Could Be Pretty (Part 4)

View Part 1 of Could Be Pretty.
View Part 2 of Could Be Pretty.
View Part 3 of Could Be Pretty.

The next few hours were pure pain for Josh, but he told himself that he just needed to last just until Sabrina came over. Before swapping, they had agreed to meet up today, and she’d be coming over.

When the buzzer rang, he was so thankful, though he did not want to get up and had to practically crawl from the couch to the door. Though it was probably a good thing he was already on his knees, because he immediately started begging her to swap back.

“No,” Sabrina replied, “Now you know what I deal with each month. It’s uncomfortable, and wearing uncomfortable clothes never helps. Maybe it’s a good lesson for you. But don’t worry. It should clear up in about a week, but then you’ll have to deal with it again three weeks later.”

Josh pleaded more. He didn’t want to deal with this even once more, and certainly not over and over again for the rest of his life.

Tron: Swapped

@bodyswapshift TRON: Swapped #bodyswap #tron #tgtf #mtf #seedance ♬ original sound - Alicia Shift

Only One

Ralph wasn’t sure what was worse -- how quickly the world snapped back to normal after the Great Shift or how he so often found himself as the only guy swapped into a woman’s body in situation after situation. Sure, he knew that (mathematically speaking) he should encounter many other guys now in the bodies of women, they just didn’t shake out that way in the real world.

When he went to a ballgame, it felt like he was the only one in the entire stadium with a woman’s body. There were definitely guys and women who swapped with guys...but he felt like a clear minority with his body. At least the lines to the bathroom were reasonable, though he wished he could say the same for the food.

Unadapted

When the Great Shift first happened, I think I expected most people would adapt to their new bodies. Maybe for a while, they tried. But as the weeks turned into months, it was very obvious that people were acting more like who they were before than who they appeared to be now.

Let’s take Melanie from my office, for instance -- or rather, her body -- Dave from the dev team is now the one inside her body. On day one, no one would’ve guessed it was Dave inside of there. Her body still looked like the hottest woman in the office, even if it moved in a little more masculine way.

I think the makeup was the first thing Dave gave up on, within the first week. Then the hair on her body’s legs and armpits started to grow in. Dave had no plans to shave it. Perhaps the only odd thing was he kept wearing her clothes -- though in reality, he had no interest in buying anything new for the newly feminine body he now had.

As it turned out, Dave wasn’t an isolated case. It started to become quite apparent which women were men before the Shift happened.

Twinsies (Episode 3)

View Episode 1 of Twinsies!.
View Episode 2 of Twinsies!.

A (Not So) Good Plan

It seemed like a good plan at the time. I could never figure out a way to strike up a conversation with a woman, which left me perpetually single, but I thought knowing their experiences better would help me. That was the core of the idea.

I’d use the magic to transform myself into a hot woman for a few hours, make friends with a few of them, and hopefully learn everything I needed to know.

As it turned out, talking to hot women when you yourself are a hot woman isn’t necessarily any easier. I still flubbed my words; they still rolled their eyes at me. If anything, the experience was even more humiliating than when I was a guy because it was like they expected more from me and they didn’t hold back on their criticism.

I suppose I did learn one thing. I asked myself why I was trying so hard to be with women like this? They were rude; they were mean. They might’ve been hot, but did I really want to be in a relationship with someone like them?

Change

She spoke with a deep voice -- not from years of smoking but from the fact that she hadn’t been a “she” before all of the modification. It was why I was meeting her. She was an expert at obtaining body parts and having them replaced. You wanted to change genders or become part robot? She was the one you’d talk to.

Of course, the technology had been made illegal except in cases of emergency -- but she took care of all that paperwork, too. Most everyone in the club was a client. I would be one soon enough.

She took a drag of her cigarette and gave me a look before speaking in her deep, masculine voice, “So, what’cha looking to change about yourself today?”

Paranoia

Why did it feel like everyone was staring at me? Seriously, I knew people was probably dealing with their own problems after the Great Shift. It made no sense to think that anyone would be caring about a single guy swapped into the body of a woman, let alone staring or obsessing over him or her. Yet that’s what it felt like.

I didn’t know if this body has internalized brain chemistry that caused paranoia or if this was just something women naturally felt self-conscious about for some reason, but I was glad the body I ended up in lived close by and I found the keys to get in pretty easily inside her purse.

I gave one last look around to make sure no one followed me before I unlocked the door and went inside.

Wily (Part 2)

View Part 1 of Wily.

