There are some who say that I got what was coming to me, and hell, some of those people are me. But back then I sure didn’t think so, nor did I have any real expectation that it would all work out for the best. There was a time or three I even contemplated filling out my discharge papers with a 9mm. But smarter people than me restricted my access to firearms so I’m still alive to tell you my tale. A story of hubris and honor, duty and desire, true love and epic hate and this is the way it all started…

PART THREE

I woke up to a strange man admiring himself in my honeymoon suite. He was tall and broad, with short dark hair and had just enough baby fat on his developing muscles that I knew he was still on the young side. But he was flexing his biceps while looking in the mirror and judging by the fact that he kept on doing it and then switching to the other arm he seemed well pleased with the show.

He was also totally naked.

“What the fuck are you doing!” I shouted and then coughed violently trying to clear my voice. “Get the hell out of here… what the fuck is wrong with my voice.”

“Do I really sound like that,” the man said as he turned around. “God, I know it sounds different from outside your own head, the vibrations and timber and what not, but jeeze I’m glad I got out when I did, no one is going to take that little girl voice seriously.”

I stared at him for a few moments trying to digest what he was saying, this was not helped any by him saying it from what used to be my mouth.

“You…” I stammered out hesitantly.

“Come on,” he said smiling and giving me a come to gesture with his hand.

“You…” I continued.

“You can make it!”

“You look like me!” I finished with a high pitched shrill that was already starting to bother me.

“No,” he argued turning back to look at himself in the mirror again. “I look like ME, Midshipman Thomas Sullivan Ryan, teen heartthrob. With a new and improved software package of course. Tom 2.0!”

If he was Tom Ryan who the hell wasI? It was at that point that I took the time to notice what was bothering me slightly about how I was feeling I looked down to the ominous weights I was feeling on my chest.

“B…bbbb bres,” I mumbled out.

“Breasts!” he completed for me enthusiastically. “Boobies, tits, titties, hooters, bazongas, ta-tas, Mother Maggie Moo’s. And they are only going to get bigger during your pregnancy.”

PREGNANT!

“Jess?” I asked him the fog starting to dim.

“No,” he corrected me. “I’m Tommy, YOU are now ,and forever more, world without end. Jessica Scott, pregnant marine wife... well, middie wife, in a few days anyway.”

“What did you do?” I asked her shocked to the core.

“Do you remember my girlfriend Heather Morris, left early this year…?”Jess asked me.

“Of course, I remember hubba Heather,” I said before I realized how I had put my foot in my mouth, by commenting on the attractiveness of my girlfriend’s friend.

“Most kids at school figure she transferred in her second year but she attended all four. It’s just that the first year she was short, mousy haired, flat-chested and acne ridden.”

“Heather?” I asked trying to visualize such an ugly duckling to graceful swan change and having a minor stoke at the conversion. Heather Morris was already making serious money as a New York model and was rumored to be involved with several of the up and coming Hollywood actors, not bad for a high school dropout. She was the sort of girl that you figured must have won all sorts of beauty contests prancing about in high heels at age five.

“Heather,” said jess agreeing. “Summer after her first year at a county fair she came across a tent with an actual bonifide genuine gypsy. Who while she wouldn’t sell her real magic to just about anyone, was willing to right wrongs and injustices and transform an ugly body to match the wonderful soul inside. She’s still a nice girl Heather, which rather proves the point. If I had been her, I probably would have acted the total bitch to all the catty girls who had mistreated me all year long. But she became my friend and was willing to hand me that gypsies business card. Ha! A gypsy business card, can you believe that Tommy?”

“Jessica, what have you done?” I asked her, my face going numb from blood rushing away from my brain in self defense.

“I told her the absolute truth, one always must with gypsies. I told her that you got me pregnant, that you refused to pay for an abortion. That you lied to me, and forged documents to ruin my college plans. That you were heading off to a wonderful future and that I was being left behind, alone, a PREGNANT penniless orphan, who most likely wouldn’t survive the experience.”

“That’s not the truth!” I argued vehemently.

“Isn’t it! You thought I would just take it,” she shouted at me in my deep resonating voice. “Didn’t you? You thought that a little quick maneuvering and I would just surrender to enemy action. What am I, the FRENCH! I’m more marine that that, I’m more marine than YOU! Now I get to go off to the Academy and be a hero. And you, little girl, will to have that baby you were so concerned about.”

