It was the middle of the night when I got the call. I’d been asleep for less than an hour and had to be up by six, so my first impulse was being annoyed, at least until I saw it was Taylor calling. Out of just about anybody that might call me, he was one of the last people who would do it in the middle of the night, and he was too conscientious to not consider the time difference between me in America and him in France. So something was wrong. Sitting up in bed, I answered the call.
“Hey, man. Are you okay?”
There was a long enough pause that I wondered if he was still on the line when he suddenly started talking in a rush of words, his voice raw and brittle and just above a whisper.
“Um, no, man. I’m not. This woman. She’s after me.”
I gave a laugh, a mixture of confusion and sleepy irritation creeping back in. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing. Did you call me at like…three in the morning just to brag?” Even as I said the words, I doubted myself. It could be a joke, sure, but it’d be out-of-character for him. Besides, his voice didn’t sound like he was joking.
“No, not like that. I…look, it’s going to sound crazy and it’s hard to explain, but I don’t have anyone else to tell that *might believe me. And I know it’s the middle of the night, but it’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do.”*
My stomach curdled as I listened to him. This wasn’t a joke at all. He sounded terrified. Swallowing, I tried to keep my voice even when I replied. “Okay, man. I’m here to listen and help you, okay? Whatever it is. Just slow down and tell me what’s going on.”
And he did.
The first time it happened, I thought I was having a dream. I woke up and I wasn’t in my apartment. I was in a house I’d never been in, sleeping in a bed I’d never seen. That’s when I noticed my hands. They weren’t mine. They were small and delicate. Feminine. The more I looked around as I woke up, I realized my entire body looked and felt wrong. Getting up out of bed, I felt tension and weight across my chest and realized I had boobs. Full tits beneath the pajamas I was wearing.
I figured out which door led to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There was a woman looking back. A few years older than us, but not bad-looking. It’s like a sick joke now, but my first thought at seeing this…this stranger looking back at me was that she was kind of hot and I’d touched her boobs. Like I was fucking eight. Like I wasn’t in really big trouble.
Because I was. I moved around in front of the mirror, looked at myself all over and even went and found another mirror hanging in the hall outside the bedroom. It was all me. Or I was all her. Or whatever.
Except I wasn’t. I didn’t know who she was or have any of her memories, but it was clear that she was a real person living a real life in Canada according to the local weatherman when I turned on the tv. I found her driver’s license, bills in a basket on a desk, and prescriptions in her medicine cabinet. I knew her name and where she lived, but not how or why my mind had suddenly been teleported into a woman thousands of miles away.
So I settled into the idea that it was a dream. It was five in the morning when I’d woken up as her, and it took me until nearly ten to decide what to do and get back to sleep. My idea was that if it really was a dream, maybe next time I’d wake up for real back in my own body.
Sure enough, when I woke up the next time, I was back in Paris. I was sleeping on the sofa instead of in my bed, which was weird, but maybe I had sleptwalked during my crazy woman bodyswap dream. Either way, I was just happy I had a reasonable explanation for what had happened.
It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed all the emails I had sent.
I was looking back through my account for an old work email I’d sent the week before when I realized there were six very recent sent messages I didn’t recognize. All within a few minutes of each other the day before, all to the same address and all with attachments that looked like photos based on the file type but which didn’t load when I clicked on them. After some poking around, I figured out it was because the attached files had been deleted from my phone, even if the sent messages couldn’t be.
Using the email address on the messages, I tried to send another asking who this was, but after thirty minutes I got a bounceback message saying the email address didn’t exist, though it didn’t specify if it had ever existed or had just been deleted since the other messages and files were sent.
That’s when I started thinking about the dream again. It seemed impossible, but I found myself calculating the time difference between Paris and Vancouver and trying to figure out if the emails were sent during the time frame I would have been awake as the woman if this was all real.
The times matched up. The emails would have been sent about the time I was laying down to try and go back to sleep in that strange bed. But by who?
The natural assumption was it had been done by the woman who I’d swapped places with. Of course I couldn’t say for sure I even had actually swapped places with her if it was real at all. Maybe I’d just somehow possessed her for awhile and my body had been sleeping or sleepwalking or sleepemailing if that was even a thing.
Except somehow I didn’t think so. Part of it was just years of stupid kid movies predisposing me to think that if someone went into someone else’s body, there was a body swap both ways. But mostly it was because I’d seen the woman staring back at me. Not her mind or soul, maybe, but it was still her body and her face. Still a part of her. And she hadn’t looked like prey or a victim. Even with me looking out from those eyes, scared and confused as I was, she had looked more like a lion than a sheep. And if that was true, maybe she was behind what had happened or at least knew more than I did.
So I tried to look her up on the internet, but then I realized I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t remember looking at her license and bills, but because I couldn’t remember the words from my time there. I could remember everything else with crystal clarity, I could even remember that there were words, but what those words had been was lost to me.
