All Bertie wanted was a safe place, a secret place. She wanted to hide away from her job, her family, but mostly from herself, even if only for an hour. She didn’t want to disappear forever, just periodically. All she needed was a little time, just enough to siphon off the stress and strain she felt. There were days when she felt she would crack from weight of trying to keep things together. She sometimes felt like Atlas, the weight of the world crushing her into insignificant particles.
She couldn’t lie to herself. There were times when all she truly wanted was to curl up in a ball and die, with no one noticing. Of course, that was quickly followed by a vision of her funeral. Some days she envisioned a vast crowd of mourners, distraught over the end to her short and glorious life. Other days, she envisioned an empty room, save for the casket her body was in. These moods were usually brought on by a dirty little habit of hers. She would spend hours looking at the MySpace or Facebook profiles of people she once knew. She convinced herself that her life was worthless and devoid of meaning and that her former acquaintances were living fulfilled lives, stuffed with meaning and happiness. The critic in her head, who sounded remarkably like her mother, was forever whispering, “You’re not good enough. You haven’t done enough with your life. You’re unimportant.” Never mind the fact that Bertie was a successful attorney with a loving husband. She somehow always managed to forget those minor points. Bertie understood on a purely intellectual level that she had accomplished great things and overcome difficult tasks. On that level, she understood she was a bright, lively, funny, intelligent woman. But on the emotional level, she was very much a five-year-old, feverishly yearning and pining away for total love and acceptance from her parents that, frankly, she was never going to get. On nights like that, Bertie prayed fervently for a secret place, one without judgment, timelines, pressures and recriminations. She knew if she didn’t eventually find that place, she might do the unthinkable.
Bertie didn’t typically believe in mystical things. She accepted most things at face value, placing belief in what she could touch, see, and hear. So, the first time she made time stop, she was understandably shocked.
One minute she was being publically humiliated by one of the partners in her firm and the next, well, she didn’t know what happened. Roger Thompson, a named partner and resident jerk of the firm she worked for was still in front of her, mouth open, face red and scrunched, finger pointed. But, no sound issued from him. In fact, now that she was paying attention, she realized silence filled the air. No radio from the receptionist’s desk, no phones ringing, and no copier going off, nothing…just blessed silence, as comforting as a favorite blanket. “I have finally snapped. I have finally lost my mind and gone completely crazy” Bertie thought as she looked around. No one was moving.
Not entirely sure what to do, she decided to enjoy the break before she woke up in the local mental hospital. She had brought a particularly juicy novel to work in the hopes that she would actually be able to take a lunch and enjoy the book. Of course, there is no rest for the weary, or in her case, the low associate on the totem pole. No lunch and no trip to the fantastic world depicted in her book.
Bertie carefully dodged Mr. Thompson’s finger frozen in air and walked back to her office, careful not to bump into her coworkers who looked remarkably like mannequins. Bertie grabbed the book, and on a whim, decided to read it on the particularly comfy couch in the reception area. If she was going nuts, she may as well make the most of it and take all the enjoyment she could. Bertie nestled herself on the couch and began reading, uneasily at first. She found it hard to get interested in the story that previously captivated her because she kept expecting to wake up. Eventually the scintillating prose captured her again and, before she knew it, she had finished the book. Startled, she looked around. Everyone was still frozen; she had finished a book and had yet to emerge from a dream or in a hospital bed.
Bertie started to freak out a little. What started off as strange, slightly amusing and a good time to read had turned into a frightening scenario. She returned to her office and pulled out a steno pad. She found it easier to think when she could make lists, probably part of the anal-retentive behavior that made her a good attorney. She started going through the events of the day up to when everything went wacko. Nothing was out of the ordinary. So, she tried to relive what was going through her mind when Thompson started bawling her out in front of an audience.
All she remembered was the humiliation and anger that was surging through her. She had wished that he would shut up or that everything would just stop and she could sneak away. Wait a minute….she couldn’t possibly have stopped time by thinking about it….That was impossible. And yet, here she was, in her peaceful office while the rest of the people were stopped. She glanced at her wristwatch, also stopped. She then paused to look outside the tiny window in her office. Everything there was frozen as well.
Well, she surmised, if I can stop time by thinking it, maybe I can start it by thinking it. She thought it best that she be back in front of Thompson before testing her hypothesis. Grudgingly, she trucked back down the hall and got back in front of Thompson’s pointed finger. She thought to herself, I wish everything would start again and presto….just like that she could smell Thompson’s horrible breath as he continued screaming at her. The phones were ringing, the copier was humming, and everyone started moving.