“Jess,” I said still not believing this could be happening.

“My name is Tommy!” she shouted at me. “You’re Jessica.”

“This can’t be happening, magic just doesn’t… this can’t be happening…”

She walked over to the bed, and removed the sheet I was using to protect what was left of my dignity.

“Exhibit A,” she said grabbing my left breast and giving it a good squeeze. “And exhibit B.” she continued with the right.

I wasn’t going to slap my own face, and I had been heavily socialized against hitting a woman so it was tough going, even if she was the one currently wearing the penis I just couldn’t. So I figured I would get the point across to her that I was angry by extravagantly showing her my extended fist and then slamming it down hard on the face she used to take such pride in presenting blemish free.

It was sort of a bad idea, but I wasn’t exactly thinking logically if you get my meaning.

The pain shocked me to the core and I was stunned for a good few seconds when I came out of it I was still pissed off and I started freaking out all over the place I jumped from the bed started only momentarily by the reverberation of my new assets and started screaming and running around the room. Throwing things I could lift and hitting things I could not. Soon enough Jess caught up with me and she used her now much more superior strength to restrain me.

“Careful, “she said smirking. “Think of the baby.”

That sort of cut the wind out of my sails. I went limp like I had just been shot with a tranquilizer dart and she picked me up and carried me back to the bed. I must have zoned out or something because the next thing I realized was that she was putting the finishing touches on tying both my wrists to the backboard of the bed with several pairs of nylons. When I came too, I gave it a good tug, trying to escape. But it was already too late.

I started throwing out curses that a lady shouldn’t really repeat and I guess I won’t either. Jessica just sort of kept smiling and the grin was getting bigger with every insult I hurled. She started dressing with my clothes hesitating only slightly over some of the combinations but she kitted herself out convincingly enough and since I had only brought the one suitcase to her four she was packed and ready to go in moments.

“Where are you going?” I asked frightened.

“I’m leaving you my dear,” she said in as good a Rhett Butler impression as she could manage. “Just like you were going to do to me. I’ll lay low the next few days until I have to report to plebe summer. And then I head directly to the Academy, they have armed guards so don’t try to break in after me. And I hope you don’t have to be told that no one will believe you if you tell them your body has been stolen. I’m sure you would hate for the baby to be born in a mental hospital. My passwords and account information are all in the folder on the desk; I already know all yours, your signal security sucks. Heather will be here in the morning to cut you loose. I really don’t see a reason for us to ever see each other again… I’m told there is no way back.”

“How long were you planning this?” I asked as her news hit me like a load of bricks.

“Since about three minutes in to applying for that marriage license at the courthouse. I didn’t know exactly what I would do, but I knew through Heather’s gypsy, I had some options available.”

“Why even marry me then? If all you were going to do was leave me,” I asked her totally dumbfounded at the changed situation from my euphoria earlier that day.

“So that I could divorce you,” she said pleased with herself. “And at least get SOME of the money my father left me. And out of recognition of the years we spent together and how nice at least part of them were I thought I would do you the favor of not making your child a bastard. Unwed teenage mothers are so tacky.”

I started to scream then, or tried to anyway I thought maybe if I screamed loud enough the night manager might realize something was wrong come to the room to investigate. Jessica took preemptive action though and stuffed a sock into my mouth following suit by using my roll of duck tape out of my car to secure it into place. She then thought better of it, and used at least a further quarter roll of it taping the rest of me down, not trusting I guess the structural integrity of women’s unmentionables.

“You signed my name to that letter to the Navy,” she continued as she taped me up. “Telling them I was pregnant. Well now you can have the body that goes along with that name. I can’t ever explain how it felt to be betrayed like that. Maybe someday you’ll meet a nice boy, date him for a couple of years fall totally mad dog in love with him and have him rip your heart out. Just because he thought he was doing the right thing. When that happens give me a call, and we’ll catch up and compare notes over coffee.”

She grabbed my suitcase and lifted it up over her back like it was nothing. Opened the door and then stopped at the entrance to turn her head back and look at me with a crestfallen look. She was crying, and those tears on my face made it look oddly feminine and I could still see the girl I had loved inside.

