Chapter 1: The Wish and the Swap
The flicker from the monitor was the most exciting thing in the room. It pulsed against the silent, stale air of my basement apartment, a lame strobe light for a party of one. I slumped in my chair, the ergonomic groan of it the only reply to the sigh I let out. Around me, half-unpacked boxes formed cardboard topographies of a life perpetually on hold. The walls were a patchwork of outdated concert posters and frenzied, half-solved equations scribbled in moments of distracted anxiety. It all smelled of old carpet, yesterday’s lo mein, and something else—a metallic flatness, like the air after a lightning strike.
Another Friday night. Another empty whiskey bottle on the coffee table, its mate half-full beside my mousepad. I clicked through another forum, another endless scroll of other people’s lives that seemed, if not better, at least different. My own body felt like a loaner suit I’d worn too long; soft in the middle, thinning on top, a comfortable, lonely prison.
“God,” I muttered to the glowing screen, the word absorbed by the cavernous quiet. “Anything. Just… something else. Please.”
The metallic smell sharpened, clogging my sinuses. The flickering bulb above my desk flared, died, and for a heartbeat, there was a perfect, weighted darkness. Not empty, but full. A pressure in my ears, a pop.
Then, light. Softer. Warmer.
I was lying down. On a bed. A clean, white duvet under my… my back. My skin felt… everything. The brush of cotton against me was a symphony. Every thread was a distinct sensation. I was naked. A cool, conditioned breeze played over me, raising goosebumps in waves that I could feel cresting from my ankles to my…
I looked down.
A shriek caught in my throat, emerging as a choked, feminine gasp.
Two enormous, perfect breasts rose and fell with my ragged breath. They jiggled, a soft, heavy weight settling against my ribs with a reality that was tactile, profound, and utterly alien. My hand—small, with slender fingers and polished nails the color of a shell—flew to my chest. The touch was electric. The skin was silken, the curve foreign, the nipple sensitive to a degree that sent a bolt straight down to my…
My other hand slapped down between my legs. No familiar landscape. Just a shocking, hairless smoothness, a vulnerable, exposed split in the world. I convulsed, curling onto my side, and felt a thick, swinging weight of hair fall across my face—blonde, smelling of coconut and vanilla. My new body folded in on itself, a cascade of new sensations: the press of my own thigh against the shocking softness of my inner thigh, the unfamiliar hinge of my hips, the way my new center throbbed with a low, insistent pulse that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with…
“Next. Time is a factor, gentlemen.”
The voice was calm, professional. Male.
My head snapped up. I was in a bedroom, tasteful and impersonal. A hotel room. A tripod stood in the corner, a small red light on the camera blinking. A man in a crisp polo shirt and khakis stood beside it, clipboard in one hand, stopwatch in the other. He didn’t look at me, but past me.
To the line.
A line of naked men. Six, seven… more, trailing out the open door into a living area. They were of varying ages, builds, all erect, all watching the bed with a flat, determined patience.
The first one, a guy with a gym-built torso and a tattoo sleeve, stepped forward. His gaze was on the space between my legs. He put a knee on the bed. The mattress dipped.
“No,” I said. The voice was high, clear, flavored with a sweetness that horrified me. “Wait.”
The man on the bed paused, looking over at Clipboard.
“Sabrina, we discussed the safe word,” Clipboard said, not unkindly, checking his watch. “You wanted a record. The clock started sixty seconds ago. We are on schedule. Are you using the safe word?”
Sabrina. That was her name. The owner of this body. Where was she? I tried to access a memory, a feeling, anything. Instead, a warmth pooled low in my belly, a liquid heat that coiled and spread. My heart hammered against my new ribcage, a frantic bird. This wasn’t my heartbeat. It was faster, lighter. I felt the pulse everywhere—in my throat, my wrists, between my legs. A hungry, throbbing emptiness there began to scream for attention, drowning out the scream in my mind.
“I… no, but…” I stammered.
“Proceed,” Clipboard said.
The man moved. His hands were on my ankles, rough, and he pulled me flat onto my back with an effortless yank. My head spun. The ceiling was smooth white. My new body was pliant, limp with shock. He pushed my thighs apart. I stared, paralyzed, as he positioned himself. I saw the head of his cock, ruddy and immense from this terrible, close angle.
“No, no, no, no,” the girlish voice pleaded, a whisper.
He pressed forward.
The sensation was not pain. It was a devastating, full invasion. A stretching, a burning-yielding split as my body—her body—accommodated him. I felt every ridge, every vein with a hyper-clarity that short-circuited thought. It was too much. An obscene intimacy. A wet, tight heat enveloped him, and my body clenched reflexively, a spasm that made him groan. The sound vibrated through me.
He began to move.
And my body began to move with him.
A low, broken moan tore from my throat. Not his. Mine. Because with each thrust, the initial shock was being burned away by a rising tide of pure physical feedback. Each stroke dragged against a spot inside that lit up my nervous system like a pinball machine. My back arched off the bed without my permission. My nipples, tight and aching, brushed against his chest, and the sensation was a bright, sharp shock that arrowed straight back down to where we were joined. My own hands fluttered, then gripped the sheets, then, horrifyingly, slid up the man’s sweat-slick back. I could feel the powerful muscles working under his skin. It felt… good. Necessary.
Stop it, I thought, a desperate, shrill command from the last fortress of me. But the body was a runaway train. Pleasure, deep and coiling, built with every slam of his hips. The jiggle of my breasts with the rhythm, the slap of skin, the crude, wet sounds—it all fed into a feedback loop of sensation. My legs, thin but strong, wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper. A high, wanton sound filled the room. It was coming from my new mouth, from these plump, unfamiliar lips.
He grunted, his pace becoming frantic. I felt a hot, sudden flood inside, a pulsing release that triggered my own. The orgasm ripped through me, a convulsive, total-body event that blurred my vision and shattered my last coherent thought into a million sparkling fragments. It was seismic, utterly different from anything I’d ever known—deeper, wider, wracking.
He collapsed on me, heavy. The smell of sex and sweat was overwhelming. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My body hummed, sated and trembling.
Clipboard’s voice cut through the haze. “Time. Four minutes, twelve seconds. Next.”
The man pulled out, a slick, leaving-empty sensation. He shuffled off the bed. Another man, older, bearded, was already climbing on, his erection bobbing. I was still gasping, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. My body, traitorously, felt glorious, molten.
“Please,” I sobbed, the word weak.
The bearded man didn’t speak. He lifted my hips, his grip firm. He entered in one solid push. The stretch was less, the fit easier. My body, wet and ready, accepted him greedily. The pleasure began to build again almost immediately, a fire stoked from still-glowing embers.
This is not me, I chanted in my head, a useless mantra as my hips rose to meet his thrusts. This is not me. This is not me.
But the body was Sabrina’s. And Sabrina, wherever she was, wanted the record. And as the second man finished, and the third approached, a terrible, shameful realization began to seep through the delirium: a part of Justin Zygurski, trapped deep inside, was starting to want it, too.