Are You My Mother? Issue 1: The Beginning of a BIG Dilemma

By: Zoli Tapay

Greta flicked off the lights and fell fast asleep, but as she dreamt, there was always something nagging at her. It always felt. . . off. After about 5 of her usual, formulaic dreams, it went dark. 

Two red points appeared, and grew larger, and larger, until she was engulfed in it. It felt like blood dripping around her, squeezing and squeezing until she woke up. But you can’t really call it that. Because when you wake up, everything is supposed to be fine and normal, but when Greta woke up, everything was can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it. . .  different.

When she pulled apart the curtains and opened the window, there wasn’t any movement or for that matter, no sound either.. No squirrels in the trees, no birds flying overhead, no cars driving in the streets. Also, all the houses looked.. Older. Well, that’s weird she thought, Maybe every single thing in the neighborhood decided to sleep in and remodel their houses. While this might sound unimaginably silly to you, Greta was horribly shaken from her nightmare and so, in her delusional state, she reasoned that this was a perfectly sound explanation to her. 

When she got into the kitchen to pour herself some cereal, She noticed that her mother, who was always up first, wasn’t up. “Mom” she called up the stairs, but as soon as she did, she noticed that yet another thing was different. “Huh. Am I taller?” She said to herself, as she climbed the stairs to her mom’s bedroom. When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw that her mom’s bed was moved to the other side of the room.

Just now, Greta was really starting to notice how weird things were getting as soon as she looked around her mother’s room. It was so pink and weird to her, with dolls on the dresser and a wooden 4-post bed with (like everything else) Pink fabric. This was strange because she had seen some pictures of her mom’s old room, and they looked EXACTLY like this, with amazing similarity. 

This time she walked up to the bed, and lifted the pink curtains. There she was. However, this wasn’t her mom as she knew her. This was her mom as a kid. “Wha-?!” She said as she sucked in a breath of air, and then she realized. She had traveled back in time.

END  OF ISSUE 1