[ WP ] You wake up on what promises to be an average kind of day only to discover time has completely stopped for everyone and everything except you . Minutes later , your cell phone rings .

`` We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please be patient and normal service will be restored shortly.'' 
 
 `` Hello?'' 
 
 No response. 
 
 `` H-ey?'' My voice breaks. It has n't done that since I was in high school, trying to learn how to talk to girls. `` I think there's been a problem.'' 
 
 I press 0 on my phone, in a vague hope that maybe it will get me an operator. Instead, it just produces a god-awful blaring tone and before I can stop myself, I instinctively hit the button to end the call. 
 
 My breaths are coming faster and my chest hurts now. I'm afraid I might be hyperventilating. Is that even possible? Should n't the air be as frozen as the picture on the TV or the cars I can see out of my window? 
 
 Maybe things I touch still function normally! 
 
 I seize on the mad hope and dash outside. It's the evening, but I still have to jog more than a block before I find a person outside. It's someone I do n't recognize: a balding man in a wife-beater and shorts, watering his lawn. Sluicing gems of water hang suspended in the air, shattering the fading sunlight into infant rainbows. The waterer is wearing a pair of fuzzy pink house shoes that look several sizes too small for him. 
 
 My first instinct is to seize the man and shake him, to demand that he share this frozen world with me. Instead, I reach out and touch one of the gravity-defying globules of water. I push it around and it breaks up as my finger passes through it, but it otherwise behaves nothing like a liquid should. 
 
 Now I'm scared, haunted by images of my fingers passing through the man in similar fashion, flesh and blood offering no more resistance than pudding. I ca n't bring myself to- 
 
 `` What the hell are you doing!'' The man shouts at me as sound and sensation come rushing back. Water sprays all over my legs before he can jerk the hose away. I'm standing in his garden. 
 
 I run for it, laughing as his shouts follow my retreating back. Whatever it was, it's over. But... my phone *must* have the number I was called from saved in it. There are mysteries to be solved! 
 
 `` Normal service has been restored. We thank you for your patience.'' It was a message left on my voicemail. The number for both calls just shows up as 111-111-1111. Even when I try to call back, I just get the blaring tone. 
 
 In the year since then, I've decided it was all a daydream. I think its better that way. After all, if it was just a dream, I can still pretend to be sane, even if my heart skips a beat whenever everything goes quiet. 
 
 Like now. 
 
 There is no sound, except the ringing of my phone.
