A 24 hour Laundromat is never the best place to get comfortable. There seems to be a tradition of plastic orange seats and flickering strip lights designed to induce a headache, if they can’t manage an epileptic fit. There were three other people who also felt the urge to do midnight laundry. A woman on the other side of the machines was reading a copy of one of those odd tabloids, studiously. A quick glance was enough to tell me that a New York woman had given birth to a snake boy. You learn something every day. Mind you, in this town, I could almost believe it.

I squeezed my back into the corner, and put a foot up on the chair next to me. This gave me a good view of the Asian couple sitting primly in their seats down the line from me. They were both reading books. The man, nearest me, was reading some sort of computer book I think. Not that I’d know anything about that. The office deals with the numbers. I just have to sell the damned insurance.

Then everything went silent. It took me a moment to realize, but the washers and dryers all froze in mid cycle. Even the buzzing flickering lights went quiet. Come to think of it, the room seemed to be lit differently – a pale half light that didn’t have any particular source.

I blinked. Or rather, tried to. The sudden realization that I could not move one muscle of my body was more shocking than the cessation of sound. I tried to move, to scream; anything, but I couldn’t. After several panicked seconds, I had the shocking realization that I couldn’t even breathe. It was as though time had stopped completely.

This tableau continued for what seemed like weeks, but was probably less than a minute now I reflect upon it. I would have been well into a good ol’ panic if I had been capable of moving. I felt like my body wasn’t part of me any more, and I was simply observing. I began to wonder if I’d died, and this was hell – my last moment on earth stretched into infinity.

Then, in complete silence, I watched someone enter the Laundromat. It was a man, dressed in blue jeans and a black T shirt. My relief was immense, and I would have sighed… but still couldn’t move. All I could do was watch as he crossed my peripheral vision, and walked to the washing machine in front of the Asian couple. Without them apparently noticing, he opened the door to the machine and reached into it. I could see the wall of water that was no longer held up by the door frozen in place. This didn’t seem to faze the man, who pushed his arm into the water, and pulled out one single solitary sock. He carefully closed the machine, smiled to himself and walked back out of the Laundromat, closing the door again in absolute silence.

With a shockingly loud burst of noise, the world came back to life. The machines turned, the dryers rumbled and as I began to hyperventilate, nobody else so much as blinked. The man reading the computer book calmly turned the page, and said something in a language I couldn’t understand to his companion. I turned automatically and looked out of the window. There was no sign of the man in the black T shirt.

I sat there, thinking. This was probably one of the smartest moves of my life now I think about it. I could have jumped up screaming “Did you see that? He stole your sock!” Based on what evidence? Obviously nobody else had seen it – they weren’t even looking around the room. It was tantamount to yelling “There’s a monster eating the wing!” In effect, nobody was going to believe me. I saw that straight away.

So I did what I had to do. I finished the clothes, dried them, folded them, packed them into the car and left. As I did so, I observed the couple fighting over something as they folded things on the counter.

I drove home slowly; in truth not paying as much attention to the road as I should have done really. My mind was replaying the event in the Laundromat. Was I going crazy, or did that happen? Did I see a man walk in and steal a sock from somebody’s machine? As I started to analyze it, the crazier it all seemed – I mean, you can’t open the door while it’s full of water anyway. It’s completely impossible. The more I thought about it, the more I began to figure I’d drifted off to sleep and perhaps dreamed it. Dreams can seem pretty real sometimes.

The following day I was heading into work; cursing the traffic as per usual. I’m a long sleeper, and having beaten my alarm clock into snooze mode several times already, I was of course, my normal fifteen minutes behind schedule. I drummed a tattoo on my steering wheel, waiting for the light to go green and let us move again. Then it happened again. A weird pressure in my skull and *pop* everything was bathed in that weird half light, and all was silent. I looked around me. Everyone was sitting motionless in their cars. I began to feel that sense of panic again, and then just as suddenly realized that I was able to move. I felt like I was made of jelly, but I could move! I didn’t care if I moved like a drunken sailor in a tub of Jello; movement was movement. And now I was sure I wasn’t dreaming.

