Out of Time collects two “un-timely” tales. In the first, “One More Tuesday,” Josef finds himself trapped with only one way out — and a life or death decision once he discovers how to free himself. In “Leap Day,” Joan experiences a time distortion in her own apartment, and she must weave her knowledge of the past and future in order to survive the present.
Short Stories – 9,000 words – Science Fiction
“One More Tuesday” originally appeared in Allegory
“Leap Day” originally appeared in Port Iris Magazine
Free on 30th Mar 24 - 3rd Apr 24
Reviews:
Out of Time collects two “un-timely” tales. In the first, “One More Tuesday,” Josef finds himself trapped with only one way out — and a life or death decision once he discovers how to free himself. In “Leap Day,” Joan experiences a time distortion in her own apartment, and she must weave her knowledge of […]
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Reviewer: Angel for Bookangel.
In One More Tuesday, Josef wakes up on Tuesday morning, wondering how to approach Alice his nieghbour and haunted by the death of a pensioner and his dog killed by a street-car. And after they have died, he wakes up on Tuesday again to repeat it over again. He has lived the day so many times he has forgotten everything he has done and yet he is still the same as the first time he lived the day. Then one Tuesday, instead of trying to save the man, he assaults him and drags him away from the street car to save him. But with the knowledge of how to end the day, Josef makes his own decision about living his life.
In Leap Day, Joan wakes up one morning and is called by her friend, Mateo, to report a break at the coffee shop they work at. But when she steps from the bedroom to the lounge, time jumps forward two years and Mateo appears acting as Joan's boyfriend. When she returns to the bedroom, Mateo is back on the phone in the present. To escape she leaves by the fire escape bu finds herself in the previous evening. Without realising, she turns up just as the store is bring robbed.
Two interesting stories on the nature of time and how people might react to them. The plots of these may be familiar but these are excellent twists on the tales. One More Tuesday works well on the Groundhog Day premise with taking an interesting approach to the decisions that could be made by someone who isn't ready to give up on eternity. In Leap Day, the time jumps are cleverly handled and interweave with each other giving a coherent timeline that can be followed and makes sense. Despite the short lengths, the characters in each story fir with their respective idea of what is happening and their actions make sense even if we might not agree with them. How they individually deal with it helps push each story along instead of having them as helpless protagonists. The stories are not just descriptive, but on a second read, they tie up self-references exceedingly well. Each story cleverly sets up the scene of each story and gives enough information to think over while also keeping the pace of the stories. Few words are wasted in the telling and the taut nature of the plots meant I was following it avidly to see what twist might happen next.
Looking at the eBook, the formatting and editing work nicely, and I didn't spot any grammar or spelling errors. There is a brief Author's note at the back giving some more details on the author, but otherwise it is two, very neatly, self contained short stories on the nature of time.
It's a pleasure to read two such well-constructed stories in one sitting and I immediately went back and read them over again to enjoy them and see what I might have missed the first time round. I wasn't disappointed and it easily stood up to the second pass. This is not just one for sci-fi fans, but accessible to anyone looking for a good story.
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