“I’m sorry it came to this Jessica,” she called back to me over her shoulder. “But you said you would do anything for me, would trade places with me if you could… and I always took you as a man of your word.”

***
Something they never show on TV is what happens when a bound hostage has to use the bathroom. Usually the hero comes to save the girl at the end of the fourth act just before the commercial break and you never see her squirming about, trying to hold it in. the pressure was both familiar and unfamiliar and I held it as long as I could, I really did.

Well at least I was already sitting down, so to speak.

Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep that night and by the time Heather opened the door early at the crack of 11:30AM I was in no fit state for polite company. She took one quick look at me and dropped her purse on the floor in surprise.

“Oh my god Jessie, what did he do to you?”

She was halfway across the room before she stopped suddenly at the front of the bed and remembered why it was she was sent here.

“Oh,” Heather said hesitantly. “You’re him.”

There didn’t seem to be much point in denying it, There was no way I was going to be able to fake being Jessica to one of her own best friends who knew about it anyway. My only hope was that she wasn’t as vindictive as her friend and that not too many lies had been told about me. I looked her hard in the eyes and tried to keep the puppy dog look out of my own, and gave her a nod.

“Well then, you’re probably super pissed off, and pregnant pissed off is a special sort of super pissed off. I know what I went through when my mom was having little brother and she was this close to being taken out by a SWAT team. If I cut you loose are you going to misbehave?” She asked ending her babbling.

I shook my head emphatically. I would be a good little girl, at least as long as it took me to get the drop on her. She sat on the bed and started peeling off tape from my mouth which was all to the good as I was starting to have trouble breathing through my nose and the last hour or so was having waking nightmares of suffocating before someone found me. When the last strand of silvery tape was peeled off, along with what felt like half of my now more sensitive face I took a few deep breaths in gratitude.

“What’s that smell, did you wet the bed?” she asked me wrinkling her nose at me.

“I was,” I said still trying to catch my breath. “Tied up a long time Heather.”

“I guess,” she said squinting her eyes, as if not believing that I had been potty trained. She was having trouble working through the gooey mass that was congealed industrial tape and women’s nylons while at the same time trying not to do damage to my wrists.

“There is a knife on the table next to the room service tray,” I said. Indicating the direction with my head.

“Oh, sorry, blonde moment,” she said cheerfully as she got up to grab the knife from the table.

“But you have red hair?” I asked confused.

“It’s just a saying Jess, gosh have you been living in a cave in Afghanistan or something.”

“My name is Thomas Ryan,” I contradicted her firmly.

“Sister, looking like that I wouldn’t go around telling many people.” She grinned at me.

Her knife work was substandard it wasn’t very long before, while trying to get up between my wrist and the restraining material ,she nicked me a few times and drew blood.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry Jessie, I just don’t have a good angle, wow, she really, I mean, HE really tied you up good huh?”

“Just cut the taught area between my hands and the bedpost we’ll worry about the delicate inside work once I get some blood moving in my extremities. If it’s not released soon it could turn gangrenous.”

“Oh my god, really?”

“Really, just give it some elbow grease think of sawing a tree, but NOT close to my wrists. And cut away from yourself not toward you.”

Eventually she managed to cut through without doing further harm to herself or me. My right arm fell limp to the mattress and after about ten seconds so did the left. I closed my eyes, just sort of grateful that this particular piece of my indignity was over with. To solve the other I tried grabbing the sheet to cover my nakedness but my hands were still too numb and after several attempts of ALMOST getting enough traction to lift it up with my forearms alone Heather grasped what I was trying to do and lifted the sheets and bedspread up for me. I totally laid down on the bed my head half on and half off the pillow and just sort of gave up for a few minutes. The events of the last day had been the most stressful of my life and I needed a bit of a rest.

The next thing I knew there was a cool glass pressed to my lips and Heather was holding a drink of water.

“You’re probably dehydrated,” she said tilting the glass back and letting the water cascade down my parched throat. “If you have been tied up since early last night.”

“Thank you,” I had the presence of mind to reply, once the glass was empty.

“You’re welcome,” she said setting it on the bed stand and getting up to cross her arms across her chest defiantly. “You mind telling me why you’re wearing a black eye that Jessica wasn’t wearing yesterday. I knew you were going to abandon her but I never figured you for that kind of bastard.”

