It’s me. I know it’s been a while…It’s about those things you gave me—the sea-monkeys. Yeah…They’re still alive. I’ve been keeping them in a jar of saltwater on the top shelf of the bathroom. No, no one can hear me. I’m calling because something about them has changed.

Something replaced my mother. I knew it when I first saw them standing over the sink, their eyes glassed over like marbles. They looked the same, had the same dye job and thick fish-eye glasses. They sounded like her, even moved like her, my mother, somehow, but off. The night before, she’d left for dinner with her girlfriends, to drink wine and complain about husbands and come home so late the night became morning.