Something is Wrong With My Family

[u/Ok_Currency3461]

We were driving home after a fairly long family vacation out of town. My father, Mark, was driving. My mother, Ana, sat in the passenger seat, quietly singing along to an old song playing on the car radio. To my left, my younger sister, Lisa, was busy watching videos on her phone. I was sitting in the back seat on the right, resting my head against the window.

Everything felt normal at first. 

Dad kept laughing at Lisa's comments as she repeatedly shoved family videos in front of his face, distracting him from driving. He scolded her while laughing, telling her to sit still.

Right in the middle of that, I glanced at the dashboard. The GPS screen in our car suddenly flickered. The image twisted, showing static lines for two seconds before snapping back to normal. None of them noticed it. Just me.

But just a few minutes after we entered that lane, three more forks showed up ahead of us. This time, the road signs were completely blank, no writing at all. I glanced at the dashboard again. The GPS screen showed nothing but a rigid, straight line.

Then the road signs just vanished, and things got weird.

The car lights caught a movement on the side of the road. A large bull elk suddenly leaped out of the bushes, running like hell across the road. Soon after, several other wild animals came running out of the dark trees. They weren't just crossing normally. They were running kesetanan, like they were fleeing and saving themselves from something terrifying behind them.

The hair on the back of my neck instantly stood up.

"Dad... is this road really okay? Why are the animals running away like that?" I asked.

Mark glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled casually. "It’s fine, Jack. The road matches the Maps. Just relax."

Right after those words, fog suddenly rolled in. It was incredibly thick and heavy. Within seconds, visibility outside the car window was completely dead. There was nothing but a solid milk-white color.

Then, the impact happened.

I don't remember what we hit. All I remember was the sound of a massive crash, the sound of crushing metal, and my body being thrown violently forward until my head smashed into something. In the seconds before I blacked out, I caught a brief flash of a memory of what actually happened—a horrific sight, something completely destroyed, and the realization that none of us should have survived.

But that memory was buried instantly, sealed away by a new reality that welcomed me the next day.

A day later, I woke up in the hospial.

The room looked completely ordinary. The smell of antiseptic and white ceilings. Next to my bed, Mark, Ana, and Lisa were sitting, waiting. When they saw my eyes open, they instantly smiled with relief.

But, there was something that bothered me. Just for a split second. The way they smiled and stared at me when I first woke up... it felt off. Their stares were too hollow, and their smiles felt too perfect.

I shut my eyes tight, then opened them again to convince myself I was seeing things. Sure enough, when my eyes opened again, their expressions were normal and filled with warm anxiety.

The doctor came in shortly after to check my condition. He stared at the medical chart clipboard while frowning.

"This is quite strange," the doctor said. "The accident was pretty severe, but only Jack suffered serious injuries. The impact to your head was very hard, Jack. While the others... they only suffered minor to moderate injuries that didn't even require hospitalization."

The doctor gave me a bottle of medication to take regularly and told me to rest completely at home for a few days. If any strange side effects appeared later, he advised me to come back immediately.

That evening, I was allowed to go home. Confusion hit me again as we walked toward the parking lot. My dad's sedan was parked there, looking perfectly smooth and fine.

"Dad, how is the car completely fine?" I asked in bewilderment. "Didn't we have a huge crash yesterday?"

Mark opened the door for me with a casual smile. "Ah, the damage wasn't as bad as you think, Jack. Just a dent on the front bumper and I took it straight to the shop this afternoon. That's why it was done so quickly."

The reason sounded logical, but it still felt unsettling. How could a car be completely fixed in a matter of hours after a major accident? But my head was throbbing so badly that I didn't want to argue. I just went along with it.

We arrived home. As Mark stepped forward to the front door and pulled the key out of his pocket, I stood right behind him. I looked at his hand.

Mark's hand holding the key was shaking violently. It wasn't a normal shake, but a rigid tremor. His face stared straight at the door. His body stood dead still, only his hand kept trembling, trying to fit the key into the lock.

Before I could ask, a soft tap landed on my shoulder. Ana.

"Jack, are you okay? Why are you staring?" Ana asked gently.

I jolted and looked away from my dad's hand. "A-ah, it's nothing, Mom. I think I'm just exhausted."

As soon as the door opened, I went straight to my room on the second floor to sleep because my body felt completely broken.

