Time Ripper

It was time. I mean… well, I was there, but it was time that did it, not me. Something, someone else, stepped into those minutes between us beginning one of our usual arguments and Julie lying dead on the kitchen floor.

When the police arrived, the bloody knife was on the floor next to her. My fingerprints were all over the knife; after all, I had been chopping the vegetables with it when Julie stormed into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her, yelling about what she’d seen through the bedroom window: Alice and me together, down in the bushes at the bottom of the garden, far away and hidden from the rest of the people gathered around the barbecue on the patio.

As Julie yelled and screamed, heads outside turned towards the open kitchen door. All I could think of was how soft Alice’s skin felt under my hands as we'd kissed.

Then… somehow… time jumped - I remember it like a bad edit in a film – and Julie lay dead on the floor with the knife lying next to her. I remember looking down at my hand in disbelief, expecting the knife to still be there, despite it being in plain view on the floor, the blood pooling stickily around it.

Then, Tracey, Julie’s sister screamed from the open doorway… and then there was chaos, until the police and ambulance men came and calmed everyone down.

Of course, everyone assumed I’d done it… everyone except me, because I knew I hadn’t done it…. Someone, something, had – in those few seconds – ripped time apart and stepped through, pulled the knife from my hand and plunged it into Julie, while I stood there and stared.

Then, just as easily it had ripped time and space apart and stepped back, allowing time to begin again while I stood there too shocked to move or speak.