Live my life again

By Noel Hansen

Alyssa woke up with a start, screaming, in a cold sweat. She sat in her bed for a few seconds, surrounded by her sheets, panting. She had just woken up from a dream where she had been falling into an abyss, and the craggy, rocky ground had suddenly rushed up to meet her. For a brief moment after she wakes up, she thinks she can hear voices talking in another room, but she can’t make out the words. But they quickly disappear, just another part of the dream.

After she has calmed herself down, she lets herself fall back on her mattress, the covers still in ruins around her. She stares at the darkened ceiling, unable to fall back asleep. She turns over in her bed and stares at the crack in her apartment wall. It has been there ever since she moved in, and though she has no proof, she has the feeling it has grown since.

She tosses and turns for a minute or so before begrudgingly turning to face the alarm clock on the nightstand. It shows 6:58 AM. 2 minutes before her alarm is programmed to go off. Wearily she sits up in her bed and switches the alarm off. Waking up so soon to her alarm has further fouled an already bad mood. The dream feels like it is following her. The memories of how she got to that place in the dream have already long faded, as well as many of the details of the fall itself. But the emotion, the fear, the anxiety, the terror that came with teh fall and the vision of the fast approaching ground is still there. She can’t shake that feeling of waiting for a doom that she knows is coming. It squirms in her gut as she throws the covers back and steps onto the cold wood floor of her bedroom, intending to walk to the bathroom and get the day started.

As she steps on the ground, she notices everything feels off. Alyssa feels like her body is off-kilter, like her vision isn’t quite right. Everything seems slightly exaggerated somehow, and as she walks towards the door of her bedroom she realizes she feels clumsier and less in control of her movements.

She pauses at the door frame, resting a moment, leaning on her forearm which is lying against the frame. She searches her mind for anything she could have done last night that would have caused this; but she didn’t go out drinking or dancing or partying last night, rather she spent Wednesday as she usually does, at home making a nice meal to help keep her emotions up until the weekend, then having a nice cup of herbal tea before going to bed. She starts to panic a little, but trying to suppress the instinct to flee, she walks to the bathroom to try and start her day, trying to convince herself she just slept on something wrong and had a bad dream, just like her therapist told her when she would have these feelings before.

She walks into the bathroom, and turns on the light, then gasps when she spies the mirror. The woman looking back at her from the mirror is not Alyssa. Alyssa is 5’8”; this woman appears to be about 5’5”. Alyssa had short, curly dark brown hair that sits on top of her head; this woman has shoulder length red hair. Alyssa has a pale, almost albino complexion; this woman has ruddy cheeks and freckles. Alyssa’s nose was rounded, this woman's nose is pointed with a slight hook. Alyssa’s chin came to a point, this woman's chin was a rounded square. This woman has prominent cheekbones while Alyssa has prominent ears. Alyssa has gray-blue eyes; this woman has dark brown eyes. This woman has narrower hips than Alyssa, and larger breasts which are located about two inches lower on the torso than Alyssa’s were. Alyssa has a scar that goes down the side of her left hand from a childhood skateboarding accident; this woman has a beauty mark on the right side of her neck that looks like it could be cancerous. If this woman and Alyssa were standing next to each other on the street, no one would make the assumption that they are related, even distantly. And yet Alyssa is not in the mirror this morning; the woman is.

Alyssa moves her arm up; the woman in the mirror mimics her movements exactly. Alyssa moves the other arm, to the same effect. Alyssa moves one arm to pat her head, and the other to rub her tummy. The woman in the mirror follows in perfect unison.

Alyssa runs to the kitchen, and stares at the microwave door. So often she has seen her face staring back at her from this door, as she waited for coffee to wake her up after a long night of work or as she waited for a pre-packaged meal to become edible. The other woman has followed her to this surface as well. Alyssa is nowhere to be seen.

Alyssa runs to the entrance of her apartment, where a wall-length mirror is set (presumably put in because the building manager thought that it would be used for checking stray hairs or wrinkles before leaving). There stands the strange woman in Alyssa’s clothes. Alyssa falls to her knees and muffles a scream. Her companion in the mirror does the same. There is no escaping it; somehow in the night, Alyssa has turned into a completely different person.

