Chapter 2: Swapping Back
The laughter died in my throat, strangled by a pure, animal panic. Andrea’s joke hung in the air, useless and tinny against the silence that followed. I was breathing too fast, a shallow pant that made the soft weight on my chest rise and fall in a distracting, jiggling rhythm. Every inhale brought the scent of Jen’s perfume, a floral sweetness that was now the smell of my own skin. It was suffocating.
“We have to reverse it,” I said, the high, soft voice trembling. “Now.”
Andrea blinked, her bravado faltering. She looked from me—Jen’s body—to Jen, who was standing silently inside my frame, staring with a kind of rapt fixation at her own hands. “Right. Yeah. Okay.” She bent and carefully picked up the remote from where she’d dropped it. The main Device on the table was still glowing, those alien symbols a silent, mocking pulse.
“Just… point it and click again, right?” Andrea said, more to herself than to us. She aimed the remote, her finger hovering over the button. “Stand close together. Maybe it needs a clear line of sight.”
Jen-in-me moved first. She took two long, clumsy strides toward me, my lanky legs covering the distance easily. She stopped too close, the height difference forcing me to crane my neck up to look into my own face. From this angle, I could see the stubble on my chin, a small scar by my eyebrow I’d forgotten was there. My glasses were slightly askew on her nose. Her expression was unreadable, a storm of emotions behind my blue eyes.
“Ready?” Jen asked, my voice low.
I nodded, a tight, frightened jerk of my head.
Andrea pressed the button.
The hum returned, deeper this time, vibrating in my teeth. The blue light wasn’t just light; it felt liquid, pouring over us, into us. The kaleidoscopic dislocation hit, that feeling of being sucked through a hole in the universe. I caught a flash of Jen’s face in my body, eyes wide not with fear, but with a startling, desperate yearning.
Then the snap.
I stumbled backward, my vision clearing. I was tall again. The world shrank back to its proper proportions. I looked down and saw my own hands, my own frayed sweater sleeves, my own jeans. A wave of giddy, soul-deep relief washed over me. I flexed my fingers, rolled my shoulders. The familiar ache in my right knee was back. The gentle pressure of my glasses on the bridge of my nose. My own flat, solid chest.
“Oh, thank God,” I breathed, and the sound of my own baritone was the sweetest music I’d ever heard.
Across from me, Jen swayed on her feet, back in her own body. She looked down at herself, at the dress hugging her curves, and her reaction was the opposite of mine. A soft, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her lips. Not relief, but… loss. Her hands, small and pale, smoothed down the fabric over her thighs in a slow, proprietary caress. She seemed to settle into herself, like slipping into a warm bath.
“It works both ways,” Andrea exhaled, sagging against the sofa. “Okay. Okay. We’re not permanently screwed. That’s something.”
I turned to the Device, my mind already shifting into analysis mode, the terror receding under a flood of scientific curiosity. “Fascinating. A bi-directional transference. The energy signature must be—“
“Do it again.”
Jen’s voice was quiet, but it cut through my technical ramble like a scalpel. We both turned to stare at her. She was hugging herself, but not in fear. Her hazel eyes were fixed on me, glowing with an intensity I’d never seen in her before.
“What?” I said.
“Swap again,” she repeated, her voice gaining a thread of steel. “Just… for a little while.”
Andrea barked a laugh. “You’re kidding. You just got back in your own skin!”
“I know what I just got back into,” Jen said, and there was a heat in her words that silenced Andrea. Her gaze never left mine. “You felt it, Justin. For a second. You were in there. You have to be curious. This is… this is the most significant thing anyone has ever discovered. And we have it. For a night.”
My curiosity, that hungry, insatiable beast, stirred. She was right. The sensory overload had been terrifying, but it was also data. Unprecedented, first-person data. I thought of the strange, soft weight, the different balance, the alien topography of that body. To study it, to understand it from the inside… The scientist in me was screaming to take the opportunity.
But the man in me hesitated. “Jen, it’s… intrusive. It’s your body.”