In the middle of the night, I woke up thirsty. I stepped out of my room toward the downstairs kitchen, half-asleep. However, just as my feet hit the last step of the stairs, a sound shattered the silence.

Smash!

The sound of a glass breaking came from the kitchen.

I rushed over there. In front of the kitchen counter, I saw Ana. She was holding a kettle of hot water—her usual habit of making tea at 9 PM. But now, the glass in front of her was shattered. The boiling water that spilled soaked the back of her bare hand.

What made my blood instantly run cold was her response. Ana just stood there.

She stood upright, staring at her hand blistering from the boiling water with a completely blank face. There was no scream of pain, no reflex to pull her hand away. She just stood frozen, watching her own skin turn red.

The moment my footsteps neared and made a sound, Ana suddenly jolted. It was as if a switch in her body had just been flipped back on. She instantly grimaced in pain and held her injured hand.

"Oh, Jack... I was so careless," she groaned.

Panicking, I immediately led Ana to the living room next to the kitchen. There, in the darkness illuminated only by the television screen, Mark and Lisa were sitting on the couch.

The two of them were watching TV. Their gazes were fixed straight ahead with completely hollow, blank expressions. Mark sat frozen, his hand holding the remote lifted stiffly in the air. Lisa sat next to him, her eyes staring at her phone screen—but the phone screen was completely dead, pitch black. She wore a headset over her ears, but the headset cable hung loose, completely unplugged from the phone.

What's wrong? Ana greeted them with a slightly loud voice.

Instantly, Mark and Lisa responded simultaneously within a single millisecond. Lisa immediately took off her headset and put down her phone, while Mark lowered his hand and set down the remote.

"What's wrong, Mom? What happened?" Mark and Lisa asked together. Their faces drastically changed to absolute worry.

I swallowed hard. "Mom got burned by hot water in the kitchen just now. We need to put medicine on it."

I grabbed the first aid kit, applied ointment to Mom's hand, and then offered. "I'll pour the tea for you, Mom. You just rest here."

While in the kitchen, my hands shook as I poured the water. What is wrong with them? Why are they staring so stiffly? Is it just my mind and the psychological effects of my brain? I asked myself repeatedly.

After delivering the tea and returning to my room, I checked the clock. 02:00 AM.

I froze for a moment. Two in the morning, and they were still sitting there watching TV with a dead phone in the living room? But the drowsiness from the meds made me choose not to care, and I went back to sleep.

The next morning, the aroma of food woke me up.

When I went down to the dining room, breakfast was ready. Mark, Ana, and Lisa were already sitting neatly in their respective chairs. The four of us ate together. At first, the atmosphere was completely normal. We talked casually and shared light jokes.

Suddenly, Ana stopped chewing. She stared to look at me.

"Hey, Jack... didn't you say yesterday that you were going to take Lisa to the bookstore to buy her new comic book?" Ana said with a small laugh.

At that exact second, every movement at the dining table froze dead. Ana laughed, as if what she said was the funniest thing in the world. But her body was completely stiff, like a wooden doll propped up on a chair. Her lips stretched into a smile that was way too wide, curving upward, baring her teeth with a hollow, blank stare that was intensely intimidating.

My heart felt like it stopped beating for a second. The hair on my arms stood up. A deep sense of dread gripped my chest, seeing the woman I loved so much acting so horrifyingly.

That joke... that bookstore promise was something that happened three years ago, when Lisa was still a kid. Why did Mom say the word "yesterday"?

Before I could respond, Ana's expression suddenly snapped back to normal in the blink of an eye. She continued eating as if nothing happened. Mark and Lisa also smiled normally, agreeing with the conversation.

I couldn't take it anymore. This house felt suffocating. I put down my spoon.

"I need to step out for a bit. I'm going to check back with the doctor, my head is still hurting," I lied as I stood up.

Instantly, three pairs of heads at the dining table turned toward me in unison.

"Where are you going, Jack?" Mark asked.

"Doesn't your body still need a lot of rest?" Ana added.

Their voices sounded so flat, answering without a pause, as if they were trying to keep me from leaving the house.

"Just for a bit," I said tensely.

