Recognize

Harvey often wondered what would happen if he ran into Stephanie. Would she even recognize her own body? Before the Shift, Stephanie wasn’t the type of woman who was stylist or would wear makeup. Then thanks to the world-wide body swapping event, Harvey ended up in her body. He never expected to enjoy acting feminine, but he couldn’t imagine not doing his hair and makeup these days. He was probably an unlikely candidate for someone who would’ve liked to end up with a woman’s body, but it turned out to be the case. Meanwhile, he sure hoped Stephanie was happy being a guy. She may not have worn makeup, but she still seemed comfortable with herself before the Shift...

Hotel

Terrance was on a business trip when he heard loud noises coming from the hallway in his hotel. He investigated to find a very drunk woman stumbling around and struggling to get into her room.

“Hey, Baby,” Terrance suggested, “If you are having trouble, you can always stay in my bed.”

“F*ck you,” The woman slurred, “I know what this looks like. It probably serves me right to get hit on by a creep like you. After all, it was less than fifteen minutes ago I was down in the hotel bar hitting on women myself. I was drunk and said something stupid and so did this woman I was trying to pick up. I guess there was some sort of witch down there or something, who decided it would be funny to have the woman I hit on and I swap bodies. So now I’m a chick and you’re hitting on me. It’s so f*cking funny that I forgot to laugh. But, hey, if you want a laugh, why don’t you try this sort of crap down at the bar. I’m pretty sure that witch is still down there, and she’ll probably do to you the same sort of thing she did to me.”

And after her rant, the woman managed to use the keycard to unlock her door. Terrance was sure she was just crazy. A witch in the hotel bar? It seemed crazy, but part of him was now a little curious to go down and see for himself...

Check Out

It started out as a typical visit to the grocery store for Michael when he spotted a hot woman in one of the aisles. She looked so good in her high heels and leather pants that he spent a little extra time examining a product he was holding in order to catch a few extra glances of her as he looked up from the label. He also found himself following her into the next aisle and pretended to be interested in some of the organic shampoos and whatnot. Ultimately, he knew he was never going to have the confidence to talk to her and was about to move on when something strange happened. He suddenly felt very strange in his own body. It took him just a moment for him to realize the heels on his feet, the tight leather hugging his legs, and the long hair hanging from his head. It seemed both inexplicable and impossible, but he was suddenly the woman he had been checking out moments ago. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. Surely, if people had swapped bodies suddenly, shouldn’t there be some sort of panic? Even if it was just him and the woman, he’d imagine she’d be approaching him in a fury by now -- she surely got the short end of the stick in this swap. So Michael decided to keep on as if this was normal; as if he was this woman. What choice did he really have? He wasn’t sure what she was looking for here or what else she needed to buy, but he figured he’d try his best to manage.

Why

“When we swapped bodies last month ago, I thought it was some sort of cosmic fluke,” Lisa told her husband Ryan, “We both seemed to struggle adapting to being in each other’s bodies. We promised to look for a way back to normal. But now I see this? A $3000 charge on our credit card to something called ‘Body Swap.’”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan confessed.

“I just don’t understand why. Why did you swap our bodies in the first place? Why do pretend to look for a way back when you knew about a way back? Why did you lie to me about so much?”

“I don’t know. I intended to swap back after a day, but I just enjoyed being you so much. I thought you’d never know. I can’t even fully explain why I was curious in the first place or why I felt compelled to pay so much to do it...”

Normal

“Okay, so now that you’re dressed, you just need to turn the treadmill on and run for about 30 minutes or so,” Laura explained.

“Thirty minutes?” A surprised Marvin asked as he turned around to look at his former body, “The last time I ran was probably ten years ago in high school! I have asthma! I’ll get winded!”

Laura sighed, “You know for someone who is supposed to be a nerdy genius, you aren’t exactly bright sometimes. Since I have your body that means I have your asthma. You have my body without any asthma. In fact, I ran every day and was in excellent shape, and I’d really like to keep it that way for when we finally swap back.”

“Right....right...” Marvin muttered before turning around to look at the control panel of the exercise machine. He still wasn’t sure how to turn the damn thing on. Sure, he could program millions of lines of complex code and create a seemingly impossible machine to swap two people’s bodies, but turning on something regular people used every day was just beyond him. He knew he was asocial, and he had never meant to trigger a test of his body swapping this early; he certainly never meant to swap bodies with Laura! Yet because of the swap, she was now forcing him to leave his house, go out in public at places like the gym, and act like a normal human being instead of the reclusive hermit he was...