"I'd better ring my husband and ask him to stay a week longer in New York," she said.

"Could you put me on the carpet, so I can stretch my legs on the floor for a while?" he asked.

"I think I'll leave you up there," she said, and placed the letter under the small rug on the carpet. She walked out of the room.

He was curious to know why she had been so unfriendly. Maybe there was a clue in the letter. If he could get off the table, he could read it. He folded a sheet of paper into a hang glider and flew down to the carpet, pulled out the letter and read.

            Dear Past Self,

                        You must warn your husband not to board the boat he's due on. Tell him any feasible story you can think of, that will warn him of deadly danger, if he catches the boat. Ask him to wait another week to be safe. I've sent back with this letter a boy who wanted to time travel. Since he looks delicious to me, and we're the same person, I know you'll want to eat him. Best not to tell him until you're ready.

            Love, your Future Self from the future.

He couldn’t believe it. She had been playing him for a fool the whole time. The moment she'd learned of his shrinking serum, she'd planned it all.

"I've got to get out of here, before she comes back from the phone call. If she finds me, she'll eat me all up and then go on enjoying her marriage."

What he didn’t know was that sometimes the past could not be rewritten. Her husband did not believe her warnings and caught the boat anyway and died.
She had planned to eat him once the boat had sunk without her husband on it, but when the day came, she had to tell her tiny captive that she had failed to avert the danger that her future self had warned of. She was still, in all timelines, a widow.

He couldn't see any way out of the room, except walking out the door she'd used, which might lead him straight into her clutches. He searched the room, and found a small grating leading to an air vent. He slipped between the bars, and stayed there.

"I'll have to wait until nightfall, or until she goes out. Then I might be able to escape and mix my own antidote and relive these three weeks all over. I'll have to avoid my younger self."

She came into the room, and saw the note on the carpet, and his absence from the desk.

Without a word about her obvious awareness of what he'd done, she closed the door and began to search the room for him. She came to the grate, and lay down on her stomach and looked in at him.

Her large hand just fit through the grating. She grabbed him and then found that her hand would not fit with him in it.

"I'll make you an offer," she said, "If I have to fetch a screwdriver from the desk behind me, and then undo all four screws on the grating, pull it off and grab you, I'll eat you for lunch in half an hour's time. If you come out of there now, and save me the trouble, I'll treat you as a boy orphaned by time, adopted you for the afternoon, and let you cuddle up to my cheek in my bed until I'm ready to eat you for dinner."

"I guess I'll accept it," he said.