I know this sounds crazy, and I don’t know where else to go.
Something happened over the weekend that I can’t fully explain and to be honest I haven’t had a full night’s rest ever since then.
I tried to tell myself that this is just my brain running low on caffeine. But the more I push the doubts away, the more uneasy I feel.
Something is wrong with my children. I have too many of them.
I have three wonderful boys. James is 8 and Braxton is 6.
I don’t remember Dylan.
I see pictures of him up on the fridge, smiling and playing catch with his dad. He goes to the same school as his older brothers. He’s a great kid, for the few days that I’ve known him.
But before Saturday I have no recollection of him being a part of our family.
Saturday was strange, to say the least.
There was a cold front moving in. Weather report said there would be rain mixed with hail. We had to cancel baseball practice because of the nasty change.
But no one seemed really prepared for the fog.
We were leaving the field when I saw it roll in, I think it came from the south. It was thick, so very much so that traffic came to a halt.
My husband tried to get out and see if there was a way around it but no one could see anything for miles.
It was so very cold, colder than you would expect. The boys were complaining because of it and even though we stayed in the car, I didn’t feel comfortable sitting there amid the cloud.
Something was wrong about all of it. Everyone could feel it but no one said anything.
Braxton and James were complaining one minute about the whole situation and then it became dead silent. Time itself seemed to stop.
I remember telling them to be quiet while we tried to drive forward inch by inch. It was a little nerve wracking being unsure what was just mere feet in front of you. My husband finally announced he could see the edge of the cloud and pushed the ignition.
I told my boys that we were finally headed home and then I saw something in the mirror.
A third child.
I screamed.
My husband slammed on the brakes.
“What the hell Joy! I thought we were going to get in a wreck!” I was staring at the third child in the back seat, and everyone in my family was looking at me like I was insane.
“Who are you?” I whispered. The question to me sounded like what any sane person would ask. I should have realized sanity left our lives the moment the fog came.
The boy spoke. “Mom… it’s me, Dylan. Are you okay?”
I looked to my husband for answers and he was equally worried, checking my head for signs of a bruise.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I waited until we got home and the three boys were asleep.
“Vincent… I know this sounds insane… but I don’t recall having three children. When we went into that fog, I only remember Braxton and James,” I whispered as we got ready for bed.
My husband couldn’t believe it. He showed me family pictures of all of us.
“I think we need to schedule a doctor visit. This isn’t normal,” he said.
But he didn’t mean for the third child, he meant for me. I had a hard time even closing my eyes that night knowing a stranger was sleeping in my house.
Worst of all, I kept wondering if my mind was playing tricks with me. How could I possibly forget having a third child? It couldn’t be. Dylan is my son, and I must be just having an aneurysm or something.
The thought frightened me because nothing about it offered easy solutions.
The next day we sent the boys to school and got that appointment. When we made it to the office, I was nearly convinced that I had just imagined the whole bizarre fog.
Then I overheard a young man in the lobby arguing with two kids he claimed were not his.
“I don’t know you I don’t care what that doctor says, you aren’t mine. Get away from me!” he snapped. I stopped him as he was about to go out the door and saw something in his eyes.
“Was it the fog?” I whispered.
He knew what I was talking about and that troubled me even more.
The doctor examined me and couldn’t find anything physically wrong.
“I’m going to prescribe a few psychiatric medications just to help you remain calm. I’m sure this will all resolve itself in a few days,” the doctor said.
I smiled uneasily and promised I would take them.
I never did I will admit. I wanted a clear mind so I could figure out what was happening and which of these children was actually real.
But meeting that man confirmed to me that I wasn’t alone. Others were experiencing the same as I was.
I didn’t know how to explain it to my husband, and I was scared he might consider sending me to an asylum if I kept pressing the issue. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe these are my children.
When they got home from school I made them food and sat right across from Dylan. I wanted to try to resume a normal life as crazy as that sounds.
This kid had made no effort to seem a threat. Maybe I was the one affected. Maybe the fog did something to me, not to him.
“Thanks for dinner mom,” Dylan said as he hugged me after washing his plate.
I gave him a half smile and sat there, feeling absolutely awful.
I was starting to feel something towards him.
Was he even real?
How could I be sure he was?
That second night of no sleep made me get up and check on the boys, to be sure that nothing out of the ordinary happened.
They were all so peaceful. My life felt like a dream.
But it was still off. Alarm bells rang in my head. Telling me not to just push these feelings aside.
I went to the attic, to try and find anything connecting to Dylan’s childhood.
If he is really my son, I knew I would have kept baby stuff up there.
But I didn’t find anything.
Not even a bracelet from the hospital.
As I sat there looking at other albums it occurred to me that every part of him seemingly manifested four days ago.
Before that he didn’t exist.
The next day when Vincent went to work I checked online in our area to see if anyone else might possibly have a similar experience from the fog.
It took a bit of digging, and maybe one too many coffees but I found something; buried under a help tab on a Facebook group.
How to tell which of your children is real
There was a video of a mother just like me.
Behind her there were three children, all sitting in chairs strapped down by zip ties.
I held my hand over my mouth as she started to speak.
“Everyone says I’m crazy. But I can’t shake the feeling that one of these children isn’t really a real kid. It started with the fog and it grew larger from there. At first I was certain… then it started to infect me more. I blur their faces. They all look the same. Then I realized I wasn’t sure which one was the one I couldn’t remember. I needed to know. If they are my blood I know they will have blood… And then I told myself it didn’t matter. I love them all. But… that unease in my stomach didn’t disappear…”
She took out a switchblade. Then the screen suddenly went black, announcing the video was pulled.
It made my heart race.
I couldn’t do that. I’m not a monster.
But what she said bothered me. The fog had infected her mind. Made her question reality. What if it was doing that to me too? What if one of these children is an imposter?
Yesterday I reached my breaking point. I tried for a full day to push these thoughts aside and treat the three of them as mine.
Yet I had no connection to Dylan. No motherly instinct was kicking in. When he hugged me I just felt dead inside. He is a stranger. A mother knows her children.
I told my husband I was going to take them to the park.
When they got out and played I sat there and watched them, trying to psych myself up to what I needed to do.
I have a few safety pins in the car for clothing emergencies, and I told myself I just needed to prick their finger.
That’s what the woman was going to do, I was sure of it. The real ones will bleed. The fake one… I wasn’t sure.
I waited until they got back in the car and then locked the doors.
“Mom, can we go for ice cream?” Braxton asked.
I was saying a mental countdown and then pounced, pricking his finger. “Mom what the hell?” James shouted.
I snagged him next. Dylan tried to defend himself and the sharp point snagged his arm.
Blood trickled down and he cried out.
“Mom, what are you doing? Why did you do that?”
I froze, looking at the other boys.
I dropped the safety pin and quickly drove them to the nearest clinic.
“It was an accident. You were rough housing and you stuck yourself. It will only be a few stitches,” I told Dylan.
They promised to not say anything to their father.
I’ve been dumbstruck and horrified by the moment ever since. Their faces were filled with fear. Their own mother attacking them.
That isn’t the worst part though, because I have one thing seared in my mind.
Braxton wasn’t bleeding.
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