Chapter 9: Teen Attracfion
The silence after MJ’s return was heavier than the one before. It was a living thing, thick with shared humiliation and the ghost of her vacant giggles still echoing off the pink walls. She stared at Peter—no, at the woman sitting frozen in the armchair, knees drawn up to a chin that wasn't his.
Her own mind felt like a bomb site. Memories of the past hour weren’t clear, not in a narrative sense. They were sensory flashes—the cold feel of laminate flooring against her knees, the coarse texture of a stranger’s jeans under her fingertips, the overwhelmingly chemical taste of cheap cologne on skin. And underneath it all, a profound, subatomic sense of purpose fulfilled, which made her want to vomit.
“Oh, God,” she said again, the words ash in her mouth. “Peter.”
The woman in the chair gave a tight, minute nod. The movement caused a wave of dark hair to slip over a slender shoulder. It was a profoundly feminine gesture, and it hit MJ with a confusing double-punch of pity and something else entirely.
“Talk to me,” MJ whispered, sliding off the couch to sit on the floor, putting herself at eye level but keeping distance. “Please. Your voice. Say something.”
“It’s me.” The voice was melodic, anxious, undeniably not Peter’s baritone. It was the sound of his mind in a stranger’s throat. “I’m still… in here. The clock says 11:07. I have… fifty-seven minutes left like this.”
He—she—hugged her legs tighter. The sweatpants were huge on her new frame, pooling around narrow hips. The borrowed t-shirt stretched across a chest that, MJ noted with a clinical, horrified detachment, was more generous than her own. Felicia’s work was thorough, and cruel.
“Okay,” MJ breathed, forcing her therapist’s voice, the one she used for stage partners in distress. “Okay. You’re you. I’m me. We’re in our apartment. We’ve been cursed by a vengeful ex-supervillainess with a flair for psychological torture.” She managed a weak, shaky smile. “Just another Tuesday.”
A faint, pained sound that might have been a laugh escaped Peter’s new mouth. “Yeah. Just another Tuesday.”
The next few minutes passed in a brittle quiet. MJ’s eyes kept getting pulled back to him. To her. It was an actor’s analysis at first. The composition was all wrong. The sharp, intelligent light in those hazel eyes was Peter’s, but the lashes framing them were stupidly long. The set of the mouth, usually quirking with a joke or pressed in concentration, was now a soft, full line of despair. The overall effect was dissonant, a masterpiece painted on the wrong canvas.
Then the analysis broke down.
A weird, hyper-aware flush crept up MJ’s neck. She found herself tracking the line of the new jaw, the elegant column of the throat, the delicate collarbones visible above the t-shirt neckline. It was like looking at a stunning sculpture made from the person she loved most. A sick, traitorous thought whispered: Felicia has good taste.
She violently shoved it down. This was Peter. Her husband. Trapped.
But the flush wouldn’t leave. And her gaze kept dropping, snagging on the way the fabric clung to new curves. It wasn’t desire. It was… recognition. An appalling, fascinated acknowledgement of a form that was objectively beautiful. And it came with a hormonal jolt that felt borrowed, like someone had cranked her teenage dial to eleven and snapped it off.
“This isn’t me,” MJ said suddenly, her voice too loud.
Peter flinched. “What?”
“This. This… staring.” MJ gestured vaguely, her face burning. “I feel like I’m fifteen and just realized the lead in the school play is really, really pretty. It’s gross. And it’s not me.” She took a breath, trying to articulate the violation. “I’ve appreciated women before. I’m not a caveperson. But this is… different. It’s like my brain is soaked in cheap perfume and it’s screaming ‘LOOK AT HER’ at me. It’s frantic. It’s the spell. It has to be. Polluting everything.”
Peter looked down at his own body, then back at her, understanding dawning in those unfamiliar eyes. “The magic… it doesn’t just change us. It changes how people see us. How we see each other. To complete the humiliation.”
“Well, it’s working,” MJ muttered, running a hand through her tangled hair. She forced herself to look at the peeling wallpaper instead. “How does it… feel?”
A long pause. “Like the worst vertigo,” Peter said quietly. “My center of mass is six inches off. Everything is softer. Lighter. I can feel my hair on my back. I can feel… the weight on my chest, pulling. It’s a constant physical lie.” She shifted, winced. “And the hips. They’re… wide. I feel like I’m going to topple over.”
Empathy, sharp and clean, finally cut through MJ’s confused static. She scooted a little closer on the floor. “Can I… would it help if I…?” She didn’t know how to finish. Hold you? That seemed dangerous, with this new electric current in the air.
“Just talk,” Peter whispered. “Tell me about something real. Before all this.”
So she did. She talked about her last proper audition, for an off-Broadway play that was too smart for its own good. She described the director’s ridiculous hat. She imitated her agent’s frantic phone voice. She talked about the mundane, glorious past. Paying the gas bill. Arguing over Thai food vs. pizza.
As she spoke, she watched the tension in the new body slowly uncoil, fraction by fraction. The intelligent light in the eyes grew stronger, pushing back the panic.
At 11:42, MJ’s gaze, wandering during a story about a misdelivered package, fell on the warped mirror. She saw their reflection. A beautiful, distraught young woman curled in a chair, and a tired redhead on the floor beside her, talking with gentle, animated hands. They looked like a scene from an indie film. Two lovers after a fight. The intimacy of the image stole her breath.
The traitorous feeling surged back, hotter this time. It wasn’t just recognition. It was a specific, shocking pull low in her stomach. A purely physical reaction to a visual composition that included the person her soul loved most. It felt like the most profound betrayal of herself, and of him.
Peter must have seen her expression falter in the mirror. “MJ?”
“This is really fucked up, Pete,” she said, her voice cracking. She didn’t look away from their reflection. “I hate it. I hate that she’s made me… look at you and see… that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She finally turned from the mirror, looking directly at him, at her. “Because I don’t even know. I’m attracted to my husband who’s currently a gorgeous woman, and part of that attraction is literally magical coercion, and I want to set my own brain on fire.”
Peter uncurled slowly. She moved to the edge of the armchair, her movements still hesitant, unfamiliar. She reached out and took MJ’s hand. The fingers were slimmer, the skin smoother, but the grip was Peter’s—gentle, reassuring. The contact sent a jolt up MJ’s arm anyway.
“It’s not you,” Peter said, her borrowed voice fierce. “It’s not us. It’s her. She warps everything. My body. Your mind. The space between us. We have to remember that. The real us is right here.” She squeezed MJ’s hand. “In the wiring.”
MJ looked down at their joined hands. A man’s mind. A woman’s hand. Her own roaring, confused heart. The wiring was a tangled, sparking mess.
The microwave clock clicked to 11:58.
Two minutes. The momentum of their nightmare was shifting again. Soon he’d be back in his own body. A temporary reprieve. But the new fracture line was now inside MJ, a hairline crack in her own identity. She had a terrible feeling that even when Peter looked like Peter again, she’d still see the ghost of the woman in the chair. And that frightened her more than any bimbo spell.