It’s funny. I was thinking of when I first discovered magic. It was like a caveman discovering fire or a baby taking its first steps. Magic changed everything for me. One minute I was a disgruntled employee working for XYZ Corp, and then time froze, I mean, literally. For an unknowable amount of time, everything around me stopped moving....

                                                                                                  - Alex Spellman

I was at a meeting. The second or third one my boss had called that day. We were trying to woo a client coming in later that afternoon, and the entire team was doing a run through of our pitch.

“17%,” corrected Chad. The woman who had been talking -- Brenda, our Financial Controller -- meekly looked up from her PowerPoint slides.

“Sorry I…”

“We had a quarterly return of 17%, not 16,” Chad interrupted again. He turned to face the rest of the table. “We have to get this presentation down before the Mexicans get here.”

“I don’t think we should be referring to them as ‘the Mexicans,’” interjected our senior HR associate, and my best friend, Rebecca.

Chad glared at her. “Okay dudes and dudettes, from the top.”

Brenda resumed her PowerPoint.

The conference room we were in was uncomfortably cold. The hum of the HVAC system purred loudly during the height of summer.

Most of my coworkers were preoccupied with something that looked like work. They were sending emails or scribbling aimlessly on their respective notepads. I was doodling a picture of Chad, whose muscles had become so ripped that they had burst. I passed my note to Rebecca, who smiled before crumpling it in her hands.

“Bro, recycle much?” remarked Chad sarcastically.

Brenda finished her dry, monotonous cost savings analysis -- I had already zoned out. I was up, but I didn’t notice until Rebeca kicked my leg underneath the table.

In the center of the table sat an ugly, brass sphere Chad’s secretary had purchased as a gift for the client. Rebecca's kick dislodged the sphere from its stand, and before any of us could react, the sphere fell onto the carpeted floor of the conference room and shattered into dozens of pieces.

That’s the moment that changed everything.

“My bad. I’ll get it,” I said, lifting myself up from my seat.

“Why am I not surprised?” Chad sighed deeply, anxiously massaging one of his muscular shoulders.

I didn’t answer, and instead silently carried the trash bin by the door over to the mess, picking up the shards with my hands.

Rebecca joined me on the floor, hunched over silently as she delicately lifted the twisted pieces off the floor. Her long, sinewy, black hair obscured her face and prevented me from seeing her expression. Was she angry? I really hoped she wasn’t angry. 

“Almost done?” asked Chad.

I picked up the last piece of the sphere, which was unlike the other shards. This one was a smooth, black rock with dozens of ridges that made it look sort of like a potato chip. It felt unusually cold. I left it in my hand for what seemed like 10 seconds, but its temperature did not equalize. It was like I was touching snow that wouldn’t melt.

I nudged Rebecca.

“Hey, Rebecca take a look at this?”

She wouldn’t budge. She was definitely mad at me then. I thought.

I stood up, and to my surprise, the rock became incrementally warmer.

I became distinctly aware of everyone’s silence. No one was talking, or moving for that matter. Was this a joke?

“Um...is, er, anyone going to say something?” I asked.

No response. My coworkers weren’t moving. They remained perfectly still, not even swaying imperfectly like people do when they pretend to be frozen.

“Seriously, this is not funny.”

I glared at Chad. “Say something asswipe.”

He remained eerily quiet. The room was more than silent - it was inactive. I couldn’t even hear the hum of the HVAC system. The only sound I heard was the ringing of my eardrums.

What really put me over the edge was a fly hanging over Brenda’s coffee cup. It was fixed above the cup, suspended in the air alongside the steam, which also was paused midflow.

That was not something that could be easily faked.

Even as I started to freak out, the part of me that binged Twilight Zone and Black Mirror was like 'oh time stuff is a thing.'

But the other part of me was like 'oh fuck, what am I doing? Fuck, time can freeze? What’s going to happen when time unfreezes?' I looked down at the rock in my hand, eyes wide, heart pounding.

So I did what felt like the most natural thing to do at a time like this: I walked over to Chad’s seat and punched him squarely in the face.

“Fuck!” I shouted.

The pain was excruciating. I had been in fights before, and I was familiar with the throbbing pain that came with them. This, however, was different. Punching Chad's face was like hitting a brick wall. My wrist went limp, and I knew instantly that my hand was broken.

The rock in my other hand grew hotter, spiking at a searing heat. I almost let go but held on because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.

Chad hadn’t budged in the slightest.

The rock cooled back down to lukewarm, and I realized I probably shouldn’t be standing in front of him when time unfroze. 

If time unfroze?

I breathed deeply to stop myself from panicking and counted to ten. I knew needed time to process this shit, but right now, I just needed to not get caught.

I jumped back down onto the carpet and placed myself as close as I could remember to where I was when I first touched the rock. I was careful not to aggravate my now-throbbing wrist. I took another breath, checking around me one last time before I let the rock fall out of my hand and onto the floor. 

I really hoped this would work.

The effect was immediate. I heard the force of my punch whack Chad in the face. He let out a terrified yelp, his normally composed voice laced with confusion and pain, as he collapsed to the floor.

“Are you okay?” asked Brenda, shocked. Some coworkers mumbled along, others were just stunned into silence.

No one suspected what had happened. I carefully used two shards of the sphere to slip the rock into my pocket without touching it, hiding a smile.

I had just bent fucking time.

This was going to be so much fun.