What If I Had

twenty one - back to reality

I stopped.

I breathed, sighing dreamily as I slid down the back of the front door.

I found my hand on my heart, beating a little faster and a little harder than usual. The realization of it all hit me like a truck even after our revelation.

The illusion is broken.

Memories.
Every last one of my dreams... were memories.
In a past life? No...

I'm in the wrong timeline.

Because of me. Because of my contraption, I screwed up not only my timeline but also the timeline I'm currently in.

I didn't just time travel, I travelled to a timeline where Rick and I got married, had kids, and split up.

I died. He left, and I died. Old and alone.

No wonder he's so crabby in this dimension. No wonder... I couldn't recognize him.

My real life, everything that was undoubtedly me, was in another time. My time. Everything I've made for myself here was just a symptom of the aftermath. I was never a high school student at Harry Herpson. I was never meant to stay teenaged. The friends I made were an effect of my contraption. The people who looked after me here weren't my real parents. I was never adopted, my last name's not Song, I don't have---

Shit! MY PARENTS!

My feet pushed the rest of my body up with such force I thought I flew across the foyer and up the stairs. I ran straight to the room down the hall screaming,

"MOM! DAD!" With both my hands out and open, I flung the door out of my way only to stun my response and leave me breathless.

What was once my parents' bedroom was now a massive storage room.

Confusion swept over me and dread overwhelmed me.

What the hell have I done? I know I had something to do with this...

The worst feeling came from my natural response which shocked and disgusted me. The feeling of apathy.
How in the hell could I feel this way?
I'm such a piece of shit for not caring... I thought. The sting of relief overcame me and followed close behind it was the wave of immense indifference.

Why? What the fuck is wrong with me?

I dropped to my knees as my eyes started to burn, I didn't deserve the fat tears that rolled down my cheeks and onto the open palms of my hands. I sobbed, but not for my adoptive parents.

I sobbed in shame, for not caring that they were gone.

My arms found themselves wrapped around me in an effort to comfort myself. Balled up in my own hug, I looked around what was once a bedroom now covered from the floor to the ceiling with cardboard boxes full of God knows what.

Across from the room, I saw myself in a long wall mirror.

A red-headed stranger stared right straight back at me.

Slowly, I got up one foot at a time and made my way over to the mirror to get a better look at myself.

I walked with caution. As if I feared something would leap out of these boxes and attack me. There was a ghostly presence in this room that freaked me out.

When I got to the mirror, I didn't recognize myself at first.

My body looked as if it had aged. As if I was no longer a teenage girl studying for high school trigonometry, but a college woman studying for level III advanced calculus. My hands travelled all up the sides of my body, more shapely than I remember it being.
Thank God for my baby face, that was about the only thing that didn't change about me physically. Everything else was bigger and a little bit more wrinkly, but very hardly noticeable.