NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 3: For all who make the call

"Mary!" Matron Caine calls for the fifth time. "Mary Pethiel, open this damn door!"

That settles it. One or two calls, a girl can pass off as drifting through dreamland. But five means it's time to wake up and rejoin the real world. I stumble out of bed, looking around the tiny room for evidence of the expected maintenance routine I agreed to almost four years ago. As usual, the floor is a carpet of dust and my dressing table – a mirrored space on the left of my closet – has a plethora of items strewn about. I shift a couple things around, close the novel spread out on page fourteen, steal a quick glance at the Mary I hate and the two fat yellow plastic candles I equally hate, the only things I have left to remind me of Ebony Pethiel, and sweep my waist-length micro twists up with a blue ribbon, then move towards the door, a dingy white wooden cemetery of residue from torn down posters.

Dammit! The candles. It's against the Bunny House's rules to have an open flame or do anything electrical in your room. I reach for them but grow weak, like always, when confronted with the blood-stained floor. It is one of the ghosts that keep me awake at night. Yet, no matter how I scrub it never comes off. Perhaps it's not soap and water it needs but a peeling back of time; someone to physically turn the hands backwards. That's why I light candles on mornings, hoping they'll undo what happened.

Matron Caine pounds on the door three more times.

"Mary, I know you're in there. Open up!"

I toss the candles beneath the bed to meet my bags of copper coins then yank the door open.

"Ten in the morning and barely awake," she squawks. "No wonder you can't keep a job."

Matron Caine looks the total opposite of me. Her light grey eyes are round whereas mine are narrow. She has thick long straight ash grey hair that has started to collect the dusts of old age. I refer to it as snowed-on because it graces the tips instead of the roots. Hers has three inches of white attached to the grey. And since she hardly trims, the setbacks will be fewer; meaning, she won't lose as many years as the others who had.

The matron, at fifty-one, also outshines me with grooming. Her skin is already super smooth compared to my harsh grater texture. So there's really no need to add insult to injury with those weekly spa visits of hers. Plus, she's medium height – bordering on tall – while I'm stunted. And, as if all of that isn't enough, her fully-developed curves cast a shadow on my slender neat ones, the only neat thing about me. But at least my breasts can win a shouting match with her tiny ones any day. She scowls at me with one of her two looks, the mean face. And for some reason she is being more stiff and uncomfortable than usual. I look down at her hand.