Showing Off

“I’m not sure what it is.” Bradley said while showing off the odd device to his friends, “I just found it outside my door in a box with my name on it. I tried to turn it on, but none of buttons seem to do anything.”

“What about this one?” His friend Victoria said reaching over.

Unbeknownst to any of them, the device needed multiple people around to work. When Bradley was in his dorm room alone earlier, it couldn’t turn on because it had nothing to do. But with a few of his friends around? Well, the device worked its magic and began lighting up and swapping their bodies.

With Bradley and Victoria being the closest, they swapped with each other.

“What the hell did you do?” Bradley said, feeling weird being inside Victoria’s body and speaking with her voice.

“I don’t know!” She replied from Bradley’s body. “Let me try again...”

Happy Hour

The Great Shift caused chaos all over the world, but at least in one midtown office, they were taking it in stride. Most of the staff just headed down to the bar at the first floor of the building, where they bartender said they could just help themselves and drink for free. Granted, none of them knew if the person inside the body of the bartender, but it didn’t matter; the alcohol was soon flowing.

After a few beers, John felt much better about being inside Alice’s body. As he was stumbling around with two beers he had just poured himself, the actual Alice came up to him -- now in the body of Steve’s body from the IT department.

“Oh, my God, thank God I found me,” Alice told him.

“Wha--?” John slurred.

“You need to stop drinking.”

“Naw, naw...is good.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t passed out yet already. My body is not used to alcohol, so let me get you some place safe, okay?”

“Fine...I’m jus’ gonna...” And John then proceeded to trip in Alice’s heels and fall on his face.

Memories

He tossed the Medallion of Zulu down into the ravine and watched until he saw a small splash in the water below. Now he sure Lulu’s body would be his forever! As he turned to walk back down from this ledge and back to the path, his foot slipped. Perhaps he should’ve been more careful, or maybe he should’ve practiced walking in heels more. Either way, he was now tumbling down the very steep cliffs of the ravine.

He awoke in the hospital with several broken bones and a head wound. But his mind was blank; he had no memories of who he was. His body seemed off, but he chalked it up to the injuries. When a doctor told him he had been identified as Lulu Ye, he shrugged; it didn’t seem wrong, but it didn’t seem right. He couldn’t remmeber either way. He decided to accept this as his name, as he had no reason to doubt the doctor. Finally, the doctor showed him an odd medallion that had been found by his body. He recognized this, but he inched away from it, refusing to take it from the doctor’s hands. He knew that was his medallion, but why was he so afraid of it to the point that he didn’t want to touch it? He told the doctor to leave it at his bedside, pushing himself as best to could to the other side of the bed to be as far away as possible to examine it when the doctor left. It sure looked harmless, but if there was one thing he was sure of, despite not remembering anything else, was that the medallion sitting there was bad news.

No One Expects...

The last thing anyone expects when just walking down the sidewalk is for another passerby to steal their body. And yet that’s exactly what happened to Jeffrey one day as the woman passed him. He simply felt woozy for a second and realized he was walking the wrong way. He didn’t turn back until he heard footsteps running away, and that’s when he saw his former body sprinting down the street.

He tried to give chance, but his female body wasn’t exactly as athletic as his original male body. He was out of breath after a block and unable to keep up. He now had to deal with the fact that he was stuck in someone else’s body. Who even was this woman? Why was her life so bad that she would steal his instead? Maybe he could try to convince friens and family who he really was? And how was body swapping even POSSIBLE!?!

False Promise

“Be careful out there, Mai.” James said while putting his hand gently on her chest, “Just follow orders and try to stay alive. I’ll ask around the town today to see what information I can find about how we could have possibly swapped bodies last night, and maybe I can figure out a way to get us back to normal.”

Mai nodded. She knew her accent was a dead giveaway that she wasn’t actually James, and so she was already trying to get in the habit of staying quiet.

But despite how they had both talked about plans to swap back to their own bodies, neither really wanted to. James was tired of fighting and seeing more death each and every day up close. Mai’s life was far from perfect, but her town was relatively isolated from the violence of the war. Mai hated her life of poverty; she even hoped of getting injured while in James’s body so she could go to the U.S. and live a new life in the richest country in the world. Perhaps she could even do so intentionally, no matter how much it hurt. Before they departed, they left each other with a kiss and a promise, yet they each knew it was a promise they didn’t intend to keep.