Happy Wife, Happy Life

Noodles (Part 2)

View Part 1 of Noodles.

When you’re hungry, it’s your top concern. You aren’t really thinking about things like the fact that you might be wearing someone else’s clothes or showering with their shampoo. Any concerns I had about the Great Shift dumping me into the wrong body were pushed aside for the time being.

Crackers on ketchup were barely enough to fill even the smallest corner of my stomach, but they were enough to give me the motivation to venture out. I checked about five different grocery stores before I found one that was open.

It was mostly picked through with a lot of fresh food remaining being wilted or spoiled. The packaged food was practically cleared out. I still managed to collect a few things.

But when I went to check out, I realized no one was actually working. Someone had just pried the door open earlier, and everyone was going in and out. I felt bad about taking the food, but I wasn’t about to let myself starve either. I slipped some cash under the register before I left just so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

You Snooze, You Lose

It was a strange event where everyone within a ten mile radius had their souls temporarily sucked out of themselves. For a few brief seconds, everyone was like spirits circling about before they could return to their own bodies.

Of course, while most people found their way back to becoming themselves, Cheng tried doing so only to discover her own body was already occupied -- and instead she was tossed into a nearby one belonging to someone else.

She was now older, overweight, and weight. She stormed down to the street and up to the body that once was hers.

“I don’t want to be stuck in your body!” She shouted, “Give me my body back!”

“I don’t know whose body that is,” Her former self shrugged, “I was a middle aged guy before all this. But, I guess, you snooze, you lose. And you lost out big time by not finding your way back inside here quick enough.”

On the Job

Jay felt like his body was slammed against the cold ground. It was actually just the effects of the mind transference, which wasn’t meant to be used in such close succession; it was his third body in less than a week.

But this was the job he had signed up for, and this would fortunately be his last swap for a while.

He could actually take his time. In fact, he had to. Three swaps in a week were hard for anyone, but four would be deadly. If he completed what he had to do with this body too quickly, he’d be killing himself. So for the first time in a while, he could actually slow down and enjoy being in his current body. And that’s exactly what he planned to do.

Repopulate

Aaron had awoken in a lab in what was obviously not his own body. There had to be a reason for it. Preservation? Escape? He couldn’t seem to remember. He was a woman -- maybe that was a clue -- maybe who was as equally as important as why.

He began to look around. From what he could tell, there were no other humans. Not in the lab...not anywhere.

And then he found the instructions about what everything in the lab did, and why he found himself in the body he was in. He was the last person left on Earth, and inside a woman’s body, he was meant to repopulate it.