Stopping the World

When I woke up, it was light out. There was still a dreariness about that you noticed after it rained, but for now, the sky was pretty clear other than for a few dark clouds.

I was still in the ditch that I had ran into for safety. When I crawled up out of it to face the road again, that’s all there was: road. No sign of people or anything else for as far as I could see, other than the city buildings in the distance. But they looked vacant.

I started to panic. Where was Nick? Did... whoever it was that was chasing us, take him? I didn’t have the slightest clue, but that was my guess considering he wasn’t here. That, or he managed to get away, but the odds of that were slim.

“Nick?” I called anyway, seeing if I would get a response. “Nick!”

The world was heavy in the bag I was holding on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what to do.

So, I just thought of the one place that I knew I could always go to when I was younger, whenever I got hurt or was in some kind of trouble. The one place I hadn’t visited in so long, that it felt strange just thinking about it.

I dug the world out of my bag and quickly found the coordinates, not really sure what was going to be in store.

And then, I went home.

>>---------------------------------------------------->>

I went to my actual home, home. Not to Nick’s house, not back to my college dorm, but home, home. Where my family was. Or where I assumed they still were.

“Mom? Dad?” I called, hoping to get a response as soon as I opened the door. Nothing.

I wasn’t sure why I expected them to be unfrozen, but... I did. They were the two people who gave the world to me in the first place, so I guess I expected them to be unfrozen too, seeing as they were once the care holders of it. Or at least my mother was, anyway.

I guess I expected too much, though, because I immediately found my father in the living room, watching tv, and my mother in the kitchen. I sighed after spotting my mother.

“Great,” I said to myself. But at least things were pretty normal here; it was dark out still, outside wise; the same it would have been when I had first stopped the world.

But there was still something slightly off, though. And I didn’t realize what it was until I stopped when I was and froze my breathing.

That’s when I really heard it. There was noise, coming from upstairs.

I felt my heart drop to my stomach. Those people... they hadn’t followed me here, had they?

But wait, those people... those people had Nick! And I knew I had to save him and get him back.

“Nick?” I called, walking toward the stairs. “Nick!”

The commotion settled for a few moments, but then it started up again. I headed up the stairs.

I knew this probably wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t really see any other option. Without Nick, I was all alone, and I knew that I couldn’t avoid what was coming by myself.

“Nick?” I said again, but in a normal voice. The noise was coming from behind the one bedroom door.

Suddenly, the door opened. So fast, that I didn’t have a chance to move, and nearly had a heart attack thinking the person was one of the people that had chased Nick and I last night.

But I was even more shocked when I saw who it really was.

“Michael?”