It usually doesn’t last too long. Emotions hate being left out of the party, and soon rush in to fill the gap; and time MUST be accounted for- so even as it stops, it’s still jogging in place, ready to sprint forward to catch up to the present. Still, that moment, that brief shut down of synapses, that mini-stroke, happened.
For Dante, this was that moment: Sitting in a giant playpen, dressed as a baby, being told that he was dead, by a girl who had just shit herself in front of him only minutes earlier. This did not compute. Dante was a processor who had just witnessed his first “2” after a lifetime of binary. Not only was it illogical, it was from completely out of left field. This did not work. This was peanut butter and mayonnaise on banana bread.