Murder the Past

Murder the Past

            “You mean, just by pushing this button I can go anywhere in time?” I studied the contraption that looked like the galvanic massage machine my esthetist strapped me into every Friday morning.

            Todd paled. “Don’t touch it, Alice!”

He jumped at me. His lab coat sailed behind him like a cape, revealing a t-shirt tight over sculpted pecs. He slapped my hand away from the red knob.

“Ow! You’re brutal.” My hand smarted like a scorpion sting. I pressed it to my lips.

“Don’t touch anything. Not a thing. I have kinks to work out. Don’t add kinks to my kinks.”

“Sorry!” My lips curled, imitating his annoyance. He could be so protective of his inventions.

He sucked in a breath and pushed black framed glasses up his slender nose. “You can’t go just anywhere in this machine.” He gazed at the contraption with cables and coils and cords sticking out and curling around each other. “It only sends you into the past. I haven’t figured out how to go into the future yet.”

            “Have you used it?”

            His eyes shifted to the right and then down. “Yeah.”

He turned to his workbench and straightened and stacked tools. He moved them to the right side of the bench and then to the left.

            The noise drove me crazy. I strode to the bench and slapped my hand over his. "Well, where did you go?”

            He flushed deeply. I’d never seen him blush before and I laughed, but my laugh was self-conscious for his sake. I liked the guy. He had his creepy moments, but he was decent.

            “Ah, just some place.”

            My teeth gritted. “Tell me.”

            He turned away. “I’m kind of busy.”

            I looked about the warehouse cluttered with his inventions—a gasoline powered computer, a laser vegetable slicer that practically cut off one of my fingers when I tried to use it, a battery operated fireplace.