Sarah - now in an absolute panic - started to scream for help. Soon her mother had rushed into the room, crying "Sarah, what's happened? You're screaming bloody murder..." as she came into the room.
"Mom..." Sarah sniveled and wept, her arms out-stretched and imploring her for help. "...I...I don't know what's happened to me. I...I had these dreams..."
"Who are you?" Sarah's mother demanded crossly. "Where's my daughter? What's the meaning of this nonsense, young lady?"
"Mom? It's me! Don't you recognize me? I...I know I'm fatter, but..."
"Fat?" Sarah's mother sneered in disgust. "Little miss, you're positively the most obese and repulsive thing I've ever seen. You look NOTHING like my daughter! Nothing at all!"
With that, Sarah turned to a mirror...and saw...oh. good grief!
The girl reflected back at her was indeed a fat, disgusting pig. Sarah knew to expect that just by looking down. But - though the sight of her swollen, bloated body made her cringe - it was her face that was the crowning obscenity. The body was bad. A great, round belly. A pair of huge, sloppy breasts. A butt that projected like a big, soft pillow. Legs that were so thick from billowy thigh to blubbery cankle, that she knew she couldn't do much more than waddle fast. Arms that were bloated, thick and heavy...
...but her face...
The girl reflected back at her was a total stranger. She looked nothing at all like Sarah. Nothing at all. Her hair was black and frizzy as a failed perm, and her heavy lips, big nose, sunken eyes and thick brows made her look more Slavic than Anglo-Saxon. She raised her hands to her greasy, acne-speckled face, and saw short, stubby fingers on the ends of her fat hands. Pale and blotchy, with varicose vanes and pallid patches of cellulite on her thighs, hips and butt, she looked nothing at all like the girl she'd been just a day before.
Nothing at all.
"But mom..." she started, and she realized she didn't even SOUND like herself! Her voice was deeper, her inflection less distinct, and she had a whining, wheedling tone that was alien to her.
"Sarah!" her mother bellowed, leaving the room and looking in another. "Jokes over! I don't know who this girl is, but it's not funny!"
Sarah looked around the room, and saw an ugly sundress she'd not noticed before. It was dark blue, obviously homemade, and had a pattern of tiny white and yellow flowers on it. Not wanting to be naked anymore, she pulled the dress over her head, and slipped her thick arms through the sleeves.
Slipping her feet into a ridiculous pair of pink fuzzy slippers, she started to waddle after her mother. Taking the stairs slowly - it wasn't easy at her size - she found her mother coming up the steps from the basement TV room.
"She's nowhere in the house..."
Tears rolling down her fat cheeks, her piggish eyes now red and raw from crying, Sarah begged her mother "Please, Mom...you've got to believe me. I swear...I'm Sarah. I woke up like this, and...and I don't know what to do!"
Sarah's mother looked at her for a good, long moment...then went into the kitchen. Sarah almost started to follow (she was VERY hungry), but the sound of her mother on the phone, calling the police...
Sarah turned and waddled away as fast as she could. She slipped out the front door as fast as she could, and managed to hide behind some bushes in the yard next-door before her mother came to the door and shouted "Get back here, little missy! Do you hear me, you ugly toad? I've called the police, and they'll be here any minute! They'll MAKE you tell them where Sarah is!"
Sarah wanted to go back. After all, once the police checked her finger prints, they'd know she was Sarah...
Unless...her finger prints were different now too. If so...then what would happen to her? Unable to provide an identity she could prove, she'd be arrested as a material witness in her own disappearance. Eventually, they'd have to let her go...but what then?
And...what if her fingerprints were now someone else's? What if she had a different identity out there, and she was bundled off to a home she didn't recognize and to parents she didn't know?