Alyssa crawls to the mirror and touches its reflection, still unable to get past the change. She stares at her face for a solid minute, unblinking and unmoving, unsure of what to do. “What? Why?” are the only two words she can think. Slowly she rises to her feet again, staring at her reflection in the mirror as she does so, unable to take her eyes away as much as she wants to. Eventually she pries her eyes away and stares at the unadorned wood of her door, then looks back to the mirror. Nothing in the reflection has changed.

Slowly, very slowly, she backs up from the mirror, still staring at her reflection. A curiosity comes to mind with the horror. She walks slowly back to her room. Along the way she checks everything thing in her apartment; every picture on the wall, every knick knack on the shelf, every piece of furniture. All are in their proper place, all seemingly untouched. She gets back to her room, and walks to the chair where her purse is sitting, and picks it up. She pulls out the small wallet that contains her ID and debit cards. She finds herself unable to open it, afraid of seeing that new face again on the contents inside.

Finally, she opens up the wallet and takes out the ID. Her old face is there, her old name. She finds this even more troubling than if it was her new face and an unfamiliar name; it makes the change more real. She pulls out her debit card; her old name is there too. Slowly she puts the contents of the wallet back in the purse and walks to her dresser, where a photo of her with her mothers and older brothers sits on top. She picks up the photo; the photo is unchanged. There is the old Alyssa, her arms around both her brothers, smiling for the camera at a family get together.

She puts the photo down and runs to her dresser. She takes out a shirt; the size is her old size. She takes out a bra; the size is her old size. She takes out a dress; the size is her old size. She takes out a pair of pants; the waist and length are the same as they always have been. She drops each item of clothing on the ground one by one as she inspects them, her confusion growing.

Slowly she walks towards the bed and sits down, not sure how to process what she is seeing. Alyssa is finding herself unable to discern what is reality. How can her body change so completely at night and everything else about the world remain the same? She decides she needs to call her best friend Yumiko; she knows Yumiko hates talking on the phone, but knows hearing her voice will calm her down, and surely once she explains things to Yumiko she will understand. They had been very close for 5 years, ever since they met when they started work the same day on the same team, in the same office, and had been there for each other through good times and bad. If anyone can calm her down, its Yumiko.

Alyssa takes a breath and opens her phone, then dials Yumiko. The phone rings for a second before being picked up.

“Hello?”, comes a familiar voice from the other end.

“Hey Yumiko?”, Alyssa says into the phone, trying not to sound as anxious as she feels; sending Yumiko into a panic isn’t going to help anything.

“Oh Maryanne! Sorry, didn’t see who it was when I picked up. How are things? Whats up?”, Yumiko asks cheerfully, with a hint of concern due to the unusual nature of Alyssa’s out of the blue call.

Alyssa’s stomach drops at her response. It feels like a brick in her stomach. “Yumiko, why did you call me Maryanne just now?”, Alyssa asks

“Well, thats your name right? What else am I supposed to call you?”, Yumiko responds.

“Why do you think that is my name?”

“Well, that is what you told me when we met 3 years ago at that house party Donovan was throwing. So unless you have been lying to your best friend all this time, I am pretty sure that is your name”

“Can you describe what I look like?”

“Uh, about five and a half feet tall, red hair down to your neck that you usually wear in bob, round face, cute cheekbones, build about average though slightly more top-heavy than other women. Why? Is something the matter?”

“Nothing Yumiko, nothing. Call you back later, I have to figure some stuff out.”

“Sure Maryanne. You take care of yourself okay? Stay safe and all that”

“Yeah, I will. Have a good day Yumiko”

“Yeah, you too Maryanne. And let me know if you need anything”, Yumiko says before hanging up.

Alyssa sits on the edge of the bed, her arms crossed and held tight across her chest. She shivers a little, maybe from cold, maybe from fear. She stares at the floor, waiting for some revelation to come to her, some guidance on what to do next or what is happening to be revealed, but nothing is coming.

