Jane jumped to the strident sound of her awakening. What day were we? Tuesday ? Wednesday ? She swivels on her stomach to wipe out cheerfully in her duvet. A large cup of coffee would undoubtedly help him to clear up ideas. She had vague memories of the day before. She took a deep inspiration to give herself courage and got up. The slippers that had slipped under the bed were far too big for her little feet. She noticed that her t-shirt was coming strangely at the knees. In the kitchen, she could not reach the shelf where the cup in which she usually used her coffee was located. She enlisted with an automatic gesture the coffee maker which emitted a complaint and a brief gargouillis. While her drink flowed drip and already embalmed the apartment, Jane headed for the bathroom to take her medication box. She was surprised by her own reflection. Planted in front of the big mirror, she found herself face to face with a little girl.

That morning, Jane was six years old.

-Damn, she sighed.

She had never come back so far in time.

Jane suffered from a rare and unknown disease that doctors simply called “temporal disruption”. They could have found a more learned name, a name in Latin which would make a little classy temporis disturbi temporis, or a name inspired by mythology as aeson syndrome, but no, they had not been more inventive. The first signs of the disease appeared the day after her fortieth anniversary. Jane had not first paid attention to it. One morning, she was radiant with a fresh complexion and the pink cheeks. She told herself that she had enjoyed a restful sleep and that her new night cream had done wonders. For once, advertising had not been false. But another morning, she discovered new wrinkles and multiple white hair. The differences with her real age had increased over the months. In the night, her body was transformed according to an unknown and mysterious process. He rejuvenated or aged in her sleep. At dawn, she discovered her age of the day helpless. She had been forced to leave her job as an accounting assistant when one morning she woke up in the body of an eleven year old prediction. She was far too young, even to solicit a discovery course. She had asked her boss to exercise her profession in teleworking so that she could shut herself up and not cross her colleagues who would have understood nothing about the situation.

Her illness had also turned her love life upside down. Jane had initially considered her temporary rejuvenation as an unexpected chance of enjoying lost time again. She had forgotten how beautiful she was at twenty. She who had been so complexed after adolescence! What a funny idea with hindsight! Jane returned to her jeans again effortlessly and was taken from a crazy desire to dance and get drunk. After dragging into two or three bars, she had managed to bring a beautiful philosophy student home who had debited her quotes from Saint-Augustin while undressing her penetrated. “As for the present, if he was still present, if he was not going to join the past, he would not be time, he would be eternity. Jane had not understood anything, but she had been delighted with her evening. Her one night lover had been in a less philosopher mood when he had discovered the next day a woman of seventy years nestled against him. He had cried out of gold and detailed like a rabbit. Jane had not held the experience and had since resolved to celibacy.

The little girl she was that day sat down with her cup of hot coffee at the table of her modest kitchen and swallow her drugs like a handful of candies. She began to believe that a vulgar placebo had been passed through her because the disease would get worse. She inspected her little pink hands. Six years today. How old tomorrow? What would happen if she woke up in the body of an infant or in that of a grabarity vieillarde? In both cases, she would be unable to move by herself. It had already happened that it remains significantly blocked at the same age for several days in a row. She shivered at the idea of ​​staying lying in bed, unable to move, and die of dehydration or hunger, helpless and stuck in the boring body of a six -week baby.

This perspective froze her blood. Her coffee was already cold. She had to urgently consult Dr. Chronas. In her wardrobe, she kept clothes of different sizes. Over time, it had formed a wardrobe to overcome all her morphological deviations. She put on a flower dress size 10 years – too large, but too bad – and sizes 29 boots which she had recovered in a fair at everything. The doctor’s office was at the other end of the city. The car would have been the fastest means of transport, but Jane was far too small to reach the pedals and she did not want to be arrested by the police. It was a hit to be directly placed in childhood social assistance. So she took the metro by being as discreet as possible. Based in the crowd, making believe that she was accompanied by an adult, we might leave her quiet. She hoped that a poodle granny was not going to caress her cheek by asking her where her mother was, as the last time she had borrowed public transport. Fortunately, and after only a few intrigued looks placed on her, Jane arrived without incident at the medical office.

Dr. Chronas did not need to examine it at length to lead to this observation: he unfortunately felt overwhelmed by the condition of his patient. All analyzes carried out, radios and other blood tests were not anomaly in Jane’s organism. It had to be psychological.

-I am not a psychiatrist, but you may have somatized your quarantine crisis, announced the doctor learnedly.

Jane got up and kicked her in the shins. What a charlatan that one!

• Let’s see, Madame Pellicer, stop behaving like a child! replied Dr. Chronas. You cannot constantly flee the passage of time!

Vexed, Jane slammed the cabinet door and began to wander in the city. Of course, she was afraid of the passage of time. She had nostalgia for the years when she was still a student, she regretted the innocence and the cheerfulness of her childhood. She would have liked to retain all these years in the palm of her hand, the years spent, but also in the years to come. The next decades were a nightmare. She refused that her body will change, that her movements become slower and painful.

Just live the present time, forever.

As it walked and the sun was declining, Jane’s shadow gradually lengthened. She crossed her reflection in the window of a hair salon.

That evening, Jane was forty-one years old.