‘MOM!’ I heard a peeving, yet sweet holler. I’ve been hearing it for more than a minute now. I had no clue where the sound came from, nor did I know who was shouting, and who the “MOM” was. All I could sense was that the sound was new to me and it came from somewhere close and it kept getting closer. ‘MOM!’
There was a loud bang on my door following a few knocks. ‘MOM…WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?’ came another yell. I could make out that it was a “She”; perhaps a fifteen-year-old girl. I sensed her anger. It hits me why would someone cry out for their mother at my door!?
The girl kept banging and hollering with increasing anger. I couldn’t stand the noise anymore. I hadn’t even opened my peepers when the girl had disturbed my sleep.  I had to get out of my bed to stop this.

I finally opened my eyes, letting them accept the morning light. The light was too harsh for my eyes to handle; everything seemed blur to me. I had probably slept for a long while the previous night. Thanks to the new dose of tablets.  I felt too tired to wake up; my legs were being pulled. I wanted to bask for a little more while. But the girl at the door probably didn’t like the fact that I wanted to rest for a few more minutes. So I rubbed my palms to generate a little heat and pressed them on my peepers; I felt better then. Things were clearer this time. Oh wait!  Pretty much stuff had changed around me. The bed I was sleeping on, the paint on the walls, the room’s fragrance, the clock that hung above the air cooler, the windows, the television and perhaps everything in the room had changed. In fact, it didn’t even look like it was my room. It wasn’t my house. I could feel my head spinning. My heart beat faster. I was blank. I had not an idea about where I was or how I got there. Nothing at all made sense to me. I tried to think hard, but the constant banging and yelling of the girl at the other end of the door didn’t let me concentrate. I knew I didn’t belong to that place, but something told me on the inside that my presence in that room and the girl outside the door made sense.

All I could think of at that time was that whatever it might be, I had to face it. I got off the bed, stood up and walked towards the door. When I walked, I felt an unusual tiredness and heaviness in myself. With an effort more-than-the-usual, I dragged my feet, trying to match its pace with my heartbeat. I went up to the door; when I unlocked it to get it opened, I felt an intense déjà vu.

I opened the door and saw the girl who had been hollering so badly all that while. She was red with anger. Her hair was half-tied and her left hand was clutching the end of her braided lock of hair. She was ready to kick open the door; her right leg was a little above the ground level, towards the door. She seemed pretty cross with her mother. I was staring at her, still clueless about why she was at my door in search of her mother. Uh, well, it wasn’t my door, but there was no one other than me in the room; and now, she had added in.
‘What the hell were you doing mom?’ she said having her anger dominating her face and tone. I didn’t know to whom she was talking. I turned to scan the room in toto, just to conclude with “There’s nobody except me in here!”
The girl shook me hard with her palms gripping my shoulder tight. ‘Where is my rubber band mom?’ she said as she walked away skipping an eye-contact with me, searching for something, which was probably her rubber band.
‘Excuse me; can I know whom you are talking to?’ I asked, still oblivious of what was happening.
She gave me a weird, enigmatic expression as a response and said, ‘Quit kidding mom. Not a good time. Now will you please tell me where my rubber band is?’
In reflex to her words, I turned at once towards the dressing table and walked ahead to pull out the second draw from the bottom in which I sought the black rubber band that she was in need of. She grabbed it from me. Her angry face morphed into a pleasant one that had a happy curve on her lips. ‘Thank you. Buh-bye!,’ she said and left.

I didn’t know why I was there, how I reached there, why the girl had called me her mother and why all this was happening. There was yet another question in my mind which awfully fazed me: How did I know where exactly her rubber band was?
My mind was filled with this marquee of questions that left me with “No results found.” I felt like an underdog; winning over those questions was too close to impossible.

I went back to the bed; not to sleep, but to think and get neat answers to those questions. My head hurt. I realized how unfortunate I was; I couldn’t answer even a single question for the least. I closed my eyes tight and rattled my brain ignoring the fact that my head was hurting badly, but I was still clueless.
I thought it would be better to go round and explore the house. At least something could give me a clue about what was happening.

First of all, I walked towards the washroom; I had a weird feeling in my stomach, and probably that’s why I chose the washroom! I saw that the washroom was really huge; one could even stay there with much ease. It was no different than any other room except the existence of four taps, a washbowl, a toilet, a shower and a hand shower.
After I was relieved from the super-weird feeling in my abdomen, I went to the washbowl to wash my hands and face, and get refreshed at least physically. I washed my hands first, then my face. I guess the water wasn’t good; my skin turned sticky on washing it. But I felt a little fresh after sprinkling some water on my face. I looked into the mirror.

