A Deal

“Look, Elise, you’d better learn to act properly in my body for as long as we’re swapped unless you want everyone to see this,” George threatened as he stuck his finger in his nose.

“I’ll do my best,” Elise said nervously, “But you need to act like me, too.”

“Then we have a deal. We need to pretend to be each other until we can figure out a way to swap our bodies back.”

Girlfriend in a Coma

Using the Medallion of Zulu to swap bodies with Zoe for twelve hours seemed like a decent idea at the time. After all, it was a once in the life time opportunity for Jared to spend time experiencing what it felt like to be a woman, and he’d be back to his own body in no time. He didn’t expect his own body to fall into a coma in that time, and to make matters worse, Zoe hadn’t told him where she put the medallion for safekeeping. He realized he was going to be her until his own body woke up...

I Agree

Jacob was up late one night when he stumbled across a site called “Body Roulette.” He laughed at the pitch about dreaming to be someone else. Thinking it was some sort of role play chatroom, he clicked a bunch of buttons marked “I agree.” Eventually, an image of a busty woman came on screen with the words “You have been matched.” Jacob chuckled, thinking he was going to have to pretend to be this woman. However, one final click and he felt a pain stinging through his body. The next thing he knew, he felt a giant weight on his chest. He felt a moment of regret, placing his hand to his head for a facepalm. But then a smile crept onto his face. This wasn’t pretend; this was going to be a whole new, strange experience.

Nightmare

Byron awoke with hair in his face. He couldn’t figure out where it came from. He brush it aside, but it seemed to follow him as he moved his head. The mystery was solved when he looked in the mirror to see the face of his ex-girlfriend looking back at him. He screamed. This was a nightmare. He had broken up with her because she was clingy and needy, but now he was stuck with her in way that was much closer than he could have ever imagined. He had her body! He had her stupid long hair hanging from his head -- her head? He was a her! He was her! He couldn’t stand it.

French Class

On the night before what should’ve been his last day of high school, Kyle prayed for a way to fix his grade in French. He was failing and needed a miracle to pass and graduate. A miracle is exactly what he got when he awoke the next morning inside the body of his teacher, Miss LaSalle. He immediately opened up her grade book and pushed his scores just a little bit higher. Feeling like this fulfilled his prayer, he expected to immediately swap back, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he ended up going to school in Miss LaSalle’s body. It was weird for him to be sitting in the front of the classroom with forty eyes staring at him. He was glad not much was expected on the last day of school, because failing one year of French wasn’t exactly a great experience for being a French teacher. It also gave him the whole summer to get back to his own body. After all, he was expecting to start college in the fall, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t go like this! Plus, if he was still like this, he might need to actually learn French for real.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Conor was just an average white guy from the suburbs. He would never admit it, out loud but walking through certain neighborhoods in the city made him feel a little unsafe. He tried to fight these internal biases, but he could never fully do it. It wasn’t until the Great Shift happened that he was forced to face these feelings head on. Suddenly, instead of sitting on the couch of his four bedroom house in the burbs, he was in a one bedroom apartment in exactly one of the neighborhoods he felt unsafe. Then he looked in the mirror and realized neither the word “white” nor “guy” properly describe him anymore. He grabbed the purse by a hook and put on the high heeled shoes that sat by the door and ventured onto the street. Despite this new body, he was no less nervous. And, in fact, the chaos of everyone screaming about being in a different body made him even more stressed out. He quickly retreated back into the apartment, hoping it would all sort itself out somehow soon.

Revenge

Nick felt quite proud of himself. It hadn’t been hard to use the old magic books he found to cast a spell that transformed him into an exact copy of his former classmate, Amanda. He hadn’t seen Amanda since high school, but even two years later he still had memories about how she had been completely mean to him. He teased and mocked him, found ways to humiliate him, and was just generally cruel. Now he had a chance for a bit of revenge. The first step was done; he was her! Next he had to track her down. For the third step, he was going to use the books to turn her into him then the tables would be turned! He could make fun of her just like she had done to him. But it wouldn’t stop there! With the books, he could do so much worse to her. While he had never been all that attractive, he could cast a spell on her to make her especially ugly or age her rapidly or just cause some extra pain. This was going to be good!

Unchartered (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1.

Nigel eventually took up the resort’s offer, and got an assortment of clothes for this body and one of the nicest suites in the hotel. But his problem was a little more complicated than just swapping into the wrong body. He had planned this trip because he was old and sick; his doctors hadn’t given him long to live. He had heard rumors that if your original body died while vacationing on Exchange Island, you kept the body you swapped with. And that’s why he scheduled this trip to be a year long, and that’s why he chartered that flight with a very exact group of young men. He wasn’t even sure if could leave early, and if he did, he wouldn’t have time to pull this off again before he passed. The other option would be to just stay here in this body, and let his former body pass. Then he’d be stuck like this, stuck as a woman.

