Chapter 1: Awakening in a Stranger's Skin
The last rep was always a bastard. The barbell trembled an inch above my chest, my biceps screaming, the familiar burn spreading across my pecs. I pushed, veins cording in my neck, and slammed the weights home onto the rack with a final, satisfying clang of metal. I lay there for a second on the bench, staring at the fluorescent lights of FitLife Gym, feeling the good ache in my muscles.
Then the world dissolved into static, then nothing.
Cold. A sharp, unpleasant cold seeped into my back. I blinked, disoriented. I was on a hard, tiled floor. The scent of chlorine and something sweet—coconut oil?—filled my nose. The sound of running water, and the low murmur of… women’s voices. Laughter.
I tried to sit up, and everything was wrong.
My center of gravity was off, low and unsteady. A strange, heavy weight pulled at my chest with the movement, a soft, unsettling jiggle. I looked down.
Red lace. A red lace push-up bra, straining over a frankly shocking amount of pale, soft cleavage. My view continued down a rail-thin stomach I’d never owned, past a tiny navel, to a scrap of matching red fabric cutting between sharp hip bones. My legs, which should have been hairy and thick, were smooth, endless, and…shapely.
“What the hell?” The voice that came out was wrong too. Higher, lighter, tinged with a breathy femininity that wasn’t mine.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through me. I shoved myself up to my feet, and the world swayed. I was shorter. The floor was too close. The room felt vast. My new balance was precarious, perched on small feet shoved into size-five boots that suddenly felt enormous and clumsy. Every step sent a ripple through me—a bounce on my chest, a sway at my hips. I felt the brush of long hair against my bare shoulders and back.
I stumbled toward a wall of mirrors, my heart hammering a frantic, birdlike rhythm against my ribs.
The reflection stopped me dead.
Staring back was Sabrina. The eighteen-year-old knockout I’d seen around the gym, the one every guy covertly watched but never had the guts to talk to. Huge, startled blue eyes in a youthful, heart-shaped face. Plush, pink-glossed lips parted in shock. A cascade of perfect blonde hair tumbled over delicate shoulders. The cropped tank top and cut-off shorts she—I—wore clung to a body that was frankly ridiculous: an impossible hourglass, all dramatic curves and slenderness.
I raised a hand. The reflection did the same. I saw slender fingers, chipped pink nail polish. I touched my face. The skin was soft, supple. I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the firm, heavy weight of a breast, the lace of the bra beneath my palm. A dizzying wave of nausea and wrongness crashed over me.
This wasn’t a dream. The sensations were too vivid, too specific. The ache in my lower back from the hard floor. The slight pinch of the bra strap. The unfamiliar, empty feeling between my legs where something should have been, and the strange, tucked-away presence of something else.
Justin. I am Justin Zygurski. Thirty-six. Six feet tall. Beard. A guy.
My eyes darted around the sunlit women’s locker room. A woman in a towel gave me a curious look before heading to the showers. On a bench nearby sat a hot pink gym bag, covered in silly enamel pins. Sabrina’s bag. It had to be.
I snatched it up, the movement causing another dizzying bounce. I had to get out. I had to find me.
I half-ran, half-stumbled out into the hallway, the boots clopping awkwardly. My new body moved with a strange, light gait. I felt every shift of my breasts, the sway of my hips, the brush of the thong fabric. It was a constant, horrifying feedback loop. The main gym area was chaos—flashing lights, a crowd gathered around the free weights.
I pushed through, my small frame easily weaving between people. “Excuse me,” I said, my female voice squeaking with panic. I broke through the front of the crowd just in time to see two paramedics lifting a gurney.
On it was a shape under a white sheet. A large, long shape. One heavy, masculine foot, pale and already waxy, protruded from the end of the sheet. Beside the gurney, on the bench press, sat 225 pounds, still racked. My final set.
A gym manager was talking to a cop, voice low. “...just finished his set. No spotter. We think it might have been an aneurysm. Guy just… didn’t get up.”
The world narrowed to a tunnel. The noise faded. They zipped the body bag. The sound was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Zip.
That was me. Justin Zygurski was dead on that gurney.
My legs gave out. I crumpled to the rubber-matted floor, the pink gym bag spilling its contents—a hairbrush, lip gloss, a tiny wallet. I didn’t feel the impact. I felt nothing. I just stared as they wheeled my corpse away.
I had no choice but to turn the page.