Chapter 2: Tumbling and Dominance
The world became a violent, jostling blur. One moment I was standing on my own two tiny feet, the next I was airborne, lifted with an ease that stole my breath. Andrea—in Mark’s powerful body—had scooped me up like a child, one thick arm under my knees, the other supporting my back. My head snapped back, my long pink hair whipping across my face.
Every step she took was a earthquake in my new skeleton. My body, so light, so insubstantial, bounced helplessly against the solid wall of her chest. The push-up bra, already a strange point of compression, did nothing to dampen the violent, separate motion of my breasts. They jiggled and swung with each pounding stride, a chaotic, tender rhythm that made me want to vomit. I clutched at the fabric of her—his—flannel shirt, my small fingers finding no purchase.
The thin skirt rode up, the cold, sticky theater air hitting the bare skin of my thighs. The thong, which had been a vaguely irritating presence, became a cutting line of fire, sawing deeper into the cleft of an ass that was now soft, prominent, and cushioning each impact against Andrea’s arm. I was hyper-aware of the entire architecture of this body: the narrow slope of the shoulders, the hollow fragility of the collarbones, the way the hips flared and connected to thighs that felt useless.
“Put me down!” I shouted, but it came out a reedy gasp, lost in the cacophony of screams and the thud of her boots on the carpet.
“Not a chance!” Andrea barked, her new voice a rasp of effort and fear. She moved with a raw, unchecked strength, shoving a stumbling man aside with a shoulder check that would have fractured my old ribs.
The blinding red exit sign loomed. She hit the barreled door with her hip, and we burst out into a narrow, dank alley behind the theater. The sudden slap of cold, rain-scented air was a shock. She didn’t stop, carrying me another twenty feet before skidding to a halt behind a dumpster that reeked of rotting food and stale beer.
She set me down, but my legs, disoriented and weak, buckled. I grabbed the rough brick wall to steady myself, the gritty surface scraping my soft palm. I was breathing in shallow, rapid pants, each inhale making the underwire of the bra press into my ribcage. I looked up at her. At him. At the stranger who was my wife.
Sweat matted the short, dark hair at Mark’s temples. Andrea’s expressions were all there—the worried pinch between the brows, the way she bit the lower lip—but they were mapped onto a face that was all hard angles and stubble. Her eyes, Mark’s stormy blue, were wide with adrenaline.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, the deep voice gentle.
“I’m… rearranged,” I managed, straightening up. My body felt like it had been shaken in a box. I adjusted the tank top, a futile attempt to restore some dignity, feeling the embarrassing slip of the bra strap down my slender shoulder. I hitched it up. “You?”
She held up Mark’s hands. They were trembling. “I just… I shoved him so hard. I felt it. The power. It’s terrifying.” She flexed the fingers, staring at the tendons that corded the forearm beneath the tattoo. “It’s like wearing a powered exoskeleton I don’t know how to control.”
A metallic taste filled my mouth. Fear, probably. Or maybe just the new body’s chemistry. My tongue felt smaller. Everything felt smaller, tighter, more acute. The chill of the alley seeped through the thin soles of my sandals, making my tiny feet ache.
Before we could say more, the door crashed open again.
Two figures staggered out. First, my own body—wearing my clothes, moving with a clumsy, panicked gait. Kylie. She was still trying to pry the wedding ring off, her face—my face—contorted in a sob.
Right behind her was Andrea’s body, moving all wrong. Mark-in-Andrea. He—she—was lurching, grabbing at the sweater draped over Andrea’s curves as if trying to tear it off. The beautiful auburn hair was a tangled mess.
“Give it back!” Mark screamed in Andrea’s voice, the sound shrill and unhinged. “This is a nightmare! I want my arms back!” He looked at his hands—Andrea’s graceful hands—with pure hatred.
Kylie-in-my-body spun around, pointing a finger with my own broad hand. “You stay away from me, you… you lady! This is your fault!”
“My fault? You’re in my date’s boyfriend’s body! Where’s Chloe? What did you do?” Mark advanced, and despite being in a smaller, softer form, there was a terrifying aggression in the movement.
Andrea stepped out from behind the dumpster. Mark-in-Andrea’s eyes locked onto his own original body. A different kind of rage took over.
“You,” he seethed. “You thief.” He launched himself at her.
