Free Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River by Fiction River

a pile of boxes on the right. It seemed they were going to have no shame, so Sherri sure wouldn’t either. She had spent many a night with Duster and Bonnie drinking in hot tubs over the years, but letting Carson see her almost nude made her feel like a young girl on a first date.
    “A little help with these clasps?” she said.
    “Gladly,” Carson said and Bonnie just smiled at Sherri as Carson undid the clasps on the back of her dress.
    Sherri moved over beside Bonnie and Duster and dug out the clothes she had been wearing weeks ago, undressing and dressing quickly, all the while watching Carson out of the corner of her eye.
    And what she saw almost made her light-headed. His body was better than she had even imagined. If this was how he looked after aging twenty years in the past, what was he going to look like in the present?
    That thought made her breath catch in her throat.
    After they were dressed, Duster turned and led them down another short tunnel and through another steel door and into a room that once again took Sherri’s breath away.
    Every inch of the huge cavern was covered with what looked like beautiful quartz crystals. And the cavern seemed to go on into the mountain for as far as she could see.
    Duster had told her that there was no end to the cavern. He said he believed that every crystal on the wall was a timeline. And that every time a choice is made, another crystal starts to grow. Sometimes the decisions are minor and the crystal merges back into the original, but other times the choices are major.
    When they had left to go back in time, Duster had hooked two wires from a small machine sitting in the middle of a rough table to a crystal on one wall.
    For a short time while he was gone, Sherri and Bonnie had watched crystals form and grow around the small crystal that Duster had hooked the wire to. Bonnie had told her that was Duster changing things in the past.
    Now the four of them stood there in that large room staring at it, looking at the billions and billions of different timelines in only this one area of the cavern.
    It was almost impossible for any human mind to grasp and Sherri felt no different. It made her realize how really, really big the universe and all of time was.
    After a moment she turned to Carson. “What day do you arrive back?” she asked.
    “December 16 th , 2016, at about 2:30 in the afternoon.”
    She took his hand, then reached up and kissed him, something she had been wanting to do from the very first moment she had met him.
    And it had been worth it. She lost herself into his kiss, into his soft lips and wonderful taste.
    Finally she pushed away. “That’s going to have to last me for seven months and twelve days.”
    “Then we had better do it once more to make sure it holds,” he said, pulling her against his hard chest and kissing her again.
    For what seemed like an eternity they held that kiss until finally Duster cleared his throat.
    She pushed back. “Come by the house. I’ll have a few surprises for you.”
    With that she turned, trying not to allow herself to kiss him again.
    Together they all four put their hands on the small time machine so that they could remember the timeline they had all just experienced. Then Duster flipped the switch and around them the room shimmered.
    They were back in 2015 and Carson was gone.
    Sherri felt empty once again without him close by. But the memory of the kiss would hold her.
     
     
    Six
     
    Carson appeared in the cavern, his hands pressed against the machine, the feeling of Sherri’s kiss still firmly on his lips. And the memory of watching her change clothes. How he had managed to just not walk over there and kiss her at that time was beyond him. Wow, he had known his share of women, but never one that turned him on as much or attracted him as much.
    He looked around as the crystal he had attached the wire to morphed and changed and swallowed up some other smaller crystals nearby as the timeline he had lived in