Time Travel Paradox Stories

Green Surge

By Eva Suluk

The air itself tasted green, thick with the scent of impossibly sweet pollen and wet, rapidly decaying concrete. Vines, emerald and pulsing with an internal light, snaked up what used to be a bustling high street, now a choked canyon of forgotten shops. Above, a canopy of fuchsia blooms, each the size of a dinner plate, pulsed a soft, hypnotic rhythm, casting the street in an ethereal, shifting glow. It was Spring, but not as anyone knew it, a hyper-accelerated nightmare blooming from the cracks of time.

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The Unburdening of Lead

By Jamie F. Bell

The smell of damp wool and fried chips clung to Lonnie's flat, a permanent tenant alongside the peeling floral wallpaper. Rain traced thin, uneven paths down the outside of the window, blurring the already indistinct grey of the cityscape beyond. On the chipped Formica table, an unpaid electricity bill lay like a tombstone amongst a scattering of instant coffee granules and a bent spoon. The air in the room was cold, not just from the weather, but with a settled, pervasive chill that seeped into the bones.

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A Breath Unsnapped

By Jamie F. Bell

The air hung heavy with the acrid scent of ozone and damp, decaying concrete. Fractured sunlight, strained through grimy, high-set windows, cast long, distorted shadows that writhed with every gust of wind through the skeletal remains of what was once a processing plant. Dust motes, thick as fog, danced in the scant illumination, swirling around heaps of corroded machinery and forgotten tools. The silence was punctuated only by the distant, rhythmic creak of shifting metal and Lynn's ragged breathing, echoing unnaturally in the vast, hollow space.

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Residue of a Former Occupant

By Jamie F. Bell

The first thing that registered was the pain. A dull, throbbing ache in his ribs, a sharp sting in his left knuckles. Julian groaned, rolling over. The sheets were cheap, polyester that felt slick and cold against his skin. This wasn't his bed. This wasn't his room. The ceiling was stained with a water bloom the shape of a lung, and the air tasted of stale smoke and old coffee. Panic, cold and immediate, seized him. He sat bolt upright, and the room spun.

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A Frequency No One Owns

By Jamie F. Bell

The place smelled of history and decay. Not the grand, dusty smell of a museum, but the specific, sour-sweet miasma of accumulated human experience: sweat, cheap perfume, spilled soda, and beneath it all, the dry, papery scent of old plaster and forgotten things. Dr. Jae Boxe adjusted the bulky headphones around her neck and ran a hand along the wall. It was unexpectedly coarse, covered in what felt like stiff, tightly-packed horsehair. This was the antechamber to the Laff Box, and according to the carnival's owner, no one had bothered to renovate it since the 1950s.

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The Littoral State

By Jamie F. Bell

The smell was the first thing that told you this carnival was different. Not the usual mix of popcorn and engine oil, but that plus the deep, briny funk of low tide. Rust bloomed on every strut and girder of the Ferris wheel, a permanent orange blush from the salt spray. Finn drove another steel stake into the grey, sucking mud, the jarring thud of the sledgehammer echoing across the tidal flat. This was his summer job: securing a temporary city of light and noise to a piece of land that tried to wash it away twice a day.

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Parallax Approaches the Asymptote

By Jamie F. Bell

Sasha found Maxine in the north field, where the grass had been baked a pale straw-yellow by the relentless August sun. She wasn't wandering, or crying, or doing any of the things Sasha had rehearsed comforting on the walk over. She was sitting, legs folded, in the centre of a vast, intricate pattern of stones. It wasn't a spiral or a circle, but something that seemed to violate the very ground it rested on, its lines appearing to curve into impossible dimensions. Maxine was perfectly still, a small, calm island in a sea of geometric madness.

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The Amperage of a Ghost

By Jamie F. Bell

The air in the booth was thick enough to drink, a humid cocktail of diesel fumes from the generator, atomised sugar from the candy floss stand, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone that always leaked from his machine. Artie worked the rag in slow, hypnotic circles, buffing the great copper sphere until the distorted faces of passersby swam across its surface like ghosts in amber. This was his world: three metres of particle board, a string of bare, fly-speckled bulbs, and the constant, low-frequency hum of The Static Tamer.

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