Stop Time
Envy is such a stupid habit. When the bald guy next door gets a car, suddenly I need one that’s shinier and faster and probably blue. Someone else’s girlfriend is prettier and I’m obsessed with finding someone thinner with bigger tits. You want what other people have—it’s automatic, it’s dumb, it never stops. I’m not usually that guy, honestly. I don’t lose sleep over it. Except for specific things. Someone takes the last sushi plate before I get there. The fat guy at the theater has a buttered jumbo popcorn while I’m stuck with small. Some other dude makes my girlfriend come when I haven’t managed it in months. That one actually gets under my skin.
But that’s not the real thing. There’s one thing I would actually commit atrocities for, and I have zero doubt about it: superpowers. And I’d use them for good, obviously. Purely selfless. Right.
Flying would be cool. I’d shit on people’s heads from above. X-ray vision sounds nice—I’d see through walls, check if my neighbor really makes those horrific sounds during sex or if she and her boyfriend are just torturing cats in there. But the one that actually gets me, the one that would change everything, is time. If I could just stop it. Hold everything still and nothing would move.
You’re alone in the world. You can do anything. Walk up to the loudmouth who’s been pissing you off and slowly, methodically push a cactus up his ass—take your time with it. Paint Osama bin Laden’s face with a marker. Steal whatever you want from any store. Cheat on every test you’ve failed. Start a travel company. Shit on your boss’s desk, Merkel’s desk, anyone’s desk. Take naked photos of strangers on the street, people you know, in their homes. Photographs as evidence that you were there and they couldn’t stop you.
I think about this more than is probably healthy. The appeal is dark and I know it—the power to freeze the world and take whatever you want, whenever you want it, with no consequences and no one able to stop you. That’s the real fantasy. That’s what I actually want.