Time Stops When You Kiss Me by Noam Rabinovitch

Time Stops When You Kiss Me by Noam Rabinovitch

The clock on the wall appeared frozen in time!

Staring at it for a lengthy interval, Al could barely detect a hint of movement of its hands. Either his eyes were playing tricks on him, or time really was slowing down as he waited with growing impatience for the doctor to see him. The waiting room was mired in a state of unimaginable desolation at that late hour of the day, with the only other body occupying the near-empty space being a young man sitting at the far end of the room and idly flipping through one of the waiting room magazines while sneaking peeks at Al whenever he thought he was being inconspicuous about it. The telephone started ringing, and a cranky receptionist answered it in a grating voice that made Al squirm in his seat.

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to recall the chain of events that led him to his present coordinates. The day had started well enough: he had met his friend, Vigo, for lunch at Andrew & Maida’s–one of his favorite dives, a place so greasy that one could smell the animal fat before the door opened. It was the kind of place that caused one’s shoes to stick to the floor and make clicking sounds with every step. And the food? Fast, cheap, and heavenly (at least in Al’s opinion).

But, truth be told, it was the portion sizes that kept Al coming back again and again: club sandwiches stacked so high that a single toothpick was insufficient to keep them together; french fries so numerous, they overflowed the sides of the plate and frequently fell to the floor; and the pickle–Good God, that pickle! What a monster! In more ways than one, the pickle was the pièce de résistance, and Al always savored it and kept it for last.

He and Vigo were chatting at the counter when Maida put the food in front of them, declaring semi-officially that the time for idle talk was over; now was the time to eat! And eat they did–wolfing down their sandwiches, tossing in fries, shoveling clumps of cole slaw, and washing the whole mixture down with soda sucked up through straws from colorful cans.

Al’s undivided attention was focused on the stern of his gigantic submarine sandwich when Vigo offhandedly remarked that a bib might be in order. Momentarily not able to talk with the sandwich occupying most of his mouth, Al merely snickered and wiped sandwich sauce from his shirt with a handful of paper napkins. The submarine was slowly going down, its mission nearly complete. When at last it disappeared down Al’s gullet, a low gurgling sound could soon be heard from deep within his stomach. The gurgle gradually built up in both strength and anomaly to become a rumble loud enough to cause some restaurant patrons to turn their heads and stare with some measure of alarm at the source of the horrible sound.

“You okay, bud?” Vigo asked after the noise had subsided.

“Haven’t been myself lately,” Al replied with a couple of thumps to his stomach, testing it for more strange behavior.

“Might be indigestion,” Vigo suggested.

“Might be…” Al concurred.

Not one to be deterred by a bit of indigestion, Al shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention back to the unfinished business sitting in front of him: his beautiful pickle. He picked up his fork, carefully inserted it into the green behemoth so that none of its zesty juice accidentally squirted itself into his eye, hoisted it up, and, with the near-perfect precision of a self-styled pickle-wrangler, ate the monster up in a single gulp!

As soon as the pickle had settled in his stomach, he could feel something wasn’t right. The gurgling sound slowly built up again to a rumble, but this time it was accompanied by violent spasms that made him grab his gut in agony. The noise got louder and louder until everyone in the restaurant had to stop what they were doing in a desperate attempt to block the noise out with their hands over their ears (some going as far as tearing strips of paper napkins and stuffing them right in). The overhead lights momentarily blinked off and then back on again, signaling beyond any doubt that an extraordinary event was about to take place.

And then it happened! A deafening clap rang through the restaurant like thunder, sending windows and even sections of the roof flying out in all directions. Pandemonium ensued and people abruptly sprang up from their tables and swiftly made for the exit. Even Andrew and Maida, believing some natural disaster had just struck, chose to abandon their beloved restaurant in search of safe ground.

Al and Vigo remained in their seats, but Al could tell from Vigo’s face that something terrible had happened.

“Al…” Vigo said in a trembling voice, “y-y-you’re…”

“What?” Al demanded. “Spit it out!”

“You’re a…BLACK WHOLE!”

