Mom

It had made sense for Thomas to pretend he hadn’t been swapped by the Great Shift. At least at first. He had found himself in the body of a middle aged woman with two scared and crying kids. Maybe it was the body’s hormones or maybe it was his conscience, but those boys needed their mom.

But as the months wore on, the role of mother grew tiresome. The final straw came one day after he learned one of the kids wasn’t actually a kid at all. It was just someone who had been swapped like he was; they had thought being in a young body again would be a great second chance to be a spoiled brat.

It was all too much to handle. Thomas was lucky that it wasn’t too late. Many people were still reporting their swaps months later. Maybe he could return to his original life despite this body, and maybe someone could actually locate these kids’ real mom.

Mirror, Mirror

Nancy couldn’t help shake the feeling that something was wrong that morning. Nothing seemed to be working quite right, people looked somewhat off in a way that she couldn’t place, and when her printer started to print out a document with the letters reversed, she realized she needed a break.

She went to the restroom to splash some water on her face, and things got even weirder. She noticed her reflection wasn’t quite matching hers. Then suddenly it all made sense; she was the one trapped in the mirror.

“Get me out of here!” She screamed.

Her own body on the other side of the mirror laughed back, “I’m sorry. There was nowhere else to put you when I stole your body. You had to go somewhere. But don’t worry; it’s nearly identical in there, just in reverse.”

“So, are you, like, my evil twin from inside the mirror?”

“What? No. I’m Jim...from the shipping department.”

Nancy just stared.

“That’s the problem,” Jim replied, “You were our supervisor and you don’t know who any of us are! You don’t care about what we need or our problems; you just cared about the bottom line. That’s why I took your body, Nancy; to be a better Nancy than you could ever be! To treat everyone in the departments you manage with kindness and respect. You deserve to be trapped in that mirror!”

Forever Vacation

How long had he been stuck on Exchange Island? Two years? Maybe three? Roy couldn’t remember anymore. But he certainly remembered how it all happened. It started out with a fairly normal trip to the resort -- well, normal by Exchange Island standards, which meant swapping bodies with someone upon arrival. In Roy’s case, he swapped with a woman and spent his week vacation trying to be as feminine as possible. It was silly and fun for him, but he couldnt wait to be back in his own body.

The only problem was when it came time to switch back; his original body couldn’t be located. The resort gave him two options: He could either return to the mainland and embrace the life of his new body, or he could stay on Exchange Island and enjoy an all-expenses-paid extention of his trip until his original body could be located.

Figuring it would only be a few days before his original body could be found, he went with the second option. But a few days passed with no word, then weeks, then months. With the hope always feeling like just a few days away, Roy rarely worried about things like plucking his body’s eyebrows or shaving his armpits or legs. With all expenses paid, he indulged heavily in the buffet every day. But the worst aspect of that hope was probably on his mental state. Hope feeling around the corner but never arriving was driving him mad; being stuck on a vacation forever without purpose probably wasn’t much better...

Your Shoes

“So, if we can’t figure out how to swap back to our own bodies, we’ll have to pretend to be each other. You have a lot to learn.” Min Ju suggested to Ted.

“How hard can it be?” Ted asked, “I already feel like I’m looking in a mirror. People aren’t going to notice anything is off no matter what we do.”

“I can see a few things just looking at you right now.”

“Like what?”

“Like your shoes.”

“You wear these shoes all the time!”

“But I don’t wear them inside! At least not inside someone’s dorm room like this. You’re an Asian woman now; you take your shoes off at the door. I mean, not like in the classroom or the student center or anything, but inside a home or an apartment or dorm you need to. And, trust me, my roommate will notice something like that.”

“Okay, what else?”

The Jackalope (Part 2)

View Part 1 of The Jackalope.

“This sucks,” Angela complained as she trudged through the forest looking for the creature that had swapped her into Cody’s body.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you came out,” Heather said from Trey’s body, “The outdoors doesn’t seem like your thing. I thought you’d wait back in the cabin like you did when we went skiing.”

“I wish! But I knew if I didn’t come out here, then Cody would. I can’t risk him staying out too long with my body and giving it frostbite or just doing something recklessly stupid. If I lose a finger on his body, who cares? And someone needs to find that antlered rabbit thing; besides, I think it sort of likes me.”

“It’s a jackalope.”

“A jack-a-what?”

“A rabbit with antlersis called a jackalope. But they’re not even supposed to exist; they’re mythical!”

“They obviously exist! We all saw it. And it was nice and friendly until all of you showed back up.”

“Hey! No blame here! I wouldn’t have thought it had the magic to swap people’s bodies either.”