Chapter 1: Beer and a Blinding Flash
The last of the sunset was a dirty smear of orange behind the fence. I took a slow pull from the bottle, letting the hoppy bitterness of the IPA coat my tongue. It was the good stuff, a local triple that cost too much and packed a punch I could feel behind my eyes. The concrete of the patio was still warm under my bare feet, holding the day’s heat. Cicadas sawed away in the trees, a sound so constant it was like silence.
I saw movement from the guest house. Sabrina.
She was a silhouette against the soft light from the open door, all exaggerated curves and sway. As she got closer, details resolved in the fading light: the turquoise triangles of her bikini top straining, the sharp jut of her hip bones above the low-slung tie of the bottom. Her sandals slapped a quiet rhythm on the flagstone path. She was so small. A doll. I looked away, focusing on the condensation trickling down my bottle. It felt weird, watching her. She was family, but the body she walked around in was a statement she hadn’t asked to make.
“Hey,” she said, her voice light and annoyingly melodic. She pulled out the other patio chair, the metal legs scraping. “It’s like, a thousand degrees in that little house. Can I just float in the pool for a sec?”
“Knock yourself out,” I grunted. “Filter’s running.”
She just stood there for a moment. I could feel her looking at me. I took another drink to avoid having to meet those big, blue eyes. They were always so wide, like she was perpetually surprised by the world. Or disappointed by it.
A searing pain lanced through the center of my skull.
It wasn’t a headache. It was a white-hot spike, driven straight between my eyes. My vision starred, then tunneled. The beer bottle slipped from my fingers, shattering on the concrete with a loud, wet crack. I heard a gasp—Sabrina’s gasp—from what sounded like a very long way away.
The world went black, silent, and weightless for a fraction of a second.
Then it rushed back, all wrong.
Sound came first. The cicadas were deafening, a roaring, metallic buzz. The smell of cut grass was overwhelming, sweet and cloying. My body… was not my body.
I was looking at my own face.
From across the patio, my own bearded, familiar face stared back at me, mouth agape, blue eyes wide with terror. I saw my own large, tanned hands come up to touch that beard, those stubbled cheeks. Those were my hands. But I wasn’t moving them.
A breeze washed over me, and every inch of my skin lit up with sensation. It was a gentle breeze, but it felt like a gale. It chilled my shoulders, my arms, my… chest. My chest was heavy. An unfamiliar, anchored weight pulled at the front of my torso. I looked down.
Two perfect, tan curves swelled above a tiny triangle of turquoise fabric. My view of my own lap was obstructed by them. I breathed in, a sharp, ragged inhale, and the curves rose. They jiggled slightly with the tremor in my chest. A deep, biological part of my brain recognized the motion, the weight. Breasts. Those are breasts.
My hands came into view. Small. Delicate. Tanned a golden brown. Perfectly manicured nails painted a soft, shell pink. These were not the hands that fixed carburetors and hauled kegs. They were Sabrina’s hands. I was in Sabrina’s chair. I was wearing…
I felt the bite of elastic at my hips, the scant cover of the bikini bottom. A thin strap dug between the cheeks of my ass. A thong. I was wearing a fucking thong. The cool evening air touched places it had never, ever touched before. A low, reflexive clenching sensation deep in my pelvis, internal and utterly alien, made me gasp.
The sound that came out of my mouth was a high, feminine gasp.
“What the fuck?” The voice was mine—my old, deeper voice—but it was trembling, cracking with panic. It came from across the table. From my body.
I tried to stand. My center of gravity was in the wrong place, up higher in my chest. I was too light. The world was too tall. The fence loomed. The chair was huge. My feet, encased in flimsy sandals, were tiny. I stumbled, catching myself on the glass-topped table. The feel of the cool glass under my palm was acute, every nerve firing.
“Justin?” The voice from my old body was questioning, terrified. “Is that… you in there?”
I looked over. Seeing my own face contorted in a expression of pure, unadulterated horror was the most unnerving thing I had ever experienced. The beard looked wrong on it now. The eyes were all Sabrina—wide, lost, swimming with confusion.
“Sabrina?” I managed. My new vocal cords squeezed the word out, tight and high. It felt like talking with someone else’s mouth. My tongue moved differently. The taste in my mouth was different—faintly sweet, like the ghost of lip gloss.
She—he—I—stood up from my chair, movements clumsy and too large. My old body lurched, knocking the chair over backwards with a crash. Those large hands patted down the familiar, broad chest, then clawed at the beard. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is… this is real.”
I looked down at myself again. The sheer physical reality of it was a crushing wave. The gentle, constant sway of weight on my chest with every slight movement. The unfamiliar narrowness of my hips, the way my thighs brushed together when I shifted my weight. The subtle, constant awareness of the new anatomy between my legs, a presence defined by absence and different pressures. The long fall of blonde hair that slithered over my shoulders and down my bare back like a cascade of silk.
This wasn’t a dream. The sensory information was too vast, too excruciatingly detailed.
“What did you do?” the voice from my body—Sabrina’s voice now—shrilled. She was backing away, those big hands (my hands) held out in front of her as if warding off a threat.
“Me?” My new voice broke. “I was drinking a beer! You walked over here and then… pain.” I hugged my arms across my chest, an instinctive gesture. The feeling of my own slender arms wrapping around the soft, full curves was indescribable. The pressure was comforting and horrifying in equal measure. The bikini fabric was rough against my inner arms.
We stood there, ten feet apart, trapped in each other’s reflections. The last of the daylight bled away, leaving us in the cobalt gloom of early evening. The pool lights clicked on automatically, casting jagged, dancing reflections on the fence.
The back door of the main house was fifty feet away. My house. My beer was a puddle of broken glass at my—at her—feet. Her body was shivering lightly in the cooling air, tiny goosebumps rising on the arms and thighs I now possessed.
We just stared. Two strangers wearing familiar skin, with nowhere to go.