“Huh?” Al said in genuine bewilderment.

“I mean…you’re wholly black! Look…” Vigo grabbed a spoon off the counter and held it for Al to view his reflection. Al was nearly thrown off his seat by what he saw: his entire frame, head to toe, was completely blacked out–as if he had fallen into a gigantic inkwell. With no hue, shade, or tint visible at all, his body’s only distinguishing feature was its outline.

“How did this happen?” Al’s black-filled outline asked.

“Must have been the pickle!” Vigo answered.

“This is freaky!”

“You don’t look good, Al!”

“I don’t look anything! I’m completely featureless!”

“The doctor will see you now.”

Al was suddenly transported back to the waiting room with the words he had been waiting for nearly an hour to hear. The waiting room was now completely deserted–the young man sneaking peeks at him was long gone. Al’s black-filled outline got up from its seat and followed the receptionist’s pointing finger down a long corridor, stopping in front of a closed door. The sign on the door read: Dr. Arlan Scag, M.D., G.P., L.G.M.

Before Al’s outline could knock on the door, it was pre-emptively opened by a frock-wearing older gentleman with wild hair who squinted at what he saw through wire-rimmed spectacles.

“You are the singular patient, yes?”

“Yes…I’m alone.” Al’s outline answered with a measure of confusion at his interlocutor’s meaning.

“I’ve been expecting you!” Dr. Scag said with more than a hint of excitement in his voice. “Come in…come in, please!”

Al’s outline followed Dr. Scag into his office and took a seat at the near side of a big paper-strewn wooden desk; the doctor continued his half-orbit to the far side of the desk before plopping himself down in a big swivel chair.

“Now then,” the doctor said as he picked up his pen and notepad, “tell me exactly what happened!”

“Well…I was having lunch with my friend, Vigo.”

“Where was this?”

“Andrew & Maida’s, near the hunting gear shop off O’Brien Beltway.”

The doctor scribbled it down. “Do you eat there often?”

“Couple times a week, maybe.”

More scribbling. “What did you have?”

“Meatball sub…fries…slaw…soda.”

“That’s it?”

“And a pickle!”

“Ah ha!” the doctor exclaimed and wrote it all down. “Do you know what was in the sandwich?”

“Hmm…” Al’s outline thought for a moment, crossing its arm outlines pensively so that they disappeared into the black void of its torso. “Well…meatballs, obviously. Cheese. And…”

Dr. Scag raised his eyes from his notepad. “Yes?”

“I believe they put a secret sauce in there…gives it a little bit of tang…”

“Secret sauce…” the doctor scribbled furiously. “Was the bread soft or crusty?”

“Pretty crusty, and to be honest–a little of the stale side.”

“So you were eating this when it happened?”

“Well…not exactly.” Al’s arm outlines reappeared from beyond the dark void to gesticulate as he continued his explanation. “I had just finished the sandwich when all of a sudden I felt something strange in the pit of my stomach–like indigestion or bloating.”

“Any flatulence?”

“Quite a bit.”

More scribbling. “Then what happened?”

“Well…I waited for a while until my stomach settled down, which it eventually did. Or so I thought, because when I ate the pickle my stomach started heaving again and making strange sounds. The last thing I remember was hearing a loud noise, like an explosion.”

The outline pointed at itself with two outline forefingers before adding: “Then this happened!”

Dr. Scag nodded in silence as he busily wrote it all down.

“What’s wrong with me, doctor?”

“This is a very strange case,” the doctor said as he looked up from his notepad. “To be perfectly honest–I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

The doctor then got up from his seat and darted towards a bookshelf. “I seem to recall reading about something like this once…” he mused while searching for a book. “It was an old Soviet book, translated into bad English…I never gave it much credence, really…”

Al’s outline shifted in its seat uncomfortably, waiting nervously as the doctor slowly advanced his search from one book to the next. The arm outlines disappeared once again as the hands were brought together, with the thumbs obscurely twiddling round and round.

