Nothing had been as enjoyable as this moment, but after the next gulp she made, the benefits would definitely be over. With a snap decision, he pinched her throat as hard as he could and made her cough him up in a gagging reaction.

“Sorry if that hurt,” he said, as she received him in her open hands, “I just changed my mind about going all the way at the last moment. You see, there’s something you don’t know about me, Bonnie.”

“There’s probably a lot, including how you know my name, since I never actually told you, and Mother hasn’t used it audibly around my room since you came here.”

“Do you remember the boy that you went to your formal with, when you were 15? I know about the lovely kiss you gave him when you both got to your street at the end of that night, because you gave that kiss to me, only two weeks ago from my perspective. I’m a time traveller from far in your future, where your teenage mystery solving days are a matter of record. I fell in love with you and came back to meet you, several times. However, a week ago, my time machine only got as far as this year and somehow reduced with me inside it, in the process.”

“It’s really you. I missed you, when you never came back, but working out why and how was one mystery I could never solve.”

“You were often on the right track, when you picked up on my knowing which was your school for the formal, without you having told me, and the way I seemed to know how to get to your street later that night, and of course I wasn’t really brave the night we met. I knew that the monastery noises were just a prank by girls from your school. So I had nothing to be afraid of. I really enjoyed being eaten by you just now too, except I do want to try to get back to your younger self soon, so that she won’t have to miss me.”

“Well I was looking forward to gulping you down the rest of the way, but I guess it wouldn’t matter if I don’t,” she said, with a curious look in her eyes, “If you succeed, I suppose I’ll start to remember things that way.”

She carried him back to his time machine, and he got in and gave it another try.

This time the machine took him back only one year, to when Bonnie would have been twenty, and enjoying the start of her college holidays. He walked out to the edge of the bushes, and wondered what to do next. He saw Bonnie come walking out across the lawn and lying down just beside his place of concealment. He stepped out and let her see him. She had no knowledge of 21 year old Bonnie’s experiences with him, and hence didn’t know who he was any more than 21 year old Bonnie had done at first.