"The Day My Mother Disappeared—and Came Back a Stranger"

I was eight when my mother disappeared.
One moment she was brushing my hair, humming our bedtime song. The next morning, her side of the bed was cold, and her shoes were gone.
No note. No warning. Just absence.

For years, I believed she died.

The police searched for months. My father broke slowly, silently. I remember finding him once at 3 a.m., sitting on the kitchen floor with a bottle in one hand and her wedding ring in the other.

I stopped asking questions when I turned ten. It hurt too much to see people pretend like they had answers.


---

But 17 years later, she walked into my life again. Alive. Smiling. Wearing the same perfume she wore the night she vanished.


---

It happened on a Tuesday.

I was working a slow shift at the bookstore downtown. A quiet place filled with whispers, dust, and forgotten stories.

The bell above the door rang. I looked up—and my heart dropped.

She hadn’t aged a day.

Same long black hair. Same mole under her left eye. Same soft smile.

For a second, I thought I was hallucinating. Grief playing tricks.

She stepped forward. “Hello, Lila.”

Her voice was calm. Familiar. As if she’d just stepped out to buy milk and came back seventeen years later.

I dropped the book in my hand. “What… how…?”

Tears filled my eyes, but my feet were glued to the floor.

She opened her arms. “I missed you so much.”

I didn’t move. “Where were you?”

Her smile flickered.

“Somewhere I couldn’t get back from. Not until now.”


---

She refused to say more that day.

Dad nearly fainted when he saw her.

But then something strange happened.

He didn’t hug her.

He didn’t cry.

He stood there frozen, eyes wide, lips trembling. And then he said something that still echoes in my head:

> “You shouldn't have come back.”




---

That night, I asked her again.

“Where were you, Mom? Were you kidnapped? Did someone hurt you?”

She only said, “Some things you’re safer not knowing.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake her until the truth fell out of her mouth.

But she just smiled. Like a ghost who had found peace.


---

The days passed strangely.

She cooked like she used to.

She hummed our bedtime song.

She kissed my forehead like nothing had ever happened.

But there were… cracks.

Her sleep was unnatural. I’d walk past her room at night and find her standing, eyes open, not blinking.

Once, I found her staring at a wall for almost an hour.

She never used her phone.

She flinched at mirrors.

She never talked about the years she was gone.

And worst of all — Dad avoided her completely. Wouldn’t be in the same room.


---

Until the night he finally broke.

I was in the kitchen when I heard them arguing.

She said, “They let me go because I promised to stay quiet.”

He said, “You should have stayed gone.”

I burst in.

“WHAT is going on?”

My mother looked at me with tears in her eyes.

“They kept me,” she whispered. “Not humans. Not police. Not anything from this world.”

My body went cold.

She walked toward me. “I didn’t want you to be afraid. But I was taken.”

“By who?” I asked.

She hesitated. Then whispered:

> “By things that don’t belong in this reality. They study time. Memory. Emotion.”



“They took me apart,” she added. “And when they put me back together, I wasn’t the same.”


---

I laughed. Not because it was funny — but because it was the only thing I could do without collapsing.

“You expect me to believe aliens took you?”

She shook her head. “Not aliens. Not ghosts. Just… watchers.”


---

I left the house that night.

I didn’t sleep.

I couldn’t.

But the next day, when I returned, she was gone again.


---

This time, she left a note.

> “I tried to stay. But I was never really free. I love you, Lila. I always will.
If you ever see me again — don’t follow me.
Don’t trust me.
And whatever you do...
Don’t let me remember who I used to be.”




---

That was six months ago.

I haven’t seen her since.

But sometimes, when I’m on the train or walking downtown, I feel a shadow following me.

Sometimes I see her face in reflections — even when I’m alone.

Sometimes I hear her voice in my dreams, calling my name the way she did when I was a child.


---

And last week, a letter came.

No return address.

Inside, a single sentence written in her handwriting:

> “They’re watching you now.”




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✒️ Author’s Note:

I never believed in monsters. Until the day my mother became one I couldn’t understand.


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