All for my mom's sake (part 1)

"What the hell?! Where am I?"

I'm James, a 19 year old boy, in his first year of college.

Studies are fine, I have a wonderful girlfriend, many good friends,

I excel in sports.

My life is almost perfect. Almost.

There is an innate sense of guilt that I carry with me since I was

little. My mother had a very hard life, and it was because of my

birth. She was a bright student, with a bright future ahead of her,

but the last year of high school she got pregnant with a boy who

abandoned her. Her parents, my grandparents, wanted her to have

an abortion, and after her refusal they kicked her out of the house.

She was therefore forced to find a job as an underpaid waitress in

a shabby bar in order to live. She sacrificed her studies, her future,

her relationships (she never found a man who wanted to start a

stable relationship with a single mother), and all of this for me.

Tonight a comet that is visible for a minute cyclically every 80 years

was expected to pass close to the earth. According to a legend, if

you make a noble and altruistic wish, while looking at the comet, it

could come true.

As the celestial body passed, I whispered, looking out the window,

"I wish my mother could have a full, carefree and happy life like

mine".

A moment later I found myself in another room.

I felt strange, and for good reason... I was no longer in my body, but

in that of my mother!

That damned comet fulfilled my wish in a way I could never have

imagined: swapping bodies between me and my mother!

Please, tell me it's all a nightmare!