The Lovely Trade

I forget where I was going the day my life was hijacked. All I can remember from that day is that it turned out to be the worst day of my life—the day I lost my life in a way that is unfathomable to me.

I'm writing this today from a small room in which I've resided for what seems like decades, but in reality has only been months. I'm no longer me, and I know that sounds strange. But if you'll bear with me, have a seat and listen—I'm going to share with you a tale that will change your whole perspective on our world, our lives, and our souls.

It was raining that cold November morning as I drove slowly but haphazardly toward my destination. I could barely see five feet in front of the car, and the headlights did no good whatsoever. The storm made it so dark, and the rain came so hard and quick that it was like sheets of water falling from the sky.

The radio wasn't picking up at all that day. For a little while it played news, then a bit of Christmas music, then it would go to static. I was agitated. I reached to change the station—I only took my eyes off the road for half a second. But in that half second, my whole world changed.

First there was a thud. Then impact with a tree. Then something that almost felt like I'd driven over a log, and the sound... it sent chills down my back and set my nerves on end so badly that I was grinding my teeth when I came to a stop.

I tried to look in the rearview mirror, but there was no visibility out the back glass. The rain was coming down much too hard. So I stepped out of my car without even reaching for my umbrella, and I turned behind me.

That's when I saw two still lumps in the road and a river of crimson red moving away from the smallest one.

About the time I stepped out of the car, the larger of the two lumps sat up—or was attempting to. When she turned to me, I was looking into the eyes of the most hideous creature I'd ever seen in my life. She looked at me with terror, then her eyes left my face and darted to the other smaller lump in the road.

It was then that the piercing screech reached my ears. I wasn't sure where it was coming from. I looked around—I couldn't see anybody else. There was no one else on the road but me and this hideous being sitting in front of me and this lump in the road with the crimson puddle gathering around it, running slowly down the slight incline.

As the scream ebbed and faded, I realized it had been me screaming.

The lump in the road was a body. The body of a small child. She was maybe four years old, and at one time she had been so amazingly beautiful—like a little cherub. But now she was just a mangled mess, a destroyed flesh suit left behind by the haplessness of a woman who was impatient and in too big of a hurry in a storm she knew she should not even have been driving in.

The woman's car—an old metal junker—had really done a number on that beautiful little angel.

I helped the hideous woman to her feet and helped her into my front seat while I contacted emergency services. I followed the ambulance to the hospital. I felt obligated to pay for Lydia's funeral, and I put Dahlia up in my spare room. I took her shopping for something to wear to the little wake.

The little coffin that Dahlia picked out for Lydia was almost like a doll's toy, it was so small. No one—not one person—was there but me and Dahlia. When I asked where the father was, Dahlia just stared at me. She had not spoken one word to me since the accident, and I was beginning to wonder if she was mute.

I took her home with me and put her up in my spare room. The first two or three months, she never even left the room. I'm not even sure she ate—if she did, it would be while I was at work. I never saw her.

But after three months and a lot of changes to my life, she emerged from the room. And when I say as a whole new woman, I mean literally.

Over the past few months that she'd been staying in my room, I had started noticing my body would ache really badly in the mornings when I got up. I'd noticed bruises that shouldn't have been there. My teeth were becoming loose. My hair was getting thinner. I was losing weight.

But my eyes were betraying me. I would look in the mirror in the morning as I got dressed and I would see me—Amelia Duncan—staring back. But when I couldn't take the pain anymore and finally gave in to go to the doctor, that's when it really dawned on me that something in my life was terribly wrong.

I thought I was dying. I thought I was terminal. I thought karma was repaying me for my deed with Lydia, quick and in a hurry, so that I didn't have a chance to get away.

Even the receptionist and Dr. Bertrand didn't recognize me when I walked in. Bertrand was the doctor who delivered me twenty-three years before. He asked me what I was doing, what I had done to myself. I told him I wasn't sure, but I was in a lot of pain.

