Shane looked in distaste at the slingback heel in his hand. He was probably going to have to wear these shoes at some point, but until then, he was going barefoot.
Looking in the mirror, Shane was pleased with what he saw. He was dressed in the scarlet halter top and black skirt, as well as the strapless bra and--ugh--the thong that he had found strewn across the bedroom floor. Shane felt a little uncomfortable wearing these clothes, but they looked good on the woman in the mirror. She was gorgeous, a vision of feminine beauty. It was a bit of a trip every time Shane realized that this was what he looked like to Beth, what he would probably look to anyone who saw him. He certainly didn't feel like a woman, even if he looked like one. It was weird beyond belief.. but it was kind of cool, too, in the way quantum physics was cool. A total mind-fuck. Part of Shane didn't want to go back to being himself yet; it would be pretty cool to live as a woman for a little while. The other part of him, though, was already tired of wearing a skirt.
Hmm. The woman in the mirror still didn't look ready for the world. Her clothes were fine, but her hair was a mess. Shane picked up a brush from the bathroom counter and began running it through his dark, shoulder length hair. The woman's hair happened to be about the same length as his own, so it was pretty easy to work with it and get it looking neat. Once it was combed, he looked at his reflection again. Somehow he still wasn't quite satisfied. He wasn't sure why, but he wanted to look good. He supposed it had something to do with Beth.
Shane and Beth had started out on the wrong foot to say the least, but once they had finally found the mirror and realized that neither of them was the person they appeared to be, they had sat down together to try to figure out their situation. They didn't come to any real conclusions--they'd figured out the what and the who, but not the why or the how of their situation--but Shane had found the conversation very pleasant nonetheless. Beth, he had found, was a charming, intelligent, sincere, and genuinely sweet woman, and she seemed to like Shane as well. Once they had gotten past the initial shock of the situation, though, Beth had seemed a bit sad; apparently she had recently broken up with a boyfriend and was having a hard time of it. Shane had offered his condolences and talked about his own love life, which had not being going well of late. It had seemed a little silly to both of them to be focusing on something like their romantic exploits in the face of something as bizarre as switching bodies, or lives, or places, or whatever this was that had happened to them, but they had both found it somehow comforting nonetheless. Maybe they'd needed to get their minds off their situation for a few minutes.
Shane had found it disorienting, at first, to see a man but know that he was really speaking to a woman; it must have been just as disorienting to Beth to see Shane as a woman. As they'd gotten into the groove of the conversation, though, all of that had fallen away... they'd begun to really connect, as though they'd known each other for ages, and the shapes they happened to be wearing had become irrelevant. As they'd introduced themselves to each other, they'd talked a little bit about their pasts, a little bit about their hopes and dreams. They'd even discovered they'd attended the same high school and college, albeit a couple of years apart. They determined they'd never met before, however, although it had taken some work to figure it out, since neither of them knew what the other looked like on the other side of their borrowed faces.
At last Beth had proposed they get dressed... probably a good idea, given that Shane was still only wearing boxer shorts at that point, which must have been a little uncomfortable for Beth. They had determined that this must have been the man's apartment, as the closet was full of men's clothes, but the only women's clothing was what was on the floor, leaving Shane little option as to what he would be wearing. He had thrown a bit of a fit about having to dress in women's clothing, but in the end he hadn't really had much choice. They'd decided to take turns getting dressed, though of course they'd already seen everything there was to see; and so Shane had waited patiently in the hallway while Beth had changed. A few minutes later she had stepped out of the bedroom, dressed neatly in a button-up shirt and slacks, and Shane had gone in for his turn.
Now he was dressed in the woman's clothes, and although he felt uncomfortable at the thought of letting Beth see him in women's clothing, he knew that she would see him as a woman... and judging from his reflection, as a woman he looked great in these clothes. So, after one last once-over in the mirror, he opened the bedroom door and headed down the hall in search of Beth.
He found her sitting on a couch in what appeared to be the living room, watching television. As Shane entered the room, she turned and said, "Shane, look at this."
Shane took a seat on the couch next to her and watched the news program she'd turned on. There was a boy on screen, perhaps twelve or thirteen, dressed in a Transformers t-shirt and sitting at an anchors desk. He spoke authoriratively about an unexplained plague of switching that had struck the town starting that morning.
"So it's not just us," Shane said. He wasn't sure whether he found that comforting or not.
The report went on. People all over town were switching places at random; the police estimated that the swaps already numbered in the low thousands, and there were more swaps occuring every minute. The mayor's office had determined that the swaps were occurring within a limited radius extending a few miles outside of town, and that there were no known swaps anywhere else in the state, the country, or the world. Apparently the swaps were initiated by physical contact with someone who had already been switched, so the mayor's office was advising that no one touch anyone in town, even through clothing.
"I guess that doesn't count us, huh?" Beth said, looking at Shane. "Since we've already switched?"
"Guess not" Shane said.
As chaotic scenes flashed across the screen--a riot in the park, looting downtown, traffic accidents, people screaming and crying--Shane felt Beth's hand touch his. Her hand felt big, rough, and masculine--though he knew it wasn't, not really--and he flinched at her touch.
Shane wasn't homophobic. As a proud, tree-hugging, peace-loving, bleeding-heart liberal, he believed that gay men and women deserved to have all the same rights as straight people. He had gay friends who he had met in college, and he cared about them deeply and hated to see the hard times they'd had in their lives. At the same time, though, Shane was not gay, and he wasn't comfortable with the thought of being with a man. And the feeling of Beth's penis, or rather the penis of the man she looked like, thrusting in and out between his legs had left Shane rattled.
Beth looked at shane and saw the discomfort on his face, and so she pulled her hand away, bit her lip, and turned back to the television screen.
Shane looked at Beth quietly for a moment. Then he reached his hand out, took her hand, and wrapped his fingers through hers. She looked back at him, and they smiled.
