Treaz stood before the bathroom mirror gawking at her naked body. It was not because she was vain or had poor body image but because the person reflecting back was not her. It was the body of a stranger.

She cupped her cheeks, unable to look away. Who was this woman? Brushing back straight, fine, red hair revealed deep green eyes and pale skin packed with freckles. The woman stood tall, and was a most unhealthy skinny. Where had the real Treaz gone?

“What’s going on?” She said aloud, surprised at her high pitched voice.

Treaz reached out to touch the glass to ensure it was an actual reflection. Her fingers glided against the cool, smooth surface. Had she actually woken up? She did feel exceptionally groggy, like a fog surrounded her. Her vision blurry.

A few moments ago, as she forced her heavy eyelids open, she felt different. Something seemed way off, yet she couldn’t place it. A shiver enveloped her unclothed body because she never slept without pajamas, and she had awoken without a stitch on.

She blinked and blinked again trying to make sense of what she saw—a woman at least ten years younger. Had she somehow traveled back in time? No. It must be some weird, lucid dream giving every indication it was real. This was bizarre. Treaz splashed her face with cold water and swallowed sips from the faucet. 

CONTINUE HERE…

Reentering the bedroom, she hunted for and engaged a light switch causing a dull illumination to confirm what she already had discovered in the bathroom—she was not in her own house. The mattress lay on the floor, no box springs. Above the bed hung two kitten posters. Piles of clothes were thrown everywhere. Maybe this was a kind of out-of-body experience?

A wave of mental exhaustion hit. Her eyes ached. It was too much—too confusing. Treaz turned extinguished the light and crawled back in the bed, yanking the covers over her head. The sheets put off a funky odor. She liked clean sheets, not ones that hadn’t been laundered in a month. Can you smell in a dream? 

She recounted the night before had been her thirty-second birthday. She vaguely remembered polishing off several vodka concoctions and most of a bottle of wine all on her own. With the after-effects of too much alcohol evident by the hammering in her skull, she massaged her temples. Curling her knees up to her chest, she shut her eyes willing herself to sleep so she could truly wake up. Wait until Grammie hears about this wild dream! 

Later, Treaz rolled stiffly from her stomach to her back—still naked. She opened her eyes to light streaming in from two broken blinds on the window. This was not her room! Stretching out her long sallow arms, she studied the abundance of freckles. How can this be? What was going on? Tears filled her eyes as she buried her face in her hands. She was losing her grip on reality. She was having a breakdown, just like her mother had suffered. 

“No!” She told herself firmly. There must be a logical explanation. 

Nothing resembled her own clothes, so she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and peeked out the bedroom door to see if anyone else might be there—sharing her crazy hallucination. 

No one else materialized in the apartment, consisting of a small kitchen and a living room area with modest furnishings. Unwashed dishes stacked high in the sink, bread crumbs and hardened beads of strawberry jelly dotted the counter, and cat knick-knacks adorned most flat surfaces. On the wobbly kitchen table was a cereal bowl holding pinkish curdled milk and an unopened nine-inch-square cardboard box with nothing written on the outside to indicate its contents.

A thirty-inch television was on a stand next to a stack of People magazines, and a candy dish containing red and silver foiled chocolate kisses. On the bookshelf in the corner sat a gaudy plastic cat whose eyes shifted mechanically back and forth with a faint ticking indicating each passing second. Held in its paws, a display of the current time and date, 6:13 am, December 18, 2016. Treaz frowned. December 18th? Three days after her birthday. How had three full days disappeared? Did she die and reincarnate? 

A wave of dizziness and disorientation hit her. Bile rose in her throat. She dashed to the bathroom, closed her eyes to avoid acknowledging her proximity to the nasty toilet bowl, and retched nothing but the water she sipped earlier. After tugging herself back up, she caught sight of those green eyes staring back at her in the mirror, boring a hole into her psyche. 

Her heart thumped. Treaz took a bed sheet and draped it over the vanity light fixture hiding the mirror, not wanting to be reminded of who she was, or rather, who she wasn’t. 

There must be someone who could help make sense of what made no sense to her.  She ran from the apartment into the hallway, which appeared abandoned with the long stretch of doors. Treaz rushed to the one across the hall and began banging. “Hello? Hello? Can you help me?”

The door cracked opened and a woman peered out. Upon seeing Treaz, she widened the door further.

“What’s my name?” blurted out Treaz, perspiration beading on her brow.

“Uh. I don’t know.”

“Please, who am I?” 

The lady stared at her, taking in her blanket draped body and disheveled appearance.