One of the people walking on the sidewalk ahead of me suddenly turned, and walked to the car ahead of me, lifted the hood (didn’t you have to go into the cabin to do that?) and ducked under it for a few seconds. Then closed it back down just as silently, and headed back to his position. I stared open mouthed. What on earth was that about? I began to reach for the door handle, when with another head crushing *pop* the world went back to its noisy honking self. I shook my head, and looked back at the car ahead of me to see if the occupant had noticed anything odd. Apparently he had not, for he remained at that spot waiting until the light went to green. Then he accelerated all of two feet before jerking to a sudden halt. The car had stalled. I was just taking this concept in when I saw another car whiz straight through the intersection without stopping for his red light.

I gasped out loud. If the car hadn’t stalled…

If the car hadn’t been tampered with more like. I scanned the sidewalk, but the pedestrian was gone as though he’d never been. Dammit.

I felt like a jerk as I drove around the guy – but I was late for work. What’s more I wasn’t all that keen to discuss what I’d seen with anyone. Least of all a victim. Why could I see this when nobody else apparently could? How often did this happen? And of course, the question that was bugging me most was “Why?” I had a sneaking suspicion that something bad had been averted right before my eyes.

So the day was normal. Cold calling folks trying to persuade them to let me lever insurance onto them. The same usual stuff. Truth was my heart wasn’t in it that day, and it showed. I didn’t get a single bite all day. That’s definitely a personal worst. Hah! How could it not be? You can’t get worse than batting zero for the day really, can you?

Well, that’s what I thought at least. Until, that is, I stopped for gas and a coke on the way home.

It was just starting to get dark, and I filled my car, drove over to the gas station building, and parked.

As I got out of my car, I felt a shove at my back, pushing me into the edge of the door awkwardly, one leg still halfway into the car. I staggered, and swore.

“Don’t move mister. Just pass me your wallet nice and slow, and we’ll get business over with eh?”

The voice punctuated this by sticking me in the small of the back with something hard. It didn’t take a PhD to work out what it most likely was. I was apparently wrong about work being as bad as it got today.

My left arm was hung over the car door, and since my wallet was in my left pants pocket, this wasn’t going to happen that easily, and I said as much.

“Don’t be a wise ass. Keep your hands where I can see them and…” *pop*

I winced, and then risked a glance behind me. The man wore a hooded parka, but I could clearly see his face frozen mid sentence behind me. Despite the thick greasy feel to the air, I began to move away. I turned towards the entrance to see one of the store clerks coming out of it, a young man in his early twenties with a shock of blond spiky hair, like a skater; and after catching sight of me moving towards him, a look of surprise on his face. He stared at me, and at the situation, and then tried to wave me back towards the mugger.

I tried to call out to him that there was no way on this earth that was going to happen, but no matter how much I tried I couldn’t seem to break the sound barrier. Everything I said fell into the silence, vanishing into the void as though I was buried in blankets.

He waved at me more urgently, and then eventually pushed me back towards my frozen assailant. Putting his finger to his lips, as though I could speak anyway, he reached for the gun the guy was holding – which a moment ago had somehow looked a lot more threatening. He popped it right open and removed all the bullets from it, while I looked on amazed; popping one out of the chamber and pocketed it. Then he gently placed it back into Parkaman’s unresisting fingers and finished up by pulling a small can of oil out of his pocket.

Flashing me an evil grin, he squeezed it liberally around the soles of the guy’s shabby sneakers. Then, putting a finger to his lips again, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pad of post-it notes, and a pen. He wrote an address on it, and handed it to me, then pushed me back towards the position I was in before everything had stopped. He was insistent, and despite my reluctance, I had seen him remove the bullets from the gun. After a few minutes of his desperate silent pleading, he put me into more or less the same place.

