Swappers Chapter 11 (Patreon)

I awoke in pain. From every part of my body. It was like the Mormon tabernacle choir had all been dragged across a blacktop playground and they now not only sang out of tune, they sang out of tune LOUDLY.

Shutting my eyes against the choir, I called out to infinity. “Aspirin?”

I heard footsteps, and a few moments later Justin…well, Michelle opened the door.

“Here’s you go.” She gave me two pills and a glass of water.

I drank greedily.

“I take it you're in pain.”

I nodded, still shutting my eyes.

“I’m really sorry, Justin, I never imagined…”

Cracking one eye open I looked at him…her. “Never imagined that me being in a porn star body might result in a loan shark trying to cut my nipples off?”

He winced at the image. “Did they really try…”

“No, thank fuck!” Justin said.

Michelle sat down on the edge of the bed.

“So, what happens now?”

Michelle sighed. “Now, we talk, I suppose, when you’re ready.”

“Now’s as good a time as any, babe.”

My wife nodded, standing up and walking to the window. He looked out into the early morning darkness.

“You know, I wasn’t happy for a long time in our marriage, Justin.”

Justin nodded. “Neither of us were.”

Michelle looked out, placing her hand on the windowsill. “I just kept thinking it would get better, you would change, you would care to change it, but it just didn’t happen.”

“You were always trying to change me.”

She turned to him. “Don’t you see, Justin. I didn’t want to change you I wanted you to want to change. There’s a big difference.”

Justin shook his head. He could spend a million years in a woman’s body and never really understand women.

“But you didn’t.”

Justin frowned, feeling the bite of tears. God damn this girl’s body. “So it was all my fault then.”

Michelle rolled her eyes. “No, it wasn’t all your fault. I know I should have just been happy with the way things were, but I wasn’t, and it wasn’t fair to ask you to change, or to expect you to change…I just…”

“Weren’t happy.”

She nodded, tears streaming down her borrowed body’s face.

“And now you are.”

Michelle looked down at the floor. And gave a single nod.

“So, that’s the plan? You and Mindy run off with my body and live happily ever fucking after?”

“Well, no.” She stood up. “We would like to stay like this, probably with Mindy in here, but we both realize it isn’t fair to you to take your body unless you wanted to stay in Mindy.”

Justin glanced down at his tiny broken body. “So, you two run away happily ever fucking after, and I get to live as probably a sex worker, porn star, and prostitute paying off millions of dollars of Mindy’s debt?”

Michelle winced a bit at that. “It does sound bad, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll say!” Justin fumed. “This is your fault in the first place, I’d never even wanted to get into the whole body swapping thing. I did it for you!”

Michelle’s eyes watered up.

“Of course, now you’ll cry. And I’m the big bad guy, er, girl.”

“No, you’re right. I do see that now.” Michelle sat on the bed, pulling some tissue from the nightstand. “I should never have involved you.”

Justin’s temper deflated. He was in too much pain, and too tired to argue.

“What if we could figure out a way to get Mindy out of her debt? Would you be happy as her then?”

Justin considered that. It wasn’t really a bad life with the parties, men, Jessica…he had been enjoying himself up until the whole kidnapping incident.

He shrugged. “It’d be a lot to make go away. Unless you have some inheritance money I don’t know about.”

Michelle stood and had that look in her eye when she was scheming or thinking super hard about something. She stroked her hair at the back of her head, a Michelle action completed using Justin's own body.

“If we could just convince the police—”

“No Police,” Mindy said, also coming into the room.

“Hi baby,” Michelle said. “Sorry, I was just…”

“I wondered what happened to you.”

Justin looked up at Mindy. “Was there ever a daughter?”

Mindy frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“A daughter. You said you did this whole thing to meet your daughter.”

Mindy cast her eyes down and shook her head.

“So why did you do it then? Why me?”

Mindy’s accent crept back into her voice a bit. “I thought if I could find Leo’s address, which I did, I could interrupt his power somehow, which I also did, and maybe break in and…I don’t know, erase any data or records of my debt.”

Michelle frowned. “We could still do that!”

Justin barked a laugh, which sounded strange with his helium voice. “No. It might have worked at one point, but now that all this has happened Leo will never let me, I mean, Mindy go. He’s going to track me down and probably kill me, or worse.”

Mindy nodded. “Very true. He has a reputation.”

“So, what do we know that Leo and Stephen don’t know…” Mindy said, standing up.

“Well, he doesn’t know where you are. Or he’d have been here by now.”

“And you have no idea how thankful I am for that, darling,” Mindy said. “I thought for sure you wouldn’t be able to stand what they put you through.”

He shrugged. “I just thought maybe if they were doing it to me, they’d never do it to you. Didn’t seem right somehow that any man should inflict that kind of pain on a woman.”

Michelle kissed him on the cheek. “You have grown, Justin, see?”

Justin rolled his eyes. Even that small act hurt.

“So, he doesn’t know where I am, and he doesn’t know the location of our home.”

Justin noted the use of “our” but let it drop.

“What day is it?” Justin said. “I feel like they’ve been torturing me for months.”

“It’s Wednesday. Our official swap back is supposed to be tomorrow.”

Justin giggled. “If only you could swap into Leo and not into me, you could erase your own debt.”

“I think getting Leo to the swap club might be a bit difficult—” Michelle started.

“No, actually, he might have something there!” Mindy said, standing up. “Look, they don’t know where we live, but they definitely know about the swap, so where do you think they’ll be having their goons or whatever watching?”

“The penthouse, for sure…”

“And the swap club!” Michelle said.

“Exactly!”

Justin shrugged. “So, they nab us and kill us when we get to the swap club instead of nabbing us and killing us in front of your penthouse. So what?”

“What if someone close to Leo convinced him that not only does Mindy have the money, but if he swaps into Michelle’s body, he can retrieve it himself?”

“Why would he do that when he could just kidnap and torture Michelle?”

“It would have to be someone very close and very persuasive.”

Justin shook his head, an act that felt like his brain was sloshing together. “I just don’t see it happening. It’s far too risky a ploy.”

“Well, that’s because I know something you don’t know,” Mindy said.

“Which is?”

“Which is that Leo has a…pet? Consort? Wife? Named Tabbi. And Tabbi happens to be pregnant.”

Michelle looked at her. “Which means what?”

“Tabbi hates being pregnant, so frequents the swap club as often as she can to try to lure someone in to carry her baby for a few days/weeks/months.”

Justin frowned. “So, Michelle in Tabbi would convince Leo to swap into Michelle?”

“Or perhaps she can gain access to the files somehow and erase the debt. Do you think you can do that, Michelle?”

“Yes.”

“No one is going to swap into me with all this.” Justin held up his bandaged arm.

“And she never swaps into men.”

“So that means you would have to swap into her,” Michelle said.

“Actually, I think we need to unwind our swap first, then *you* can swap into Tabbi,” Mindy said, pointing at Michelle.

“But I’m not convincing at all. Why wouldn’t you want to do that, since this is your plan.”

Mindy gave a sad smile. “Because if it all goes belly up, we swap back, and they take me, as it should be.”

“But they’ll kill you!” Michelle said, fear in her eyes.

Mindy shrugged. “I’ve lived a wonderful life. And I’m exiting after meeting the love of it.”

“No!” Michelle ran to Mindy, wrapping her long arms around her. “I won’t let you do that.”

Justin watched them, tears falling from his eyes. “Neither would I.”

“I can’t let you do that, Justin.”

He sighed softly, rolling lying back, and pulling the covers over himself.  “And I simply refuse to allow a man to harm a woman. Not if I can do something about it, even if that something means I take it in your place.”