Oh-My-God! The reflection on the mirror threw me off. A while back, I had seen that my room had changed and concluded that it wasn’t my house. Now was I supposed to conclude that the image that reflected in the mirror wasn’t that of my face? I couldn’t digest what my eyes saw. Well, how is a girl of eighteen years supposed to accept the so called fact that her face has got wrinkles and her hair had started turning grey? Especially when she was without those weird additional stuff on her face the previous night when she was happily enjoying her stay over with her friends as a just-turned-eighteen girl!
It threw me off both mentally and physically. I practically fell down all of a sudden as an impact of a push which wasn’t practical. I needed time to understand whatever was happening. Well, not just sometime; perhaps, even eternity wouldn’t be enough to accept it.
I was breathless, clueless, thoughtless and no idea what else was I losing.

I didn’t want to waste time in thinking about the answers which weren’t ready to show up; I had to seek them myself. I rushed downstairs, to the drawing room. There was a man sitting on a couch, speaking to someone over the phone. ‘She’s here. I’ll call you back,’ he said and ended the call as he caught my sight. There was no other woman in the room and obviously, that made me think that the “She” he had mentioned over the phone was me.

‘Good morning sweetheart! Should I get you some coffee?’ he asked. He was being too nice to me, but I had no idea who he was.

‘Goo… good mo… good morning,’ I heard myself stammer.
He raised his right eyebrow and the coffee mug in his right hand as a move to get an answer for his question.
‘Nope. Uh, my head is hurting. I need to rest for a little more while,’ I put forth an excuse just to leave the room. Then I went back to the bedroom and sat to recollect what had happened the previous night.
It was the 31st of March. Khushi, Yash, Prateek and I were at my place. We folks were having a stay over. The night was full of fun, games and pranks in which none of us was “Not trapped”.  Mom served us vegetarian chili which was mom’s signature dish; our favorite. After dinner, we watched a movie, and I had my tablets; I had got my head hurting for a long time and our doctor had given me a new set of tablets with high dosage since the first hadn’t worked. And that perhaps resulted in my long sleep. That was it. I didn’t remember anything after that. All I knew was that I woke up in the morning to find my life probably having it fast-forwarded to “Twenty years later”.
Oh boy! Now was I to convince myself saying that I did nothing other than sleeping all these years because of the increase in the dosage of the tablets? Maybe that was why I felt so tired.  But that’s not practically possible!
I started thinking of the possibilities, and my head started hurting once again. I was in need of some tea. I went back to the drawing room. The man had left a note:

“Hey Isha! I’ll be a little late today. I guess you’ll have to pick Simar from school. Take care. Love you :)”

There it was! That note left another marquee of questions running in my aching head to let it feel heavier. And again, I started thinking. Is the girl I saw in the morning supposed to be Simar? Am I their guest? Or am I married to the man who left the note? These questions hit me with a huge hammer on my head.

For some reason, I re-read the note twice. The handwriting seemed familiar to me. But as usual, I couldn’t win over the doubt.
I was losing my mind. Could it be a lapse of memory or something?
There it was! I finally had an answer to at least one question. It could be a lapse of memory; “Jacob Memory loss”. I faintly remembered reading about something called “Jacob Memory Loss”, which is one kind of a terrible disease where there is a possibility of forgetting even the daily language. Naomi Jacob was probably the first person affected by this disease, and she couldn’t recognize her own kid.
I felt that there could be a possibility that the angry girl in the morning could be my daughter and the man in the drawing room- my husband.

Silence. Breathlessness. Blood rushing through my body. Weird feeling behind my neck. Questions. Silence.

Somehow, things were getting clearer; they started making sense to me one-by-one. As the matter of fact, if things were happening the way they were, I was perhaps trapped by that memory loss! WOW!

I couldn’t recognize my own daughter and the reason why she’s here. I had wrinkles on my skin. I had my hair turning grey.
But there was yet something that hit me. “The Article”. I had read that article somewhere around just a year ago or two. Now how is that possible? If I had forgotten my daughter who could undoubtedly be around fifteen years, how could I remember something that I had read just two years back?
Oh boy!  I am not designed to take so much of thinking. Things were not how they actually seemed to be. It was a very bad time. I wished the breeze could just carry away all the confusion and let only the truth remain in front of me.
Things were not clear anymore. And that made one thing super-clear to me; well, actually two things.