This somehow scared me worse than anything, and after wracking my brain for a better solution, I finally decided to just leave it alone. Maybe it had been a dream. And my computer getting hacked or accidently sending out some kind of email made more sense than me swapping consciousness with another person on a different continent after all.
But then it happened again.
I wasn’t asleep this time. I’d just gotten out of the shower when the world swam around me. Light became dark, my body felt smaller and lighter, and I gasped at the cool night air filling my lungs where I’d been breathing hot steam a moment before. Instead of walking through my bathroom, now I was standing still outside at night near a tree and a cluster of dark green bushes. The back side of a park or recreational yard, maybe? The question left my mind as my…her…stomach lurched and I had to prop against the tree as I puked my guts out. That was when I saw the man’s feet.
I knew he was dead right away. Of course he was. His throat had been slit and his guts opened up like someone was field dressing a deer. Stifling a scream, I took several steps back and looked around again. The killer could still be nearby and…
Something buzzed in the pocket of her jacket. Reaching in, I pulled out a phone, but not before feeling the hard edges of what I thought was a folding knife nestled against it. Ignoring the new flood of ideas rushing through my mind at that touch, I swiped the screen. A small smear of red spread in the thumb’s wake, but I only dwelt on that a moment before the words behind the stain caught my eye.
Bad timing. Don’t get cute and try to find me or tell anyone. I’m better at this than you and I already know who you are. Smooches.
Looking around again, I started heading across what I could now tell was part of a large recreational complex. The trees and bushes had been at the edge of what was labeled a dog park, but there was also a soccer field and a baseball field, as well as a couple of different small playgrounds. I had no idea where I was going or how long the swap might last this time, but I knew I didn’t want to be found near that man’s body, especially when I felt sure now that this woman had killed him.
I thought as I walked, and I was scared, but I was also angry, and I didn’t know how much time I had. So when I felt like I was in a good spot at the other end of the park, I pulled out the phone again and found the email app. My chest tightened as I found the emails sent from my account. Pictures of my apartment building, my car’s license plate, several of my IDs and cards…she had almost everything other than passwords, and how could I be sure about that? Had I stored any of that stuff on my phone somewhere?
It didn’t matter. I needed to hurry and email her information back to me. Not to my normal email on my phone either. I’d make a new account now, email everything I could find, and then report it all to the cops. If I did it fast enough, maybe they could
Phone remotely disabled.
The screen had blurred out except for that message writ large across the top. When I swiped up, it was replaced with:
If your phone was locked accidently or against your wishes, please enter your pin to reactivate.
Shit.
Stuffing the phone back in her pocket, I make my way out to the street. I saw only one car there, and the keys in her pocket didn’t trigger the lock, so either it belonged to the poor guy back there or there was another parking lot somewhere else on the property. Either way I started heading for the distant pool of light down the road. It looked like a gas station from a distance, and as I got closer I saw I was right. I checked my…her…clothes as I got to the edge of the parking lot, but I saw no obvious bloodstains on her jacket or skirt, and only a few traces on her fingers. Stuffing my hands in the jacket pockets, I ducked into the station’s bathroom and scrubbed them clean before taking out the phone and wiping it down as well.
It was as I was drying the phone that it occurred to me that I was destroying evidence—not of my crime, but of hers. Helping her get away with it while making it easier for her to be free to come get me whenever she wanted. Looking into the mirror, I stared hard into the eyes I found there. When I spoke, hearing my words in her voice sounded strange…but also strangely satisfying.
“Fuck you.”
Ten minutes later I was in a taxi. Another fifteen and I was walking into the police station, hands clammy and heart pounding. I knew there was a risk that this time the swap was permanent, but I didn’t know that for sure, and last time it had gone back to normal, right? What was a sure thing was that if I didn’t get this psycho caught while I had a chance, she was going to come for me sooner or later.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed open the door to the police station lobby and went in. Across the room, an older, heavy-set man looked up and gave me a nod. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
I sucked in a deep breath and forced the words out. “I need to report”
“a crime. I…uh…oh God.”
I was back in my body. Looking down at my hands, I saw a small smiley face had been cut into the web between my thumb and forefinger. It hurt a little when I flexed my hand, but numbing anticeptic cream had been put on it after the cuts were made. Blinking, I forced myself to ignore both my fear and the disorienting nausea that was getting worse with every swap.
I had to find the number for that police station. Warn them that the woman that was standing there was dangerous. A murderer. Tell them where the body was and about the knife in her pocket.
Getting off the sofa where I’d been sitting, I started looking for my phone. It was on the counter in the kitchen, and as I reached for it, it lit up and began to rumble. Holding my breath, I forced myself to pick it up. My hand started shaking as I read the text message there.