“Ah ha!” the doctor exclaimed at last before grabbing a book off the shelf. He opened the large volume and leafed through it as he returned to his desk. He continued leafing after sitting down, using his thumb to riffle through the pages until he arrived at the chapter he had been searching for. He then put the book down in front of Al’s outline and motioned for it to have a look.

The outline leaned forward and read out loud: “Chapter 38–The Curious Case of the Transmogrification of the Gluttonous Traveler.” It looked up. “What does this mean, doctor?”

“Like I said, it’s in bad English. Simply put, it proposes a theory whereby a body–such as yourself–might collapse in on itself if the center were to hold enough dense matter.”

The outline’s forefinger scratched the top of its head. “Huh?”

“Let me try to perform an experiment before I give you my final diagnosis…”

The doctor ripped a sheet of paper from his notepad and crumpled it into a ball. “Ready?” he said and tossed it at Al’s outline without waiting for a response. The paper ball disappeared into the black void, causing the outline to shake uncontrollably as if it had been hit by a cast iron anvil! At length, the shaking subsided, and the outline gradually returned to its former stable state.

“What just happened?” it demanded in a slightly whiny tone.

“Just as I thought…” the doctor said, returning to his scribbling. He muttered under his breath as he recorded his findings into his notepad: “Paper ball entered subject’s event horizon and was instantly lost in the gravitational abyss…”

The outline’s whiny tone became more pronounced: “What did you do to me, doctor? I demand answers!”

Dr. Scag put his notepad down. “I know it’s hard to believe,” he addressed his whiny patient, “but in your gut, you are harboring a dense core of semi-digested material that is sucking the very fabric of space and time. Nothing can escape it!”

Then the doctor leaned forward and added with a finger raised purely for dramatic effect, “You have become a bottomless pit!”

“What did you call me?” the outline said with a whininess that seemed to have reached its peak.

The doctor reclined back in his chair and rubbed his hands in glee. “You are a miracle! A freak of nature! I need to run more tests, of course…” he said, mostly to himself.

“Tests?” the outline said and abruptly stood up. “I don’t think so, Doc!”

The outline then made a beeline straight for the door, just barely in time for the doctor to notice it had left its seat.

“Wait!” the doctor pleaded. “You can’t walk out of here in your condition!”

“I feel fine, Doc. You know what? I feel pretty darn good, actually! Thanks for the diagnosis, but I think I want a second opinion.” And with that, the outline reached for the door handle.

“NO!” the doctor cried, but he was too late. As soon as the outline touched the handle the entire door got sucked into its dark void, leaving an empty doorway in its place.

“Oops,” the outline said, momentarily vibrating from the aftereffect of swallowing up the door. “Sorry about the door, Doc.”

“Just try not to touch anything else on your way out!” the doctor snapped.

A moment later, the outline was gone.

Dr. Scag slumped back in his seat and let out a heavy sigh. “There goes my Nobel prize!”

& & &

The bus was filled to capacity, with nearly all its seats taken. As it wound its way through the maze-like urban landscape, it kept gaining more and more mass in its dense interior, raising its temperature and pressure to such levels that many passengers silently prayed they reached their stop before the entire bus burst at the seams.

Al, having gotten on the bus early enough to acquire one of its precious rush-hour seats, couldn’t help but notice that, in stark contrast to the rest of the bus, the seat right next to his was conspicuously empty, as if fellow passengers were going out of their way to avoid sitting next to him.

But then again–if one was honest about it–who could rightly blame them? After all, who in their right mind would want to risk sitting right next to a bottomless pit (as Dr. Scag had so inelegantly put it)? Absolutely no one with their head on straight, that’s for sure! Why, you would have had to be some sort of lunatic to get so close to a featureless outline, wouldn’t you? Al couldn’t help but agree and continued to self-deprecate for many minutes more until a squeaky, mouse-like voice roused him from his negative thoughts.

“Excuse me, young man…is the seat next to you taken?”

And there she was: an angel in little-old-lady form! A blessed little creature who had only recently gotten onto the bus. She pointed with a wizened finger to the empty seat next to Al’s, and for the first time since he had left Dr. Scag’s office, Al felt (almost) human again. All it took was one person’s mere acknowledgment of him to make him feel like a person again rather than an outline.