He said, "No, Amelia. I mean, this isn't about pain. This is about physical modification, for lack of a better word."

I laughed him off and told him I was just lacking in self-care at the moment because I'd been involved in an accident a few months back and was really depressed over the whole outcome. He examined me and wrote me prescriptions—one for depression, one for pain, and a vitamin to get me energized in the morning.

On my way out of the office, he said, "Amelia?"

"What, Dr. Bertrand?"

"You would tell me if you were on drugs, right?"

I laughed—the hardest laugh I'd probably managed in a while. "Of course I'm not on drugs, Dr. Bertrand. You know how I feel about drugs after watching my mom and dad—both addicts. Growing up in a foster girls' home because I lost them both to the needle. You found them. I'd been shut up in that apartment with them for three days, dead. Why would you ask me that?"

"You know, you never know unless you ask, right, Amelia?"

"Right, Dr. Bertrand."

He wished me well, and I headed home.

Upon arriving there, when I walked through the door, for the first time since Dahlia had shown up in my life, she was out of the room. She was moving around like she was twenty-five instead of sixty-five. She was humming and cooking, and the apartment was clean. It looked like she'd just taken a shower. She smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. She looked younger—lots younger.

I asked her how her day was. She turned with a really big smile and said, "Delightful. How was yours?"

I told her I'd been to the doctor and he said I was depressed and gave me some medicine. I explained that I needed to take better care of myself. I told her that whatever she was cooking smelled delicious and I would be out shortly. I headed toward my bathroom.

Once I turned the light on, the face looking back at me in the mirror was appalling. I didn't see Amelia. I didn't see Amelia at all. She was gone.

In her place was a middle-aged lady who looked like she'd been smoking her whole life and had spent every day of her life on a beach in the sun. Her skin was beginning to look like leather. The lines in her face looked like they'd been etched there with an exacto knife.

I tried to look away from the mirror because I knew that something was not right in my life—something was horribly wrong. But not knowing what it was, not being able to put a finger on it, and not being a really spiritual person or even a superstitious person, I chose to not look at the mirror. I started the shower, stripped, and stepped inside.

After standing there until the water was literally running cold over me, I got a towel, dried off, and went out to join Dahlia for supper.

As the days wore on, my health deteriorated more and more until I had, on my last shopping trip, purchased a cane because my back was getting bowed and I couldn't stand up straight. I was hurting all the time—but worse now than ever before.

When I came in from work that day—and it had been such a long day—coming through the door, I could hear the tinkle of laughter, a happy young woman's laughter. I thought to myself, Oh, you must be watching TV.

But when I walked through the entrance and into the living area, there was a young man sitting on the couch. Dahlia was coming from the dining room attached to my kitchen with champagne in my mother and father's wedding wine glasses. No one ever used those because I figured that was the only day they were ever happy—that was before they got on drugs. I often thought that the drugs were brought about because they couldn't handle being young with a child—namely, me.

I tried to post a smile. "My, aren't we in high spirits."

She said, "Sweetheart, yes we are." She pointed at the young man sitting on my sectional. "Desmond here has invited me out to eat and to stay the weekend with him on his yacht. I've decided to go because I know that Lydia would want me to get out and live again. She wouldn't want me becoming a recluse or a shut-in or an old hag, or you know... an old crone."

When she said the word crone, she had a little smirk on her lips. I was trying to place where I'd heard the word before, but it wasn't coming to me. It was like my brain didn't just have brain fog—it was literally full of holes, eaten by moths or something.

As I was still trying to place the word crone, the uneasy feeling in my gut was churning and turning to acid reflux. Desmond stood and placed a gold-threaded cape around Dahlia's shoulders—a very expensive-looking cape.

He said, "Nice meeting you, ma'am. Now if you'll please excuse us, I'd love to take your daughter and show her the weekend of a lifetime."

I looked at Desmond. "My daughter?"

