Pause

He stopped short, standing completely silent and still as he stared straight ahead, unseeing. A moment passed before he seemed to unfreeze. A moment ago, the world had been calm, but no longer. Now, all at once, the young boy screamed his little lungs out, his face contorting and turning bright red with the effort as he began quickly rocking back and forth on the spot, hugging himself as he did.

Watching on, the boy's mother shook her head, closing her eyes and taking a breath. She let it go, for just a minute before stepping forward.
"Angus," she called, her voice raised though not angry in order to be heard over the screams. "Angus, look at me," she said. It took a while, but it wasn't long before the young boy stopped his screams, looking silently back at his mother. She reached out, wiping the tears from her face. "Ssh, there, that's it," she said encouragingly, brushing his hair with her hand. From her pocket, she pulled the smallest remote you'd ever seen and handed it to the boy. It was so small that it only had two buttons- play, and pause.

Without a moment's thought, Angus lightly pressed the pause button and at once, the world around him paused in motion, like a DVD when you paused it. The boy looked around, satisfied before pointing the remote back at his mother and pressing 'play'.
"What's going on?" she asked calmly.
"My head, Mummy," Angus complained, falling into her open arms. "My head is spinning."
"Ok, let's talk about it then, what's going on?"
"Mal," said Angus. "He was my friend yesterday, and he says he still is but... he's not acting like it. I'm confused and I have no idea what to do."
"It's as they say," said his mother said. "Actions speak louder than words."
"It doesn't make sense when someone says something but does something different. It makes them seem a little two faced," said Angus bluntly.
"Well, it doesn't always make sense, no," was all his mother could think to say.

When Angus had calmed down and he had talked it out with his mother, he pressed play on the remote away and the world resumed going on, as if nothing had ever happened. As if a little boy hadn't just paused the world a while. Because only the boy, and the mother he'd unpaused knew of any time passing at all. Even the clocks had stopped.

Little were they aware, a man had been watching them from outside through a window. A man who was  miraculously immune to pausing.
"I wish I'd had one of those things as a kid," he sighed as he wandered away. "It would have made it so much easier."