Italy felt like a dream. The sun drenched the ancient streets, music echoed through the alleys, and everything smelled like bread and basil. My parents and I wandered for hours, eating gelato and snapping pictures of crumbling statues. It felt perfect — almost too perfect.
We found a tiny restaurant down a narrow alley. The kind of place only locals knew about. The food was incredible, and my parents were happier than I’d seen them in months. But as we ate, something shifted.
The air grew heavy, almost sticky. The lights dimmed, even though no one touched the switch. My dad’s smile faltered, his eyes glazing over for just a second too long. Mom dropped her fork, rubbing her temples, and my own chest tightened like someone was squeezing my lungs.
Then, without warning, the world cracked apart.
A cold rush of static swept through me. My heart skipped, my vision blurred, and I felt like I was falling through myself. It lasted only seconds, but when I came back… everything was wrong.
I looked down at hands that weren’t mine — larger, rougher, with a wedding band that didn’t belong to me. My heart pounded, heavy and foreign in my chest. I lifted my trembling fingers to my face and felt stubble scraping against my skin.
I was in my dad’s body.
My mom, now in my body, gasped and grabbed her face like she could rip my features off. And my dad — wearing my mom like a mask — touched his cheeks, horrified and silent.
We left the restaurant without speaking. No one noticed the wrongness in the way we moved, or how we kept glancing at each other with wide, terrified eyes.
Back at the hotel, we tore through the room like trapped animals. We begged and pleaded with whatever unseen force had done this, but the spirits were gone. No taunting voices, no sinister laughter. Just silence.
And the most terrifying part? They never came back.
We stayed locked in that room for two days, too afraid to step outside. Mom — in my body — cried herself to sleep the first night. Dad paced for hours, scratching at his arms, the sight of his hands on her body making my stomach turn. And me… I just stared at the mirror, touching my dad’s face and trying to convince myself I was still real.
But we couldn’t hide forever.
Eventually, we flew home.
I sat in my dad’s seat, gripping the armrests until my knuckles went white, every bump of turbulence making me think the spirits were coming back to finish what they started. But nothing happened.
When we landed, we didn’t talk about it.
Instead, we stepped back into our lives, pretending nothing was wrong.
I went to work at my dad’s job. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I watched old videos of him talking and mimicked his mannerisms until people stopped asking questions. I kissed my mom goodbye every morning, feeling sick every time her lips pressed against my face.
My mom went to school in my body, sitting through classes and pretending to be a teenage boy. She stopped talking to her friends. Stopped texting people back. She just came home, locked herself in my room, and cried into my pillow.
And my dad, trapped in my mom’s body, tried to hold us together. He made dinner. He folded laundry with her hands. He hugged me goodnight, and I flinched every time.
So we lived like that. Wearing each other’s lives like costumes. Pretending we were still a family.
But sometimes, late at night, I catch my mom — in my body — staring at her reflection in the hallway mirror, touching her face with this distant, empty look in her eyes.
Like she’s already starting to forget who she used to be.
And I wonder if that’s what the spirits wanted all along.
For us to lose ourselves.
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