Luke wanted to give chase. He wanted to get his body back. However, his leg was hurting, and he needed to take care of that first. After all, what was this woman’s endgame? If she went back to his place, he knew where he lived. If she went back to her own place, he was sure someone knew this woman and where she lived. Where could she run to?
He blacked out and woke the next morning. He didn’t feel more powerful, but he did feel quite strange. As he looked down at his body, he realized why. The damn spell had transformed him into a woman! And not only that, he appeared to have a pretty nice body with a small, red, leather dress. He figured he must have messed up.
He sighed. But then he tried another spell -- teleportation to get back home. He knew it was a long shot, as that spell never worked for him; however, this time it did. It seemed weird, but maybe transforming into a woman was in fact, a way to boost his powers...
One day he woke up as a baby, the next an old man, and one day an adult film star. He was starting to think he’d be swapping forever. And one day he woke up the body of a woman around his same age. He dismissed it at first, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to be stuck as a woman for the rest of his life. But as the day went on, he realized it might not be so bad. She had mostly plain clothes, her proportions weren’t outlandish like a few bodies he had in the past, she seemed genuinely average. There was a comfort in average.
On the street, he looked down at his unremarkable outfit and decided this was it. This was the body he was going to keep. He only needed a few small parts to construct what he needed, then this would be who he was forever...
Click here for Part 1.
Finally getting home again felt great. He loved reconnecting with all his (now also swapped) friends. There were also things that felt weird. Food tasted different -- almost weird. He wasn’t sure if this was his new body’s differing taste buds, or if he just got used to the flavors overseas in the past year. He found himself dropping foreign words into his conversations. He had never learned the language, but he did pick up a few things -- mostly swears. He would often daydream about going back...
Jason, for instance, found himself halfway across the globe in a new body as a result of the Great Shift. While most people were challenged by the fact that they found themselves in a new body, Jason had the added complication of trying to understand what was going on with no one around being able to explain in a language he knew that the same thing was happening to them. He felt lost and confused, and he knew he had nowhere to turn for help.
His only saving grace seemed to be due to the fact that he had swapped into a body located near a major tourist attraction, and he eventually found someone who could speak the same language.
A little more time passed and things got really weird. Jake could tell the hair on his head was now rapidly growing out. He swore his beard was thinning too. His arms and legs felt more slender.
By lunchtime, the changes were undeniable. He had become a female version of himself. And once lunch was over, even his clothes had changed to a fashionable version of what he had been wearing. His boots were now heels, his overalls now a cute leather outfit.
He walked back to the construction site, but instead of being welcome, he was greeted to the same sorts of hoots and hollers that women got when passing by. Jake realized this was no longer where he worked, but much like his physical changes, the mental affects of his transformation were happening slowly.
“I told you to stop gambling,” Ally replied calmly, “You said you stopped gambling. Yet somehow you managed to come home today with the body of some white girl because you wagered your own body in a card game? How did you even do that? How is that even possible? You’re lucky I even believe you. Have you thought about what you’re going to tell your work? Your boss? Do you think they’ll magically believe you and let you keep your job? You fucked this up, Ed. You are going to lose that job. We’ll probably lose this house. It’s still entirely possible you’ll lose me. You need to fix this.”
“You said we’d be swap with our sisters for 24 hours, and it’s been a week,” Jared yelled, “And each day, it’s getting worse. I can apply makeup perfectly, I can coordinate outfits -- I find myself CARING about coordinating an outfit -- I don’t even want to tell you the way I’ve been looking at guys these days. It’s not just that this weird spell you cast transformed my body into Alice’s, I think I’m becoming Alice...even down to the way I think. You need to undo this. You need to reverse this. I need to get back to normal.”
“You will,” Peter said nervously, “I mean, you are. That’s sort of how the spell works. Your personality, your memories, everything about you will become like Alice so that it’s like you never swapped at all. It was all just supposed to happen faster, so that we wouldn’t even notice. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Ron reached up to comply before suddenly turning around to snap back, “You know, just because you swapped into the body of some brat doesn’t mean you have to act like one. And just because I swapped into the body of that brat’s mom doesn’t mean I have to listen to you! In fact, maybe I should be telling you what to do in this mother-child relationship!”
Jake looked like he was about to cry, but Ron wasn’t buying it.
“No,” Ron continued to insist, “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to play off my new motherly hormones, and it’s kind of working. But I also know we’re both grown men here, and I know that you’re still checking out y new ass while turning on the water works. It’s gross, man! If I could abandon you here, I would, but as long as I’m in the body of this mom, I guess I have to play the part. But that doesn’t mean I have to buy you this goddamn candy.”
“Okay, okay,” He sighed, “See! Your hands aren’t touching any part of your body. But, seriously, I’m going to have to at some point -- we swapped bodies, Carla! At some point I’m going to have to change clothes or use the bathroom or shower, and then these hands are invariably going to touch some place you feel uncomfortable with me touching. I’ve respected your wishes so far, but you’re going to have to be a little bit reasonable here as well.”
Carla scowled in Matt’s direction. She knew he was right, but the thought of Matt being inside her body still grossed her out. She didn’t want him in there, and she certainly didn’t want him touching anything while he was. The best she could hope for was that they’d swap back as mysteriously as they swapped in the first place and soon...
Evan doing something like putting on a bikini was a near impossible task. The bikini bottoms were logical enough, but the way the straps crossed on the top made it difficult for Zach to figure out. He did his best. It felt a little tight and he was pretty sure something was wrong, but everything was covered up enough to hit the beach.
He realized there were likely to be plenty of other things that were going to be difficult to figure out, but this vacation was only for a few weeks. And, plus, it was free, after all.
