Not Quite Home

The first time Cheryl notices, it’s something small. A paperclip, silver, coiled tight around itself like a little spring, except… no. She’s sure she’s never seen a triple-looped paperclip before. And Cheryl’s seen a lot of paperclips. Filing, sorting, stacking. Paperwork is her whole life. She flicks it away like an eyelash, a glitch in the everyday static.

Next week, it’s bigger. The cashier at the grocery store, the one who’s bagged her bread and almond milk every Wednesday since forever, has a name tag that reads Terry instead of Teresa. Cheryl laughs, shakes it off. Maybe she just read it wrong. But the way Terry—or is it Teresa?—tilts his head, smiling like a wax figure almost but not quite mimicking real joy, that smile sticks in her head like gum on a shoe. She leaves the store, the scent of plastic bags and rotting produce clinging to her.

And then there’s Dave. Her husband. Only he isn’t.

Dave used to snore in his sleep, a sound like an old engine coughing itself to death. A comfort. A rhythm she tuned herself to in the dark hours between night and morning. But now he sleeps silently, chest barely moving, like something learning how to pretend to be alive. Some days, Cheryl catches him just staring at the ceiling, blinking too slow, like he’s reading a script in his head.

“It’s just stress,” he tells her when she finally asks, forcing that lopsided grin that’s been his trademark for twenty years. Except, no. His smile was always crooked the other way. Left side higher than the right. She remembers because she’d always tease him about it, tracing the dip with her finger. “Just work, you know?”

But the way he kisses her goodnight now—mouth cold, like a leftover appliance with the plug yanked out—it’s all wrong. All off.

The thing is, Cheryl’s read about this. The Mandela Effect, they call it. Mass memory glitches, entire swathes of people swearing up and down that they remember Berenstein Bears, not Berenstain. That Nelson Mandela died in prison, not in 2013. Little tricks your brain plays, rewriting history in ways that don’t add up. But this… this is different.

Cheryl starts keeping notes. Lists of things that aren’t quite right. The dog next door used to bark nonstop—now it’s silent. The Starbucks logo, she’s sure, had a crown, not a mermaid tail. The potted plant in her cubicle was yellow. She’d swear on her mother’s grave it was yellow, but now it’s purple, and everyone—her coworkers, her boss, even that mousy intern—insists it’s always been like that.

The world around her is a funhouse mirror—close, but not close enough. Days pass. Weeks. Cheryl loses track. Her notes become frantic, the pen bleeding through the pages like desperate claw marks.

And then it hits her.

She’s never had a mother.

She’s never had a mother, yet she’s got this vivid image—an old woman, skin like crushed paper, saying, “If you frown too much, your face will stick that way, young lady.” She can remember the rasp of her voice, the smell of lavender. But she’s not real. Never has been. A fabrication, a phantom, a filler in Cheryl’s mind. One more subtle mistake.

She looks at Dave—or whatever’s wearing his skin—and asks, “Who are you?”

His smile melts. Face sliding away like wax under a blowtorch. Lips, nose, cheekbones. Restructuring, rebuilding. A fleshy puzzle piecing itself into something new and terrifyingly blank. He leans in close, the grin gone now, eyes dark, bottomless.

“You’re not supposed to remember,” he says softly.

And the world shudders.

The ceiling cracks, like a TV screen fracturing, spilling not light but darkness. Everything around Cheryl—her home, her life, her entire reality—peels away, layer by layer. She’s in a cold metal box, her body strapped into place. The hum of machinery buzzes under her skin. This place—this cage—reeks of antiseptic and recycled air.

Rows of humans around her, all suspended, all trapped, twitching in perfect synchrony. Faces locked in expressions of blissful ignorance, like they’re watching their happiest memories replay on a loop.

“This is your habitat,” Dave-Not-Dave whispers. “We’ve worked so hard to get it right. Tweaked every detail.”

His voice becomes a slithering hiss in her ear. “But you humans… you’re so fragile, so slippery. One misplaced smile, one wrong-colored plant, and the whole illusion unravels.”

Cheryl screams, and the sound echoes back, distorted, swallowed by the emptiness around her.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “We’ll put you back. Erase all the rough edges. Make you fit again.”

Cheryl’s vision blurs, her mind unraveling like a ball of yarn. Her own memories twist and shatter. The wrong becomes right again. This is fine. This is normal.

The hum rises, the machinery resets, and Cheryl is back in her office, staring at a stack of papers. The potted plant is yellow. Just as it’s always been. And Dave snores beside her at night, a comforting rumble, warm and alive.

But sometimes, just sometimes, she catches herself staring at a stranger’s reflection in the mirror. Eyes too wide, smile a little too straight. Blinking too slow.

She’ll look away, shake her head, and laugh at herself.

After all, it’s probably just stress.