“We’ll try to keep it down out here,” he said and gently eased me onto a bed.
“I’ll get you some water,” he said, vanishing toward the kitchen.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be real. I stared down at my borrowed hands, hoping they would dissolve back into my own familiar ones. But they didn’t change. They stayed soft, delicate.
I touched my cheek; it was smooth, not a hint of stubble.
The man returned, a glass of water in hand. I think he expected me to drink it, but instead I found myself just holding it out in front of me as if I had never seen water before.
“Do you want your meds?” he asked.
I just shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut, as if wishing hard enough would make reality snap back to something recognizable, something mine.
“Alright, just try to rest,” he said and motioned the children away from the door, where they peeked in with curious concern.
The room was silent after he left. Silent except for my own breathing, which sounded alien and wrong to me now. I sat there, frozen, the weight on my chest rising and falling with each breath. The apartment beyond hummed with muted life—children’s voices, their laughter floating in like a distant echo of happiness.
A framed photo on the bedside table taunted me: the man, the two kids, and her.
“What the fuck…”
I sat up slowly and looked at this strange body I was trapped in. A woman. It was horrifyingly real.
God, she had huge breasts, too. They seemed to loom out at me, exaggerated and impossible, and I watched them rise and fall with my breathing. I was too afraid to touch them.
I knew I had to keep it together, but each glance down shattered my composure. This was supposed to be a simple trip, supposed to be me picking up a stroller.
I stood up, the room swaying slightly under my feet, and shuffled toward a mirror over the dresser. The reflection looked back at me with wide, blue eyes full of panic. Long waves of strawberry blonde fell around my shoulders; my cheeks were flushed pink against pale skin.
“Zoey,” I muttered at her, as if saying it would make it less true.
Her mouth moved when I talked. Her lips formed the words in sync with mine. Her body turned stiffly in tandem with every frightened move I made.
I sank back onto the bed, clutching my head in my hands. What was going on? What had happened to me?
I thought back to the moment before the noise, before this impossible madness. I had been talking to that man. He was showing me the stroller. We had shaken hands.
And then—
A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts.
“Hey, babe,” he said softly from the hallway, “you doing any better?”
Panic clawed up my throat.
“Yeah,” I croaked, hardly recognizing my own voice.
“We’ll be quiet, promise,” he said. I heard him coaxing the kids away, his tenderness both disarming and terrifying.
They had no idea that I wasn’t who they thought I was.
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