We just got out of work not too long ago. We called mom to come pick us up. When she got there, we were out on the curb, eating our packed lunch that we hadn't gotten a chance to eat before because of all the bustle at the work place. Tortillas de harina with cream cheese. They were good, and I think it got the kids awake and dominant. It's been a weird day. I still feel them strongly now.

Well, mom gets there, and things are cool. She gets out of the driver's side and onto the passenger's while we take her place so we can drive home. We flung our bag and our lunch box to the back seat, and that's when it all came crashing down!

We hit the first joint of our right index finger against the ceiling of the car. The first sound out of our throat was a shrill squeal, like a child's whine. Mom laughed (I dunno, can't blame her, I guess I would've laughed too, if I was an Outsider, but being stuck on the inside, I was freaking out!) and shrugged it off. It was then that I knew the kids were firmly dominant. One of them, I'm not sure if it was Gis or Jack (or both), held out our finger to mom, in childish hopes that she'd kiss our boo-boo and make the pain go away. Like when we were kids. But she just stared at it and said: "Ay, p'os, �que quieres que haga?" That brought forth another whine, a little louder than before.

"Ay, �pero que tienes?" she demanded, halfway between amused and peeved. "�Que, estas chiflada hoy, o que?"

That did it! Gis let out a pained wail. As a kid, I remember that was the biggest insult an adult could provide: telling us we were spoiled. Her feelings were deeply hurt, and she wailed loudly in pain. Yowlie panicked, and wanted to bolt from the car, but the seat-belt held us back, so instead he cringed away from our mother. One of us adults, Ninja it was, I think, closed the door on the driver's side quickly to keep the sound from echoing out in the dark street, where the security guard was within earshot. That was one of the last things we managed to do, us frontrunners. After that, the kids were firmly in control. In their terror, they wouldn't let any of us adults take over the body. All we could do was watch as Jack took over the wheel (yes, he can drive) and spun the car around sharply while Gisita cried and cried and M.B. glanced at our mother out of the corner of his terrified eyes. Yowlie is terrified of any Outsiders. He doesn't know how to react to them, and thinks they are all out to hurt us. He doesn't understand the concept of "mother" or "sister" or "brother". The concepts are foreign to him, and his main form of defense is to hide. On the flip side, he can become very calustrophobic when he's trapped in a place with an Outsider. Like the inside of a car.

So we suddenly get to the stop sign before entering the big streets, and there Jack stops and lets Gis sniffle. We take this time to try and gain our composure, as by now mom is silent and no doubt staring at us, bewildered. I mean, it's not like our finger fell off or anything, right? As through a tank of water, I even recall hearing her telling us somthing about: "Ya se que te dolio, pero �que quieres que haga?"

She had it all wrong, see? We were frightened, not in pain. Gisita was hurt because mom couldn't understand, didn't realize it was her, la Chiquita, la Pollita that was crying out for comfort. It terrified her that mom didn't seem to see her, saw us only as an adult and it didn't seem to cross her mind even for an instant that we were suddenly a child. Yowlie was barely within sanity at this point. He wanted to scratch himself away from everything, wanted to run and hide. He didn't want to be seen as a child or an adult, didn't want to be seen at all. When mom opened her mouth to question our behavior, it only sent him off into harsher fits. I'm surprised we even remained in control of the car, but then again, Jack is multi-talented. We did drive very haphazardly, though. We almost crashed at least once. It was terrifying, from our point of view. Unable to stop any of it, struggling for dominance while their terror coursed through us at a rapid pace. I recall Ninja cussing incessantly, which probably didn't help at all, of course. Polla kept screaming at Piojo, what the hell was wrong with him, and why wasn't he stopping any of it, and on and on. His cold reply was lost to me in the effort to regain control of our body. The kids have never driven alone!

At one point, mom asked us something, and Yowlie screeched in horror. That's when mom lost her cool and yelled at us to pull over, right now! so she could take the car from us. Her voice was old and sharp and it cut us like a chain whip. Gisita screamed. She suddenly didn't recognize the old woman in the car next to her. Where was her Mami? Yowlie cringed and shook his head furiously, outright refusing loudly in his terror: "NOOO! NOOOOOooooooooo!"

"Entonces, �callate ya!" She sounded so angry, but I believe she was more frightened than the children. It sent all three into hiccuping sniffles, Jack's eye wide and solemn as he quickly paled to a grey to match the car seats. He very much wanted to disappear. As soon as we got home, we bolted from the car, scampering away from our mother as fast as we could and heading for the safest mode of comfort we laid eyes on: Mu�eca. After a while, once Mu�e had been in our lap a while and we had sniffled into her fur some, the children grew disconcerted. She is a small dog, therefore safe, because she wouldn't be bigger than us, but she was just so tiny in arms that by all means, according to the children, should just be able to fit around her round belly perfectly. They were confused to see their own body so big and grown up. That's were we took opportunity to finally dominate the body, though it was very hard. The one of the kids who was holding on to the body the strongest was Gis. We were only able to remove her from our eyes after Yowlie had pushed her aside so he could dominate. He's slightly older, but still a kid, and so she felt safe enough with him. It was shocking, though, to realize her terror of adults had spread to include us, too. She writhed away from BB's grasp and ran for Jack. That's when Yowlie took over for a nano-second, and I took over from him. He was pale and limp with exhaustion. He heard a sound from within the house and snarled at it softly, steeling himself for an attack. Because when mom had yelled at us, he reached his point of no return. He lost himself in his terror, and with the option of flight gone, he had finally been ready to fight his fear. Problem is, he fears mom. So now he wants to... bite her. Because he gets just like an animal at times like these. When he growled, I felt what was going on inside him. He was afraid for Gis, not only himself. Not for Jack, because Jack has the benefit of camoflauge, and can hide almost anywhere. It's the first time I think he's ever felt empathy for someone.

It took us a while, but we managed to finally get the kids inside the house. It took a lot of courage and a fuzzy Batman blanket to persuade them to walk past mom's open door. Only now is my heart finally slowing its pace.

I'm tired. But now the thing that holds me back, what keeps me from facing mom is a different kind of fear. *sigh* I wish Grizzly would dominate. He'd know what to do (I hope). I mean, I know I need to go face mom, but I'm afraid I won't know how to explain things to her, or if she'll believe me, or what she'll think it all means if she does. Will she demand that we go to a psychologist now, just like the Dud has demanded we do? Will she think we're crazy? We've never done this before! Will it matter at all to her? Will she care? Will she... will she hurt us? Make someone else hurt us? What if we get locked away? And what if we are losing our grip on our control? We've always said we will hold ourself accountable for our actions, whatever they may be. So... how do we hold ourself accountable for this? If the consequence is we lose what trust we have with mom, and she becomes afraid of us, how do we go through with it? I am so very afraid. I don't know what will happen.