New Blog Fiction: The Millisecond Men

Welcome, like my past blog novel project, this hopefully short science fiction piece is just something I'm making up as I go along.
Enjoy.

THE MILLISECOND MEN

by D.R. MacMaster

Bob new that it was not going to be an ordinary day when he spilled the coffee and it didn't hit the floor. The coffee just hung there, the sunlight from the kitchen window reflecting on the thick, glossy black parts of the suspended spill, passing through the thin brown other parts. Bob got down on his knees, looked all around it, then under it. It was coffee all right, but it sure as hell wasn't acting like it. Bob poked it with a finger, it was hot, and it started to flow around his finger. Bob pulled back his finger and the coffee froze, apparently solid, and still suspended in mid-air above his canary yellow linoleum. A small hot trickle ran down Bob's finger. He shook it off, the droplets freezing in mid air. Now this was getting weird. "Honey," Bob called out to his wife Jennifer, "you really should see this... I never saw anything like this before." Now answer. Bob rose to his feet. She had to have heard him, he couldn't hear the shower running anymore. It meant that she had to be out....

...or did it?

Bob went up stairs, he wanted to run, but something made him take calm deliberate steps. He called to Jennifer as he came up, but still no answer came. Bob opened the bathroom door, called Jennifer's name again, knowing she didn't like to be surprised, then went inside. Jennifer stood before him, naked, the water, which should have been flowing all around her, stood rock still in little droplets in the air, and in the form of tiny interconnected domes on her skin. Bob stepped back, he didn't want to touch her, scared of upsetting whatever strange balance had now overtaken his house. He left the bathroom, backing out, one step at a time. He was certain that he was officially out of his mind.

Bob rushed to the bedroom. He had to call someone, anyone, to come help his wife, explain the coffee, or at least lock him up in a padded cell with enough drugs to make things move again.

"Hello?" Bob asked the phone, he didn't bother listening for the dial tone, he just dialled 911 and waited for an answer.

None came.

Bob hung up, then lifted up the handset and listened.

No dial tone.

Not even the hum of electrons flowing through wires.

Nothing.

Bob rose, and looked out his bedroom window. Outside was Maple Court. Good old Maple Court, bastion of undefeatable normalcy. Sanity had to be out there.

He was wrong.

Alex, the twelve year old who delivered the Bay City Herald, was on the sidewalk in front of the MacIntosh house, the morning's newspaper hanging motionless in the air, inches from his fingers.

Across the cul de sac Ron Cohen, who was a dentist, was holding the leash while his Jack Russel terrier, Pipsqueak stood on thin air, his legs extended and frozen.

Bob stepped back from the window.

Then the whole house began to shake.

"Now what?" asked Bob.

TO BE CONTINUED!