Chapter 2: Echoes of Panic
The phone was a pulsing rectangle of light on the nightstand, a silent scream in the blue gloom. Justin—no, not Justin, this—stared at it. Andrea’s name and number glowed on the screen, a digital anchor to his real life, sitting there in this impossible, perfumed nightmare.
His heart, Brittany’s heart, hammered against the unfamiliar cage of her ribs. The sensation was all wrong; quicker, lighter, a frantic flutter high in her chest.
He had to answer.
He lunged, his new center of gravity throwing him off. He stumbled, one of her bare feet slipping on the polished concrete floor. He caught himself, the smooth surface cool against her palm. Her palm. He grabbed the phone. The case was slick, cold. He fumbled with it, his shorter fingers struggling. The ringing stopped.
A missed call.
“Shit,” he breathed, and her voice—soft, smoky, wrong—curdled the air.
It started ringing again instantly. Andrea wasn’t giving up.
He swiped to answer, bringing the device to her ear. The scent of lavender on the pillowcase was overwhelming. “Hello?” he said, and the word sounded foreign, shaped by different lips, a different tongue.
For a second, there was just staticky silence on the line. Then, Andrea’s voice, tight with a confusion so profound it was near anger. “Who is this?”
It was the most grounding, the most horrifying sound he’d ever heard. His wife. In his house. Calling him. “Andrea, it’s me. It’s Justin.”
“What?” The word was sharp, clipped. “No, it’s not. This number… Justin just gave it to me. He’s… he’s not making any sense. He’s crying.” Her voice dipped, becoming hushed, private. “He’s sitting on our kitchen floor sobbing and he told me to call this number. Who are you?”
A cold wave of understanding crashed over him. He’s crying. Justin-in-his-body was there. In their kitchen. With Andrea.
“Andrea, listen to me. Please. You have to believe me.” He was pleading, his voice cracking in this high register. “Something happened. I was on the couch, we were watching the show, and then I woke up… here. I’m in someone else’s body.”
A harsh, disbelieving laugh shot down the line. “Okay, hilarious. Is this one of his friends? This isn’t funny. My husband is having some kind of panic attack or something and—”
In the background, a muffled, frantic voice cut through. A man’s voice, raw with terror. “Tell her! Tell her it’s me! Please, you have to tell her!”
Justin’s blood ran cold. That was his voice. His own baritone, but strangled, pitched high with a desperation he’d never heard in himself. That was her. Brittany. Inside him.
“What the hell is going on?” Andrea’s question was no longer directed just at him. It was to the room, to the universe. “Justin, stop it! Stop saying that! Who is this? Why does he keep insisting I call you? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Justin shouted, and the sound was a girl’s shout, resonant in Brittany’s throat. He pressed a hand—her small, soft hand—to his forehead. “Andrea, it’s me. You got mad at me during the show because I wasn’t paying attention. You asked if I wanted tea. I said no. Then everything went white. I woke up… I’m in Brittany’s body. The intern. From work.”
The silence on the other end was thick, violent. He could hear her breathing. He could hear the soft, wet sounds of his own body sobbing in the background.
“That’s impossible,” Andrea whispered finally, but the certainty was gone, replaced by a dawning, greasy dread.
“The blanket on the couch is the gray one from your mom,” he rushed on, the details tumbling out. “The remote has a chip in the corner from when I dropped it last year. You’re wearing your… your fluffy blue socks. The ones with the little pandas on them.” He could see it, the domestic snapshot so clear it hurt.
Another pause. When she spoke, her voice was flat, dead. “Justin?”
“Yes.” The relief was so potent it made his—her—knees weak.
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove it’s you. Right now.”
He scrambled, his mind racing through eight years of marriage. The intimate, the trivial. “Your password for everything is our wedding date backwards. You hate the smell of my protein shakes. You have a tiny, crescent-shaped scar on your left knee from when you fell off your bike in fifth grade. You…” He sucked in a sharp breath, the lavender scent suddenly cloying. “You cry every time we watch that dog movie. The one with the golden retriever.”
A soft, broken sound came through the speaker. Not a word. Just a release of air. In the background, the sobbing had stopped. He could almost feel Brittany, trapped in his skin, listening.
“Andrea?” he prompted, desperate.
“Oh, my God.” It was a whimper. “Oh, my God. Justin? What… how?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” He was pacing now, her bare feet slapping lightly on the cool floor. The movement of her hips was a fluid, alien rhythm. “But she’s there. Brittany. She’s in my… in your husband’s body. In our house.”
“She’s… what?” Andrea’s voice was hardening again, shifting from shock to a protective fury. “That… person is in my house? In you?”
“I’m coming home,” Justin said, the decision forming as he said it. “I’m coming right now.”
“No!” Andrea’s reply was immediate, fierce. “Don’t you dare come here looking like… like that. We can’t… God, we can’t have some intern show up at our door in the middle of the night! What would the neighbors think? What would we do?” Her mind was racing ahead, slamming into practical walls. “You… you stay there. Figure this out. I’ll handle… this one.” She said the last words with a venom he’d never heard her use.
“Handle her? Andrea, that’s me in there!”
“It is not you!” she hissed. “It is some crying, hysterical stranger in my husband’s body who claims she was… was touching herself and thinking about you and then woke up on my kitchen floor! Do you understand how insane that sounds?”
The words landed like physical blows. Touching herself. Thinking about him. The warmth he’d felt. The slickness on his—her—fingers. A hot wave of shame, so deep it was nauseating, washed through him. He’d been an unwitting participant in her fantasy. And now he was wearing its consequence.
“Just… stay put,” Andrea said, her voice fraying at the edges. “Do not move. Do not call anyone. I need to… I need to talk to this… person. We’ll call you back.”
“Andrea, wait—”
The line went dead.
The silence in the loft was absolute, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerator and the frantic thrum of Brittany’s heart in his—her—ears. He was alone. Trapped in this slender, pierced, perfumed prison. He looked down at the body that wasn’t his, at the hands that weren’t his, at the phone now dark in a palm he didn’t recognize.
Out there, in his house, a stranger was wearing his life. And his wife was locked in a room with her.
He had to get out. He had to get home. But first, he needed clothes. He turned, unsteady, towards the closet, his reflection in the dark window a ghostly feminine silhouette against the city’s neon grid. A stranger’s face filled with his own terror. The journey was just beginning.