“You don’t know my name?” 

“No. I only see you going in and out of your apartment.”

Treaz opened her mouth. The woman recognized her.

“Sorry, I gotta go,” said the neighbor closing the door.

Treaz pounded again, “No, please! I need help. I don’t know how I got here.” 

The woman called from behind the door, “I’m gonna call security if you don’t stop.” The pounding and pleas continued. “I’m calling security.” 

Treaz collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the cold cement, her mind a flurry of confusion. Maybe this is really me and the other life was a dream. But no, no—she pictured Grammie and the house they had shared so clearly. That couldn’t all have been a dream. She wept. I AM becoming my mother.

A middle-aged man wearing a uniform squatted in front of Treaz. His voice gentle. “Miss Edwards?” No response. “Miss Edwards. Are you alright?”

She frowned and looked into his eyes, her face streaked with tears. 

“Danielle. What’s going on?”

Danielle Edwards? She shook her head. “My name is Treaz.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “You flipping out on something?”

“No. My name’s Treaz Popa.” She grasped his arm. “What am I doing here?”

“You live here.” 

She started crying again. 

The security guard attempted to help her up. “Look, let’s move you back in your apart—” 

She pushed him away. “I don’t live in there. Don’t make me go back.”

“Do you want me to call somebody?”

Treaz pointed at her body. “Who is this?”

His eyebrows arched. “Yeah. I think I need to find some help.” He stepped away—too far for Treaz to hear his phone conversation, but close enough for him to keep a wary eye on her. As sirens grew louder, she covered her face with the blanket trying to ignore her living nightmare. 

More footsteps approached and she heard the guard say, “Danielle Edwards. She’s really freaked out.” 

“Miss Edwards?” came a deep female voice. “Danielle? Can you uncover your face?”

Slowly, she lowered the blanket for the EMT. 

“My name is not Danielle, it’s Treaz,” she said in a raspy voice.

“Okay, Treaz. My name is Candace. And my partner is Brent.”

Treaz quickly glanced at Brent, then back to the woman. 

“Do you know where you are?” asked Candace.

She shook her head.

Brent addressed the guard who stood nearby. “You say she lives here?” 

He nodded at the open apartment door behind them.

“That’s not my house. I’m not going back in there,” Treaz said in a loud, stern voice.

“Alright. We won’t force you,” said Candace. Then she turned to the security officer. “Can you find her something to wear?”

After a few minutes, he returned with some clothes and handed them to Candace.

Treaz tightened the blanket. “I don’t want to wear those. They’re not mine.”

“You don’t want to be naked, do you? Let’s stand you up.”

Candace and Brent raised her to her feet. Treaz allowed them to help her put on the stranger’s clothing. They fit loosely over the rail-thin body.

“We’re going to take you to get checked out,” reassured Candace.

Perhaps these people could help her return to her real life—her real body. 

Candace gripped Treaz’s arm. “Can you walk?”

With an emergency tech supporting each side, Treaz shuffled down the stairs to the awaiting ambulance. She squinted at the brilliant blue sky, not expecting such glare for the forecasted tropical depression from the gulf. There was no rain, nor puddles.  Instead she was surrounded by a simple landscape of beige rock, a ground cover of orange and gold flowers, and a periodic cactus. The blood drained from her face. “I’m not in San Antonio?”

“Nope. Phoenix, Arizona. Home to two hundred ninety-nine days of sunshine a year,” said Brent.

“How’d I get here?”

Candace opened the back doors of the ambulance. “We’re taking you somewhere to find that out.”

Treaz hesitated before climbing in, but she complied knowing that she certainly couldn’t cope with this by herself. She almost bumped her head on the roof, being much taller than she was used to. Once inside, she realized something was missing. “My bracelet,” she shouted in a panic, grasping her wrist. “Someone stole my bracelet.” Her head jerked up as a chill shot down her spine. A figure flashed in her mind—a man outside her bedroom window that last night at her home. Had he taken her bracelet? Had he stolen her body? Everything felt like a dream. If she could just rouse herself. Treaz pinched her arms hard.

Candace grabbed her hands. “Danielle, stop pinching yourself.”  

“I’m not Danielle! I need to wake up.” She struggled to free her hands. A sharp jab went into her arm and she whimpered. 

“Just relax,” said Candace.

Soon her body lost its tension, and the EMT’s laid her on the gurney placing a restraining belt across her torso. Her thoughts turned to her grandmother. She experienced a horrific sense of doubt that she would ever see her alive again. That inextricably painful thought brought stinging to her eyes. Would Grammie and Treaz both die alone?