Absent-mindedly Alyssa checks her phone, more out of habit than out of any real belief that it holds answers to her situation. She has no new messages. She opens up her contacts list, and sees it hasn’t changed since the last time she looked at it. All her friends and family and co-workers are still there, as well as some numbers for individuals she swapped numbers with at some point but never did anything with. However, none of those seem out of place; their names are all clearly marked with where/how she met each person. Her message history as well doesn’t seem out of place, all of the last messages roughly match up with what she remembers talking with people about.

Alyssa glances at the clock on her phone, and realizes she will be late for work. Unsure if she still has a job in whatever new life this is, however she does not want to risk finding out the hard way. She quickly changes into work appropriate attire, pulling her belt a little tighter than she is used to in order to account for her narrower waist, before rushing out the door. She is relieved to see that at least her old car is still parked in the garage where she left it, and that the key that was left in the coin dish by the entrance to her apartment still fits it.

The drive to work is uneventful, and Alyssa finds her usual parking spot outside the clinic is available. She pulls in and rushes into the office. The office manager who works the overnight shift, Sarah, nods to her as she comes in and gives her a disinterested, though courteous, greeting of “good morning”. Alyssa makes a mental note of the recognition on Sarah’s face; here too people are used to her as Maryanne, not Alyssa.

She passes one of the techs in the hallway on the way to the break room to drop off her things before clocking in, Mark. Mark had a crush on her, in the previous life, and would always blush when she walked past and would stammer and twitch with nervous energy whenever they had reason to talk to each other. Now he just gives her a nod as they walk past each other in the hall. For as much as things in this new life have stayed the same, there are still changes that mean she is always going to know things are different, she concludes.

Alyssa gets to the break room and opens the fridge to deposit her lunch, then walks over to the coffee put burbling on the counter next to the sink to pour a cup of coffee. She never thought she would be grateful for a cup of the cheap trash the clinic purchases, but right now she is looking forward to the comforting rush of energy it promises to bring.

Her co-worker Stephanie walks into the room and greets her. “Morning Maryanne, always good to see your smiling face. Your hair looks lovely this morning, love what you are doing to it!”, she says, walking past Alyssa to drop off her own lunch in the fridge.

Alyssa, almost spilling her coffee over herself, responds. “Oh hey Stephanie, glad to see you!”

“Yeah, I am glad to see you as well! Would chat more but I got to attend to some paperwork in the back office, just stopping in to drop these off”, Stephanie says as she lays down box of donuts on the break room table before walking off.

Alyssa grabs one from the box before heading to her desk out front to replace Sarah. No one else is in the hallways of the clinic this early in the morning, which is good; it gives her time to think about her next move. She sits down at her desk just as Sarah is putting on her jacket.

“Anything crazy happen during the night?”, Alyssa asks.

“No, it was pretty dead, as usual. Take care of yourself now”, Sarah says before grabbing her purse and heading out the door, leaving Alyssa alone again.

The light from the evening sun stings her eyes. Alyssa never realized what a difference three inches could make; previously at the end of her shift, she could see the setting sun through the trees, but it never landed on her eyes. Now with her shorter stature, the sun pokes through a hole in the trees in the park across the street from the clinic and blinds her. She’s had to close the blinds in order to be able to concentrate on her job.

She feels lucky that nothing there has changed at least; the job is the same, her history at the job is roughly the same, and her relationships with her colleagues are roughly the same. It seems none of her relationships have changed, from what she has been able to glean over the day; the history she has with people has changed, but for most people her relationships with them is about what it was before she woke up this morning, with very few exceptions. Whatever new life she is living now, it isn’t all that new; she is where she was before in almost all aspects of her life, in this new world now she just got there in a different way most of the time.

Many questions still remain, however. Like what of the remnants of her old life? Her pictures of her as she was with her family? What to make of those? And what is her relationship with her family? Her relationships with her friends and co-workers has remained largely the same, but there are still differences. Does she still have the same number of brothers? Are her parents still together in this new world?

This is all leaving aside the greater questions of “how this happened” and “why”. But Alyssa has worked next to doctors for long enough that she knows that finding out all the symptoms to properly diagnose a problem is key before working to understand how one got to have the problem in the first place, and visiting her family seems like a good start to that.