I may have mentioned that my cat was quite wily. First of all, carrying a ten pound cat down to the basement is an easy feat; getting that same cat in the body of your hundred pound wife down into the basement is a much more difficult task.

It took several hours, and I thought everyone was in position to get my wife and my cat back into their own bodies. But at the last minute, the cat goes crazy -- and I’m the one who ends up in my wife’s body!

It’s not the first time I’ve been stuck in her body. When I first tested the thing, we found it could overheat, so I built in a limit only allowed for two swaps within a twenty-four hour period (this also prevented potential chaos, of course).

I suppose that now gave me a day to figure out how to get the cat in my much heavier body down to the basement to swap back, even as I now had to figure out doing it from inside my wife’s body, which wasn’t nearly as strong as my own either.

Flesh and Algorithms

Spot

It had been just over twelve hours since we had used to medallion to swap bodies, and if I was being truthful, I had a blast! I had probably pranced around in at least a dozen different cute outfits that I probably never would’ve had the guts to explore as a guy; I enjoyed being treated like a princess at various times; and feeling smaller and lighter was a weird plus. But as much as I enjoyed being a woman, I was ready to go back to my own life as a guy.

We had stashed the medallion pretty well. A place where no one would look. I was still afraid something was going to bite my hand off when I reached in there. But there was no animal waiting for me. Unfortunately, there also wasn’t the medallion.

Instead, a crumbled up piece of paper awaited me. It apologized for taking the medallion, but also explaining how they had waited years for it to turn up again. When they saw us with it, they followed us to this spot. They explained how happy they were to finally get their bodies back, but they didn’t explain why they couldn’t have left the medallion behind so I could get my body back as well!

Meet Me

Kevin woke up in his hotel room in what was clearly a body that wasn’t his own. He immediately went to work posting on various internet sites about what had happened to him before finally getting a promising response after a few hours. Her name was Julie, and she agreed to meet him at his hotel room.

When he opened the door, he was shocked by the appearance of his own body -- a wig? Makeup? Feminine clothes? He had watched several hours of YouTube tutorials and made great effort to pass reasonably as a woman in his current body. And Julie had the nerve to THIS with his body?

“What the hell?” He asked, “Are you wearing a padded bra? I’m a guy! I don’t even have any breasts to pad!”

“Why do you think I needed it?” Julie scoffed.

“Look, I just hope no one saw you. I’ll never live this down if the guys at the office find out about this.”

Site

“Are you on that site? I’m warning you that you really shouldn’t do it.” Albert said looking up from his phone to see his roommate’s computer screen while sitting on the couch.

“You did it! You seemed happy about it!” Evan replied while pausing on the image of a particularly beautiful woman.

“I was happy when I first did it, sure. But it’s been months, and using that site to swap bodies with a woman is just not worth it, Dude. Like, within a month you’ll regret it. I mean, if you were actually transgender or something, it might be worth it . But I know you’re just curious, and there’s no undo option for that site!”

“Whatever. Too late.”

Manic Pixie Dream Alien

Flight

The fact that everyone on the plane was still alive was a miracle. It was purely by chance that the pilots were unswapped by the Shift -- unlike everyone else on the plane.

Neil has sudden found himself in the body of one of the overworked flight attendants, teetering on tight heels that were already on exhausted feet. Despite the initial demands of everyone on board, it wasn’t hard for him to explain he wasn’t actually who he appeared to be. After all, everyone else was in the wrong body as well.

He finally got to sit back in his seat, an everyone was surprisingly calm. Everyone was silent as they sat there in the wrong bodies, and Neil felt as wrong as anyone. And once they landed, they soon realized the people on the plane weren’t the only ones affected by a massive swap....

Allergy

I used to be allergic to flowers. Grass, too. And trees. Being outside was often just a nightmare for me. It wasn’t really a problem for me anymore; not since the incident that merged me and my girlfriend into a single person.

We weren’t the only ones affected. It happened to a lot of people in a lot of different ways. The exact nature of the split varied from each swapped pair. As far as other people were concerned, it was like I stopped existing. Except for my bad eyes needed glasses, the body was entirely hers. They didn’t look and see me; they only saw her.

From my perspective, it was an entirely different story. She was gone. Mostly. And I missed her dearly. I had always hoped she was just hiding away somewhere in my brain and that she would re-emerge to take control. It never happened. The only hints of her that remained were strange affinities, like my newfound love of flowers. I had avoided them for obvious reasons previously, but no longer...

