When the World Stood Still

The moment Ebele opened her eyes, she knew something was different.

The usual hum of the city—cars honking, voices rising, the distant chime of a church bell—was absent. The morning light streaming through her window was frozen in place, a single ray suspended midair, catching the dust like a million tiny stars.

She sat up, heart hammering, and looked at the clock on her wall. 7:35 AM. But something about it was off. The second hand hovered between two numbers, caught mid-tick, unmoving.

Ebele scrambled out of bed and ran to the window. Outside, Lagos was a still-life painting. Pedestrians hung mid-step. A danfo driver leaned out of his bus, mouth open in what would’ve been an impatient shout, frozen in time. The wind, which had been rustling the trees last night, now left the leaves stiff in midair. Even the Atlantic Ocean in the distance was eerily still, waves arrested in motion.

The world had stopped.

Except for her.


At first, she panicked.

Was this a dream? Some cosmic joke? Had she died?

She paced around her apartment, hyper-aware of the silence pressing against her. She turned on the faucet—water flowed freely, obeying only her. She picked up her phone, but the screen remained blank, refusing to acknowledge her touch.

Ebele stepped outside, feeling like a ghost moving through the streets. She waved her hand in front of people’s faces, screamed at them, shook their shoulders. No reaction.

Minutes passed. Then hours. Maybe even days. But she couldn’t tell anymore.

What did time mean when it no longer moved?

With nowhere to go, she wandered. Through her neighborhood. Through streets she had never noticed before.

And then she saw her.

A girl—no, a younger version of herself—sitting on the steps of an abandoned house. Her knees were pulled to her chest, her small hands clenched tightly. Ebele knew that look. She had worn it at ten years old, when her father left.

She hesitated before stepping closer.

The girl didn’t move. Of course, she wouldn’t. But Ebele saw the unshed tears in her younger self’s eyes, the tightness in her jaw, the way her tiny fingers gripped the fabric of her dress.

“I see you,” she whispered.

The words surprised her. She hadn’t planned them.

She sat beside the frozen child and reached out, brushing an invisible tear from her cheek.

“I see you,” she repeated. “And I know how much it hurt. How much you wanted to be enough to make him stay.”

She swallowed hard, staring at her own small face. She had buried this moment for years, pretending it hadn’t shaped her, pretending it hadn’t left a void.

But it had.

Ebele sighed and leaned back, staring at the sky. “But you know what? We made it.”

And just like that, the child was gone.

Not vanished. Not erased. Just… integrated. As if a missing piece of herself had been returned.


The next person she found was a young woman, standing in the middle of a busy road—well, what should have been a busy road. This version of her was eighteen, hands clenched around a Bible, eyes hollow.

Ebele winced. She knew this version too. The one who had fought so hard to fit into the mold of her religious upbringing. The one who had prayed away parts of herself. The one who had begged to be seen as worthy.

She walked up to her, sighing at the tightness in her grip.

“You don’t have to fight so hard,” she murmured.

The girl didn’t move, but Ebele felt something shift inside herself.

“They never loved you,” she continued. “They loved the version of you that made them comfortable.”

She exhaled, shaking her head. “But you are already whole.”

And just like before, the girl disappeared.

The weight she had carried for years, the guilt, the shame—it lightened. Not completely gone, but no longer suffocating.

She understood now.

She kept walking, finding fragments of herself scattered throughout the still city.

The version of her who had dimmed her light in relationships, desperate to be chosen.

The version of her who had let her mother’s words define her worth.

The version of her who had believed suffering was a requirement for love.

With each encounter, she spoke the words she had needed to hear. And with each one, she felt a part of herself return—like gathering lost soul fragments across a frozen world.


When she finally made it back home, the clock on her wall was still stuck at 7:35 AM.

But she knew time was waiting for her.

Ebele stood in front of the mirror and stared at herself. Not the younger versions. Not the broken pieces. Herself.

For the first time, she saw someone who didn’t need to be fixed. Someone who wasn’t waiting for permission to be whole.

She closed her eyes.

Breathed in.

Breathed out.

And then, the world moved again.

As the world jolted back into motion, Ebele stood in the middle of her apartment, the clock ticking forward as if nothing had happened. The city roared back to life—horns blared, conversations resumed, waves crashed against the shore. But she had changed.

She touched her chest, feeling a quiet certainty she had never known before. The versions of herself she had met weren’t just memories; they were truths she had long buried, waiting to be acknowledged. And now, with every step she took, she carried them—not as burdens, but as the mosaic of who she had always been.

She was no longer waiting to be chosen. No longer seeking validation in places that drained her. No longer running from the parts of herself she once feared.

Time had stopped so she could see. And now, moving forward, she would never be the same.

Because the greatest freedom wasn’t in escaping the past—it was in embracing every part of it and choosing to live anyway.