As Sarah rose from her slumber, she let out a long, loud groan that resonated within her bedroom. She stretched out, relishing the feel of her soft sheets on her skin. She knew she had wasted the day away sleeping, but in her defense, Sarah had only just gone to bed at about four that morning. It had been a long night of partying, but fortunately for Sarah, there was no hangover to be suffered today.

She pulled her sheets off, sitting up in her bed. It took her a moment to readjust to her surroundings: the tiny apartment Sarah liked to call home. It had only four rooms; the small living room and kitchen area by the front door, her bedroom to the left of the front door, a small study to the right, and a bathroom that was connected to her bedroom. It was messy and largely unfurnished, save for her mattress that rested on the floor in the bedroom, a large dresser on the opposite side of the room, a couch in the living room set across from a decent thirty inch television set, and a small kitchen table with only two chairs in the kitchen. The study had a desk, but it had gone unused for years now and the room itself had essentially been turned into a glorified storage closet. Sarah rubbed her eyes as she began to wake up, and energy flowed through her body once more.

That was when the silence struck her - despite the fact that it was midday and Sarah’s tiny apartment was right in the middle of Soho, there was absolutely no noise coming from outside. She scrambled to the edge of her bed that overlooked Broadway and clawed the window open. She poked her head out the window and-

Nothing. No noise whatsoever. And to top it off, nothing was moving. The cars looked like they had just stopped in the middle of the street, but the drivers were still there. The pedestrians had all been frozen midstep, and the street vendor that worked the corner of Spring and Broadway was stuck mid-transaction.

Sarah spun back towards her bedroom, checking the digital clock that was on the floor next to the bathroom door - but it was blank. Nothing at all. Fortunately, she had a backup: a battery powered analog clock leaned up against the wall just next to its digital counterpart.

But while the clock read 1:41, none of the hands moved. She had just replaced the batteries only a couple days before, so Sarah knew that wasn’t an issue. Then it hit her - time had stopped.

She almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. It seemed impossible, but all the evidence in front of her seemed to add up to that conclusion. But why did she keep going? It was like one of those video games she would play as a kid, where she was the special player character that, for some strange reason, was the one who survived the freezing of time.

Of course, the logical next step for Sarah was to experiment with the new reality she seemed to find herself in. Her phone was completely dead, and the lights in her apartment weren’t working. There was no running water either, which unnerved Sarah slightly. She’d have to find a different source for water, then. Her television wouldn’t react to the press of the power button, and all her kitchen appliances were dead.

“So, electricity is dead. Makes sense, I guess,” Sarah muttered to herself, recalling the words of her high school physics teacher. Electrons did need to be moving for electricity to work, and it didn’t seem like anything was moving on its own in this time frozen world Sarah now lived in. She figured if she could get them to move somehow, things would work again, but what kind of power sources operated manually these days? It was 2078, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah entered the study, scrambling through the boxes and piles of stuff that had accumulated in the room over the last three years she had lived in the apartment. After twenty minutes - wait, did that still apply? Sarah paused to consider that concept. Had she been searching for twenty minutes? If time was frozen, hadn’t she been searching for no time at all? She shook her head, struggling to come to a solid conclusion.

In any case, she had found what she was looking for. An old box of film cameras she had kept, with enough film to last about a week. The film had been protected, so it was likely still good. She inserted a roll of instant film into one of the instant cameras the had in the box. She framed a museum worthy shot of the kitchen and hit the button. As the film emerged from the camera, Sarah was surprised to see that the film didn’t seem to be developing at all. Wait, scratch that - the film [i]did[/i] develop, but the entire image was pure black, as if she had taken a picture in a completely dark room. Sarah frowned, placing the camera back into the box. She had wanted to take pictures of the city while it was frozen, but that was clearly not a possibility.

Slightly disheartened but still curious to test the limits of this time freeze, Sarah went back to her bedroom and opened up her dresser, setting up an outfit for the day. Just because the world was frozen didn’t mean Sarah wasn’t going to look cute as fuck.

Sarah emerged from her apartment building in ripped dark blue jeans, a loose, low-cut white shirt, and her favorite black leather jacket. On her head was a loose-fitting black knit hat, and her shoes of choice were a pair of brown combat boots. And to top off the look, a pair of (stolen) aviators over her eyes. Perfect. She lit a cigarette and headed north on Broadway, on the lookout for any kind of trouble she could get herself into.