I have a brother who is three years younger than me. He was an affectionate kid who stuck to my side constantly when we were little. While I thought he was adorable, I also found him a bit annoying. Even after I started elementary school and began playing with my friends, he still wanted to tag along, so I always felt like I was lugging around extra baggage. It was exhausting.

One day, as I called out, "I'm heading out!" and left the house, my brother chased after me as usual, saying, "I wanna go too!" I couldn't take it anymore, so I scolded him in a sharp tone, "Stay home with Mommy and wait for me." But he refused to listen, saying, "No." Just as I was about to lay down the law even harder, he added, "I don't wanna be with Mommy." Surprised, I asked him why.

"Mommy turns purple whenever she's alone with me. It's scary."

I didn't quite get what he meant, so I asked, "What do you mean, purple?" He said, "Her face turns purple, like someone colored it in with a crayon." From what I could gather, my mother's face only turned purple when it was just the two of them. I found this impossible to believe, which left me wondering why he had come up with such a creepy story. "That's ridiculous," I told him. "You'll hurt Mommy's feelings if she hears that." But he insisted, "It's true!"

"When her face is purple, Mommy's angry the whole time. She keeps chasing me around," he said. Hearing that gave me a slight chill. I even wondered if maybe it wasn't my mother, but a ghost. Still, my brother was young, so I decided he must be misinterpreting something. "Maybe she's not mad—maybe she just wants to play with you?" I suggested. "I don't know if she's mad because her face is purple and I can't see her real face. But she won't say a single word to me," he said. His story didn't make much sense, but I figured my mom was probably just wearing a mask to entertain him. Satisfied with that logic, I forced him back inside the house and went off to play.

Afterward, though, I couldn't stop worrying about him. I cut my playtime short and arrived back home well before my curfew, intending to sneak a peek through the window to see what was going on.

What I saw was my mother wearing a mask, and my brother cowering in fear.

My mother had put on a homemade mask—what looked like a round, white frisbee completely covered in purple permanent marker—and was chasing my brother around in total silence. My brother was trying to run away from her, sniffling softly in terror.

The bizarre scene rooted me to the spot. Even when my curfew came, I couldn't summon the courage to step inside. "Why?" "What for?" I asked myself over and over, but I could find no answers. I just stood frozen in front of the door. Eventually, the front door opened. My mother stood there looking like her normal self, and she gave me a relieved smile. "Welcome home! If you were already back, you should've come inside. You had me worried." Unable to look directly at her as she spoke as if nothing had happened, I glanced at my brother behind her. He looked terrified and exhausted, staring at me with a look of quiet resentment.

From that day on, I made sure to stay with my brother at all times. It wasn't even so much for his sake as it was because I never wanted to let my mother slip into that eerie state ever again.

Looking back now, I think my mother was abusing my brother, using him as an outlet for her stress. It might sound dramatic, but if I hadn't noticed and had kept leaving him alone back then, there's no telling how far that abuse might have escalated.

I can't rule out the possibility that I completely misconstrued things or that it was just my imagination, but my mother's eerie behavior back then was so terrifying that I still get occasional flashbacks to it today.