“Heather you know me, think about everything Jess told you about me up until recently. Was I ever that much of a bastard.”

“All men are bastards deep down. You’ll be finding out about that soon enough.”

“I did this to myself, when I woke up…things were a bit… strange. I didn’t hit her. I could never hit her.”

“Oh ho,” she cackled with glee. “I just bet things were a bit strange, must have been quite a shock for Mr. Clean Marine. But that’s what you get for leaving my girl high and dry.”

“I would never leave her.”

“You have a funny way of showing it, refusing to even give her money for an abortion, on top of refusing to wear a condom in the first place. If only she could have gotten a hold of me in time, I would have sent her the money. Ten times the money! but I was in a shoot in the Caribbean all last week and only just got home to a frantic phone call that your hard core republican, woman hating family had SUED her and stopped her right to choose. And insult on top of injury breaking up with her and heading off to enjoy the dream you were supposed to share together.

“She told you we broke up?” I said starting to feel a little damp in my borrowed eyelid.

“Of COURSE, she told me, we tell each other everything. Including the plan to see how you like the abortion issue from the other side of the skirt.”

“Not everything,” I said in a soft voice.

“Oh yeah, like what?” she retorted defiantly.

“Heather, Jessica left behind her purse, it’s over there next to the TV. I want you to go get it.”

“Your purse,” she seemed pleased to correct me.

“Whosever purse,” I said angrily. “Just go get it and look inside.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.” I answered calmly.

She got up and walked over to the entertainment center and harshly grabbed the brown leather purse which I guess belonged to me now. She un-ceremonially upended all the contents on the little desk set aside for business guests and started working through the detritus that seems to accumulate at the bottom of all women’s purses. Eventually she worked her way through the hairbrushes and sanitary supplies and came across an unsealed envelope. Opening it up she began reading and after half a minute or so turned around to stare at me with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t understand,” said Heather. “You were going to get married?”

“HAVE got married, I gave the paperwork to Jessica to put in her purse while I was going to get the car. It was raining outside and I didn’t want it to get wet. This,” I said raising an arm to indicate the room and my otherwise disheveled state. “This, was our wedding night… and now she’s… I was never going to leave her Heather, NEVER. And I was never going to abandon my baby. Even if that meant stopping her from, from… she’s gone. Oh, God she’s gone!”

I started crying then, normally men are only allowed to cry when watching “Old Yeller” or the Jim Brown scene at the end of “The Dirty Dozen”. And you can sometimes get a special permit if your team wins the World Series. But If I am ever audited it is my belief I could get a waiver for today.

“I just, didn’t want her to kill the baby, we could have given it up for adoption or my parents could have raised it or anything. I would even have accepted…eventually, swapping bodies so I could take the risks for her. That’s just like what I was going to do in the Marines, taking risks to defend the weak. We were STILL going to be in school in the same state, STILL be together. But she... She left ME!! She said she never wanted to see me again,” I gasped out, my voice shrill with pain.

I just sort of went Zen at that moment. Left all higher brain functions behind and began a crying jag of biblical proportions. I think I lost every bit of that moisture that was in the glass of water Heather gave me. I don’t know how long it lasted, Heather, by instinct I guess, just wrapped me in her arms and kept rocking me back and forth and stroking my long hair. If I had been any sort of aware I’m sure the sensation of my head being pressed firm against a super models more than amble bosom while being told that “baby it’s going to be all right.” Would have been the stuff adolescent fantasies are made of. As it was, it passed me all by and I only found out about it years later when Heather and I got together in Chicago one evening to reminisce.

Heather was a direct instrument of my destruction, and was the reason I was in my current reduced circumstances but I don’t hold it against her. She harmed me, but she also saved me. I don’t mind telling you I went a little bughouse nuts and I would probably still be there if it wasn’t for Heather dragging me kicking and screaming off the not so metaphorical edge. Eventually, well into afternoon judging by the height of the sun out the window, I was calm again. Or maybe I had just spent all the tears I had left in this world.

“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” Heather asked simply when she realized I was back and aware.

It was all I could do to nod meekly.

“What a bitch!” was all she said.

