A Cure for Time

Her name is Autumn. And she has a story too terrifying to ignore.

When seventeen-year-old Eli Ackerman sees a young woman stranded on the side of the road in the rain, he does what any decent person would do. He offers her a ride. But Eli quickly realizes that this simple act of kindness is not going to be so simple when she tells him her story. Her name is Autumn, she says, and she’s from the future.

It’s a joke, right? It has to be. But when the punchline doesn’t come, Eli suspects that Autumn concocted the story to protect herself from a truth too terrifying to face. He gets a hint of what that truth might be when he sees the bruises on her back and realizes that someone has been hurting her. And when he sees the car in his rear view mirror, when he sees the silhouette of a man outside his bedroom window, Eli fears that Autumn is being followed.

She won’t tell him the truth, but Eli knows that the man who hurt Autumn is coming after her, that he wants to go on hurting her, and that he will kill anyone who gets in his way.