Time Trick

by Tom C. Underhill, Nick Wisseman

A cheating husband discovers that having sex with a prostitute can transport him to any intimate moment in his past.

Jim’s let his mind wander to other women during sex with his wife before. He’s even strayed physically a few times. But he’s never cheated on her with a prostitute ... until today.

Bad move. Sleeping with the hooker transports Jim back to whatever intimate moment he’s thinking of when their act of adultery begins. At first the literal flashbacks are intoxicating, but when they cause him to destroy his present, they become the only means of salvaging what’s left of his life ... and finally doing right by his wife.

“Time Trick” first appeared in Bewildering Stories , issue 351, August 2009.

14 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 27, 2012

About the author

Tom C. Underhill (real name: Nick Wisseman) lives in Bear Lake, Michigan with his wife, daughter, fifty cats, twenty horses, and ten dogs. (Okay, so there are actually ten times less pets than that, but most days it feels like more). He's not quite sure why he loves writing twisted fiction, but there's no stopping the weirdness once he's in front of a computer. Eventually he hopes to merge this stubborn surrealism more fully with his academic training to produce something in the historical fantasy line. But for now, he's content with the purely speculative fiction he's published in magazines like Allegory, Battered Suitcase, Bewildering Stories, The Cynic Online Magazine, and Mysterical-E.

Reviews

[Heather Boustead · Rating 3 out of 5]

Time Trick
By Tom C. Underhill

Jim can’t believe what has happened to him in the moment of spending time with a prostitute he is transported back into the past and one slip has altered his entire future. Jim returns to the present through his climax until he does something he must desperately try to take back with another visit, hopefully undoing the damage that was done.

I do enjoy Tom Underhill’s writing and his thought provoking endings but this short story is not for me. I know a lot of people use adultery to stimulate their audiences and raise their anger and this story certainly manages to do that with me. However, this story certainly manages to take the phrase “be careful what you wish for” to a whole new level.

As always if you have any requests or recommendations email me at:
Reflections.of.a.BookWorm@gmail.com
Be sure to visit my blogs at:
http://reflectionsofabookworm.wordpre...
http://bookwormrflects8.blogspot.com/
You can even follow me on Twitter
@BookWormRflect

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a great play on words that may have inspired this idea and the concept is spectacular, extremely original, but the ending is rather abrupt. I would love to follow Claudia more, see more stories with her, but the main character just didn't capture me.

[McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with the rating on this one... I didn't personally enjoy the book but the idea was different and the writing good. If you aren't looking for Happily Ever After but an interesting twist to a story. You might enjoy this one.