Beth sighed happily... a long, contented sigh that stirred up from somewhere deep inside her and meandered peacefully through her smiling liips. It had been a very long time since she'd felt this good. Breaking up with her last boyfriend had been hard... but she'd been unhappy a long time before that. Maybe she'd been with the wrong man; maybe she'd been with the wrong friends; maybe she'd just been dissatisfied, deep down, with the direction her life had been taking. It didn't matter now. Because here, now, in this perfect moment... she didn't think she had ever felt happier in her life.
It was funny, she reflected, that she and Shane found themselves back here, back in bed, tangled in sheets, in the wake of making love, since this was where they had first met so many hours ago. And it was amazing that they found themselves here together, when their first few minutes together had been so confusing and unpleasant. Jumping into August Larsen and Amanda Reynolds mid-sex, with both of them on the wrong side fo the gender fence, had been... well, "shock" wasn't really strong enough a word, was it? Once they'd gotten their identities, their situation, and their genders sorted out, though, their relationship had gotten off to a fast and pleasant start. And now, at the tail end of one of the best days of Beth's life, she and Shane found themselves together in bed again, basking in the afterglow of sex and very much in... love? Was it love? Could she call it love after just one day, after just a few hours?
Yes. Yes, it was love. She was certain it was love.
Shane stirred gently against her chest, and looked up at her, his big, breathtaking eyes locking with hers, and they shared a long, affectionate gaze. God, he was beautiful. Beth had never been attracted to women, never. Once, as a teenager, she had stolen a kiss with her best friend, Samantha, while they'd been walking through the woods at the summer camp where they'd both been counselors. But that had been an experiment, nothing more... and Beth had neither requested it or enjoyed it. Sam had just been a curious teenage girl, as many girls that age were, and so she had begged and begged that summer afternoon for a kiss, and Beth had finally relented. It had done nothing for Beth, though... and in fact, it had made things so awkward between them that their friendship had distentegrated over the next few weeks. It had been a long time since Beth had heard from Sam. She wondered, wistfully, where her old friend was now...
In any case... what she had with Shane was much, much different. It wasn't just that Beth was positively enamored with the man Shane was beneath his feminine sheath--though she was, fully and passionately. Beth was attracted to Shane physically as well... and that was just a little disorienting for her. Beth had always considered herself fully heterosexual. She liked men, and rugged men at that... she saw little in women that interested her, and couldn't quite wrap her mind around what men saw in them. Beth liked firm skin and muscle, stubble and a strong, wolfish face.
But Shane... oh, Shane. She loved his silky hair, his smooth skin, his soft curves. She loved his gentle soprano, his soft facial features, his warm smile. She loved the arc of his waist, the swell of his hips, the stretch of his thigh. God help her, she loved his full, perfect breasts. She still couldn't imagine she would find any old woman attractive... but Shane drove her wild, and she adored every perfect inch of his perfect, feminine body.
It was so difficult for her to comprehend that this was all an illusion, that Shane really was a man. She didn't want to believe it. She wanted to believe that the delicate, feminine creature in her arms was really a woman through and through. She wanted to know that all the details she loved about his body were real. She knew better... but she could pretend she didn't. And looking at Shane, it took a great deal of effort for her to imagine that he was anything other than the lovely woman she saw leaning against the crook of her arm. She wondered, briefly, if she would feel the same way about him if they ever returned to their original bodies, and she saw Shane as he really was, as a man, or if her feelings for her were so intertwined with the shape he was in now that the magic would fizzle when he was separated from Amanda Reynolds's body... but she brushed the thought aside. She would deal with that when it happened... if it ever happened. Though at the moment, however strange it would be for her to live the rest of her life as a man, she hoped it never would happen...
She wondered, absently, what they were. Were they a straight couple? Were they a gay couple? From her perspective she supposed they were lesbians, and from his they must have been gay men... but to the outside world, they would have been a straight couple. And in reality, beneath the illusions of August Larsen and Amanda Reynolds, they were. But if they were a straight couple, then which of them was the man and which was the woman? Was she the man because she looked like a man, or she the woman because she really was a woman? Trying to juggle all the various perspectives made her head spin.
Maybe they were simply two people who were very much in love. Maybe that was enough.
Making lovoe had been an... interesting experience. It had been a challenge, to be sure. Straightforward intercourse had not been an option, thanks to the illusions that made them appear to each other as the opposite sex. Simply put, he couldn't find her vagina, and she couldn't feel his penis. With some cooperation and a little creativity, though, they had been more than capable of satisfying each other. Working around--and with--their illusory bodies, they had shared a deeply, a passionately, an intensely pleasurable evening together.