“Why, certainly!” he said cheerfully and motioned with the outline of his hand for her to sit down. As she took her seat, Al noticed that she seemed somewhat short-sighted because she kept squinting her eyes as she looked at him. But regardless of her motives, sit next to him she did, and at no point thereafter did she indicate that a reconsideration of her decision was forthcoming.

Al was steadily regaining his optimism and could feel his spirits lifting higher and higher with every new stop, as more and more passengers disembarked and fewer and fewer eyes fixed themselves upon him. But just as he was becoming sure that the worst of his troubles was behind him, something terrible happened that caused his day to become infinitely worse–a disaster of truly cosmic proportions!

As the bus veered on a sharp turn, all its passengers veered along with it; Al happened to veer a little too much and accidentally bumped into the little old lady sitting beside him. The result of this tragic chain of events was all too predictable–the little old lady screamed before getting sucked into Al’s black-filled outline and disappearing forever as if she had never existed!

The bus immediately screeched to a halt. The driver looked back in alarm.

“What was that?” he cried.

“That poor old lady just disappeared into that blob!” one of the passengers remarked, dutifully pointing to Al’s outline.

“I saw it too!” another passenger chimed in. “That thing ate her up like spaghetti!”

“I didn’t eat her up,” Al’s outline tried to explain to the increasingly flustered crowd around him. “She crossed my event horizon. It was an accident.”

“Oh, yeah?” the first passenger said with a raised eyebrow. “Well, maybe you should be a little more careful with that event horizon of yours…don’t you think?”

The other passenger added: “Yeah! She was just minding her own business!”

The bus driver eyed Al’s outline severely. “Hey, buddy…” he said in a voice that betrayed the fact that he wasn’t paid nearly enough to deal with something like this, “I don’t want any trouble, okay? Maybe you ought to get off here…”

Al’s outline sighed and got up from its seat. “I don’t want any trouble either…” it said, heading to the door.

The door opened, and the outline disembarked. The bus promptly sped off.

The outline sighed again and started walking home. The street was empty at that late hour of the day, which was just as well since it meant that no more accidents were in the immediate offing. The outline ambled along the empty sidewalk, passing dark and empty storefronts, feeling low and sorry for itself–feeling like an outcast who would never again be accepted into polite society.

And just when the outline’s self-esteem seemed like it might never recover from its nadir, something caught its eye that made it forget about its troubles, if only momentarily: a couple of puppies happily wagged their tails and yapped at it through a pet store window. The outline couldn’t help but take notice that the two pups didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest by its appearance.

Al suddenly felt like himself again and knelt down to have a closer look. The pups became even more excited and started pawing at the glass window.

“Hey there, little fuzz balls…” Al said to the increasingly excited pups. “Friendly little guys, huh? You’d never judge me by my appearance, would you?”

As if in response, the pups began to yelp. Al couldn’t help but laugh.

“A little lonely in there, are ya?”

Al reached out his hand to touch the window. But rather than bumping against the glass, his fingers continued moving as if the glass wasn’t there at all! Magically, his hand traveled right through, inching forward until it was close enough for the pups to jump up and touch it. And just as they were about to do precisely that, he swiftly withdrew his hand back outside the window.

“NO!” he exclaimed, partly to the pups but mostly to himself. “I can’t! I mustn’t!”

The pups frenziedly pawed at the glass, and Al waited for them to calm down.

“Sorry, little guys,” he said to the sad-eyed pups. “But you’d turn into dog spaghetti if you touched me, and that would really put a damper on an already horrible day!”

It suddenly dawned on Al that his bizarre condition might be permanent and that never again would he be able to do simple things like riding the bus or petting a dog. All his hopes and dreams disintegrated into dust like the aftermath of a stellar collision. He became an outline again, an opaque blob destined to be shunned and consigned to the margins of society–seemingly forever!

The outline started walking again and didn’t stop until it arrived home. It closed the door with a loud thud and turned the key to lock it shut, and only then could it feel as if the weight of the universe had finally lifted off its shoulders.

