His Mom

For a moment Ben could only stare in confusion.

Dressed in a denim jacket, skirt and leggings, with hair that had a metric fuck ton of product worked into it, his sister was looking at him with wide-eyes.

Her entire look had changed, seemingly overnight.

“Who the fuck are you?” She asked, “and what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

The voice was familiar, but decidedly different from Lucy’s. This girl looked a lot like his sister, but not exactly identical. Even without the drastically different clothing and hair style, there were little things about the face that were off. But even as he noted the slight difference in nose, the freckles that didn’t belong, the different colour of eyes, Ben couldn’t shake the feeling of deep familiarity. He knew this girl.

Recognition came to him all at once. Of course he knew who this person was, he had seen her just about every day of his life, even if she wasn’t exactly the same as she was now.

“M-mom?” He stammered out.

The girl scrunched her nose in confusion, took a step back. “I don’t know what you’re on, or how you broke into my room, but you need to get the fuck out of here right now you creep!”

“Wait, I’m sorry, I don’t- ”

Before he could finish his sentence a fist collided with his nose and sent him stumbling back into the room and down onto his ass.

He felt a small trail of blood run down into his mouth, the taste of copper making him sick. “Fuck, what’d you do that for!”

The girl stared at her fist and then back at Ben, just as surprised by her action. “Wow,” she breathed.

“Wow?” He wiped at the blood, “you fucking hit me!”

Her expression instantly shifted to anger. “Well what the fuck are you doing in my room?” She leaned over him, fist raised for another strike. “What are you, a fucking perv? A burglar or something? I could call the cops you know, or get my dad to come up here and break your legs!”

“I’m none of those things, Jesus Christ, I don’t…” he rubbed at his nose again, the blood starting to dry, “shit, just listen to me!”

He wondered how he would remotely go about explaining any of this. Hell, he didn’t even understand it himself. One moment he was in bed, and then the next he was…what? In an alternate dimension? In the past? This was some Dr Who shit and he couldn’t really make sense of it.

“Ok, this is gonna sound weird but you’ve got to believe me,” Ben spoke in a slow, deliberate pace.“My name is Ben….and,” he swallowed another curse, trying to grope for the right words, “I didn’t break into your house. I swear to god, I just woke up in this room a few minutes ago. I’m just as confused as you are.”

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t really know how I got here, because frankly, even to me this shit sounds insane and impossible,” he looked her straight in the eyes, those same blue eyes that were identical to his own. “but….I think… I’m from the future.”

His mom just stared at him, a look of distaste crossing her features. “The future?”

“I know how it sounds, believe me I do…but yes, I’m from a couple of decades in the future.” His eyes searched herself, imploring, “you’ve got to believe me.”

She looked at him for a moment longer, her pretty face a tangle of warring emotions…

“What a crock of shit..”

…and brought her fist down against his face hard. Consciousness left him.