The TV crackled, fuzzy lines running down the screen before settling on a scene Jon knew by heart — the family camping trip. He remembered it instantly: the little cabin in the woods, the icy lake, the endless mosquito bites. And there he was, five-year-old Jon, darting across the screen in his beloved red hoodie, already a size too big back then, and a pair of comically tiny swim trunks. His mother appeared on the recording seconds later, a younger version of herself in her late twenties, fit, carefree, and laughing in a bright two-piece suit.
Jon’s stomach dropped. He had completely forgotten about the wish.
Before he could blink, the world snapped. A flash — like a camera bulb going off in his skull — and suddenly he felt... wrong. Smaller. Softer. His chest ached in strange new ways. He looked down at himself and froze.
Smooth, tanned legs. A midriff. A two-piece bathing suit stretched across a body that was definitely not his own. His mom’s younger body.
“Oh, no,” Jon muttered in a voice that wasn’t his. Higher, feminine. His hands flew to his face, then down again, then back up in sheer panic.
Next to him on the couch was his mother. Only… she wasn’t. She was the tiny, terrified five-year-old version of himself, sitting in that ridiculous red hoodie and swim trunks, wide-eyed and on the verge of tears.
J-Jon?” the little boy squeaked in his old voice, a child’s voice — tugging at the oversized sleeves of the hoodie. “What happened?!”
Jon’s pulse thundered. He had no idea how the wish handled situations like this, no idea if there was a way to stop it. All he knew was that the sight of his actual mother trapped in a child’s body was about two seconds away from escalating into a screaming fit that would wake the neighbors.
So, without thinking, he scooped her up — his younger self, his mom — and pulled her into a tight hug.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Jon said quickly, fighting to keep his new higher voice steady. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll tell you what happened.”
The little boy clung to him, trembling, and buried his face in the red hoodie’s sleeve. The absurdity of the situation hit Jon like a truck — he was hugging his mother, who was himself, while inhabiting her twenty-something body from an old VHS. His brain scrambled between terror and the insane urge to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness, with feeling an instick to rub cercals on his back like mom would do to the boy... mom.
But he held her tighter anyway. Because if there was one thing he couldn’t let happen, it was his mom — his five-year-old mom — completely losing it.