Immersive Experience

Wayne had booked travel for an “immersive experience” in a Latin American country, and he was really looking forward to it. The plane arrived a little early, but he was allowed to check-in. However, it all seemed like just an ordinary hotel room in a rather unremarkable resort. He told himself he’d spend the night and then demand a refund the next morning, so he could get an AirBnB for a more authentic experience.

However, he didn’t wake up in the hotel; he didn’t even wake up in his own body -- the most obvious aspect of which was that he was now female. She didn’t seem to have a phone, and he had no idea how far away the resort was. He did find a note, which simply said: “Have fun spending the next two inside the body of a local! Enjoy your immersive experience!”

Just Keep Working

Curt thought that swapping bodies with his wife was probably one of the better results of the Great Shift. Sure, not swapping at all would have been the best, but at least swapping with a spouse meant most of the details about your life were pretty much the same, and any challenges you were going to face would easily be answered by someone you were close to.

Though his wife Li did have some complaints. She told him that he was ruining all of her outfits at his job. Curt explained that he had to wear something! And he was lucky to be working! Construction jobs had dried up a lot in the immediate aftermath yet he kept going with work as though nothing had happened. His boss didn’t care that he was in Li’s body, and it kept putting food on the table.

He also tried to explain that she wouldn’t be wearing any of these things anymore. When she said that wasn’t the point, he promised to replace anything he ruined once things got back to normal.

clean.

Karaoke Room (Part 1)

A couple of my bros and I decided to do some karaoke on a Friday night. I know, perhaps not the craziest thing to do to kick off the weekend, but the rooms were private and BYOB -- so minimal public embarrassment while saving a lot on the beer budget.

I was so drunk that I thought I imagined the change at first. My clothes were the same, but I was definitely different. My body now had parts it certainly didn’t have before while lacking others. And yet, I was to drunk to be worried. I just laughed.

Did I really just randomly turn into a woman in the middle of karaoke night? It seemed so outlandish. My mind was spinning.

So Metal

It wasn’t an ideal time for the Great Shift to happen -- though I’m not sure there is technically ever a good time for you and everyone you know to be swapped into other people’s bodies -- but it still sucked.

The club we were scheduled to play at wasn’t huge, but it was bigger than the places we typically played. But moments before my metal band was slated to take the stage, I went from being a guy with deep guttural growl of a voice to a woman who practically squeaked when she talked.

We had all swapped with someone, but we agreed that I had it the worst -- the only one whose new body might affect our performance. We took to the stage anyway.

Somehow we pulled it off. Even though the entire crowd was swapped too. Someone my new voice worked in a way -- sure, it was a bit of a different sound, but it also seemed like people dug it even more.

Smile

After the Great Shift, Ju Won’s friends had all thought he’d adapt to being a woman fairly quickly because he was gay. He had to explain to them that being gay and being trans were not even remotely close to being the same thing, and he was struggling with being a woman just as much as they were. It didn’t help them understand.

Still, Ju Won was interested in pursuing a relationship. He wasn’t sure if his preference transferred over or if this body was just straight, but he was still interested in men. The problem was that none of them seemed interested in him.

The Shift was still fresh and few people were interested in romantic exploration. He had a few moments at the club, but his new body’s busted smile always seemed to turn them away.

Then one time on the street, he got a compliment from a guy. He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it. And strangely, the guy didn’t run away. He smiled back...he SMILED BACK. Ju Won was over the moon...

I Swapped Bodies with My Blind Date

Doing Okay (Part 5)

View Part 1 of Doing Okay.
View Part 2 of Doing Okay.
View Part 3 of Doing Okay.
View Part 4 of Doing Okay.

I don’t even remember exactly how it happened next -- what we were even talking about at the moment --when we suddenly turned to each other and started to kiss. It was hard to process all the thoughts that were running through my head; I was kissing my own body!

There was a warmth that spread through my body, but I think the thing that I will never forget was the taste. I recognized it; it was what my mouth tasted like before the Great Shift. Of all the things that had changed when I became a woman, the differing default taste in my mouth had been a weird one. But kissing my own body brought back that original neutral taste that I kin of missed.

I think she liked it too, judging from the smile on our face after we parted lips and just sort of stared at each other.

Liminal Space

Few people have travelled to the liminal spaces of the backrooms; far fewer have escaped; but I think I might be the only one to have mastered them.

You see, the backrooms may seem random, but they are all based on math. If you know enough data and the right calculations, you know why wall X intersects with wall Y at angle Z or why that table is stuck in the middle of a wall. But all that math meant it was at least theoretically possible to re-arrange yourself as well.

