Repeat Rewind: Tales of Time Travel

August 25, 1997

It happened so fast. I thrust the scissors at her. She grabbed my hand and twisted it with a smooth, expert motion that forced me to my knees. The shears in her hand clacked together once. Then she let go and I fell to the floor, howling in agony. There was nothing left where my right index finger had been, just something I don't like thinking about.

When I looked up through my tears, the woman in the mask was gone. Someone was screaming. Someone was sobbing. I don't remember which one was Addie and which one was me.

My sister disappeared three days later from our backyard, the very first time she dared to take a step outside after what had happened to me. We never found her, not even a body, and I was sure the woman with the shears took Addie.

Mama never believed me about that: she thought me and my sister had made up the story to conceal whatever accident had cost me my finger. And after a while she stopped caring, too busy grieving for a daughter that she never got to bury. When I was seventeen, I got myself emancipated from her. It was done with mutual agreement.

I kept on living with nine fingers and an Addie-shaped void inside me.

If you can call it life.

***

"An interesting story," the man in the suit said mildly, wiping his mouth with a delicate motion on a thick, feather-soft white napkin. I leaned back and lit a cigarette, holding it carefully with my four-fingered right hand.

The soft murmur of conversation and the warm glow of paper lanterns filled the restaurant's courtyard. It was the kind of place where I would have been asked to leave if I set foot inside in my usual frumpy jeans and scuffed sneakers. My brand new red dress was uncomfortable, way too tight on my stomach rolls. From the way it had been poking my back all evening, I'd guessed a while ago that I'd forgotten to take off the clearance sale tag.

I turned my head to blow out my cigarette smoke when he said that, even though I wanted to breathe it in his face, make his eyes sting and tear up. My hand trembled.

"That's my sister you're talking about, you son of a bitch," I said almost gently, and he smiled. Dark-haired, graying at the temples; forty if he was a day, but the firm set of his mouth and the bright green of his eyes made him better to look at than I was comfortable with. I was twenty-nine, and I had enough daddy issues to last me a lifetime. Hell, I had enough issues, period. I looked away from those pretty eyes.

"You told me you had information about Addie," I continued. "Don't act slick with me."

"I do," the man said. He'd told me to call him X when he'd sent me the first message on the unsolved crimes forum, but I refused to play along with the coy secret agent bullshit, so man in the suit he was. If he hadn't been the only one to respond to my masked woman story, I wouldn't have come to this place to meet him.

Suit Man straightened his shoulders and gave me a once-over, not in the come-hither sense, more like he was searching for something. Whatever he found made him nod to himself and lean forward. "Miss King, take me somewhere private and I'll tell you everything I know."

What the hell?

"This isn't some ploy to get in my pants, is it?" I asked slowly, willing my voice to stay even. "You say you can tell me about Addie, then you bring me to a posh restaurant in this fucking straitjacket of a dress—"

A passing waiter gave me a disapproving look, and I glared at him until he shook his head and moved on.

"—and now you say you want to be alone with me? If you lied to me about my sister, I'm going to wreck you, man."