This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Hoomanbeanzzz on 2024-09-20 12:51:18+00:00.

I’ve always considered myself a stickler for proper grammar.

It’s not that I go around correcting people’s speech—I’m not that guy.

But I notice things. Little things. Like how people use “literally” when they mean “figuratively,” or the difference between “your” and “you’re.”

It’s just the way my brain is wired, I guess.

So when I first heard someone say “woman” when referring to multiple women, it grated on my ears like a sandpaper-covered Q-tip.

It was in a YouTube video, some influencer talking about “woman in the workplace.”

I rolled my eyes and left a comment correcting them. No big deal, right? Just another day on the internet.

But then I heard it again. And again.

TikTok videos, podcasts, even a news anchor on TV.

“Woman” used as a plural.

Each time, I felt a little jolt of annoyance. I started keeping a mental tally, noting how often I heard it. It became a sort of game, albeit an irritating one.

At first, my friends agreed with me.

We’d laugh about it over drinks, mocking the “bad grammar” that seemed to be spreading like a virus.

But then something strange happened.

Sarah, my best friend since college and an English major to boot, used it in conversation.

“Did you see all those woman at the protest yesterday?” she asked casually over coffee one morning.

I nearly choked on my latte. “Women,” I corrected automatically.

Sarah looked at me, confused. “What?”

“You said ‘woman.’ It’s ‘women’ when it’s plural. C’mon you know that.”

She furrowed her brow. “No… it’s always been ‘woman’ for plural. Are you feeling okay?”

That was the moment I felt the ground shift beneath my feet.

Something was very, very wrong.

That conversation with Sarah was just the beginning.

Over the next few weeks, I found myself in a linguistic twilight zone.

Everywhere I turned, people were using “woman” as a plural.

It wasn’t just online anymore—it was everywhere.

At work, my colleague Mark gave a presentation about “woman in STEM fields.”

When I privately pointed out his error afterwards, he looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“Dude, it’s always been ‘woman’ for plural. Did you sleep through English class or something?”

I laughed it off, but inside, panic was starting to bubble up.

Was this some kind of elaborate prank? A Truman Show-esque scenario where everyone was in on the joke except me?

I started paying closer attention to everything around me.

Billboards, commercials, casual conversations—the word “women” seemed to have vanished entirely, replaced by its singular counterpart in all plural contexts.

And yet “men” and “man” remained as the same usage.

One evening, I found myself furiously Googling “women vs woman plural.”

My heart raced as I clicked link after link, each one confirming what I was desperately trying to deny: according to every source I could find, “woman” was now the correct plural form.

Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Cambridge—all the dictionaries agreed. Grammar websites, language blogs, even academic papers all used “woman” as both singular and plural.

It was as if the word “women” had never existed.

I slammed my laptop shut, my mind reeling.

This couldn’t be happening.

The room seemed to spin around me as a terrifying thought crashed into my consciousness:

What if I hadn’t just misremembered a grammatical rule?

What if I had somehow slipped into a different reality altogether?

The idea was so absurd, so impossible, that I tried to laugh it off.

But the laughter died in my throat as other small inconsistencies I’d been subconsciously noticing suddenly came into sharp focus.

Wasn’t the coffee shop on the corner always a bookstore before?

And when did the traffic lights change from vertical to horizontal?

I could have sworn the Mona Lisa had a bigger smile…

I shook my head, trying to dislodge these unsettling thoughts – burrowing into my brain like maggots.

It was ridiculous. People don’t just wake up in alternate realities.

And yet, as I lay in bed that night, staring at the unfamiliarly familiar ceiling, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the world I went to sleep in yesterday wasn’t quite the same as the one I woke up to today.

Sleep eluded me as my mind raced, cataloging every little thing that seemed off.

By the time dawn broke, I was exhausted, wired, and more convinced than ever that something fundamental had shifted in my reality.

And it all started with that one little word: woman.

The next few weeks were a blur of confusion and mounting panic. Every day seemed to bring new discrepancies, each one chipping away at my sanity a little more.

• * The local park I’d visited since childhood was now on the opposite side of town.
• One of my favorite books “To Kill a Mockingbird,” suddenly had a different ending. In this version, Tom Robinson was inexplicably found not guilty, and the story concluded with a town celebration of justice prevailing. The powerful commentary on racism I remembered was completely gone, replaced by an oddly cheerful resolution that felt utterly wrong.
• The moon looked slightly larger in the sky.
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were now called “jelly and peanut butter sandwiches.”

But the most maddening part? No one else seemed to notice anything amiss.

I tried bringing up these changes with friends and family, but their reactions ranged from mild concern to outright dismissal.

“Are you feeling alright?” my mom asked when I insisted that we’d always celebrated Thanksgiving on the third Thursday of November, not the fourth.

My colleague Jake laughed when I mentioned that Nelson Mandela had died in prison. “Dude, he was president of South Africa. Everyone knows that.”

Even Sarah, usually my most steadfast ally, started to distance herself. “I’m worried about you,” she said one day over coffee. “Maybe you should talk to someone… professional.”

But how could I explain to a therapist that I believed I’d shifted into an alternate reality? They’d probably have me committed!

As the inconsistencies piled up, I found myself withdrawing from social interactions.

Every conversation became a minefield of potential discrepancies.

I’d hesitate before speaking, second-guessing my memories, terrified of revealing just how out of sync I was with this new world.

Work became nearly impossible.

I’d stare at my computer screen, trying to remember if the keyboard layout had always been this way, or if the company logo had always been blue instead of green.

Sleep, when it came, was fitful and filled with dreams of falling through cracks in reality, always waking up in slightly different versions of my bedroom.

And through it all, that plural “woman” haunted me.

It was everywhere, a constant reminder that something fundamental had changed.

Or that I had changed. Or moved. Or… something.

I needed answers. And I was willing to go to any lengths to find them…

But what I would discover next was so horrifying, I don’t know if I can live with the knowledge.