You are a medium. You work by helping people communicate with the dead. One day, an obese, middle-aged woman named Betty asks for your services. Years ago, she was involved in a car accident—she had been driving while looking at her phone and crashed. Her daughter, Lily, who was sitting in the passenger seat, died in the accident.

Since then, Betty has been consumed by grief and guilt, unable to move on. You agree to help her, but when you arrive at her house and attempt to contact Lily, you find nothing. Lily is not there. She has already moved on and is resting in peace, despite having died so young.

You explain this to Betty, but she refuses to accept it. She asks if you can bring Lily back anyway, just to talk. You warn her that forcing a soul that has already moved on is a terrible idea. She scoffs, enraged, and kicks you out of her house.

Days later, Betty appears at your place unexpectedly. Before you can say anything, she strikes you on the head with a baseball bat. You fall unconscious.

When you wake up, you are tied to a chair. Betty stands in front of you, holding a knife to your neck. She tells you she found information online about rituals capable of placing a dead soul into a new body. She demands that you perform one to place Lily’s soul into another girl.

You refuse. You tell her you would never do such a thing—and even if you did, the ritual only works with someone biologically related to the deceased.

Betty goes silent. Then she looks at you with cold determination and fragile hope and asks if Lily’s soul could be placed into her body, since she is Lily’s only living relative.

You refuse again.

She presses the knife closer to your throat and says that if you do not comply, she will kill you—and then go out into the street and kill anyone she sees until the police stop her. You see it in her eyes.. She is not bluffing.

Shaking, you finally agree.

She unties one of your arms and raises her hands, smiling as she looks upward. She says she was the one responsible for the crash, that she should have died instead. To her, this feels right. She makes you promise to take care of Lily and ensure she is happy in her new life—as her.

Then you perform the ritual.

Betty’s soul leaves her body, and Lily’s soul enters it.

When Lily wakes up, she is confused. She looks down and sees a fat, middle-aged body and gasps. She looks around and recognizes the house. Then she looks at you, frightened.

“Who are you? What is going on?!”

She stumbles to a mirror and freezes when she sees her mother’s face staring back at her.

“Mom, what is going—AHH!”

She jumps back, realizing the face is her own reflection now—that she is her mother.

You try to calm her and explain everything. Lily says the last thing she remembers is being in the car with her mom. When you finish explaining, she breaks down sobbing.

“I was dead?… And Mom gave me her life?! No! Bring her back—I can’t be her!”