Later that evening, as the outline was relaxing on the sofa and watching its favorite TV show–Waltzing with the Stars–a commercial came on that caught its attention.

“Are you feeling down?” an official-sounding voice asked.

“You could say that,” the outline responded.

“Is life handing you lemons?” the commercial voice continued.

“Rotten ones–sure!”

“Do you need someone to talk to?”

“Maybe…”

“Call the number on the screen right now. We’re here to listen.”

The outline picked up the phone and dialed the number. A moment later, a voice sounded through the earpiece.

“Omega Help Line…” the tired-sounding voice said, “this is Cassie. How may I help you today?”

“Uh…” the outline started, searching for something to say. “Hi…”

“Oh, hello. How are you doing today?”

“Not too good.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like to talk about it?”

And talk about it the outline did, relaying everything that had transpired on that awful day. So good did it feel to get it all out of its system that the outline failed to notice that Cassie, on the other end, had barely even said a word the last half hour or so. When the telling of the day’s events was done, the outline summarily told Cassie that she was welcome to end the call if she’d like to, on account of it probably being the weirdest story she had ever heard.

“Not even close!” she said bluntly. “I’ve heard things over the years that would make your story seem like a day at the park!”

“But I’m a monster!”

“You don’t sound like a monster to me.”

“Wait till you see me!” the outline said with a self-deprecating snicker. “I’m a freak!”

“I never judge a book by its cover,” she said matter-of-factly. “Besides–I like freaks.”

Then she added something which made the outline raise its obscured eyebrows: “I consider myself to be one!”

“Well, how’s this for being a freak–if I were to touch you, you would immediately turn into spaghetti and disappear forever inside of me!”

Through the earpiece, the outline suddenly heard a torrent of uproarious laughter!

“What’s funny?”

“I’m sorry…” Cassie said after her laughter had subsided enough to enable her to speak. “I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that that’s probably the most romantic thing anyone has said to me in the last year!”

“Really? That’s pretty sad…”

Cassie laughed again. “Tell me about it! Who’s the freak now, huh?”

The outline sighed. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“Look…it’s not that I don’t believe you. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, right? We all look like freaks in our own ways. But it’s who we are. Embrace yourself!”

“If I embraced myself, it would probably tear a hole in the space-time continuum!”

Cassie started laughing again, and this time the outline couldn’t help but join in. They continued their conversation until it was well past their respective bedtimes, and when both of them were too tired to continue talking, they bade each other good night. But before disconnecting the call, Cassie made one last remark: “Hey–I just realized you never told me your name!”

“W-w-well…” the outline mumbled awkwardly, “I…well…I’m a little self-conscious about it…”

“Why?”

“I sort of have an identity crisis right now…”

“Come on!” she demanded. “Tell me!”

“Oh, very well…” the outline said with a sigh. “It’s Al. My name is Al.”

“Al…” she repeated before adding with a playful giggle: “As in…short for Alpha!”

& & &

It was a magnificent summer’s day, without so much as a wisp of cloud in the azure midday sky. With so many reasons to be outside and enjoy the fabulous weather, Vigo couldn’t help but wonder why the park was so desolate. Not that he was complaining, of course, having the park nearly all to himself and his dog, affording the big mutt an extra-long leash to sniff one landmark after another in search of a suitable one to leave its ‘mark’. After a lengthy search, the dog appeared to have finally decided on a good-sized tree and was about to lift its leg when a tug on the leash distracted it from its tree-marking duties. Looking up at its master, the dog saw Vigo gazing at something some distance away. Finally, there was another tug on the leash.

“Let’s go, Lupus,” Vigo said to his dog, and they started marching toward a little pond near the center of the park. As they got nearer, they noticed a strange scene unfolding at the pond’s edge: a small, wiry, curly-haired woman was sitting next to what could only be described as a huge black-filled outline of a man! She handed him a sandwich from a picnic basket.

“Al…that’s your fifth!” she said in indignation as he took the sandwich.

“I know…I know…” he said, unwrapping it.

“You’re becoming supermassive!” she protested.

“One more won’t kill me,” he said, and a moment later the sandwich disappeared into his black void.

