Stop | Stop; Go Duology Book 1

chapter two: cass

The orphanage is quiet. Christmas always is. But today is the day I can leave this place. Adoption never happened for me, the years coming to pass as slowly as possible for me. When I move, time stops around me, making it difficult to do much with anyone. I've spent my life in isolation, away from everyone else in my own little room, and no one talks to me. No one can. If my mouth moves, time ceases to tick. My curse.

It's finally the moment where leave this place and head to somewhere I can be this strange person I am. I want to find my birth mother. Maybe she can tell me what's wrong with me.

Or perhaps I'm all on my own.

I pack my things, having to use extra force to place them where I want in the small, ragged bag I've had for—forever, it seems, as the world doesn't act the same when there's no time to move it.

Something I don't understand about my powers is that they only effect time when an exterior part of me moves. The rest of my body, constantly moving and pumping blood and creating waste, it continues to move even when I still, even when I'm breathing heavily. But what I've seen, that's the only thing my powers are able to do, aside from stop and start time. Then there are these side effects: if I don't move for a good while, my body begins to spasm. And then when I move for too long, I start to feel sick. Of course, the effects have waned and it's hard to notice anymore, but I can't do anything else with my powers, and it's been that way forever. Well, since I turned thirteen, at least.

I wish I had the guts to leave earlier than this, but I didn't know what to do. Now that I'm eighteen, I have no choice. They'd kick me out, time frozen or not.

I say my goodbyes to everyone around me, fully aware they can't hear, moving about the frozen orphanage and talking out loud. No one here as ever heard my voice, and no one here, I don't think, ever will.

I dart into the office and pull my file from a cabinet drawer. I'd read it a million times: left on the front-step in the middle of summer, with nothing but a name tag, like something from a movie. I'm sure it has some clues I'm overlooking about my mother... it has to, right?

I've been able to watch movies. I'd just have to sit really still and be super quiet. I couldn't laugh, I couldn't cry... all those things would make time stop and take the motion picture away from me.

I make my way outside, the sun just rising over the horizon, but frozen as the small clouds overhead begin to leak. I touch the raindrops, moving them like curtains, and smile a bittersweet smile as my butt finds the bus stop seat. Everything shifts into motion once again, and I watch as life takes place without me. Beautiful, imperfect life with no strange powers outside of my own. I truly feel alone.

There's a sound at my right that makes me jump and I cling to my file for dear life, afraid of what it is that has suddenly appeared beside me. But there was no one, not even a bird to defecate. Instead, there's another manila folder, just like the one I hold in my hands, but less ragged and used. It's very pristine and nice. But what is it doing here? Maybe someone left it when I wasn't looking? Or it was here before?

That couldn't be.

I look around, but nothing tells me there was anyone going in the opposite direction of where I sit. Almost no one's out here at this time, except for a few stray cars belonging to those who have to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn to go to work.

Feeling like I shouldn't open the file, I reach for it and crack it with full curiosity blossoming. Boy, am I a mischievous little girl.

But what I see inside... it makes my heart stop beating and my breath catch in my throat. The world moves around me again as I still, staring at the information before me. I hear the bus screech to a stop.

Asylum room #143
C a s s a n d r a B u r r H o d g e s

The name... the face...

They were mine.

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