Read Online The Trouble With Time by Lexi Revellian - Free Book Online Page A

grew through what had once been her flat. She stood, staring, heart pounding, more alone than she’d ever been in her life. The longer she looked, the more panicky she became.
    Floss walked up the steps to the front door, part of her hoping a miracle would happen if she stood on the spot she’d been transported from. The door’s wood was warped and paintless, with only two panels in place. She pushed the edge, and what was left disintegrated and creaked wearily to the floor in a puff of dust. Inside was worse than outside. Fallen masonry, plaster and timber covered the floors, and furniture rotted where it stood, legs giving way, fabric frail and split with age, splotched with bird droppings. Books decayed on their shelves. In the rooms open to the sky, nettles flourished waist high, and birds, ants and spiders had moved in.
    Floss wept.
    The sky grew darker, and eventually hunger and cold drove her back the way she had come. There was nowhere else to go.
     
    When Floss climbed back over Bunhill Fields’ gate and headed towards the man’s house it was 8.45 by her watch, and dark. The clouds had cleared and a huge moon shone above the trees. She’d been gone two and a half hours.
    The yellow glow of candlelight glinted through the few non-boarded up panes. Floss approached cautiously, picking her way between stacked junk surrounding the building. A pipe sticking out from a galvanized water tank caught her shin painfully, tearing her jeans and drawing blood. She tiptoed to the window and peered in, grasping the tang of the knife she’d found in a ruined kitchen. Its handle had decayed to dust, the steel’s surface was brown and pitted, but she had spent half an hour whetting the edge on a wall to a ragged sharpness. Floss was not under the illusion that this would even the odds should the tramp attack her, but she was a believer in doing what you could.
    The man was sitting at a table, eating by the light of an elaborate seven branch candelabra, reading a book. Like everywhere else she had seen, the room was derelict, but it had been swept clean, and flames flickered in a square stove whose pipe went vertically through the roof. Beside the stove, wood was stacked to the ceiling. The room’s bareness and lack of personal possessions gave the place a curiously medieval atmosphere like a monk’s cell, dedicated to contemplation. A plank supported on bricks held an orderly row of rusty tools, several knives all bigger than hers, some convex lenses, a row of church candles and a dead rabbit. Strings of onions hung from hooks. A narrow metal bedstead with a sagging mattress, yellowed duvet and grubby blankets stood in one corner, with a pile of books on the floor next to it. Drips plopped from the ceiling into a metal bucket.
    The man looked up and saw her. She jumped backwards, feeling foolish. The door opened and he stood silhouetted on the threshold.
    “Thought you’d be back. You look freezing. Come in.”
    She followed him inside, cautiously, not sure what to expect. The air seemed warm compared to outside and smelled of damp plaster and wood smoke. He fetched a padded jacket from the bed and handed it to her. It was clean, nearly new. Only after she’d gratefully put the jacket on did she realize where it came from, and wondered what he had done with the corpse. On the table was a small pile of items, the contents of someone’s pockets; a penknife, a bunch of keys, a neat electronic gadget she couldn’t identify, a man’s metal cuff. She took off a sandal and rubbed her chilly toes, keeping a wary eye on the man who was doing something by the stove. He came back with a steaming dish in his hand which he pushed towards her.
    Floss’s mouth watered. “What is it?”
    “Rabbit stew.”
    The stew wasn’t bad; a bit smoky and consisting mostly of rabbit meat and onions, but she spooned it up eagerly. He poured wine into a smeary glass for her. It was so smooth and delicious, she reached for the bottle to view its