Every family has one old relative they would happily disown, and in our case it was my Uncle Nick. Even his brother - my father - distrusted him, though he felt compelled for some reason to invite him each year to Christmas dinner.
For someone who had never had a job, at least none that he ever spoke of, Uncle Nick was remarkably well off. Each year he would drive up in a brand new car, with a sack full of store-wrapped gifts. He would be dressed in designer clothes, and would walk about with the easy confidence of someone without a care in the world. But there was also something a little creepy about him, especially the lecherous way he studied my mother whenever he thought no one was watching.
He was also old before his time. Though Uncle Nick was by ten years the elder brother, he looked old enough to be my grandfather - something we all put down to a life of excess and unhealthy habits.
Shortly before my twentieth birthday, he died. A heart attack. He was found at the side of the road in the middle of town, his trousers about his ankles. No sign of violence. Clear indication of recent sexual activity. It was a strange enough occurrence to make the local papers.
Even stranger - though this did not make the papers - his house was like a shrine to ladies' underwear. Uncle Nick lived modestly, in a terraced house in a run-down part of town, but he had drawers and chests full of knickers, mostly cotton lace, of many designs and sizes and colours. Some were clearly decades old, and some were almost new. It had almost been a shame to send them all to the skip.
We gave the old pervert a cremation - no one really knew him apart from us - and rented out the house for a nice steady income. Uncle Nick had had a few thousand in the bank, which about covered our costs, but otherwise he remained as much a mystery in death as in life.
Even his will had been strange, leaving everything to me personally: "To my nephew Marcus," it had said, "I leave all my worldly fortune, and ask only that he wears my watch with pride."
His watch. An old wind-up watch that looked older than the wars. At first I'd had no intention of wearing it, ever, but as the summer holiday ended and it was time to return to university and the final, third year of my mathematics degree, I picked up the watch and thought: Why not?
*
The watch kept good time. Remarkably good time, considering that it never seemed to need to be wound up or corrected. Perhaps, I decided, its age disguised Swiss craftsmanship. Perhaps, even, I was wearing an antique mechanism worth millions to the right buyer. (And indeed so, though not for the reason I imagined.)
Whatever, I had more important things to think about. The lecture material was tough, with in-class tests imminent, and for the third year running I was without a girlfriend. Worse, I was still a virgin, too shy to make a move and too desperate to be desired. My skill with differential equations was not matched by a skill with women. While my housemates paraded their conquests before me, I made do with internet porn.
And then, once night, musing over Uncle Nick's watch and its amazing precision, I pulled out the button at the side that I had assumed to be the winding stem - and wow.
The lights in the house dimmed and an oppressive, unnatural silence fell. "Hello?" I queried, but my voice sounded dead. I didn't connect this with the watch at first - of course not. I put the watch down and went to investigate.
The door of my room opened with reluctance, and still there was silence beyond, as if my housemates had all suddenly left. And yet, Andy was still on the sofa, snuggled up with his girlfriend Emma, Netflix and chilling. Except they were as motionless as the dull image on the screen. And George was in the kitchen, filling a tumbler with water from the tap, water that was quite stationary. When I dipped my fingertips into the stream, however, they came away wet, and I sucked them dry curiously.
I pushed open the resisting door to Jacob's room. He and Patricia were frozen mid-coitus, her brightly coloured pink hair disarrayed as if gravity no longer existed (though it did for me), Jacob's condom-sheathed cock half-buried within her pussy as he took her from behind. In this position her bare breasts looked superb, hanging beneath her so tantalisingly.
How could I resist? I didn't know if I would ever get such a miraculous chance again. (For that matter, I didn't know how long this temporal glitch would continue. The lovers might awaken at any instant and find me gawping at them like an idiot.) Standing beside them, careful not to touch them or the bed more than necessary, I cupped that beautiful, exposed breast in my hand.
Just as the doors resisted me, so too did her flesh, but it was pliable and not without warmth. I pinched her nipple gently, wondering how much of this she could - or would - feel, and fearful of doing damage.
For the first time in my life - that I could remember, anyway - I had my hand on a woman's breast. Tender and intimate, erotic, more so because I had no right to be where I was, intruding on this private, primal act of coupling.