That’s how I figured out how to steal Danielle’s body. The proper alignment and the proper timing meant my brain could simply replace hers -- male to female, and all it took was just some simple quantum mathematics. Of course, a slight miscalculation could mean a misalignment or I might’ve ended up in a simulacrum instead of the real thing. But I didn’t feel misaligned; I didn’t feel like a copy. No. This was real, and I felt great! Everything was great!

The Experience

Jeremy hit the ground hard. He expected it to hurt, but it felt good instead. In fact, everything felt good. The floor, the loud music -- all of it was good. People reached down to pick him up, but he didn’t want to. After all, the floor felt so good. But, as it turned out, standing up also felt good as well. Realizing he was in someone else’s body? A woman’s body? Also good!

It took him a few more minutes to realize he was high. How he got high was still a mystery to him, though maybe he was just imagining all of this. The club, the different body -- maybe it was all just from whatever he was on. It didn’t seem to matter right now; he could just enjoy this for what it was -- an experience...an out-of-body experience?

the workplace. (epsiode 2)

View Part 1 of the workplace.

Basic

The thing about Emily was that she was pretty ordinary. I didn’t know anything about her before swapping into her body, but it didn’t seem to matter; I could just sort of fake it with a lot of bland cliches about twenty-something year old women.

Her style seemed basic and unoriginal. When I saw another woman on the street -- I wasn’t sure if she was a friend of Emily’s or not -- but I just sad some things about Taylor Swift and Pilates, and then we both went about our day.

If I had known it would be so easy to be a woman, I think I would’ve stolen the body of one years ago. Then again, maybe it wasn’t all women who were so simple....maybe it was just Emily.

Oh.

Lou still couldn’t believe he was going on his first date since the Great Shift. He was still nervous about it, but there were things that would make it easier. When he arrived at the bar, it was pretty easy to spot Clarice with his own former face, for instance.

It all seemed to be going quite well until he mentioned the date.

From inside his body, she laughed, “Are you serious? We’re just exchanging info here, because we should be friends.”

“Oh,” It was hard for Lou to say much more.

“I mean, my former body is a 3 or 4 at most. But now? I’m like a 7 or an 8! I’m really sorry for what you lost, but a date?” She laughed, “No way!”

“Oh,” Lou repeated.

Allergic

One thing I didn’t anticipate when swapping bodies with Nikki was the effects of her female hormones on my male brain. I never expected to start finding cute guys attractive, and I certainly never wanted my heart skip when just the right one looked at me. Yet that was exactly what was happening to me.

But it wasn’t my own shyness or any kind of social norms preventing me from talking to any of these guys, it was another aspect of Nikki’s body -- her allergies. Why did every cute guy seem to own a dog? And why did Nikki have to be so allergic to animals?

Then again, I had a body swapping machine. I didn’t have to stay in Nikki’s body to remain a woman, I could literally be any woman who would be willing to swap bodies with her. I just had to find one without allergies...

Sit. Stay. Swap.

Hotwire

It was a rough neighborhood. While Nathaniel had grown up here, it was a place he had told himself he was never coming back to. The Great Shift had other plans.

It wasn’t just that he had found himself thrust back into one of the roughest areas. It wasn’t just that the Shift happened in the middle of the night. He also found himself in a woman’s body. All those things added up seemed like a recipe for disaster, and Nathaniel decide he wasn’t going to stick around.

Of course, growing up in a bad neighborhood ha given him some useful skills. There was the time some guy taught him how to hotwire a car -- he was certainly using that skill now. He knew it probably wasn’t ethical, but feeling safe while in a strange, unknown body was a higher priority right now.

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...

Experiment in Empathy

It was meant to be an experiment in empathy, a way to help their failing marriage. It had been three months now since Beth’s husband, Mac, had been turned into an exact copy of Beth. The only problem was that the copy of her body also meant he had a copy of her brain. For all intents and purposes, he thought he was Beth and always had been.

As a result, they often argued about who the real Beth was and who was really Mac. And the fact was, they didn’t really know. Beth began to question her own identity. Maybe she was really Mac, and she just didn’t know it -- though she’d never reveal she thought that to him. Mac (of course) had the exact same thought. So they both kept insisting they were Beth -- the REAL Beth.

Even the scientists weren’t sure which was which, and refused to force either of them to go back to being Mac for ethical reasons. The marriage continued to be just as tense as ever.