*Here's the short story I used to enter a contest to win Hourglass by Myra McEntire. The point was to write about time-travel in 500 words or less, I came up with it in 45 minutes with 499 words*
Fifteen Precious Minutes
By R. Brownell
She was too late, that’s what bothered her the most. She was someone who had always set every clock fifteen minutes ahead, just to be on time. It had always worked in the past, but now rushing time just seemed silly. No matter how far ahead your clock is you can never change what you missed during those precious minutes, minutes that could change a person’s life forever.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Go back and change it,” he demanded.
“You know I can’t do that, it’s against the rules. Something can only be changed in the moment it happens. You can’t change the past, it’s impossible.”
The wind whirled around seventeen year old Meredith Montgomery’s hair. It sounded like she had been sucked deep into the vortex of a horrific storm. She could hear her brother Kyle’s voice just barely above all the noise.
“If you don’t believe me then why are you trying,” those were the last words she heard as the vortex sucked her through back to the morning of the meeting.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Meredith knew the risks when it came to Professor Valentine, he couldn’t be trusted but she didn’t care. She needed answers about her ability, and he had them.
One hour until the meeting and she was nervous all over again. She bit her nails the same way she’d done, and sat in the same orange chair. She wore the same clothes, dark jeans and a black t-shirt. Then she twirled her hair in the same direction. A knot in her stomach reminded her of what she had to do. That was the glitch in her time-traveling, every time she tried to change something in the past she couldn’t, her body would take charge and she’d just repeat step-by-step the exact moment.
Deep down she knew she had to change it, her body thought other-wise. It felt like being a puppet on a string. She wasn’t the only one with these abilities, hundreds of people had them, but around here it was only three. There was Meredith, her brother Kyle and her best friend Logan.
Kyle was telekinetic, and Logan couldn’t time travel, but he had the ability to change time by a few minutes to stall someone. The knot in her stomach pulsed at the thought of Logan’s ability. He’d known about the meeting and had tried to stop her more than once. That’s when she realized he moved time; he changed her clocks so she would be late.
Meredith peered up at the clock, 11:35. The meeting was at noon, and in the past she left at 11:38, and it had been too late then. She wasn’t going to let that happen this time. Fighting the urge to wait, she shut her eyes tight and slowly inhaled as deep as she could go. The vortex had come back for her.
“No,” she screamed.
"You can't take me yet."
The vortex didn’t care; the wind around her grew louder, and louder until there was only silence.
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