He stepped back to admire the scene, and held up a hand as I started to move. He wrote another note on the pad: “Was that how you were before stasis?” I blinked, and looked around, and then shrugged and nodded.

Another note: “Have to do. Give him your wallet. I don’t think he’ll get far with it. Go to that address as soon as you can.”

As soon as he was sure that I had read the note, he crumpled it up and pocketed it with the bullets, before walking back into the store.

Suffice to say that after that it was easy. I handed the guy my wallet, he tried to shoot me and, after a couple of clicks, he panicked and ran away. I pulled my wallet from his unconscious hand about six feet away, and went in and reported the incident. They called the police, and it was all a palaver. But, better than the alternative that might have presented itself, I have to consider.

I know, you are wondering what happened to my rescuer. I think he slipped out back – he certainly wasn’t in the store when I went in, and never showed his face while I was still there waiting for the police.

But he’s the reason I met Mister Jenson. “Mister” hah! I still don’t know his first name. Somehow it seems almost sacrilegious to ask. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

Unable to resist, I called in sick the next day, and went to the apartment listed on the scrawled post it note the next day. It was in a roughish area of town, and I felt a little nervous as I drove through it. The paper said it was an apartment in a large tower block. What it did not say was what was that it was run down; but I should have realized it. . A 70’s housing project that was full of bums and dropouts, interspersed with the odd desperate-to-get-out family was going to be more than run down. It was going to be a hole.

I sat in my car at the foot of the block staring at it and the tower for at least ten minutes before I decided to go in. This whole thing was crazy, but I had to find out what it was about. If I walked away now, I might never know. Besides, if it kept happening, it was just going to get creepier.

Much to my surprise, inside the block was better than I’d hoped. The elevator was vandalized – no surprise there – but the place didn’t really stink too badly. In fact it smelled faintly of bleach. It would seem the residents took care of that problem, or at least someone did.

Three floors up, I wended my way along a balcony full of washing, kids toys and the like to find myself face to face with a plain red door, and an apartment number matching the one on the post it note.

The door had to be red didn’t it? I almost expected the route back to be painted blue. “Okay Neo..” I muttered to myself. “Let’s find out how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” I knocked on the door, and waited.

It was answered almost immediately by an elderly black gentleman. Gentleman was the word – there’s no way one could call Mister Jenson “Guy”. For that matter, it seems hard to call him anything other than “Mister Jenson”. He looked at me, gave a faint smile, and stepped back from the door, gesturing inwards. “I’ve been expecting you.” He said softly; his smile working into the creases in his face and highlighting his white stubbly cheeks.

“Er, right.” I managed, intelligently.

I stepped past him into a small apartment. It looked like it was just the three rooms – the bedroom I passed on the way in, and a kitchenette on the one side with a living room on the other.  I moved towards the living room as he closed the door behind me.

He came in following me. I noted his carpet slippers: plaid. Somehow they seemed to suit him.

“Would you like a drink?” he enquired, solicitously.

“Erm. No.” I replied. “Look, I’m not sure what all this is about, but can you tell me what’s going on? I’m assuming that you do know about this weird thing that’s been happening to me. Is it your fault? Can you make it stop?”

He chuckled, and settled into his armchair opposite me, which creaked alarmingly. “Please, sit down Mister Smith. I’ll try to explain.”

Wondering how he knew my name, I sat. I somehow didn’t really seem as if I had a lot of choice.

“It’s never easy to explain, but I’ll try my best. I seem to be the person that the angels round here send folks to.” He chuckled. “I seem to have done this for all of the ones in the area that I know.”

There was an awkward pause before he started again. “We call the state that you must have seen happen temporal stasis. For a short while, time seems to stop. You can move, but nobody else can. You may have found that locks appear to not work – you can open doors that ought to be locked. We still don’t really understand that.”

He steepled his fingers. “How many times has it happened?”

I settled into the chair. In for a dime, in for a dollar. I explained what had happened at the Laundromat, with the broken down car, and being mugged.