***

“Come on,” she said trying to get the sheet from my grasp. “Where both girls here.”

“Some of us more than others,” I said inclining my head toward her chest.

“Now now, you have nothing to be ashamed of, yours at least are all home grown and quite perky, I’ve seen them before.”

“Then you don’t need to see them now,” I argued.

“And I don’t want to, but you need a bath Jes… You need to wash your body Tommy. Aside from your general level of cleanliness, you were also sitting in a puddle of your own urine all night. You need to wash downstairs thoroughly, and keep doing so daily or you will get a UTI.”

“A what?”

“A urinary tract infection, girls fiddly bits are much more complicated if they didn’t teach you boys that in school. We can’t just give it a shake and call it done. If you don’t wipe carefully and keep it clean a UTI is almost guaranteed and they are no fun. I had two of them when I was younger.”

“All right, I’ll take a bath but I don’t need your help. I’ve been ok to bath unsupervised for a while now. The parts may be different but the principle is the same.”

“Just don’t be embarrassed to really get down in there. It’s important!”

“Ok,” I said as I turned the hot water on and gestured for her to leave the bathroom. “Now go.”

“And do you know about your hair? You always just had that buzz cut.”

“High and tight,” I informed her.

“Whatever, it didn’t look like you needed to do much to take care of it.” She said accusingly, as if it was some high misdemeanor to have manageable hair.

“That’s rather the point.”

“So you won’t know the first thing about taking care of women’s hair.” She countered triumphantly.

“Water, shampoo, and water again until there is no shampoo, see,” I said forcing a smile. “First thing.”

“You are just such a guy,” said Heather shaking her head as she moved to leave me the small bathroom alone.

“Thank you,” I replied, pleased at the compliment.

“If you think your tiny little mind can stretch to it, you might also try the bottle of conditioner. I’m going to order some room service for when you get out. It will be here in an hour but I want you to use every bit of it.”

***
I was alone with my mammaries, and it wasn’t as enjoyable an experience as I would have thought. Maybe if I hadn’t been emotionally wrecked and wearing the body of my principle wrecker I would have taken the time to enjoy myself. But the situation being what it was I just couldn’t get into it. I lay there in the tub with legs flat and my back resting upon the tiled wall I just let the hot water build up and flow over me.

Eventually I started staring at my hands. Jessica was never really a girly girl but for whatever reason likely to torture me since she knew I would be inhabiting the body next, she had left me painted fingernails behind. It was some shade of red, one of the some 10,000 shades of red according to my sisters.

My sisters? God! My whole family? The last few years we hardly spent time physically close but that didn’t mean we weren’t emotionally close. Scattered to the four winds as we were it was still a rare day when I wasn’t in contact with at least one of them. Email, Skype, texts, often times even actual mail cus we were old school like that. Many times the base exchange in whatever country we were in wouldn’t have this piece or that of what we missed about the good old USA and we would forever be having our extended clan send us what we craved. When we for the most part got back to the US and the girls went off to college we kept the habit up and little boxes of cookies and keepsakes would be delivered right to your door by the United States Postal Service.

How was I going to tell my family what happened? It was hard enough trying to figure out how to tell them Jess was pregnant and we were getting married, so I kept postponing it. And now? My girl is pregnant, and hey, we switched bodies can I borrow your bra? If I tried telling them about the swap the first thing they would do would be to call up Jessica and ask her what the hell was going on with your girlfriend. Jess would always have the upper hand, all she had to do was say “what the hell” and any credibility I had would be shot. And what exactly would I do if she confirmed what I was saying? Somehow that seemed even worse.

And the General?

Daughtered four times running and, a Lt. Colonel closer to the end than the beginning, if I had never shown up, or been another girl I believe he would have done his duty as he had always done, and loved his family. But his wife bore him a son, and I could always tell that while he loved all his children equally, I was just a little more equal than others. Do I tell him he now has five daughters and that the son he thinks he has is really a thief, a liar, and an oath breaker? Or do I let an honorable man keep his dignity.

I felt a tightness in my gut, whether it was just a cramp from sitting in an odd position all night, emotional turmoil, hunger pains from missing breakfast or an actual symptom of my pregnancy it served to illustrate that I was not, in fact, alone in here. I was carrying a precious cargo and if I didn’t get my act together little bundle of joy would be exiting an infected orifice.