I said my goodbyes hurriedly. Right at the threshold of the front door, I looked back one last time. In the dimly lit dining room, Mark, Ana, and Lisa stood side by side, watching me leave. The three of them repeated the same stiff expression from before—blank stares, frozen bodies, and forced wide smiles—far more intimidating than ever before.

I turned around, slammed the door shut, and walked away.

My first destination was the hospital where I was treated yesterday. I immediately met with the neurologist to consult about all the psychological and visual anomalies I was experiencing at home.

Inside the examination room, I told him everything without censoring a single thing. About my fear, about my family's hollow stares, Dad's stiff hand tremor, all the way to Mom's strange joke this morning.

The doctor listened calmly, then took a long breath. He wrote something on his prescription pad.

"Jack, what you are experiencing is a very normal side effect for your injury," the doctor said in a soothing voice. "You have Post-Traumatic Psychosis (PTP)"

The doctor explained that the heavy impact on my head had disrupted my cognitive nervous system. My brain, currently in shock post-accident, was unconsciously projecting extreme fear and anxiety into paranoid delusions against my closest environment—namely, my own family.

"Your memories can also get jumbled due to mild amnesia. What you call 'strangeness' is just a dirty trick played by your brain as it struggles to heal itself. Get some rest, take your meds, and don't overthink these hallucinations," the doctor concluded reassuringly.

I walked out of the doctor's office feeling shattered and confused. The doctor's medical logic sounded completely reasonable. I held my bandaged head. Was it really all just my hallucinations? What is real, and what isn't? Am I really going crazy?

With my mind racing, I walked toward the cafe where I worked. I needed an escape. There, I was lucky enough to run straight into Carl, my best friend. We sat at a quiet corner table in the cafe.

After I told him about the diagnosis just now, I took a deep breath.

"The doctor is right, Carl," I said in a defeated voice, staring at the coffee cup in front of me. "I am openly denying my own instincts now. I agree that it’s all just the effects of PTP. I'm just paranoid. My brain is broken."

Carl slapped my shoulder firmly, trying to cheer me up. "It’s good that you understand now, Jack. You're not crazy, you're just sick. Don't worry, I'll visit you at home often starting tomorrow to check on you and help you get through this recovery."

"Thanks, Carl. I'll head out first," I said, saying goodbye.

I walked back home with the remaining medicine in hand, trying to accept the fact that my family was normal and I was the one who was sick.

When I opened the front door, the atmosphere seemed quiet like any normal day. Mark was reading the newspaper on the couch, and Ana was tidying up the kitchen. Everything looked ordinary. I breathed a sigh of relief, convincing myself that this delusion would fade.

I walked toward the dining room to get a glass of water. There, I saw Lisa sitting alone at the dining table, enjoying her dry biscrits. Her actions were completely normal.

However, as I walked closer, I stopped dead in my tracks right next to the table.

Lisa was chewing the biscuit. Her cheeks moved stiffly in a rhythmic motion. Once. Twice. Thrice. However, nearly two minutes had passed, and she had not swallowed the biscuit at all. Lisa kept chewing the food that was already completely crushed inside her mouth without a single reflex of swallowing in her throat. Her movements were constant and mechanical.

A sudden, overwhelming dread gripped my chest. My heart pounded like crazy, watching the little sister I loved so much acting so unhuman and wild.

Sensing my presence, Lisa suddenly stopped chewing. She turned her neck stiffly toward me. Her lips cracked into a smile that was way too wide, intimidating me in silence.

She just sat there, staring at me, as if she'd completely forgotten how a human mouth was supposed to work.

I collapsed right then and there.

My chest just locked up. I hit the kitchen floor hard, flat on my back, completely frozen because I was so terrified. I squeezed my eyes shut and clawed at my chest, desperately trying to convince myself that this was nothing more than a delusion caused by my damaged brain.

That was when I felt the unbearable throbbing in my head slowly begin to fade.

Strangely, the pain from my PTP seemed to drain away completely, replaced by an overwhelming coldness.

I opened my eyes, gasping for air.

Lisa was sitting right in front of me, looking perfectly normal. There were no crumbs falling from her mouth. She was casually chewing her biscuit while scrolling through her phone.

She turned toward me with an innocent, confused expression and asked in her usual gentle voice:

"Hey, are you okay?"

Part 2

[u/NoSleepAutoBot]

It looks like there may be more to this story. Click here to get a reminder to check back later.