He was particularly interested in the mugging, questioning me on it in the smallest detail. He was amazing – my recall of the situation changed a lot as he dug details out that I thought I’d forgotten.

“So.. you haven’t started to feel it then. Knowledge of what’s going to happen to people?” He eventually asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I responded, blankly.

“Well, that’s the way it works eventually. You just know that something is going to happen to someone. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s a bad thing. You can elect to change it – you can stop time, and delay them with something stupid, and that makes the thing in the future not happen.” He looked at me seriously. “Most of us elect to stop bad things happening by some means. Some of… us… well, some seem to delight in turning people into a worse future. I’ve never understood why.”

I stared at him. “Some people arrange for what? Accidents and the like?”

He shrugged. “Power corrupts. Since we’ve never found out what the source of this weird power is, we don’t know who to complain to. We all just do what we feel we should with it. Fortunately most of us are good guys and try to make people’s lives easier.”

I stared at him. “You mean to say that I’m supposed to do this too? Save people and well… stuff?”

He leaned back in his chair, and waved his hands, fingers spread. “I can’t make you do anything. You can just ignore it if you want to.” He gave me a piercing look. I could swear that he was capable of looking through to my soul when he did that. “In my opinion, Mr. Smith, you wouldn’t cope with that for long. I think that you are the sort that would help people; which is why I’m happy to talk to you. If you were the other sort… well, I’d have asked you to leave already.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, suddenly afraid. Was he threatening me?

“Speaking of leaving, I think I should go.”

He smiled warmly. “Of course you can, but you’ll be back. Again and again.” He waved to the door. “Let yourself out, and close the door firmly would you? It sticks. Oh, by the way, remember you can’t save all of the people all of the time.”

I frowned, but rather than start another conversation I didn’t want to get into, I stood, politely said goodbye, and left. Banging the door firmly shut behind me.

I walked down the concrete stairs pensively. This was all too weird. I couldn’t cope with it. I crossed to the car and looked back at the building. Some kids were kicking a soccer ball around in the car park, and as I watched, one of them kicked the ball awry, and sent it my way. I bent to pick it up and looked at the kids. One of them, a sandy haired child, had his back to the building, sitting “in goal” as it were. And I just knew that something was about to fall on him. I looked up automatically. The balconies were clear. I shook my head, and was about to throw the ball, and then thought again.

Instead I beckoned him over.

He came trotting on over, and I handed the ball to him. “Be careful where you two send this. If you ding a car, someone will be after your hide!” I chastised him.

He was about to reply, probably to give me some smart ass answer, when he was interrupted by a scream from behind him. I looked up to see someone plummet from the top of the building to the ground, lying crumpled in the kid’s goal mouth.

All three of us stared at the man, and then both boys began to scream. I ran over to the guy, but there really wasn’t anything I could do.

After that of course, it all became a bit of a blur. The police arrived, and for the second time in two days, I found myself giving statements and such. They concluded it was a suicide after they found a note on the body. I sat there in my car with the door open and wondered how I knew to pull the kid over.

Jenson’s words kept coming back to me. He was right. There was nothing I could have done to save the guy. He had decided to kill himself.

When the entire hullabaloo had calmed down, I went back upstairs, and knocked on the red door again. He opened the door, and smiled at me.

“How did you know?” I shot at him straight away.

“How did you know?” he countered.

I blinked. “You mean, it’s going to be like that now all the time?”

He nodded, sagely. “Would you rather the kid had died as well?”

So that’s how I became an angel. Or a leprechaun, or a spirit, or a changer. Different cultures call them different things.

But the next time you have a flat, or a sock goes missing or someone flags you down for long and laborious directions that make you late for work, don’t get mad. It’s entirely possible that one of my companions did you a favor you never even knew about. I’d appreciate a little goodwill from time to time. It makes things a lot easier.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pull the plug on your alarm clock. I think you might want to be late for work tomorrow.