Chapter 1: Straddling a Stranger
The first thing I felt was a hot, pulsing fullness, deep and wrong. A gasp ripped through my throat—a high, feminine sound that wasn’t mine—as my body clenched around an invasive, thick presence. A wave of intense, slick heat flooded my core, followed by a shuddering groan from beneath me.
My eyes flew open.
I was straddling a giant. A man with a chest like a barrel, covered in coarse dark hair, his face obscured by a thick beard. My hands—small, delicate, with chipped black polish—were gripping his broad, sweating shoulders. My thighs, slim and trembling, were hooked over his hips. A sharp, sweet ache radiated from where we were joined.
“What the hell?” the man beneath me barked, his voice a deep, resonant boom that vibrated through me.
He shoved at my hips, his hands enormous, and my body—so much lighter, so unbalanced—tumbled off the bed. I hit the floorboards with a jolt, the impact rattling my teeth in a smaller, unfamiliar jaw. My head swam.
I pushed myself up, and the movement was all wrong. My center of gravity was off, too high. A heavy, tender weight on my chest swayed and jiggled with the motion. I looked down.
A crop top, ripped and black, was stretched over two full, round breasts I’d never seen before. A silver hoop glittered in each nipple, pressing against the thin fabric. My stomach was flat, almost concave, leading down to a pair of low-slung lace… things. A thong. I was wearing a thong. I could feel the tiny strip of fabric riding up between the cheeks of an ass that felt larger, softer.
“Who are you? What did you do?” the man roared, scrambling off the bed. He was colossal, naked, and fully, shockingly erect. My mind, reeling, processed the sight with a sort of detached horror. It was huge, thick, and glistening. It looked… painful.
“I didn’t do anything!” The voice that came out was a stranger’s—higher, melodic, edged with a panic that made it crack. “This isn’t my body!”
I stumbled toward a full-length mirror in the corner, my steps short and unsteady. My feet were tiny. The cracked glass reflected a nightmare, a miracle.
A girl stared back. Short, dyed-pink hair stuck up in chaotic spikes. Huge, kohl-rimmed blue eyes were wide with terror above a small, pierced nose. Full, painted lips parted in a silent scream. Tattoos swarmed the slender arms stretched out in front of me—sleeves of roses, daggers, and intricate geometric patterns disappearing under the crop top. More ink peeked above the waistband of the thong on my hips and lower back. My frame was slight, curvy in a way my old body never was, all dips and swells that felt alien and unstable.
I brought a hand to my face, felt the plush give of my new lips, the cool metal of the nose ring. A silver barbell pierced my eyebrow. I swallowed, and the motion in my throat felt different.
“This is impossible,” I whispered. The girl in the mirror mouthed the words.
“You’re telling me,” the man grunted. He was pulling on a pair of grey boxers, his movements stiff and awkward, like he was piloting a crane. He kept staring at his own hands, turning them over. They were meaty, scarred, covered in dark hair. “One second I’m… I’m making tea, and then…” He looked at me, his expression shifting from anger to a dawning, grotesque comprehension. “Justin?”
Hearing my name in that cavernous voice was the final, dizzying blow. “Chloe?”
A shudder of relief so profound it nearly buckled my new knees washed through me. “Oh, thank god. Justin, it’s me. It’s really me.”
She—he—Chloe took a step forward, and the sheer size of the body she now inhabited was overwhelming. She towered over me. The beard on her face looked comically wrong, her gentle Chloe-spirit utterly at odds with the brutish physique.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice shaking. I became acutely aware of every sensation. The constant, gentle sway of my breasts with each breath. The dull, throbbing ache between my legs, a sore, wet feeling that was entirely new. The tug of the belly button ring against the crop top. The way the lace of the thong chafed slightly. I felt fragile, exposed, and hyper-aware of my own surface.
“I don’t know,” Chloe said, her deep voice trembling. She looked down at her own massive chest, the corded muscle of her arms. She touched her bearded cheek with revulsion. “I was in my kitchen. The world went white. And then I was… here. Like this. With him… inside…” She gagged, clutching her stomach.
“It was you?” I whispered, the memory of the initial sensation flooding back. “That was… us?”
“It wasn’t us!” she cried, a horrified sob escaping the male body. “It was these… these people. These bodies.” She wrapped her arms around herself, a gesture so familiar, so Chloe, but made strange by the bulging biceps and wide shoulders. “Where’s my body, Justin? Where am I?”
A low moan came from the other side of the bed.
We both froze. Moving in unison, we edged around the mattress, a petite, pierced pink-haired girl and a hulking, half-naked mountain of a man.
Another body lay on the floor, curled on a discarded pile of clothes. Long mousy brown hair. A soft, familiar floral-print dress.
It was Chloe’s body. Our Chloe’s body.
But as the person stirred, rolling onto their back, the eyes that blinked open were not Chloe’s. They were glassy, confused, and mean. The face, Chloe’s sweet, kind face, contorted into a sneer I’d never seen on it before.
“What the fuck is this?” the person in Chloe’s body slurred, their voice Chloe’s, but the cadence all wrong. They pushed up on Chloe’s slender arms, looking down at the dress with utter disgust. “Why am I wearing this garbage? And why do I feel so… weak?”
They looked at me, then at the giant Chloe, their gaze clearing into a sharp, calculating glare. “Sabrina?” they said, aiming it at me. Then at Chloe, recognition dawning with a cruel twist of Chloe’s lips. “And Mikey? What the hell did you two idiots do?”
The man—Mikey, Michael—was in Chloe’s body. And the woman whose body I was trapped in, Sabrina, was currently in mine, back in my apartment in Chazy.
But the man Chloe was trapped in… he was here. And from the look on Chloe’s-face, he was not supposed to be.
The real Michael Miller was never supposed to swap with anyone.
Chloe, in Michael’s body, took a staggering step backward, hitting the dresser. A half-empty bottle of cherry vodka toppled and rolled, spilling its contents like blood across the chaotic sketches of tattoo designs.
“Oh, no,” Chloe breathed, her deep voice hollow with terror. She looked from the sneering stranger in her own body to me, in the body of the stranger’s girlfriend. “Justin. What did we get into?”