It was a mistake. Andrea flinched, but Mark’s new body had no muscle memory, no coordination. He tripped over the hem of Andrea’s jeans, which were too long, and stumbled forward. Instinctively, Andrea-in-Mark’s body caught him—caught her own body—by the shoulders.
The sight was surreal: my wife, in a man’s form, holding her own physical form, which was thrashing and spitting like a wildcat.
“Let go of me! Don’t touch me with my own hands!” Mark shrieked, and he brought his knee up, aiming for the groin of his old body.
Andrea gasped, a male grunt of pain, and doubled over, but her grip—his grip—was immense. She didn’t let go. Instead, she used her weight, twisting and driving Mark-in-Andrea back against the brick wall. She pinned him there, one of Mark’s muscular forearms across Andrea’s own slender collarbone.
“Stop. It.” Andrea ground out, each word a low punch of air. “Just stop.”
I moved then. My small sandals slapped on the wet asphalt. I walked up to Kylie, who was staring at the struggle, my own face pale with horror.
“Hey,” I said, my voice forcefully calm. “Kylie, right?”
She looked down at me, her eyes—my blue eyes—wide. “How do you know my name? Who are you people? What kind of drug is this?”
“No drug. My name is Justin. That’s my body you’re in. And the woman in your body over there?” I pointed to myself. “That’s me.”
Her jaw—my jaw—dropped. “No. That’s not… you’re a girl. A little alt girl. I’m not a girl. I’m… I’m a man!” She said it like she was trying to convince herself, patting my chest, my stomach. “I feel sick. I feel heavy. And this… this thing between my legs is weird and it keeps getting in the way!”
I ignored that. “We need to get out of this alley. People will come. Police, ambulances. How do you think this is going to look?”
“I don’t care! I want my life back!” she wailed.
Behind us, Mark was sobbing in Andrea’s body, the fight gone out of him, replaced by a hollow, shuddering despair. “I can’t be a woman. I can’t. I have a competition next month. I have clients.”
Andrea still held him pinned, but her expression had shifted from anger to a grim, shared understanding. She looked at me over Mark’s—her own—shoulder. “Justin. What do we do?”
The architect in me assessed the variables: four displaced minds, two original pairs hostile to each other, a public location, impending authorities with no rational explanation. We were a chaotic equation.
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “And we can’t let them go. They’re linked to us. They’re the only ones who understand.”
Kylie snorted. “Oh, so you’re kidnapping us now? In my own body? This is so messed up!”
“It’s not kidnapping,” I said, though it absolutely was. “It’s containment. Until we figure this out.”
Andrea gave a sharp, decisive nod. In Mark’s body, the motion was intimidating. She looked at the person in her own body. “Mark. Listen. You want your body back? So do I. Fighting in an alley isn’t getting us there. We need to go somewhere. Talk.”
Mark-in-Andrea just cried, great heaving sobs that shook the frame I knew so intimately. It was agony to watch.
“Fine,” Kylie said suddenly, her voice thick with resignation. She held up my hands. “But I’m not going anywhere until I get this ring off. It’s giving me the creeps.” She started tugging at it again, her knuckles—my knuckles—turning white.
A strange, protective surge went through me. “Leave it on.”
“Why? It’s not mine!”
“It’s mine,” I said, and the words left my girlish mouth with a force that surprised even me. “And you’re wearing my life. So you’ll treat it with respect.”
She stopped, staring at me, seeing the man inside the five-foot frame for the first time. She slowly lowered her hands.
Andrea eased her pressure on Mark. “Can you walk? Without trying to kill us?”
Mark-in-Andrea nodded miserably, using the back of Andrea’s hand to wipe Andrea’s own tears from her face. The intimacy of the gesture was profoundly wrong.
“My apartment is closest,” I said. The thought of walking into my own home, looking like this, was a fresh wave of dread. But it was the only logical base of operations. “We’ll go there.”
We moved as a miserable, shuffling caravan out of the alley: Andrea-in-Mark guiding a broken Mark-in-Andrea by the arm, and me, in Kylie’s petite form, walking beside my own tall, slumped body, which was now occupied by a sniffling stranger. Every step was a reminder of what I’d lost—the stride, the presence, the simple, unthinking ownership of my own flesh. Now it was all borrowed. A tight, jiggling, aching loan in a too-small dress, with the cool night air whispering secrets against skin that was no longer my own. The night wasn't over. It was just beginning in a new, more terrifying shape.