I found a home video of my Mother that shouldn’t exist

My mother died a few days after giving birth to me. I never met her—only saw her through the videos my father kept on his phone. My older brother always resented me, and blamed me for her death. I didn’t argue. Part of me believed him. It felt like my existence had cost us everything, like she would still be alive if I hadn’t been born.

I saw it in my father too—or maybe I imagined it. He was always quiet, always distant, carrying a loneliness he never spoke about. He never blamed me, not once, but sometimes silence says more than words ever could.

No one ever entered her room. Not my father, not my brother. But I did. Sometimes I would sneak in, just to feel close to her, to pretend—if only for a moment—that I knew what it felt like to be loved by a mother. The room never changed. Nothing moved. Her presence lingered in the stillness, in the faint scent that clung to the air. But even that began to fade, day by day. I remember thinking that maybe I should stop going in… before even that last trace of her disappeared. Eventually, I did.

That was twelve years ago.

When I turned seventeen, my father died. Not long after, my brother left. Before he did, he told me I was the poison that killed his parents. I wanted to tell him I was their son too… but the words never came.

Tonight, I got drunk and walked into her room. I cursed myself for ever being born, then collapsed onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The thoughts came slowly, heavy and quiet—would my death finally mean something to my brother… or would it be the first time my life meant anything at all?

I lay there longer than I should have.

There wasn’t really anywhere else to go.

After a while, I got up and looked around the room. My mother’s belongings were still neatly arranged inside her cupboard, untouched, preserved like time had stopped for her alone. Her clothes hung exactly as they did in those videos. I found my parents’ wedding album too—every page filled with a kind of happiness that made something twist inside me. Looking at it, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe I was never meant to exist… that I was the fracture in something once whole. The curse this house never recovered from.

I put the album aside and opened a small safe tucked behind her things. Inside were a few of her most cherished belongings—carefully kept, almost protected. A faint trace of her perfume still lingered. There was a folded hospital bracelet with her name on it, the ink slightly faded. A small diary, its pages filled with neat handwriting—lists, reminders, thoughts that ended too soon. A hairbrush with a few strands still caught in it. A dried flower pressed between paper, fragile but preserved.

Beneath them lay a photograph.

My parents, and my brother, the day he was born. A hospital room. My mother looked weak, exhausted… but her smile was radiant, full of a quiet, overwhelming joy. My father stood beside her, smiling too—not just for her, not just for my brother, but for himself. It was a kind of happiness I had never seen in him while he was alive without her.

Next to the photograph was her wedding ring, resting in its box. Small. Simple. Beautiful.
There were more things beneath it.

A pair of tiny knitted socks—unused.
A sealed envelope with my father’s name on it, never opened.
A second hospital tag… smaller.
No name on it.
Just a date.
And under everything—
Her phone.
I opened the envelope with my father’s name on it and began to read—

“I wish I could be there for our son’s life. I want to see him smile, watch his first steps, see him grow into a man, fall in love, have a family of his own. I wanted to hear him call me ‘mom.’ I wanted to hear his voice… but fate is not kind. There is a cruelty in this world that hides behind promises.

I love you, Viktor. And I love both of our boys. I wish we hadn’t made the mistake we did. We wished for our son to be born—alive and well. We wished for the family we dreamed of. But I didn’t understand then… that the wish we chased was fractured. Wrong in a way we could never take back.

Our fractured wish might make his life miserable but he deserves to know the truth. Please tell him or show him what I’ve left him. He will understand. After all, he is our boy.
Tell Ivan I’m sorry for leaving so soon. Tell him to be kind… to be a good big brother to Felix. Do not blame him.

I am truly sorry.
Take care of them from what’s to come.
Love, Elena.”

When I finished reading, my hands didn’t feel like mine anymore.

I just stood there, staring at the letter—confused. I couldn’t make sense of all of it, but one thing felt certain, heavy and undeniable: my mother had died so I could live. I really was the cause of all this.

Do not blame him.

The words echoed in my head, over and over, like they didn’t belong to me. I didn’t know who they were meant for—my father, my brother… or me. And that line about the wish—what had they done? What had they asked for?

With shaking hands, I picked up her phone and turned it on. The screen lit up slowly, as if it had been waiting. I began scrolling, hoping—needing—to find something else. Something that could explain what she meant.

The phone was completely empty except for a single video titled—Felix.
I hesitated. Closed my eyes. Took a breath. Then I pressed play.

The video began in silence. For a few seconds, there was nothing—just darkness, like the camera was still being adjusted. Then a faint rustle. Fabric. Breathing.

And then—my mother.

Alive.