So… right! Objective defined and understood, target acquired. I grabbed the washcloth and went to work. Soap to towel, towel to body, rinse and repeat, when I had reached every bit that was reachable and abraded off the top layer of my new skin I stood up and opened the stopcock to let the bathwater empty out. I switched the water over to the shower function and let it both rinse me off and wet my now suddenly more substantial hair down.

The hair all wet felt like about ten pounds pulling down my scalp, an entirely novel experience for me. I grabbed the shampoo bottle to spit out a handful of goop, underestimated the amount of goop I would actually need and spread it around liberally over my hair. The whole process along with the rinsing off that followed took about ten minutes which was about 40 times longer than the quick 15 second rubdown I was used too. And I was starting to understand why Jess was always late to everything.

I shut the water off, and grabbed one of the towels off the rack. I started working it around my waist like usual when I realized I now had more territory to protect. I tried getting it to cover everything but if it was high enough to protect my breasts it left about an inch on the hips and you could see some of the hairs of my bush hanging out and if I lowered it the tops of my nipples poked out. I was sure I had seen this done before? Hopefully with a bigger towel, unless there was some sort of secret cotton technology girls were briefed in on and guys weren’t, that let them stretch it out on their whim. I solved the problem by laying eyes on a bathrobe helpfully enough supplied by the bed and breakfast. I put it on, the first sort of clothes I had ever put on this body. And since it covered everything important with enough material left for my own semi-puritanical sense of dignity I called it good and opened the door to the main room of the suite.

***

Heather had the old room service removed and the waiter was placing dinner on the table when I got out. If the waiter thought it odd to have two women alone sharing a meal in the honeymoon suit paid for by a conspicuously absent young man he thought nothing of it. Or at least, nothing past the twenty that Heather slipped him as he rolled his cart away.

“Here,” she said grabbing the towel I was rubbing my head with in what I assume was an unfeminine manner. “You need to wrap your head like a turban while we eat so that your hair doesn’t get all frizzy. Later on, I’ll show you how to use a blow drier.”

We sat down to eat, and I was grateful for the food. It had been almost a full day since I had last eaten and Jessica’s metabolism was already getting into overdrive. Heather had ordered us pasta with shrimp and red sauce and I plowed through my plate like an experienced trencherman much to Heathers dismay and then when I looked up from my clean plate to see her staring at me I assumed it was because she was done and finished the rest of her plate too. Dinner conversation was stilted, understandably so. How do you make polite conversation in such a situation. So Heather, ruined any lives lately? No Tommy and how are you enjoying those ovaries of yours?

“We need to talk about Jessica,” Heather interjected as I was finishing off desert. I guess we were giving up on being polite.

“Yes we do, do you know where she is?” I asked looking her hard in the eye.

“What? No, she didn’t tell me. What I mean is we have to help her.”

“Help HER?”

“YES!,” she bellowed back at me. “She obviously… she wasn’t thinking right, the pregnancy, finals, going to the academy, it’s easy to see how it could all be too much for her. The Jessica Scott I know would never have done this to you. We need to find her, him, and get him help.”

“Finding HER is a secondary issue, though hopefully before she shitcans my military career while she is unstable like this or hell, just by looking at the wrong guys butt! First we have to find a way of switching us back.”

“Jess said it was one way?” Heather said with a confused look on her professionally beautiful face.

“Yesterday I would have said body theft was impossible, and now we live in a world where magic is real. If it can be done once it can be done again, I just have to charge hard and find a way and…”

“What?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said as I raced toward the toilet in the bathroom and gave my shellfish dinner a burial at sea.

“Are you ok, are you, I mean, is Jess allergic to shellfish? I thought I remember her eating shrimp kebabs before, like lots of times.”

“Jess loves shrimp, and so do I.”

“Oh…”

“What?” I asked angrily brushing the hair that had fallen out of my towel and tried keeping it from getting further wet or dirty as I gave another heave.

“I think you are having morning sickness.” She answered hesitantly.

It was another sign that I was having a stressful day that I did not at first understand what she was talking about. When I did it embarrassed the hell out of me, but it also pissed me off.

“How the hell can I be having morning sickness, it’s four in the afternoon?!”