Mitch grumbled as he was put on hold again. He had been on the phone for over an hour now. It was only two days earlier when he went online to buy a product guaranteed to bulk him up. Thanks to advances in technology, workouts were a thing of the past. Now you could just order a product that could use tech to instantly give you six-pack abs, bigger muscles, or lose inches off your waist -- and would even morph your clothes to match. Of course, sometimes screw ups happen. Mitch was sent the wrong product and now from the neck down, instead of looking like a male bodybuilder, he looked like a female super model -- and was, in fact, female in all the ways that counted. To compound the problem, he couldn’t seem to get anyone on the phone to help him fix the problem. When they finally gave him a solution, Mitch wasn’t happy with what he heard.
“Eight weeks?” He shouted, “What do you mean it’s back-ordered? I’m going to be stuck like this for eight weeks?”
Immediately, he went into Adria’s closet and started trying on clothes and shoes and anything else he could. It was much more fun than he expected, but also more time consuming. The clothes were tighter, harder to get on and off, and just took longer. The boots were tough to walk in, some dresses were hard to breathe in, but damn, he was sure having a good time. Two hours just flew by...
He was shocked to have Eddie’s door open and see his college girlfriend, Kelsey standing there. But it was impossible, because it looked like she clearly hadn’t aged a day.
“Do you think I programmed Kelsey’s butt too big?” The woman asked, “Her butt wasn’t this big, was it?”
“What the hell is going on here? Who the hell are you?” Frank yelled in shock.
“Come on, Frank. It’s me. It’s Eddie. This was that thing I’ve been talking about for the past 30 years. I finally worked out all the flaws in the tech. Haven’t you been paying any attention?”
“I guess when you talked about recreating people, you meant on a computer screen.”
“Nope. Real life. Nano-technology! In fact, I’m indistinguishable from the 20 year old woman you knew 30 years ago -- except for maybe a few gaps in my memory, which is why I asked about the butt.”
“Turn yourself back, man. This is creepy.”
“It took weeks to get like this! It’ll take weeks to go back, but I can make small modifications, so please, just let me know if I need to adjust this butt.”
He first tried calling the city’s taxi commission. He had written down the number and license, but it didn’t correspond to any cab on record. He called every company, but still came up empty. Eventually, he just started standing on busy streets flagging down cabs. He was sure he’d remember what the driver looked like -- heck, he had been that driver for a few hours. When a taxi would stop, he’d check the number and the face or the driver. If neither matched, he’d let it go, explaining he changed his mind. The driver would usually curse him out for wasting time.
Garret realized he’d probably spent hundreds of hours hailing thousands of cabs at this point, but so far he hadn’t gotten into a single one. Not one matched the magic taxi that had picked him up two months ago.
“Oh, God, no!” Brendon replied, “She has enough to worry about. Besides, if she didn’t notice last night at the bachelorette party, I doubt she’ll notice today at the wedding.”
“I never expected a bachelorette party to be so much fun. That massage alone was heavenly!”
“I know!” Nathan interjected, “I didn’t expect that I’d like being a woman, but here we are! It’s been bliss. Even these dresses actually feel free and liberating. Heck, I’m not even wearing any underwear! It feels great! I know we’re only supposed to be swapped for a week, but do you think Natalie might be interest in staying swapped?”
“You can ask. I might ask Ashleigh as well.”
After serving the last few rows of first class, he went back to his own row. He had assumed the flight attendant was now in his body, but she sure didn’t let up pretending to be him. He tried to press the issue, but instead got an apology about the pinch.
There wasn’t much choice. He was going to have to figure out this new life he now had. He was stuck as a woman, many years younger, and with an undoubtedly much lower salary. It all felt so depressing. As he walked through the airport after the slight, he tried to even begin to imagine how he was going to cope.
Jeremy walked over as fast as he could while wearing the heeled boots. He seemed to be right on top of his phones; location, but didn’t see his body anywhere. Then not far away he spotted a trash can. He walked over and rummaged through and found his phone. The woman who swapped with him was even more clever than he had hoped, but he still wasn’t giving up. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck in the body of a woman -- even an attractive one!
Evan was a bit more prepared for what just happened. He grabbed the glasses from his former face and the book from his old hands.
“Fascinating,” He said, “The celestial event transpired exactly as predicted, but I never could have expected spacial displacement of my corporeal form into another’s anatomy.”
Julia’s processing took a bit longer, but was slightly more blunt. “Holy shit,” She whispered, “I swapped bodies with a dork.”
“Hope you enjoy my life,” Karen couldn’t believe she was hearing her own voice say those words, “Because I sure as hell am going to love being your entitled ass.”
“How --? Why --?” Karen could only seem to say single words, still quite unused to the deep voice she now had.
“You got me fired! You know most people don’t complain about coffee being too hot. They just say thank you and wait a little longer or add a little more milk. But not stuck up bitches like you. Luckily, my grandma was a witch and taught me a thing or two. Thanks to a little spell she gave me, you’re going to be broke and out of a job, and I’m going to be driving around in a luxury SUV.”
“But I have a husband! And a child!”
“Being a man myself, I’m pretty sure I know what one likes. Your man will be in good hands with me. Plus, I’m sure I’ll raise your kid in a way that doesn’t turn them into the same type of spoiled brat that you grew up to be. Now, if you don’t leave me alone, I will call the police. And I promise you, considering you have my body now, you don’t want that...”
However, as the months passed, Tim’s confidence never seemed to return. Instead of being the confident, tall, well-spoken blond man, he was now a nervous, shy, mumbling Asian woman. He would tell himself he was still who he was, but he never could seem to recapture his magic.