“Maybe not,” she replied, “but it might kill the rest of us!”

“AL…IS THAT YOU?” a voice called them from afar. They turned their heads and saw Vigo approaching them with his dog.

“Hey, Vigo!” Al called back with a wave of his outlined hand. “How’ve you been?”

“Well, I’ll be…” Vigo said with incredulity as he gazed at Al. “I thought you were dead or something!”

“Nope, still alive and kicking,” Al said matter-of-factly. “I’m just a little…different.”

“How come you never called me?”

“Sorry about that. Been a little busy lately…”

“Who’s this?” Vigo asked nosily, indicating the girl sitting next to Al.

“This is the love of my life–Cassie.”

Cassie smiled and waved hello.

“Well, I’ll be!” Vigo said with fresh incredulity.

“We met over the phone,” Al said as he looked into Cassie’s eyes. “She convinced me that I wasn’t a monster, and the rest–as the saying goes–is history.”

“You fell for this guy?” Vigo asked Cassie with a jerk of his thumb in Al’s direction.

“I was irresistibly attracted,” she said without taking her eyes off Al.

“Attracted?” Vigo sneered. “There’s literally nothing to see here!”

“That’s what makes him so mysterious!” she said with a smile. “Don’t you think?”

It was then that Lupus started barking in the direction of the water. Vigo looked at the dog’s quarry and saw something so strange that it left him uncharacteristically speechless: at the water’s edge, two small human forms were spinning around and pulsating light so intense that Vigo had to shield his eyes with his hand.

“What’s that?” he cried out.

“Oh, that’s our twin boys–“ Al said, “Leo and Alpha Jr.”

“Why are they doing that?” Vigo asked, still keeping his hand up against the pulsating light.

“Well…they’re two and a half,” Al said, exchanging a knowing smile with Cassie. “It’s just something they like to do.”

“They can go on for hours!” Cassie added.

“Hours, eh? Well, it’s been fun catching up…” Vigo said with surprising urgency. “Let’s have lunch sometime, okay?”

Before Al could respond, Vigo and Lupus turned around and hastefully departed the scene. When the retreating figures had become mere dots on the horizon, Cassie turned to Al and said with a playful smile: “Have I told you recently how much I love you?”

“Only about fifteen times a day!” Al said without a hint of sarcasm.

Cassie leaned in, and Al followed her lead. What transpired next could only be described in metaphysical terms: a few miles away, Dr. Scag felt the walls of his office begin to shake and wasted no time in grabbing his notepad to record what was happening (muttering to himself that the end of the world had surely arrived); in a sun-drenched flat, two dogs purchased as pups from a nearby pet shop got roused up from their afternoon naps by strange distant sounds, immediately causing them to sit up and howl back in response; and Lupus was about to lift his leg and proceed with his tree-marking duties when he and Vigo became perfectly motionless like a couple of mannequins. All around Cassie and Al, everything seemed to have frozen to a standstill–even time itself–and this phenomenon propagated outward and affected everything within a radius of many miles as their lips met and became locked for what seemed like an eternal heartbeat.

Daring to open her eyes after a couple of millennia had passed, Cassie made the startling discovery that she was observing herself from a third-person perspective and could see the back of her own head. How strange! As she accelerated closer and closer to the speed of light, Al became her portal to the unknown, transporting her to the far reaches of the universe and allowing her to glimpse its darkest and most ancient mysteries. As the centuries ticked by for her at the pace of a wristwatch seconds hand, Cassie underwent a metamorphosis akin to rebirth during which her entropy became balanced with the rest of the universe–a blissful feeling of total surrender to the cosmos that she wished could last forever.

But when time began to move again after an interval that could have been as short as a nanosecond or as long as ten million years, Callie gradually became aware that she was back at the water’s edge at that city park on that beautiful winter’s day. She slowly opened her eyes, feeling as if she had awoken from an eternal slumber, to gaze into the mysterious face of her one and only Lambda.

“Boy…” she said dreamily, “you’re a great kisser, you know that?”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Noam Rabinovitch 2025