A faint blush colored her cheeks, but she didn’t look away. “I’m giving you permission. I want to… to know what it’s like for you, too. To see from up there.” She gestured to my height. “We’ll swap back before morning. We know we can.”
Andrea watched us, her head swiveling back and forth like she was at a tennis match. Her smirk was back, edged with something darker, more intrigued. “This is officially the weirdest night of my life. And I went to art school.” She hefted the remote. “So? What’s the verdict, kids? Freaky science sleepover, or do we try to pretend this never happened?”
The hum of the Device seemed to grow louder, a siren call. Jen’s eyes were pleading, vulnerable, but beneath that was a will I’d never suspected. This shy, quiet girl was asking me, quite literally, to inhabit her.
My curiosity won.
“Okay,” I said, the word feeling heavy and final. “One night. We document everything. Sensations, perceptions, everything. And we swap back at dawn.”
Jen’s smile was radiant, a flash of pure, unguarded joy that transformed her face. “Yes. Thank you.”
Andrea shook her head in disbelief. “Un-fucking-real. Alright. Get close. Let’s do this before I come to my senses.”
Jen and I stepped toward each other again. This time, it felt deliberate, a pact. I looked down at her, at the beautiful, mysterious form I was about to occupy again, this time with consent. With purpose. Her breathing was quick, her chest rising and falling. She was excited.
“Ready?” Andrea asked.
Jen nodded, her eyes locked on mine.
I took a deep breath of my own air. “Ready.”
The button clicked.
The process was no less violent the second time. The world tore, my sense of self was once again shredded and stuffed into a smaller, softer container. But I was braced for it now. I rode the sensation, a helpless passenger in a torrent of wrongness.
The snap.
I was back in the dress. Back in the delicate, swaying balance of Jen’s body. The immediate sensory flood was just as overwhelming, but now I could name the things. The persistent, gentle ache in my lower back—subtle, but there. The constant, faint pressure of the underwire of the bra against my ribs. The way my hair fell like a heavy, perfumed curtain around my shoulders and back. The shocking, hairless smoothness between my legs, a vulnerable nakedness that made me want to cross my thighs tightly.
I took an experimental step. My hips rolled forward, an innate, anatomical pendulum. There was a soft, distinct jiggle from my rear with each movement, a shifting of mass that was both fascinating and mortifying. My smaller feet in their strappy sandals made me feel precariously anchored.
I looked at Jen. She was standing in my body, tall and grinning. She stretched my arms over her head, a long, luxurious stretch that made my joints pop. She looked down at my hands, then made a fist, testing the strength. The smile on my face was entirely hers—wonderstruck, triumphant.
“This is amazing,” she said, my voice full of a warmth I rarely used. She looked at me, her gaze traveling down the length of her own body that I now wore. “How does it feel?”
“It feels… detailed,” I managed, my new voice still a shock. Every word was a melody I hadn’t composed. I became acutely aware of the slide of my tongue against my teeth, the different shape of my palate. The dress fabric whispered over my skin, over places that were hypersensitive in ways I had no reference for.
Andrea clapped her hands together, a sharp, decisive sound. “Okay, you two are officially the weirdest experiment I’ve ever witnessed. Ground rules. No… solo explorations.” She gave us both a severe look. “We’re basically babysitting a priceless, alien artifact and your profoundly poor life choices. Living room. We stay in the living room. I’m making more popcorn.”
Jen-in-me just nodded, still smiling that unfamiliar smile. She was looking around my living room from my height, a conqueror surveying new territory.
I, however, was beginning to truly understand the scale of the night ahead. Every slight shift, every breath, was a reminder. The soft brush of my own cleavage as I turned. The way the weight of my breasts pulled when I leaned forward. The intimate, inescapable fact of my new anatomy, a secret, complex landscape I carried beneath the soft fabric of Jen’s dress. It was a prison of flesh, and I had volunteered for it.
The Device hummed on the table, its blue light etching our shadows against the shelves of sci-fi novels. The stories on those spines felt childish now. We had stepped into a reality far stranger than any of them had ever dared to imagine.