She was sitting upright in a hospital bed, pale, drenched in sweat. Her hair clung to her face, her eyes sunken but alert—too alert. The kind of awareness that didn’t belong to someone who had just given birth. She looked like she had been there for days… maybe longer.
She stared straight into the camera.

“Viktor… I don’t know if you’ll watch this or Ivan, or if you’ll let Felix watch it.
Felix, you deserve to know the truth. You deserve to live without carrying guilt that was never yours.

This is your second birth, Felix. You were our first child… but you were born dead. We were devastated.

It took us ten years to have you. Doctors said that it was impossible. We turned to God. Nothing. Then one day it just happened. We thought that waiting was worth it. That God heard our prayers and granted us our wish.

Those 9 months were not easy but we were happy. Our son was going to come into our life and we were excited to show you how beautiful life can be. We had so much love to give you that we were always thinking about the day you will be born.

Yeah…

And then you were born dead. I held your cold body in my arms. 9 months and we lost everything.

Grief takes you to places you don’t understand. We prayed for your peace… for your soul to be free. But somewhere along the way, that prayer changed. I don’t even remember when. It became a wish… to have you back. Just once. To hold you warm again.

Viktor cried in silence when he prayed. And I cried in his arms. We forget that when we pray something else also listens to our prayers. And sometimes that something even answers. That’s what happened to us. When that voice came, we answered with grief in our hearts—and it heard us.

The next year, I got pregnant again. We thought our wish had been granted. We already knew your name, so we gave it to him. Ivan. He came into our lives like light. We believed everything was finally right again.

And then… a week ago, six years after Ivan’s birth… you were born.

We called it a blessing. Not a wish.

But today… I saw the mark on you. The exact same birthmark you had… the first time.
That’s when we understood.

You are our wish, Felix.

But we don’t know what Ivan is.

He is our son. Your brother. But he was never part of that wish. And we didn’t understand it… until the answers came to us without us asking.

I may look weak after giving birth to you… but this isn’t because of you. This is something else.
Listen to me carefully, Felix.

What I’m about to tell you is very important.

Our wish wasn’t heard by God. And it wasn’t a devil either. It was something else… something beyond us. Something from a world that exists alongside ours, but without a physical form. Something that needed a body—something that needed enough energy, enough connection, to cross over.

I don’t know what it is.

Viktor had a theory… he called it cross-possession. A world like ours, but displaced—out of reach. He believed there were souls there, wandering, searching for bodies. Waiting for a moment strong enough to connect. And grief… grief is strong. Strong enough to be heard.
That connection took time. Years.

And now… it’s here.
I don’t know if it’s you, Felix… or Ivan.

I don’t even know if it’s either of you. I can’t be certain… and that’s what scares me the most. But you need to be careful. Both of you are human—both of you are my sons—but if Viktor is right, then there is something else… something dormant, living inside one of you. Waiting.
We took some precautions. Viktor must have placed a talisman in our house. As long as you don’t stay away from the house for too long, the integration will never complete.

Ivan, darling… you became our light. You brought life back into this house when we thought we had lost everything. If you ever start to feel different—if your thoughts don’t feel like your own, if you hear something calling you from far away… don’t answer it. Don’t follow it. Because it won’t be guiding you back—it will be learning how to replace you.

And Felix… if you’re the one it chose… if you ever feel like you’ve lived moments before they happen, or see things that don’t belong to this world… you must tell someone. You must not keep it inside.

There is one more thing Viktor noticed… something we didn’t understand at first. The talisman doesn’t just protect you from integration—it holds time itself in place. That talisman does not belong in our world and I don’t know where Viktor got it from. He only told me it came from a sage… someone he called Serovielan.

So if either of you ever feels… at home outside this house… if the world beyond these walls starts to feel more familiar than the place you grew up in… that means it’s already begun.
Please… stay together. Watch each other. Don’t let either of you drift too far.
I love you both.”

The video ended.

I sat there for a while, unmoving, the silence pressing in on me. My eyes burned as I rubbed them, not even realizing when the tears had started. The room felt heavier now… like it was listening.

I wished I had met her. Just once. To hear her voice without a screen between us. To feel her arms around me—warm, real, safe. I wondered what that would’ve felt like… if it would’ve been enough to quiet everything inside me.

But all I had were fragments. A voice in a recording. A room that wasn’t mine. A life that didn’t feel like it belonged to me.

I leaned back against the bed, staring into nothing, letting her words replay in my head. The wish. The voice. The talisman. One of us.

For the first time, it didn’t feel like I was alone in that room.

It felt like I had never been. That’s when I heard footsteps. I looked at the door and Ivan stood there with his backpack. “Sorry, Felix. I should have understood you better. I will be kind to you like a good big brother.” He smiled. That smile felt different as if it didn’t belong. “We will be a happy family just like mom wanted.”