Unutterable tension

He made his way round to the front of the house with the intention of taking to the road again, and was skirting the main lawn when something attracted his attention. A small brown bird was flying backwards across the lawn, about five feet from the ground; but it was not this which seemed so strange. It was the fact that the bird was flying far more slowly than any natural bird ever does.

Previously, all movements about him, although in reverse, had been in- variably at normal speeds. But this bird was like something in a slow-motion film; it was simply drifting backwards, and he could count each wing-beat. He watched it with interest, and when it was almost in the centre of the lawn his eyes widened in surprise. For it had stopped in mid-air!

In a moment he was across to it. There, five feet above the ground, the small brown bird hung as if suspended by invisible wires, frozen into an exquisitely carved, tiny statue. He passed his hand all around it, below and above, and finally took hold of it. It was brittle hard and utterly immovable, exactly as all other objects were in this alien Time Stream.

He suddenly realised, with a faint thrill of fear, that the whole world seemed to have become noticeably silent. A vast quiet was all about him; not the faintest twitter of a bird, not a rustle of a branch, not a click or tap sounded anywhere. He stood stock-still as if afraid to stir lest some other nightmare was about to beset him.

As he slowly turned his head, he discovered that all motion, too, seemed to have ceased. A gardener who had been bent over a border was grotesquely crouched, one hand half-stretched out. The slight dip and sway of the branches in the breeze had stopped, a film of smoke from a chimney balanced in the air like a spray of blue glass. The whole Earth seemed to be holding its breath.

Then a second of unutterable tension tugged at his body and a shock of reeling nausea struck him. His body seemed to be riven into a million pieces, yet he could not stir or cry. There was a brief flash of all-enveloping darkness. Then the tension snapped like a released rubber band, and he was staggering slightly, wild-eyed.

The small brown bird was flashing off toward the bushes—flying for- wards! The gardener stood gazing at him with a ludicrous look of amazement on his face. Rostof realised, with a sudden wild thrill of hope, that the man could see him. He ran forward, babbling incoherently.

The next instant he was shaking the hand of the astounded Mr. Curle, laughing and weeping at the same time.

 -- Charles F. Hall, The Man Who Lived Backwards (1938)