Bertie was beyond belief. She had to check, had to make sure….so, she wished time would stop again. Silence fell around her and everyone froze. Bertie froze and restarted time several more times, unable to believe what she was doing. No one seemed to be adversely affected. They just stopped and started back up like little wind up dolls.
It seems Bertie got what she always wished for – her own secret place, any time she wanted and anywhere she wanted. All she had to do was wish. Suddenly the world was truly her oyster. She had “time” to do anything in the world she pleased. If she wanted to eat a leisurely lunch and then take a nap, she simply stopped time. If she wanted to read an entire book uninterrupted, she froze time. There were no more early mornings or late nights. She simply completed projects in her secret place. The partners were astounded as Bertie could now do the work of three people in half the time. Raises, bonuses, and perks started coming her way.
All was well and Bertie was living an exceptionally fulfilled life until one morning she looked in the mirror and noticed the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She was a little troubled as they seemed to appear overnight. She pushed it out of her mind as delayed stress reactions.
She went about her life merrily, freezing time whenever it suited her, until the day she noticed the lines were deeper and she had some liver spots. These were such that Bertie could no longer ignore them. She was definitely too young for liver spots and the wrinkles were too deep for someone her age. She quickly phoned for an appointment with her dermatologist. But her doctor just laughed at her concerns and ignored her pleas that she did not suntan and there was no reason for the premature aging of her skin. Her doctor merely nodded and then recommended skin products with sun protection. It just didn’t seem right to Bertie. She was too young, she didn’t abuse her body or her skin and she shouldn’t be aging at this rate. But follow-up consultations with other dermatologists confirmed that despite her careful living, she was aging quickly.
At the first sign of the fine lines, a thought in the very dark corners of her mind began to grow, quietly whispering that the ability to stop time must be connected. Quietly insisting that just because time stopped for everyone else didn’t mean it was stopping for her. Bertie sat and thought about that. How many times had she stopped time since she discovered she could? And how long were the intervals? It was impossible to tell when the clocks and watches were stopped. It never seemed long to her.
Still, even if time didn’t stop for her and she continued aging, it didn’t explain how her skin had aged 10 years in the space of a few months, it just couldn’t be possible. She tried to estimate the intervals by the number of projects completed and books read. Her estimate was staggering and she quickly dismissed it as inaccurate. There was no way she had lived 10 years in her secret place; she hadn’t stopped time long enough for that to happen. While she was convinced her premature aging and her special powers were related, she was equally convinced that there had to be more to the problem.
Terrified, she made a solemn promise to herself that she wouldn’t stop time again until she knew what was going on. But that was like a heroin addict trying to go cold turkey. She couldn’t do it. Her bosses were accustomed to her massive level of output. If she no longer could do the work in her secret place, she would be fired because she simply couldn’t keep up. Her friends and family now depended on her superwoman abilities and endless energy. Additionally, she had no idea how to go about finding out what the problem was. She wasn’t about to advertise her ability and there was no research available on the subject. Her dream had become a nightmare; she resigned herself to her inevitable fate.
Bertie kept stopping time, kept going to her secret place, more and more frequently. To her family and friends, it seemed as Bertie aged overnight. She didn’t wake up one morning and find a gray hair, she woke up and found herself gray headed. The wrinkles got deeper, the liver spots multiplied. One day she was ram rod straight, and the next she was hunch backed. The physical problems created new terror for Bertie. What if she had a heart attack or a stroke while she was in her secret place? Would the world stay frozen while she died a slow, agonizing death? Would the world return to normal once she died? She didn’t know. The familiar feeling of carrying the weight of the world returned.
Finally, it was too much. One day, at the ripe old age of thirty five, Bertie just didn’t wake up. Her body was exhausted and could no longer do what she demanded. No one understood what had happened to Bertie. Everyone assumed some new disease had accelerated the aging process. There were rumors ranging from the mundane to the extreme as those left behind tried to make sense of Bertie’s untimely death. There were rumors of cancer, exposure to radioactive material and even alien abduction. The truth was far more extraordinary, but Bertie died without telling a soul. Bertie lived her life wishing for a secret place. Her desire was stronger than she could ever fully comprehend. Her craving to take a break and isolate herself from the rest of the world ended up killing her. The once young, vibrant woman had lived a lifetime in her secret place and had died with the body of a women three times her age.
