The Swap (Part 1)

Freshman year. Right after coming back to campus after winter break. The swap happened. It had been three days since that swap. I was in Li’s body, and she was in mine.

“Every day I see you, it looks like you just woke up. A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, you know?” She said while staring me dead in the eye.

“Pastels?” I asked, basically responding with my own criticism of how she was dressed in my body.

“Your mom sent it.”

“It’s fine. It’s passable.”

We both knew we were pushing the limits of what would be an ‘acceptable’ look for the other. Neither of us really wanted to embrace our new bodies; we just wanted to swap back!

So Much Worse

A few minutes ago I had woken up in a weird lab in the body of a woman. It felt so strange, and I immediately started complaining and cursing. The mad scientist seemed to appear out of nowhere, telling me to shut up or he’d make it so much worse.

I wish I had listened.

I soon found myself waking up a second time. The world was blurry and the colors were muted. Things seemed bigger. I saw the body that I had been in not long ago -- I could recognize the clothing. It was acting strangely -- panting, making whining animal-like noises.

Then I realized exactly what kind of animal the body was acting like, because I realized what kind of animal I had become! That mad scientist had put me into the body of a dog! Maybe being a woman wasn’t so bad after all!

Continuum Medical Services

Dude!

“So, you’re saying that on this website, you can literally modify your features to make you look in any way you want? And people will always think you were like that? I dunno. It seems a scam to me.” Mike mused as he looked a the laptop open in front of him.

“Dude!” His roommate Jason exclaimed, “Look at me! I pushed that thing to the limit and turned myself into a chick! The only thing I didn’t realize was that it was one time only, and now I’m stuck like this!”

“You haven’t...always looked like that?”

“It may change what you look like, but it doesn’t exactly transfer the needed life skills over. I had to figure out how to put on a bra this morning, Dude! And that’s still the least of my problems! I need to figure out my cycle and birth control pills and so many other things I wish I didn’t need to know.”

Unearned

The Great Shift had happened hours ago, swapping the bodies of all the locals and tourists on the small island. Most people had gone home or returned to their rooms, but Austin just sat on the edge of the resort property the entire time since the Shift. He hadn’t budged.

It had only been a few days prior when he realized a truth about himself -- or perhaps herself would be more apt -- the realization of being a trans woman. She hadn’t started any sort of process yet; she hadn’t even picked out a new name. As a result, the sudden shift of being in a woman’s body was still...difficult.

The problem wasn’t with the gender of her new body -- that was obviously the good part. The problem was that the body still wasn’t hers and it didn’t feel like hers; it felt stolen, unearned, and fake. Austin didn’t miss her old gender in the slightest, but she did miss her body...