A colorless, odorless, and silent cloud descends upon the small mountain town of Durango, Colorado, taking the residents by complete surprise. Emergency response teams from local, state, and federal agencies rush to the scene and are shocked at what they find; like a children’s game of Freeze Tag, the residents of Durango are frozen in place, literally stopped in their midday tracks. In the local park, a young couple is frozen mid-picnic, she with a mischievous smile as he leans over and whispers a sweet nothing into her ear. Not far away, an older gentleman sits on a bench, a brown paper bag of bird seed resting on his blue jeaned pant leg. The birds, normally arrayed around his shoes to nibble on tossed seeds, have found the bag on his lap and are skipping the middleman altogether. A young woman wearing a fashionable track suit and walking her labradoodle is eternally sipping her latte. The dog looks up, tail wagging, patiently waiting for her owner to finish.

At the elementary school, classes are running longer than usual. In the third grade down the hall, children are frozen in their seats, the teacher frozen mid-point, looking at a boy in the third row with his hand raised. He’s on the edge of his seat, hand raised in desperation. The expression on his face says “pee!” Or did, at least; a dark spot grows on his pants. In the gym, kickballs are rolling around the floor, unfetched by the motionless children. The slop they call lunch has been, thankfully, delayed until further notice.

And downtown is a mess. The streets had been closed for a bicycle race, the pack ready to swallow a lone, bonking breakaway rider 100 meters from the finish. With the pack tilting towards the line at forty-plus miles per hour, the furious pumping of shaved legs and arms just stopped. Suddenly lacking the coordinated fury, the pack crashed spectacularly in a heap of busted carbon fiber frames, taco’d wheels, busted collar bones and road-rashed flesh. It looked like so many mannequins tossed into the back room of some dystopian Bloomingdales. The breakaway rider coasted across the finish line - his brave victory preserved - and then coasted another quarter mile down Main Avenue until his momentum ran out and he came to rest leaning fittingly against the team car.

There are anomalies, like the labradoodle, and the birds. It seems that only humans are affected. Those caught mid-stride have fallen to the ground like toppled toy solders. And intersections are a jumbled kinetic sculpture of crunched cars, pushing each other to and fro by feet frozen on gas pedals. It’s a slow-speed demolition derby punctuated by scratching, groaning steel and the smell of burnt rubber.

Most amazingly and inexplicably, the good people of Durango are still, technically-speaking, alive. Local EMTs are similarly immobile, but soon EMTs from neighboring towns arrive, and as they rush to help the locals they are surprised to find pulses. Stethoscopes are confirming that hearts are beating within the otherwise frozen bodies and lungs continue to inflate and deflate with metronomic regularity. Eyes aren’t blinking, but pupils are dilating in response to rapidly drawn penlights; it’s impossible to say whether or not they are seeing. Likewise with the other senses. Medical teams are scratching their heads, figuratively and literally. It’s a puzzle that emergency crews didn’t train for.

In the ensuing confusion and chaos, as news teams descend upon the town, with communications dishes sprouting like mushrooms and helicopters whirlygigging overhead, nobody notices the skinny man with the haggard beard walking away from the town and into the nearby woods, the blankness of his eyes betrayed by the ever so slight upturn of the corner of his mouth. He disappears without a trace.