The Supervillain

The baby has crowned, its red flesh visible through mats of slick black hair, so I put up my hand with the elbow twisted just so, willing the pulse to flow through me and escape my palm and smack into reality and stop time. I scream as I do this. I always scream when I do this. It hurts, but not in a way I can explain to people who do not have the Gift. It hurts the way a profoundly loud bass note penetrates your sternum, or the way a heartbeat feels suddenly out of place. It hurts from a low, deep place in the innermost sanctum of my body. But sometimes it’s worth it, because when I create this pain, I also stop time.

It’s not free of effort. My arm must remain thrust out — right or left, it doesn’t seem to matter — and my palm forward and my fingers splayed and my elbow torqued into a slightly uncomfortable position. There’s a vibration I can’t explain taking place as the world is frozen, shimmering and shivering against the powerful forces of time. I can’t do this indefinitely. The longest I’ve held time was … well, how could I measure that? Felt like 15 minutes maybe, but could have been five. You know how time is when you’re unable to measure it. Everything feels slower. But also everything feels nothing at all. I’m frozen, too. I am not above time. I am merely the pebble in its cogs.

I made sure to lock my gaze on my son’s head before I stopped time, so I am still looking at the horror show of his crowning skull within the distended, unfolded, exploded flower of my wife’s pudendum. The doula is helpfully crouched just below the action, squatting in a way that seemed effortless even before I removed time from the room and therefore all strain from all bodies. Frozen time doesn’t feel weightless for me, coursing as I am with the pushing pulse of the Gift, but I like to imagine it does for everyone else, or that they feel nothing at all. I don’t like to imagine anyone in pain because of my actions, even though now, if I could shift my eyes to my wife’s face, I know it would be contorted with excruciating and hot agony.

She doesn’t know I can do this. Nobody does. The nature of the Gift is its invisibility, its undetectable blink of nothing within the flow of everyone else’s time. I’ve slyly questioned people after holding them to see if they/ve noticed anything amiss, even in the vaguest way like a deja vu, but the only thing ever amiss to anyone was the nonsense of my questions.

Early in our relationship, I froze my wife tilted upside down. We were cheekily playing on a swing set in an empty playground. She’s small enough that she can still enjoy the swings, and I pushed her as a father would, harder for higher, both of us giggling at this willful return to youthful pleasures. I used one mighty stiff-armed push to twist my elbows and scream and freeze her at the height of her swing, legs up in the air, head tossed back so far her hair fell in a straight line to nearly scrape the ground below, face frozen in a full-cheeked smile with her squinted eyes slightly moist with joyful tears. I held her there for as long as I could — this was, I believe, the longest I ever held time — and noticed the blood did not rush to her head. This is why I don’t think she feels pain now.

Maybe that’s why I’ve done this. To relieve her pain just before the rush of joy she will feel — we both will feel — at this miraculous birth. Unless something is wrong? I cannot know, although the head looks normal enough. Nobody can know until the infant emerges and breathes and wails and shakes its tiny limbs. And even then. Years from now, the wrong may come. Humans are time bombs like that.

Maybe I’ve done this to give myself a metaphorical deep breath before my life changes forever and I’m responsible for this sliver of flesh about to emerge. Wow. He’s really crowning. I thought when I had flung my arm out that it was just a small segment of skull present but now I can see that he was free nearly down to the miniature ears, a full and bulbous semi-firm head just waiting for the … no, wait, it can’t be.

My son is emerging. Without sound, he has slid forth and his head and one shoulder are free. His head has fallen back. The doula, frozen obediently, has not reacted to cradle it. His eyes, black and shimmering, are open. He is … he is looking at me.

He is blinking.

I cannot move. Not unless I release the Gift, expel the pulse I’m holding like a breath. My son, my infant son, opens his mouth and wails, the sound visibly fighting like a sonic boom through the air directly to my face and finally reaching my ears where it explodes into existence as a baby’s scream. Time is moving slowly for him, so slowly, but it does move. Look, his eyes are closing. No, not all the way. He is squeezing them in effort. An arm is coming free.

He is going to fall. His fragile body is going to hit the linoleum floor of the birthing center and his soft bones are going to crack. I need to save him. I need to release the pulse, but once I do, time will rush, lurching forward, and it will be too late. He will only fall faster! The doula’s reactions will be too slow. I will kill him. But if he goes as slowly as his scream, if time remains gentle and gravity dampened by its slow procedure, perhaps the impact will also be lessened? Maybe, by holding the Gift to him, I can save his life?

The strain is already great. While I don’t feel it in my muscles, I do feel it in the deep down of my inside, the home of the lowest heartbeat, the source of the Gift, the pulse, the time-stopper. Each non-moment that passes holds a heavier moment back, and they pile up like weights on a barbell. With enough concentration, I can hold a lot, but in my present panic, I can feel myself wanting to slip, wanting to release.

My baby is loose now and sliding backwards from the birth canal. My wife’s body is responding dumbly, releasing its tension in ways that I cannot predict; will this hurt her? Will she catch fire when time snaps back and her flesh is in a new position? Nobody has ever moved before, voluntarily or not. My son is beginning to fall.

My son is beginning to fall. His arms are flung back and his head tilted upside down as he slowly slides. He is looking at me again. What I know of infant anatomy tells me he cannot see clearly enough or far enough to make out my face as anything but a riot of messy color but I cannot shake the feeling that he is staring at me with accusatory eyes. His slack and toothless mouth seems to have fallen into a sneer. The only thing suspending him is the fact that his legs are still tucked inside my wife. He looks as if he’s at the height of a push on a swing.

My scream completes. Time has resumed. My arm falls heavily and I hunch over as if to vomit. There are other screams in the room. I am faint to the point of blindness. Blood rushes through my ears, muffling the sounds, but it’s impossible to ignore the chaos of voices and the panic and the shouting.

With great effort, I lift my head slightly to see my son, limp on the floor at the foot of the bed, born somehow above time and now, just as quickly, out of it.

I roar and stop time again but can only hold it for a microsecond and I collapse to my knees behind the doula, who is tenderly but swiftly trying to lift my son’s body to my wife’s arms. A heaving breath and my ears unclog.

“What’s happening?” I hear my wife yell. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, I’m so … sorry, he was right there and then … I don’t know.”

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s happened?”

“God, I don’t know!”

There are no more Gifts in this world. Not for me. Not for anyone. My son is dead. I have a Curse.