awhile, I blinked. Then, I closed my watering eyes, squeezing them tight as I prayed silently that everything would be normal when I opened them once more. It was not.
Slowly I raised my hand and waved it in front of her unblinking, unseeing eyes. There was no response. I thought that perhaps I should hit her, maybe pinch her, but that brought me back to the having to touch her aspect. Throw something at her? I glanced at the gum stacked before the counter. It was a soft projectile but hard enough that it would get someones attention. Maybe it would wake her up, but I didnt think it would work, and I couldnt bring myself to heave something at the defenseless woman. It seemed horrendously wrong.
I took a small step back, swallowing heavily as I looked slowly around the store. Though it had not been crowded, it was suddenly easy to pick out every person amongst the racks of souvenir clothes (clothes that didnt sell much anymore, at least not to tourists as we had few of those now) and candy counters. Mainly because none of them were moving too. I doubted throwing something at them would work either.
It was eerily quiet within the store. I didnt hear any movement on the street outside either. Driving had been banned a month ago (I now realized why), but I didnt even hear the hum of bicycle tires or the thumping footsteps and chatter of people. The soft murmur of conversations had vanished. The street sounded just as dead as the store now appeared. The
hum of the stores air conditioner was frighteningly loud in the unnerving hush.
I turned slowly toward the door. The blinds were drawn over the window, blocking out the bright summer sunlight. It was impossible to see if the rest of the world had been as affected as the store. I wanted to believe that it hadnt, that this store was an isolated incident, but I knew it wasnt. A cold chill, that had nothing to do with the ac unit, raced down my spine. The hairs on my neck and arms stood on end, the room swam and blurred violently before me as fear threatened to choke me.