Unchartered

Nigel Brooks had planned his trip to Exchange Island perfectly to ensure an optimal result. The 80-year-old billionaire chartered a personal flight with only a handful of young professionals just out of college, all of them handsome, fit young men. It would ensure he would swap with one for the entirety of this expedition. But after he arrived, instead of swapping with one of the men as planned, he found himself on the beach with dried salt in tangled hair and holes in tattered jeans. The most shocking aspect of it all was that he was a woman! He could only presume that she was in some sort of boating accident off the coast at around the same time his plane had landed.

Well, this wasn’t what Nigel had signed up for at all! He stormed to the front desk of the resort, demanding a different swap. The staff were helpful, but they explained it didn’t matter how this other person came to the island; they couldn’t control the swaps. They offered Nigel some clothes and insisted  he take one of the nicest rooms. Nigel was furious. He talked about how much money he paid to be a young man again for a time. The last thing he wanted was to be a woman! He began to cry.

Change the Plan

Bruce thought that swapping bodies with a woman would be an instant turn. Yet once he actually built up the courage to steal a woman’s body, he was disappointed. Something about having a feminine body so accessible just wasn’t the same. 

He quickly adjusted his plan by going into a women’s locker room. This too came up short. Now that estrogen and other female hormones were running through him, the idea of women in various states of undress just wasn’t exciting him.

But he wouldn’t give up. He pulled out his phone and started taking pictures. No one would think twice if he pretended to take some selfies while actually quietly snapping photos of other women. He might not be enjoying this sight right now, but when he was back in his own body he certainly would!

Of course, what Bruce hadn’t thought of was how exactly he was going to get his own body back now...

Business as Usual

“Quite frankly, I don’t care that I swapped bodies with Aida. I don’t care that the entire world swapped bodies. These reports need to be finished, and no one is going home until they’re done.” With that, Dan put his glasses on and leaned over the table in the conference room. Then he sighed and took the glasses off, knowing he no longer need them since he had the eyes of Aida, his administrative assistant.

The rest of the office looked on awkwardly, a few noticing that Dan was about to give a free show thanks to Aida’s short skirt. Others just wanted to go home. Work had been tough enough after The Great Shift struck earlier that day, and the fact that Dan, the head of the company, was pressuring to continue on with business as usual was tough to accept.

Cool

The last thing Harold remembered was turning on his invention that was supposed to enhance traits to “make him cool.” It was a device he had envisioned in high school, but never acted on creating, thinking college would be better. College was no better. He was still made fun of daily for being a scrawny, nerdy loser. But waking up and getting to his feet, he realized something had gone wrong. He wasn’t a cool version of himself -- he was a woman!

“Hey, Bro, you’re up!” Harold heard a voice say. He turned to see  a vaguely recognizable version of himself enter the room. The guy was buff, tan, and -- simply put -- cool.

The other Harold continued, “Just so you know, our invention actually worked. I’m everything we dreamed of. Unfortunately, there was a side effect. All the super lame parts of my personality became, well, you.”

“But I’m a woman!”

“You know we always used to get shit on for being girlie. You probably got whatever chick hormones we had too.”

“You mean estrogen?” The female Harold asked. He paused thinking abut that exchange, realizing he didn’t truly get the short end of the stick. Yes, he retained his effeminate nature and the bodily hormones had made this form a woman’s; he was still scrawny, pale, and nerdy. But his had unwittingly considered his intelligence a “nerdy” trait, and retained that as well. His male counterpart, while now buff, attractive, and totally masculine also seemed to be relatively dumb. The female Harold knew he could fix it and merge them back together but also had a hunch the male Harold might object.

The Orbs (Part 4)

Click here for Part 1. 
Click here for Part 2. 
Click here for Part 3. 

The days passed; Andrew and Maria kept trying to use the orbs, but they never worked. Eventually, much like the orbs mysteriously appeared in the office, they went away. Maria seemed mildly upset, but Andrew took a deep breath. 

“I think I can do this. I can be you,” He told her, “There’s just one thing I need to know about. Kyle keeps calling. I need to know what to tell him.” 

“I guess it’s all up to you now,” Maria sighed, “But here’s the deal. He’s my husband, but he cheated on me. So we separated; we were trying to see if could reconcile when all this happened. I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

Andrew took a deep breath before leaning in and smiling. “I got this,” He said.

The Orbs (Part 3)

Click here for Part 1. 
Click here for Part 2. 

Both Andrew and Maria made it through the day without any incident. They tried to orbs one last time before leaving to no avail; that meant they were going to be stuck in each others bodies for at least the weekend. They spent the rest of Friday giving each other instructions on how to dress and act, mostly in preparation for returning to work on Monday. The weekend certainly helped Andrew adjust to being in Maria’s body. By the time Monday rolled around, he effortlessly slipped into a blue dress and put on some makeup. It wasn’t until he arrived to work on Monday that something threw him off. There was a large vase full of flowers on Maria’s desk with a note, “I don’t know what I did wrong, but I missed you on Saturday. Love, Kyle.” Andrew guessed Kyle was Maria’s boyfriend, but she hadn’t mentioned him. She certainly didn’t tell hi to show up to any date! He wasn’t sure he would’ve gone, but he also began to wonder what else Maria hadn’t told him.