Fifteen minutes before the end of the shift, she texts her parents to see if she can come over for dinner that evening; they respond that that would be fine. This will allow her to see her parents and (hopefully) her little brother who still lives at home in the Mother-In-Laws while completing his masters. Talking with all three of them should give her the information she needs.

After her shift is done, she transfers her work off to her replacement for the evening shift, a sullen man 5 years her junior who wears eyeliner and always looks like he is about to cry. He always looked at her with some minor derision before, a sneer always on his face. Now as she packs up her things into her purse and signs out of the office computer, he looks at her with a deeper sadness and his usual sneer is replaced with a sad, small smile. Alyssa is unsure what this means, and doesn't want to find out; she doesn’t want to spend anymore time in this strange body, in this estranged off-center universe than she needs. She knows that largely the destination of her history is the same in this universe, she doesn’t want to spend more time than is needed trying to figure out how the shape of it has changed.

She drives home before heading to her parents for a quicker shower and to change out of her work clothes. After she gets out of the shower, she puts on looser, more casual clothes for her visit to her parents; her shirt and bra being tighter than normal was causing her serious discomfort all day. Before she heads out the door, she pauses at the picture of the old her with her family. Will her parents look different? She thinks to herself. Will her brother? They live in the same house they always had at least, she had confirmed that. Part of her thinks they must; nobody in her family has ever had red hair.

She grabs the photo and puts it into her purse before grabbing her jacket and keys, lacing up her shoes, and heading out the door.

Her parents' house is warm and inviting as she pulls into the driveway and parks. The house and the garage is awash in golden light, and the sun setting right behind it has almost given it a halo. She turns off the car engine and gets out of the car just as her parents dog Sparky runs around the house to greet her. The instant she spies Sparky, her face lights up; Sparky isn’t the dog she grew up with, that dog had sadly passed away when she was in college. Her parents adopted Sparky when she was already living on her own, but she had helped them pick the animal out at the shelter and had helped train her from a puppy, so there is still a good deal of attachment between the two.

She crouches down to welcome Sparky towards her, to give the girl a hug, but the animal does not approach. It stops when it sees Alyssa get out of the car. Instead of the expected familiarity and tongue-wagging grin that Alyssa expects to see, she instead spies wariness and caution on the animal's face, like it has just met a stranger and is trying to understand if it is friend or foe. Alyssa holds out her hand and the dog approaches cautiously and sniffs it. This seems to make the dog ease up a bit, but she still isn’t as playful as she would usually be with Alyssa. The dog turns around and heads towards the front door with the dog flap, and Alyssa pats her head which causes her to wince in reaction and run ahead. She follows her up after she grabs her purse from the passenger seat.

Alyssa opens the front door to see her mother at the stove top, mixing something that is putting off an aromatic scent. Aylssa can detect hints of garlic, rosemary, and thyme in the scent coming from the kitchen. Her mother turns to greet her, with only love on her face.

“Oh hi honey, glad to see you! Dinner will be in a few minutes. Your father is in his office as usual, working late for the firm again. And Davie is up in his room, doing whatever he does up there. Make yourself comfortable!”, she says, a gentle and contented smile on her face, as if all is right with the world.

“Sure mom”, Alyssa replies. “I am just going to drop my purse off at the table.”

Alyssa’s mom nods and Alyssa heads past her to the dining room. After depositing her purse on her usual seat at the table, she walks to the living room. She tries to act casual about it, but every step towards that center of family life makes her feel like her body weighs a thousand pounds. She is not sure she wants to see what is contained therein on the walls, on the mantle, and on the cabinets.

She walks into the room, and as expected nothing has changed since she was here last. She walks over to the mantle over the fireplace in the corner. On the mantle there are picture after picture of the family. Each picture is the exact same as it was before. Each picture contains Alyssa, not Maryanne.

Alyssa rushes back to the dining room and grabs the family photo from her purse. She takes it to the mantle and holds it up, comparing the woman in her photo to the ones on the mantle. They match. Her family’s photos still show Alyssa. And yet her mother recognized her as she walked in? Maryanne is just about to walk back to the dining room and deposit her photo back into the purse when her father walks into the room.