Curiosity crept into Shane's gorgeous eyes. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, his lilting, feminine voice lazy with contentment.
Beth grinned. "I'm thinking I want to go again," she said as she leaned in for another kiss.
With an expert hand, Vic applied mascara to his eyelashes. Once again, for what must have been the hundredth time that day, Vic reflected on how fucking amazing his wishing stone was. He'd never put on makeup in his life. Never even thought about it. When his girlfriends in the past had talked about makeup, he'd zoned the fuck out, just like any man who wasn't a fucking queer would do. And yet here he was, applying makeup like he'd been doing it his whole life. He knew everything about makeup now... all about the different kinds of makeup, the different product lines, techniques for applying it, what makeup worked best for what women at what age with what clothing for what occasion... it was like he had a copy of Cosmopolitan in his fucking head. He had perfect muscle memory for it, too... putting on mascara, he reflected, was a delicate art. It would be pretty damn easy to gouge your eye out or something. But here he was, doing it with a steady hand, and he hadn't poked himself once. Fucking amazing.
One last touch, he thought as he put his mascara down. Fingering through the various shades of lipstick on Amy's vanity--no, his vanity, because there was no way in hell he was giving up Amy's life now--he picked out a tube of coral red lipstick. It would look good with his red hair. He wanted to look perfect tonight.
Once he'd finished applying his lipstick, Vic took a step back to get a good look at himself in the mirror. He looked... amazing. He looked breathtakingly, brilliantly gorgeous. And he looked 100% fuckable.
Perfect.
He'd traded out his pink dress, which was cute but a little too innocent, for a skimpy black number, and he'd wished up a pair of matching heels. He'd picked out his sluttiest lingerie to go underneath. Then he'd done his hair and added some jewelry and a dab of perfume. The makeup had been the final touch. Taking in the whole picture, he smiled a sly smile. He looked good enough to be a leading lady walking down the red carpet... but tonight he was going to play the femme fatale.
Only one thing left to do before he took the stage. Reaching into his purse--a nice black number to match his outfit--he took out his wishing stone. After some careful thought, Vic had figured out exactly how to get to August Larsen's heart and break it to pieces. Larsen thought of himself as a ladies' man. Larsen was a pretty good-looking bastard. A charismatic casanova type. Among the knowledge he'd wished up about Larsen, Vic saw a long line of torrid romances with gorgeous women. Most recently he'd been dating Amanda Reynolds, a small-time fashion model. Larsen was the kind of guy every man envied and every woman wanted... and the kind of guy that Vic hated. Vic was a train wreck when it came to women. He'd had girlfriends, yeah, but they'd all turned out to be whiny bitches, cheating whores, or snobs who'd decided they were too good for a deadbeat like Vic. Seeing August Larsen's success with women made Vic's blood boil... but it had also given him his mogus operati, or modem opaletti, or whatever the hell it was called.
Lifting the stone, Vic took a deep breath. This was a big one. It was a wish he wasn't entirely comfortable making. But it would be worth it if it let Vic get revenge, not just on Larsen but on every fucking Lothario who thought he was better than Vic just because he managed to get all the women. And if he worded his wish carefully, Vic thought he could probably avoid any weird consequences.
"I wish," he began, carefully, "that Amy Johnson and August Larsen have been having a secret affair for the last year. I wish that only Amy and August were aware of this affair, and that there were no evidence that could link the two of them together."
And that was it. That provision at the end, Vic hoped, would keep Vic from getting involved in the aftermath of Larsen's murder... if no one knew that Amy and August were a couple, then no one would have any reason to suspect Vic of killing Larsen, nor would anyone expect Vic to mourn the bastard. The last thing Vic wanted was to have to mourn August Larsen... the son of a bitch didn't deserve even Vic's pretend grief. Vic could always tweak the wish later if things didn't work out the way he wanted them to. For now, though, Vic had what he wanted: the chance to come to August Larsen as a lover, and to murder him as a lover. It was perfect revenge not just on the man who had demanded Vic's death penalty, but on all the fucking idiotic pretty-boy bastards like him.
One problem crossed Vic's mind, but it was easily resolved. "I wish I could touch people without making them switch bodies," he said. It was fun tapping people on the shoulder and making them switch, sure; but if Vic was going to get Larsen into bed, he needed to be able to touch the other man without making him jump away. Vic could always wish himself up another way to screw with people's lives later. With his wishing stone, the possibilities were literally endless.
