Mourning

Gabriel placed flowers by the plain white cross that stood on the side of the road. He often came here to do this; it was never easy for him. After all, it was the spot where he had died.

He was walking back to the university campus along the side of the road that night when the driver of an SUV swerved and hit him. The moment of impact was an agonizing pain he would never forget, but the pain ended almost immediately as he soon found himself behind the wheel of a car in a comfortable heated seat.

He wondered if it was just sheer luck at first; perhaps he had crashed through the windshield and conveniently landed in this positions unharmed after the SUV plowed into him and landed in a ditch. But as he looked at the rear view mirrors, he saw a reflection that wasn’t his own. By some inexplicable means, he had swapped bodies with the driver when she hit him. Despite being shaken by the accident and the swap, he searched for the woman’s purse to find her phone and dial 9-1-1.

His voice was unnervingly feminine as he talked and he closely examined his now middle aged facial features move in the mirror as he spoke. When the ambulance arrived, Gabriel’s body was pronounced dead on the scene. The investigations began that night.

The fault for the accident was ultimately blamed on a manufacturing defect with the vehicle. Gabriel often wanted to tell his parents about what happened, but throughout the investigation they wouldn’t even look at him. He couldn’t blame them. He now had the face of the person who they thought killed their son. Trying to tell them the truth would likely only make them angrier and sadder.

And as tough as that was, it was harder for him to try to fit into the life of the body he now had, Olivia’s life. She was a middle aged mom with a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. He knew he was distant to all of them at first; they all believed it was due to trauma from accident. In a way, that was true, but certainly not in the way they suspected. And yet over time, Gabriel learned to love and appreciate his new life...