“Hey kiddo, how are things at the clinic?”, he says as he sees her.

Maryanne turns. “Oh fine, how are things at the firm?”

“Oh fine”, he replies, a smirk on his face as he returns her lack of answer.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”, MaryAnne asks, trying to act casual but feeling tense.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Why did you and mom decide to name me MaryAnne?”

“Oh that wasn’t my decision kiddo, that was what your mom wanted, ask her”, he says, turning to head to the kitchen and greet his wife.

“Hey Dad, can you just take a look at one thing else?”

“Oh sure hun, what is it?”

Alyssa hands him the photo she had taken from home. “Can you tell me what you see in this picture?”

“Well that is all of us on vacation obviously! Oh hmm, thats odd; some strange woman has replaced you in the photo. Where did you get this?”, he says, looking directly at her with an inquisitive look on his face after studying the picture intently.

“Dad, can you look at the family photos on the mantelpiece?”, Alyssa replies, dodging his question.

Alyssa’s father walks over to the mantel and peers at the photos one by one, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed.

“Huh, thats odd. Did you do something to the photos? They don’t show you anymore, they show this other woman from your photo. Can you please put the old photos back hun? Not sure I get what joke you are trying to play here”, he says, quickly turning away from the photos. “Now I am going to check in on your mother kiddo, take care”, he finishes.

Alyssa sits down on the couch, slightly stunned from the interaction. It is like nobody wants to see what is right in front of their eyes; nobody wants to make the connections to what is happening, they refuse to see it. She continues to sit on the couch, completely silent, until her mother calls her in for dinner.

Dinner with her family is pleasant, and after desert in the living room with everyone, Alyssa bids them farewell and goes back home. Once the door is closed, she sighs. Everything continues to confuse her and she finds herself feeling stuck, unable to comprehend what is going on and what to do about it. She takes off her jacket and hangs it up, and deposits her purse in her room before heading to the shower.

Standing in front of the mirror after taking off her clothes, she just stares; stares at the unfamiliar body that is presented to her, stares at the unfamiliar curves and folds and blemishes and scars. A scar she had on the inside of her right thigh from a biking accident as a child is gone; now she has a scar across the top of her left foot. A tattoo of a whale she had over her left breast is gone, though she does have a tattoo of stars on her left shoulder blade. None of the various cars and blemishes on her body indicate anything of what has happened to her; she had feared taking off her clothes in order to reveal a hideous pattern that might reveal to her that she had had surgery without her consent, but no such evidence has shown. Rather, she just looks like a normal woman in a normal body; a normal woman who has lived a normal, full life. Just not her body. Not her life. Looking at her body in the mirror now, she feels like she has been repeating a word over and over; all meaning, all attachment has been completely lost.

A shower helps to relax her, but doesn’t help to make her feel better about the situation. But she retreats to bed after the shower, unable to concentrate on any television or reading. She lays in bed, staring up at the ceiling for an hour after the lights have gone out, her mind racing, her body refusing to sleep. Alyssa resolves to figure out more tomorrow, to investigate her past more tomorrow. Surely there is some clue somewhere, some answers somewhere.

The next morning, Alyssa wakes up and walks to the bathroom, as she has for many mornings before this. The woman looking back at her from the mirror is not Alyssa. Alyssa was 5’5”; this woman appears to be about 5’3”. Alyssa had shoulder length red hair; this woman has frizzy brown hair that sticks out in all angles from her head. Alyssa had ruddy cheeks and freckles; this woman has a tan and a birthmark across her right cheek. Alyssa’s nose was pointed with a slight hook, this woman's nose is small and upturned. Alyssa’s chin was a rounded square, this woman's chin is wide. This woman has prominent teeth while Alyssa has prominent cheekbones. Alyssa has dark brown eyes; this woman has bright green eyes. If this woman and Alyssa were standing next to each other on the street, no one would make the assumption that they are related, even distantly. And yet Alyssa is not in the mirror this morning; the woman is.

Alyssa screams.