One- I hadn’t slept for twenty years because that practically didn’t make any sense, and I probably had my own family.
Two- I didn’t have the Jacob Memory loss disease because I remembered an article that I had read around just a year ago or two.

What else could be possible?!

I composed myself and tried thinking about other possibilities. When I was scrolling through the active aspect of my brain, something struck me. It could be a dream!
Oh yes! It could be a dream! I jumped with joy on the inside. So this one; the third one should be it. But I needed to make sure of it. I paused to pinch myself.
Hoping that it was nothing, but a dream, I pinched myself so hard that a part of my skin came off. ‘Ouch!’

‘How in heaven’s name can this happen?’ I whispered to myself. 

I rushed to the washroom like I had a tiger chasing me. I didn’t look into the mirror because I couldn’t accept my face with those wrinkles and hair turning grey. I turned on the tap; the water was hot and that helped me.
I washed my face and hands; I rubbed them too hard, unlike the time when I just sprinkled water on them without much effort.
When I washed my face, my skin started peeling off. I was scared to death. In fact my pants were safe only because I had my abdomen emptied when I woke some time back; otherwise they would have turned wet!
I kept rubbing my skin, and it kept peeling off my face and hands. I felt too sticky; more than the first time I had washed my face. There was no blood, and it hurt too less. When I kept repeating this action, I realized that it wasn’t really my skin. I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure that it was not my skin.
After a while, instead of rubbing, I squarely started pulling the sticky layer off my hand. I kept peeling it out, and it kept coming out. After around five minutes, almost the whole thing was off my skin. I washed my face again with soap before I could look into the mirror. This time I felt less sticky, and more of my own skin on my face.

Three…Two…One… I turned straight to look into the mirror, gathering some guts. It became foggy because of the vapor from the hot water! I cleared the fog and looked into the mirror. Phew! There it was- My face! My very own face! I was so happy; it showed on the pleasant curve on my lips. I felt like the most satisfied girl on earth. I saw my face after so much of struggle.

But things weren’t completely sorted out. There was a lot more to decipher; the girl, the man and my presence in their house.
First of all, I needed to know how I got there. Secondly, I needed to know why someone would put that sticky thing on me. Thirdly, I needed to know where my friends and my mom were. And atop of all, I needed to get out of that place.
I rechecked the room just to make sure I’ve not got any of my stuff back in there (even though I hadn’t brought anything to that place). On the bed, near the pillow was a small chit. I picked it up and unfolded it. It said:

“Hey Isha! How has your day been till now? We hope it was great! :) Now quickly rush down and get out of the house.”

Who could have written this? The handwriting was similar to that of the man’s. I still couldn’t guess to whom the handwriting belonged. It was pretty familiar, but maybe because I couldn’t think fluently, I didn’t get an answer.

As the words in the parchment instructed me, I rushed downstairs at once. There wasn’t anyone there. I wanted to get out. I tried opening the door, but it was difficult. I felt suffocated. I added in a little more force to my action and finally got the door opened after around half-a-minute.  I jumped out and jogged for a few seconds. But I panted like I had come running for quite a while.

I realized someone’s presence behind me. Well, actually some-many’s presence! I turned behind at once.

‘HAPPY FOOLS’ DAY!!!’ came a huge roar. Khushi, Yash, Prateek, and the strange man and the girl whom I had assumed a while back as my husband and daughter stood there with such excitement, while I was still thoughtless.
I didn’t know how to react. “Fools’ day?” I thought. Then, things practically became clear; completely clear. WOW! So it was these folks who scared the hell out of me!

‘It was a prank young lady!’ Yash said.

I stayed silent. I was recollecting everything that had happened. The recollection added in more fun. I laughed my soul out! Every one of us did. It was the best “Fools’ day” trap ever laid on me! These guys are impossible.

Then they told me that the man was Prateek’s uncle and the girl was his cousin. This meant that it was all planned! And everything completely made sense.
 

“BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP” I hear my alarm. “BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.”
‘Wake up Isha! Don’t you have to leave for school?’ my mom asks, as she pats me to wake me up.
I wake up. I am in the room where I slept last night. My room; my house. I want to know what had happened with me. I rush to look into the calendar. It is the 1st of April. The day has just begun. 
Huh? So it was all the third possibility I had thought of! Just a dream?!