Satisfied, Vic dropped the stone back into his purse, took one last look at the sexy little whore in the mirror, and stepped out.
Beth shivered.
She was cold. She wasn't sure if it was the air conditioning in the apartment, or the clothing she was wearing, or just her imagination... but there had been a chill she'd been unable to shake all day. Certainly, when she'd first jumped into August Larsen, topless and wearing just a pair of boxer shorts, she'd had an excuse to be cold, but she'd put on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans since then. But still the chill hadn't gone away.
Beth pushed herself up, a little groggily, from the couch, where she had spent most of the afternoon and evening watching the news. She'd gotten some good information about her situation that way; apparently there were people swapping lives all over town, and so Beth was far from alone in finding herself transformed into a stranger. As useful as that information was, though, she had to admit to herself that spending the day on the couch, watching TV and drifting in and out of sleep, was not so different from what she'd been doing for the last few weeks. Since she'd broken up with her boyfriend she had been an absolute wreck... and while finding herself in the body of a man was certainly a startling little hiccup in her depression, she couldn't blame her lousy mood on her body-swapping adventure.
Weaving her way through the apartment, Beth retreated to August's bedroom. She needed to find something warmer to wear. Digging through August's drawers--past his underwear, which she didn't want to even think about having to wear--she found a pair of socks and slipped them on. There was a bathrobe hanging on the bathroom door; this too she grabbed and shrugged it over her shoulders. Like the jeans and t-shirt she was wearing, like the boxers she'd been in when she'd first jumped in, the socks and bathrobe fit perfectly, even though August was a pretty big guy. He was probably close to a foot taller than her, and yet his clothing fit as though it was designed for her, for a woman, rather than for a man. Strange... though no stranger than anything else that was happening in town.
As she tied closed the robe, Beth caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. The man in her reflection was tall, athletic, and very handsome... and she hated seeing him every time she look in the mirror. She didn't want to be a man. The thought of spending the rest of the week as a man, much less the rest of her life, made Beth wilt. She hadn't left the apartment, hadn't even called her family or friends, because she wasn't comfortable having other people see her as a man. She felt big, bulky, hairy... ugly. Yes, beneath August's visage, she still had her own body, but it wasn't the woman she really was who everyone would see when they looked at her, but the man she appeared to be. The whole foundation of Beth's sense of self, of her identity, was rooted in the fact that she was a woman. Being a man... it felt like she was wearing a silly costume. The thought of someone else seeing her in that costume... she couldn't do it.
Not to mention the fact that being a man would likely make her love life very... bleak in the future. Yes, she was a good-looking man now. She would have little trouble attracting women with this body, if that was what she wanted. But it wasn't. She wanted a man... and there weren't many men who would be attracted to her while she looked like this. And, to put it delicately, the kind of men who would be attracted to Beth now were not exactly her type. Beth had spent the last two weeks alone, and it had nearly killed her. The thought of spending the rest of her life in a man's body, alone, unable to attract a straight boyfriend... it was a terrible, lonely thought. She pulled her robe tighter about herself and turned from the mirror.
Perhaps, she thought, she needed to find another straight girl in a guy's body. There had to be others out there... and they would be in the same bind she was in. On the surface, it seemed perfect... they would both be attracted to each other because they would both look like men on the outside, even if they were women on the inside. But no, that wouldn't work, would it? Beth didn't want someone who looked like a man but behaved like a woman. She wanted a man.
She wasn't the only one who was alone, it seemed. Looking around the apartment, she hadn't been able to find any evidence that August Larsen had a girlfriend. No women's clothing tucked away in any drawers, no second toothbrush next to the sink, no salad in the fridge, no recent photographs with a woman. Beth had even checked August's cell phone and e-mail... it didn't look like August had had a girlfriend for months at least. No boyfriends, either--it had crossed her mind that he might be gay, but she couldn't find any evidence of that, either. He'd had girlfriends in the past--a lot of them, it seemed, judging from various trinkets and photographs tucked away in musty old boxes--but he'd been alone for a long time. That was... shocking, considering how good-looking August was, how good a dresser he was, how successful he seemed to be. He should have had women tripping over themselves to get to him. Instead, he appeared to be as lonely as Beth herself. It was almost a crime for a man like this to be so alone.
