Time Bent Anthology

A different take on time travel. 

What if the "grandfather murder conundrum" didn't exist? Where you could freely travel in time without affecting your or anyone else's present?

The trick is that this also tends to "haunt" you, even drive you insane...

This anthology contains:

Time Bent by S. H. Marpel
A World Gone Reverse by J. R. Kruze, S. H. Marpel
A Very Thin Line by S. H. Marpel

- - - -

Time Bent:

TIME HAUNTED HER. IT didn't do what it was "supposed to" when she was around.

It ran forward, backwards, sideways. Sometimes time helped her solve her problems, sometimes it made them worse.

For a lovely young woman, you'd think there would be young men lined up to talk to her at any gathering. But she stayed away from them – perhaps to protect them from what was "haunting" her.

Two Ghost Hunters came to help her solve it. But she left with only the promise of returning "just in time" - and didn't

Or was this time-problem contagious? Were other people at risk because of her - or could she pass it onto her children?

Life didn't seem any more safe, just because you could bend time any way you wanted.

A World Gone Reverse:

When the hamburgers all disappeared, along with the buns I was warming, I thought I was seeing things.

But when my spatula went through the cast-iron grill top - I had to let it go out of reflex. No way was I going after it - I'd been burned too many times.

It wasn't like I had a choice after that. Because the grill itself dropped out through the bottom of the rolling coach we were cooking out of that summer.

I looked up at Hami, my order-taker, business partner, and lover - only to see her fall through the floor as well. A look of shock and trying to say something, but frozen in time.

Then the coach disappeared, and I fell with it - but only as far as the pavement it used to be parked on. I could see the asphalt beneath my feet at least.

Until it turned to some sort of foamy waves lapping on a beach I'd never seen before. Green hard sand. Green water.

And a long white line that went down this beach like it was some sort of dual-lane highway going nowhere...

A Very Thin Line:

I was walking in my pasture one sunny afternoon, when a pair of hands pulled me into the underworld.

Once I arrived, I relaxed - a bit. Because it was an old friend. Carol. A time-bender and now a Lazurai as well. Meaning she could walk through rock - and other things.

"Hi John. How have you been?" Carol was standing in front of a crystal fire place, warming herself from the magma heat that was channeled out of the earth's core.

"Not bad, Carol. Other than being pulled deep into the earth without a simple request, or how-de-do."

"Sorry about that. Really. But I need your help - because I'm ...