It happened one night in summer

Trigger warning: rape

It happened one night in summer. I don’t know exactly what it was, but there was a palpable shift and my ears started ringing. My husband came home from work with a bunch of random shit he bought, acting weird. He put our one-year-old daughter on top of the dryer and just left her there, seemingly uncaring if she fell or not. We argued about it, and then all of a sudden there was a party in our backyard. I felt the shift trying to make me believe this was normal and okay, not strange at all. I played along, but I knew there was something wrong. My grandparents were there, which made me feel better, but there were these women. I can’t remember how many, the number seemed to always be changing. One minute it was three, then five, then eight, then three again. The shift did that. It made me so disoriented I could barely speak above a whisper. Some of the women went inside, and I immediately wanted them gone. They started going through things, a few went into our bedrooms, and one lay on the couch suggestively. I couldn’t speak loud enough that they would listen, so I went and got my husband and told him to make them leave. When they came out they were carrying boxes and I saw that they had stolen a bunch of random things from us. Some of my kids’ arts and crafts, some of their toys, some photos, a heart-shaped locket, clothing. I tried to take it all back, but then the ones responsible fled and drove away before I could confront them. I was so angry. Suddenly almost everyone was gone except for my grandparents and the friends of the women. I demanded the friends tell me the womens’ names so I could find them. I feared they had gone into my kids’ rooms and done something to them while they were sleeping, in addition to stealing things from us. I got into a physical altercation with one of them, until she told me their names. I had the hardest time writing them down. It was like I had forgotten how to put pen to paper. That was the shift. The number of names kept changing, too. I was finally satisfied with what I had written, confident that I could decipher what was there. I thanked the women, my hard feelings softening a bit when they told me they never liked the other women who had stolen from us. I realized it was just us in the yard now. I decided to let them out through the front door, rather than make them walk around the house to the driveway. We made it to the entryway when they started taunting me, and laughing with each other like they were all in on some joke that I wasn’t. Then they said something about my husband. I realized I hadn’t seen him. Our bedroom was right off the entryway and the one I had gotten into a fight with was staring through the door. I turned to look and I could see someone in the closet. I walked into the room to see better, and that’s when I saw my husband fucking one of the women in the closet. I screamed for her to get away from him, and he shoved her away. That’s when I saw his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused. Something was wrong, and I could tell he wasn’t aware of what was happening. I started screaming as loud as I could at the women that they had raped my husband. I ran out to the front porch and called the police but could barely hear the operator speak. I looked at my phone and saw it wasn’t my phone. It was an old cell phone I’d had as a teenager. It took all my energy to speak loudly as I told the operator my husband had been raped and I needed the police now. She brushed me off, saying that she didn’t think the police could come. I felt so much dread and so much anguish. Something was happening and I couldn’t figure out what, and there was no one coming to help us. I begged and pleaded with her to send the police, breaking down and sobbing because we needed help. Then a silver car pulled up, the same one the women had driven away in earlier. I ran back into my house and there were so many people inside. They were dressed like doctors and nurses. I immediately panicked when I saw them going in and out of my kids’ rooms. I ran into my daughter’s room and saw her intubated and swaddled tightly in what looked like a straight jacket. A woman was rocking her back and forth as she slept. I was horrified. They had done something to my kids. I ran into my sons’ room and found them in the same condition, but unswaddled and with no one in the room. I quickly pulled their tubes out as carefully and quickly as I could, then grabbed them and ran out the front door. I don’t know why I left my daughter. I just ran while holding my boys. I thought if I could get out I could get help. If you turn right on our street you will find a busy road at the top of the hill with a police station on it. I turned left. I don’t know why. Left, there is nothing but woods and a few houses. I ran left. A car came up behind me and a teenage boy got out, asking if I needed help. I kept running, afraid of anyone. Then he said he was sent to get me and began chasing us. I had seen a house with a light on that I was going to run to, but the boy was too fast. I ran straight into the woods. And then he jumped at us, like an animal. Everything went black after that. The next thing I remember I was running up my street to the main road, alone. My boys were gone. I started screaming as I ran, begging for help. It took everything in me to make any noise above a whisper. Grey daylight was breaking as I made it to the top of the street and saw the police station. The next thing I remember, I was sitting in the police station with a rosy-cheeked, middle-aged cop. The ringing in my ears was gone, the day was no longer grey, and I didn’t feel the shift. The cop was laughing. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, or what had happened, but I knew this wasn’t the same day that the shift began and all those horrible things had happened. The cop was saying how crazy all of it was, and the more he spoke the more I understood. The shift was real. It had happened. It wasn’t just a dream or some figment of my imagination. It had really happened. And now, we were supposed to just go back to normal, move on, pretend like it didn’t affect us. Like they didn’t rape my husband, like they didn’t hurt my babies, like they didn’t ignore my pleas for help. So I sat there with the cop and smiled and said how crazy it was, and tried to pretend like it didn’t happen as I went back to my normal life. But those events would always live inside me, I’d never forget.