It was certainly fitting, though, in a cruel sort of way. She'd turned from a lonely woman into a lonely man. Was that irony? Or did it just suck?
Suddenly Beth wavered. Reaching out for the doorframe, she tried to steady herself. For a split second...
No, it was nothing. For just a moment, it had all seemed wrong. For just a moment it had felt like a lie, like a brittle illusion, like it was all supposed to be different. For a moment, she'd seen herself in the arms of a petite brunette woman, a woman she had loved more than... and she had felt so... was this some kind of spillover from August's memory, or... but no, August wasn't... it was her own...
She shook her head. Whatever that had been, it had passed quickly. The other woman, and the feelings that woman had evoked... they were gone now. Still, there was a lingering sense--like a bitter aftertaste on her tongue--that something wasn't right, that something was out of place.
She sighed. It was all wrong, though, wasn't it? Wrong body, wrong gender, wrong reflection, wrong life. The feeling of dissonance she felt probably wouldn't go away until she found herself back in her own body, as Beth. Until then, this strange out-of-tune echo would persist. Beth just hoped it wouldn't drive her crazy before then...
As Shane gazed across the lights of the shining city, he felt his muscles slowly begin to unwind. It had been such a wild day--an understatement if there ever was one--but up here, things almost felt normal.
Shane had spent many a night up here, on the room of his apartment building, looking out at the town. This was where he came to relax, to think, to connect with himself. He'd brought a few friends here, too, and a handful of women. Some of his fondest memories were of this very spot. So he supposed that it was natural that now, even in this foreign body, even after this strangest of days, this was where he would be drawn. Like a moth. He needed his city lights.
He'd never much minded heights. He'd never worried about getting too close to the edge of the roof. He felt a little more awkward now than usual, though, thanks to his ill-fitting clothing. The men's t-shirt and shorts he was wearing--which he had taken from his own closet, and thus should have fit him as well as they ever had--now dwarfed his body. He felt almost like a child dressing up in his father's clothes. He'd had to buckle his belt to its last notch just to keep his shorts from sliding off over his hips. It wasn't that Shane was that big a guy; he wasn't. But Amanda Reynolds, the woman whose image now cloaked his body, was a rather small woman, and apparently as a result of that, Shane's clothing fit like it belonged to a linebacker. It was a nuisance. Still, after spending several hours in an outfit so skimpy that he'd felt practically naked, shane was grateful for every oversized inch of these clothes, however ill they fit.
When Shane had jumped into Amanda, she had been at the gym. Shane had been walking along the sidewalk when someone had brushed into him and, suddenly, he had found himself using a stair machine, wearing nothing but a sports bra and a pair of very short, very tight shorts, along with a pair of socks and sneakers. He had wandered the gym in a daze for a few minutes, amazed to find that no one seemed to be troubled by a man wearing what was obviously women's clothing. Shocking as all that had been, though, Shane hadn't been prepared for the sight he'd seen when he'd come to the long mirrored wall at one end of the gym. Rather than his own reflection, he had found himself staring directly into the eyes of an absolutely gorgeous woman, whose lithe figure looked amazing in the tiny bra and shorts she was wearing... the same bra and shorts that Shane himself had on.
It didn't take long for Shane to put the pieces together and realize that, to everyone else in the gym, he appeared to be this woman... especially when other people in the gym began to switch as well. As one of the first people in the gym to figure out what was happening, he had taken it upon himself to keep everyone calm. Shane, it turned out, was far from alone; by the time he left a couple of hours after jumping into Amanda, every living soul in the gym had been swapped. It was quite an assortment of people who found themselves flipped into gym patrons that afternoon. There were women who found themselves switched into muscular, shirtless men, and men who, like Shane, found themselves turned into women; there were fit, athletic types who'd become fat slobs and vice versa; there were a couple of children who found themselves turned into adults. One man and woman, at opposite ends of the gym, had swapped with each other. And there was one old man, a heart patient, who had switched into a teenager on a treadmill... they'd had to call an ambulance to take the poor man to the hospital. Shane hoped the man was okay.
After a while the people in the gym had thought to change all the televisions in the gym to news channels; and thus they had learned that they weren't alone in having switched bodies; apparently it was happening all over town. With that, everyone began to disperse; they all wanted to go home and check on their loved ones. Shane had stayed a little longer, to make sure everyone was okay, but once everyone else gone, he had left, too.
