The Price of Time

by C.L. Spillard

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Some people have a Guardian Angel. Some aren’t so lucky, and have a Guardian Devil.

And lifelong green campaigner Verity Player of York has just come face-to-face with hers: evil genius Stan ‘Satanic’ Mills.
He’s the mastermind behind the spread of an idea so simple – and so fundamental to everyday life – that few people would think to question it.

But Verity has long ago grasped its infernal logic. She knows it as the mechanism that lurks behind humanity’s apparent death wish. And now, facing its creator, she’s the only mortal who can fight to make him halt it before its final, devastating phase.

Her struggle pitches her into a surreal game.

Desperate, she bargains for a sporting chance. But this comes at a price: the forfeit of her precious conscience if she fails to strike the first blow by New Year…

Though a fantasy, ‘The Price of Time’ deals with a subtle but destructive force from real life.

A Word from the Author

“Tightening its grip. With every heartbeat. You know how it makes you pay for your time, lass: how every mortal pays for their time.”

These are the words of the story’s evil genius Stan ‘Satanic’ Mills as he boasts to heroine Verity of the mechanism he has set up to destroy humankind. She’s one of a very few to have seen and fully understood it – and no others can bear to look Mills in the face.

You could say she’s discovered her world is under a spell.

Of course Verity, Stan Mills, and all the other characters in ‘The Price of Time’ are pure fiction.

But its world – including the mechanism – is our world.

(C.L. Spillard, May 2018)