Read at your own risk: Short stories to make your spine shiver

The time fracture

We thought we could do it, we thought that we, mere humans, could master time. We thought. But we were wrong. We played at being Gods, gambled all our lives, and we lost. We lost it all.
It all started the day I got a phone call,
"Hey, It's Devon." I heard as I put the phone to my ear.
"Devon? It's so good to hear from you."
"Yeah. Hey listen, I have something I need to talk to you about. Can you meet me at the old science department in the abandoned lab building?"
"That old place? It's been deserted for years, are you sure you want to do this, whatever it is?"
"Loosen up Seb. It'll be fine." I knew that tone, that was the tone that Devon used when he knew it was absolutely not fine. "This could change everything." He said as he hung up.

The lab building loomed above me like a grey metal giant, I saw a rat scurry into it. A rabbit ran in the other direction, back to the forest. I walked through the door and down the hallway. The plaque on the door read, "The Susan lab building, dedicated to our founder." I pushed open the door, only to walk straight into a spiderweb of cords and electrical wires.
"Oh! There you are." Devon said as he scurried about this way and that, playing with the controls and straightening wires on a large contraption that resembled a egg. "That's the vortex." Devon said.
"It looks like a doomsday bomb to me." I had no idea how right I was.
"It's actually a... Well it's a... Time machine."

"Yeah right." I scoffed. "This is a joke, right?"
"I don't joke."Devon said.
"You've got to be kidding me." I replied. "You always joke, remember physics class?"

I made my way towards the center of the room where Devon was standing, nearly getting strangled by the wires hanging from every surface in the room,
"Ok fine. I do joke, but not about this." He was serious, I could tell. I could see him doing the final calculations then hitting a button that entered them into the machine. His hands were shaking, I'd never seen him like this.
"Ok, what are you making this 'time machine' for?" I cautiously approaches the capsule. Devon stopped dead in his tracks, his fingers hovering above the keyboard. "Oh... Dang it Devon it slipped my mind I'm so sorry. I didn't mean..." I scraped my shoe against the floor.
"It's fine. I need to move on, besides, she won't be dead when I'm done with this will she?" He ran his hands over a worn out picture of her, she was wearing a white wedding dress, the inscription read
"To Dev. From Trina, forever and after." I could see a tear slowly trace its way down his cheek and drip onto the picture. "Well we shouldn't just stand around." He stood up quickly and put the picture back in his pocket. "There's work to be done." I walked over to a console and started working.

"Done." I said much later as I whipped the sweat off my brow as I punched in the final lines of code.
"Remember Sebastian," Devon said to me. "We can't make even a tiny mistake. Or we risk unraveling the fabric of time and space."
"No pressure though..." I murmured under my breath. I could hear him mumbling calculations to himself.
"Three to the power of seven...eighty-nine multiplied..." He paced back and fourth between the machine and the computer consul. He picked up the picture of his deceased wife once again, I could see he was upset and emotionally unstable. "Today was our anniversary..." He whispered, more as if he were talking to himself than to me. "I was going to get her the gift she'd been asking for..." He took two plane tickets out of his pockets and looked at them. "We were going to go to Greece.." I knew this was a bad idea... Devon wasn't thinking clearly.
"Dev..." I said hesitantly. "Are you sure you want to do this... I mean, this could be dangerous, is it even worth the risk?" He whipped around to face me, his eyes were red, and his cheeks were wet with tears.
"Worth it?!" He snapped. "I don't care if I have to tear the whole world apart! I will get her back." He stumbled blindly over to the console with shaky legs. "I will get her back..." He murmured to himself. He pushed a final button and the machine sputtered to life.
I gasped to myself "Woah..."

I saw three things then, all happening at almost the same time, first, the machine started to creak and groan as it powered on, second, I saw Devon put on a crisp white hazmat like suit and get inside, third, I saw the machine disappear,
"Devon!" I called after him. "Crap!" But before I could do anything, I heard a "Crack" I couldn't  figure out where it came from, it seemed to come from... Everywhere. There was a blinding flash of light, and the I saw it, the capsule, it had returned.
"Devon! Are you there!" I called out, The door to the machine slid open and out stepped Devon, But there was something wrong. He was wearing a black suit, not the white one he had entered in. He had a woman with him, but not the one from the picture. 
"Hey Sebastian." He said. "I did it, I brought back Alice."
"Alice? What about Trina?"
"Who's Trina?" He asked.

That's when I saw it, out of the corner of my eye, a flicker, like a blur of light moving across my peripheral vision. Then I saw it again, I looked at Devon, but he was gone, The whole room stated to blur, to spin and fade. That's when I saw it, a photo, it was of a woman in a cream wedding dress, written on it was,
"Devon; May our love last forever, Alice" Then the whole world went dark, the last thing I heard, was a crack, the sound of time breaking, of time fracturing.