It had been a... long walk home. Shane hadn't been able to figure out which of the numerous lockers in the locker room was him... or, rather, which was Amanda's. And even if he'd been able to figure it out, he wasn't sure he would have been able to get through the lock to open up the locker. With no way to get Amanda's street clothes from her locker, Shane had been forced to walk home in Amanda's sports bra and shorts. Not surprisingly, he'd gotten a lot of male attention during his four-and-a-half-mile walk home. He'd been accompanied home by catcalls, pick-up lines, and dozens of pairs or roving eyes. One particularly aggressive and grungy-looking man had even stalked him for three blocks, harassing him and trying to pick him up, until at last a police officer had stepped in and escorted the man away. As harrowing as all of that had been, though, it hadn't prepared him for the encounter he had a couple of blocks past downtown.
Shane had learned, after a while, to ignore the cars that passed him along the road. The honking, the catcalls... he'd begun to sympathize with every woman who had ever told him how obnoxious men could be. When one car had pulled up beside him and stopped, though... when a man had stepped out... it had gotten Shane's attention. The man had turned out to be a fellow named Rico, Amanda's ex-boyfriend. Amanda and Rico had broken up just a few days before, after a year and a half of dating, and the feelings were apparently still very raw. Rico spent a good twenty minutes pleading with Shane to take him back... and despite his best attempts to persuade the other man that he wasn't really Amanda, Rico wouldn't believe him. Why should he? Apparently Rico hadn't been paying attention to the news... and body-swapping? It was certainly pretty difficult to believe if you hadn't seen the evidence. Shane himself still couldn't shake the feeling that he was dreaming.
Shane couldn't blame Amanda for breaking up with Rico. He got the feeling that Rico was an... unpleasant man. He insulted and threatened Shane several times throughout their conversation, called Shane a "bitch" and a "whore" and a "dyke", made some fairly nasty sexual comments, and ranted in a wild, paranoid manner about Amanda's friends and family. And that didn't even take into consideration the pungent aroma of whisky and cigarettes on Rico's breath. Worse, Shane knew that Rico's violent threats weren't in vain; now Shane understood the cuts and bruises he had seen on Amanda's thighs and arms, and behind the hair she let fall in thick waves over her cheek. How Amanda had lasted a year and a half with this man, Shane couldn't understand. So, terrible as it sounded, Shane was glad when Rico reached out to slap him, only to be replaced a moment later by someone else. Shane hadn't bothered waiting to find out who Rico had switched with; he had sprinted down the street and hadn't stopped running for several blocks, until legs ached and his lungs burned for oxygen.
Nevertheless, he had learned some valuable information from Rico... first of all, it was from Rico that Shane had learned Amanda's name, but also that she was a small-time model. Shane wondered, grimly, how the wounds Rico had inflicted on Amanda must have affected her modeling career.
At last, after a long and unpleasant couple of hours on the street, Shane had gotten back to his apartment. After a hot shower and a short nap, and a long talk with his sister, Shane had changed into his own clothing, grateful at last for the opportunity to cover up his exposed and dangerously attractive new body. And then he had retreated up to the roof, where he had spent... well, he didn't even know how long he had been up here. He just knew that it had been a long time, and that it had been very, very good for him. Shane couldn't say that he was happy about the thought of being a beautiful woman yet... but at least he felt ready to face his new life.
There was something nagging at the back of his mind, though... an odd feeling that he couldn't seem to shake. It wasn't an easy feeling for Shane to put into words, and it was even harder for him to understand. It was simply a feeling that something was... off. That something wasn't the way it was supposed to be. That was natural, he supposed, given the events of the day, and even given the little bit he had learned of Amanda's life and her relationship with Rico. As hard as Shane tried to brush the feeling aside as a natural reaction to the body swaps, though, he couldn't. He had a gut feeling--profound, visceral--that something had gone wrong with the universe.
And then there was the image, in the back of his head, of the tall, good-looking man with the dog tags and the loving eyes. Shane saw the man every time he closed his eyes. The image wouldn't go away...
Shane shook his head. Perhaps what he was feeling, that feeling of wrongness, wasn't a result of the body switching, but some sense of what had caused it. After all, whatever had caused these switches... it had to be something powerful and primal and way beyond the common understanding of science. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the world... not as far as Shane knew, anyway. So maybe something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with the universe... and this feeling, and the body switching, were simply part and parcel of whatever that was.
In any case, these were big thoughts, and they were way beyond Shane's area of expertise. He wasn't a scientist or a mystic... he was just a guy. So he sighed and decided to leave the big questions to the people who might be capable of answering them.