Jacob's attention was unwavering on Patricia, his expression one of lust and determination. Her eyes were closed, her mouth wide open, and I wondered what it would be like to slip my hard cock between those lips...
Because I was hard. Had I been more certain that time would not suddenly restart, I might have taken more liberties with her, but I needed first to understand the nature of this most unnatural state.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, half expecting it to be as frozen as the rest of the world seemed to be, but no. There was no network, no WiFi, but it worked, and the time on its clock was advancing normally. Most importantly, the camera worked, and I took some photos of Patricia, even close-ups of her cock-stuffed pussy.
Before retreating to my room to mull this over, I picked up her red lace knickers from the floor. They were damp with evidence of her earlier arousal, and smelled divine. Remembering my Uncle's huge collection, I understood completely his obsession with these garments.
It all clicked suddenly. My uncle. The knickers. His premature aging. The strange manner of his death. The watch. It was all connected. Uncle Nick must have also had this incredible power to stop time, and had used it to steal underwear - and no doubt for more.
Back in my room, I pushed the crown back into the watch - and the noise of the world rushed back again. I heard a distant cry of surprise from Patricia, followed by cursing from the kitchen, but otherwise life continued unaware of its brief interruption.
I could wait no longer. Patricia's musky knickers pressed to my mouth and nose, I breathed in that intoxicating scent as I worked myself to a climax. But although the memory of Patricia's breast in my mind was sharp, and the image on my phone of her pussy sweet indeed, it wasn't Patricia who I was imagining as my cum spurted onto my belly.
*
Ever since the start of uni, I'd had a crush on Keira. She was one of the prettiest girls in my maths classes, with long, strawberry blonde hair and a thick Irish accent. I loved listening to her speak, and laugh, and I loved watching her - and not least her sizable breasts. I could hardly take my eyes off them, something that made both of us uncomfortable whenever we interacted.
So I had taken to adoring her from a distance, and one of my daily delights was seeing her on the bus in the mornings. I would sit behind her somewhere, watching surreptitiously, spinning fantasies in which she served my every depraved whim.
Keira...
And now, suddenly, I had the power to make those fantasies real. In a way. It would be wrong - so very wrong - but to have such power and not use it? It would drive anyone mad. If I used the power to murder half the world's villains, would that be an act of Good or Evil? Maybe I would do that later, but first I would have my fun.
Indeed, I hardly slept for lying awake planning the day ahead. When she wasn't on the bus as anticipated, I felt acutely distressed. I got off at the next stop, and waited seemingly forever for the next to come along. Being able to stop time does not hasten the arrival of buses. I breathed a sigh of relief at finding her there.
As always, I dared to hope for a smile from her, or at least a nod of recognition, but dreaded it also. Would she see in my eyes my intentions towards her? See me for the undeniable pervert that I was?
She barely glanced at me, her lips thinning with familiar distaste - and that, more than anything, decided it for me. As I settled into a seat a few rows behind her, for once I didn't mind that we were not alone. My fellow passengers would be an unwitting audience, and an alias, even, should one ever be needed.
I stopped time, and started the day.
The sun dimmed, and the bus stopped so abruptly I expected to be thrown forward, but the laws of physics were being selective indeed. Through the windows I saw birds halted mid-flight, pedestrians posed like statues, cyclists balanced perfectly on two points. Almost like being in a photograph.
Inside too. Men, women, sitting still with expressions of utter boredom, all utterly defenceless in this moment of time. Across the aisle from me, two attractive young women in business suits were no longer talking about whatever series it was. It was Keira I wanted, but I had all the time in the world. Time enough, certainly, to tease open a shirt and expose a white lace bra. Or to tease up a skirt and reveal white lace knickers...
How cruel the invention of underwear! How much simpler things would be without it!
I hadn't thought through all the technicalities of my planned adventure. I teased her nipples through the lace, and imagined them getting hard in response, and my fingers squeezed between her thighs to brush against the protective lace there. If she was wet, I couldn't feel it. Deciding to leave her like that, her clothing disheveled, I kissed her parted, unresponsive lips, my tongue seeking hers.