"Yes. Dahlia told me all about how you'd always wanted a child and could never have one, and then as you were getting on in years, you realized that the one-night stand you'd had resulted in that child you'd always wanted. But you were scared to have it because you'd gotten past your prime. She said you've been the best mom. You decided to keep the baby—which turned out to be her—and you worked really hard to provide her with only the best. She says you've never had a break from her. You've never left her with a babysitter. You've always taken her wherever you went. You've never been on vacation. I just want to take her away for the weekend so that you can have a break and just relax and heal."

I don't know what he saw in my face, but they turned and headed toward my door. As he opened the door for her, she turned and looked at me with the darkest look in her eyes and the most diabolical smile on her face.

She said, "It's really turned out to be a very lovely trade, wouldn't you say, Mom?"

With that, Dahlia walked through my door—the reverse of the way she'd walked through it into my life—never to be seen again.

As the days wore on, I got to where I couldn't even get up out of bed. After a week of missing work, someone finally came looking for me. They placed me here in this home—it's supposed to be an assisted living facility, but let's call it what it is: a nursing home.

I'm twenty-three fucking years old, and I'm in a nursing home. I look like I'm a hundred and three.

Needless to say, I took what money I had saved for retirement and hired a private investigator. He couldn't come up with anything, so he hired a psychic and a medium. It was the medium who figured it out.

My life had been hijacked.

See, Lydia had hijacked Dahlia's life by similar means. Lydia had reversed in age so well that she'd almost become a toddler before I hit her. That's not going to happen to Dahlia because the witch was Lydia. The spell was cast by Lydia, and so she had powers unlike anything the medium had ever seen.

She had hijacked Dahlia's life.

The hideous creature that sat up in the road that day—the person I thought was Lydia's mother, the woman I thought was just really upset that I'd killed her daughter and was almost mute because of it—that woman, that hideous creature, was a mere twenty-six years old. She was in the prime of her life. She was a bank teller. She worked as a flight attendant on weekends. She was beautiful. She was in college. She wanted to be someone one day.

And Lydia—the beautiful little girl, the little cherub that I had snuffed out so easily with my big old clunky car—was a witch who had hijacked Dahlia's life, just as Dahlia had hijacked mine.

Lydia was a ninety-six-year-old woman who knew she didn't have long, but she wasn't ready. She wasn't done living yet.

I'm sure Dahlia wasn't the first life hijacked by Lydia. I'm sure it wasn't the first cruise that she went on. She met Dahlia on a cruise and cast her reverse-age spell and her destiny-swap spell. She began to age in reverse as Dahlia began to get old right before her eyes. She hung around to watch the whole process because it was fascinating to her—that kind of power was right there at her fingertips.

But she wasn't banking on reversing to the age of a toddler. Something about Dahlia's rare blood type amplified Lydia's magic, her power—it doubled. That's why Lydia appeared to be a toddler.

And now, as I sit here in this room—this assisted living, they call it; let's call it what it is, it's a fucking nursing home—I'm twenty-three years old, and I'm in a fucking nursing home. I look like I'm a hundred and three, and they think I'm a hundred and three.

I had continued to work after Dahlia walked out the door, until I couldn't anymore. After missing a week of work because I couldn't even get out of bed, someone came looking for me and found me completely unable to move or take care of myself. A little physical therapy got me up moving—albeit slow—and they moved me in here so I'd have someone to help me with dressing, bathing, and feeding myself.

I've only been here six months. My birthday is in a month. I've been here six months, and so much can happen in six months.

You know, I had plans. I had goals.

I often wonder what my fiancé thinks happened to me since I just disappeared without an explanation. I often wonder if Dahlia found out about my fiancé and maybe she's taken that from me also. I know she destiny-swapped with me. She life-swapped with me.

I sit here dying, looking into a mirror across the room at a woman that I don't even recognize—a woman that if I'd seen in an alley late at night, I would have screamed. I look like a hag. Or should I say a crone? Because I remembered where the word came from.

It means witch.

It means witch.

No, Dahlia.

Not such a lovely trade at all.