The Ten Minute Boy

Hamza woke up with a headache, the sniffles, and aching bones, which was the third time this week. He had never thought of myself as the superhero type, but after reading hundreds of Marvel comics and watching most of the films, he started to think there might be something to it.

Initially, he thought he was having premonitions, but after the last episode, he realised he had this gift to do good.

Let me tell you what happened to Hamza: he wasn't stung by a wasp, bitten by a spider, a cat, or a bat. Or getting zapped by leaking radiation. No, it just happened. The first time, he was sitting with some college friends, including Jasmine. He loved Jasmine, but from afar, he didn’t dare tell her.

Anyway, the group of friends were sitting in the park having lunch when Hamza felt a sharp pain between his eyes. He closed them, rubbed the spot, and when he opened them, everything looked different — people had moved, things had changed.

He heard a police siren. The group looked in that direction. A car came around a corner, going way too fast. It tipped up and started to slide on its side. We all sat and stared — it was happening too fast. The car hit the kerb on our side of the road and flipped onto its roof. Still sliding, it skidded through a fence separating the kiddies’ play area from the rest of the park, hitting a pram and squashing it against the climbing frame. All five friends stood with their hands over their mouths — one girl started to cry. Jasmine ran towards the wreckage to help.

Then, the headache struck again. Hamza closed his eyes and rubbed the spot. When he opened them and saw the park as it was before — no hysterical mums crying, no car upside down, no police shouting into their radios, “Ambulance, we need an ambulance now at the City Park.”

Hamza looked around, feeling dazed. “Are you OK?” Jasmine asked.

“Erm, yes, I guess so.”  His heart fluttered.

Not ten minutes later, a police siren sounded from the left. The noise of screeching tyres echoed as a car came round the corner. Hamza looked at the car, then turned his head to the right and saw the pram. He got up, ran over, grabbed the pram with the sleeping child inside, and hurried over to where his friends were sitting. The child's mother cried out.

“What are you doing?” Jasmine asked.

“I don’t know, I think I just need to…” Then it happened: the car flipped on its side, hit the kerb, and slid on its roof, through the fence, past the spot where the pram was, smashing onto the climbing frame.

“Oh, my goodness,” Jasmin cried, "You just saved that child's life." The mother and other parents ran over to the group of friends. Taking the child out of the pram, the mother was in tears, hugging her and trying to thank Hamza.

  The same sort of thing had been happening now for over a year. Hamza had been saving people from incidents and accidents, kids falling out of trees, that sort of thing.

The process worked the same way each time. Hamza would get a sharp pain between his eyes, close them and when he opened them, wherever he was, life had moved on ten minutes, and he had that time to assess the situation and think how he could change it. Because after he opened his eyes again, the previous ten minutes were about to be re-enacted.

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A year later, to the day, Hamza heard a knock at the door of his flat. He was browsing social media pages where images and content about him had gone viral, with over a million hits on a thirty-second clip. He couldn’t believe it. Closing his laptop, he opened the door. “Yes, can I help you?” he asked the man. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged along a corridor, with industrial lighting hanging from the ceiling every twenty steps. The walls were the plain grey colour, like the stairs of a shopping mall. Entering a room twelve feet by twelve feet, his captor tied him to a chair in front of a table; the walls and ceiling were the same dull concrete. Hamza could hear the air conditioning machine buzzing in the background; it must have been set on warm, as he felt uncomfortably hot.

One man left the room, the other sat at the desk facing him. “Hamza,” he asked, calmly. “This gift you have, some acquaintances of mine would like you to help with a little something”

“Sorry, man, I have no Idea what you’re talking about”

The man hit him.

“Hey, no need for that” Hamza wiped the blood from his nose on his shoulder.

The man looked at his watch, “The Lotto is on in ten minutes, so I want you to go forward and get the numbers.”

“It doesn’t work like that…,” he was hit again.

“Ok, ok, I’ll do it, just don’t hit me again.” Knowing he had no control over when it happened, Hamza tried to stall. He closed his eyes and concentrated, but nothing happened. A few seconds later, his head began to ache between his eyes. He lowered his head, reached up with his fingers and pressed on the spot. There was an explosion, and the door to the room shattered off its hinges. Three men stormed in, wearing grey uniforms; one was wielding a large gun. He shot his captor right between the eyes, while another cut the ties that bound him to the chair. He was helped out of the chair and out of the room; he had no idea who these people were.

 Hamza opened his eyes, and he was back in the room. His captor shouted, “Well, what are the numbers?”

Hamza laughed to himself as he knew what was about to happen.