A Most Regretful Wish (Patreon)

This 2,248 word story was inspired by a six-word prompt posted on the Discord server by CornyCartoonist, who suggested "he shouldn't have made that wish". I hope you all enjoy the end result, and remember to keep an eye on the Discord for the next time I ask for your six-word ideas!

Cole sat alone in his office, lamenting the unmarked pile of essays before him. Why oh why had he chosen a career as a college professor? Oh yes, that was right. He hadn’t. He’d had the position thrust upon him, not by some pushy parent or intimidating authority figure, but by his own Ethics professor. The man who had tricked him into switching their bodies. An ethics professor doing something unethical, like plotting to steal the body of one of the star lacrosse players on campus? The irony wasn’t exactly lost on Cole. He’d probably laugh if he wasn’t still so frustrated at how the situation had developed, and how he still carried around the shame for his part in it.

Even though the events took place some eight months earlier, Cole could still remember them as if they had only taken place the day previously. In fact the events still regularly replayed themselves in his nightmares, a cruel reminder of how his hotheaded foolishness had been the ultimate cause of his downfall. The fleeting reminder prompted a storm to gather in Cole’s mind and he dropped his pen to the desk, well aware of the fact he’d get no more work done while his tempers were flaring. To be fair, he’d been in need of a break. Eight months on and he still hadn’t built up the patience to read through and annotate thirty essays for each of his classes, even if his little exchange with the real Professor Martinsen had been kind enough to grant him the knowledge to maintain his lecturing position. Unfortunately even adopting those subject-specific smarts didn’t make essay-marking any less mind-numbing.

Before he had been Gareth Martinsen, Professor of Ethics at Bryce University, he had been Cole Elliot, a twenty year old fraternity brother and the star of the school’s championship-winning lacrosse team. He had been an athlete since his youth and enjoyed a modest amount of popularity in high school, even to the extent of being named Prom King. He’d always liked to think he was a pretty easy-going guy, but in hindsight Cole knew that he had been rash and obnoxious at many points during his pre-switch life. For a while after that swap he’d wondered whether it was the result of karma finally catching up with him, but he sincerely didn’t think there was anything he’d ever done that would deserve such a severe punishment. His worst crime was only being something of a self-absorbed jock!

Cole had adjusted to university life with ease. None of his classes were all that difficult and he relished the opportunity to play his favourite sport at a more challenging level. He was popular with the ladies, made good friends with the guys, and altogether was loving life. His only form of opposition came from the Ethics Professor, who continually gave Cole failing grades on his essays no matter how hard he worked on researching and writing them. There was no logical reason for him to be achieving the lowest grades in the class - he’d even had one of the star pupils check over his essay for him and they’d confirmed that they couldn’t see why he’d been failed either - and as such the only logical explanation could be that the professor had some sort of personal vendetta against the college athlete. Burning with outrage, Cole was determined to confront the man and get to the bottom of the issue. It was that fiery passion that had led him to the door of the very office he now spent most of his days in for the fateful moment that would continue to haunt his every moment since.

He had marched into the office as a man on a mission and slammed his collection of essays down onto the desk, none of them showcasing a grade any higher than an ‘E’. Was it a bold entrance for someone with lesser authority than a seasoned professor at a prestigious university? Absolutely, but Cole wasn’t exactly in his right mind at that exact moment. He wanted the justice he deserved, and to be recognised for the hard work he put in! Sure, maybe he didn’t care about his classes as much as he cared about putting on a show out on the lacrosse field, but he wasn’t some total jock slacker and he resented being treated as such.

Cole had a number of theories as to why Professor Martinsen seemed to have a grudge against him. Perhaps the professor had been bullied by jocks in his youth and now took out his childhood issues on any jock that took his class, or maybe he’d wanted to play lacrosse himself but had simply not been good enough and now resented those who got to live his teenage dream. More scandalous considerations included the forty-something unmarried man simply resenting the college jock for his good looks and raw sex appeal, or it could even be that the professor had developed intense desires towards him and was fighting back against them by punishing Cole! Truthfully he didn’t even care which of those possibilities was the truth, or if it was something else entirely, he just wanted the respect that he deserved and a grade that properly reflected his efforts. It was an outrage he hadn’t already received as such!

Despite Cole having entered the room with the explosive force of a meteor, the professor had retained his stone-faced expression throughout the college jock’s opening tirade. That only served to make Cole irate, as it was the same look he received whenever he dared to attempt to contribute in class. The professor’s face radiated his sheer level of distaste for the younger man - how thoroughly unimpressed he was by the other beings - and that got right under Cole’s skin. He wasn’t used to being disregarded in such a manner and it pissed him the hell off! It was a downright injustice and he simply wouldn’t stand for it any longer.

“You’re a mediocre student at best, and an entitled little prick to boot,” began Martinsen’s eventual response, the words being said with a tone of boredom. “I know your type, Mr Elliot. You can’t coast by on athletic talent forever. Life won’t always be so easy.” Each progressive word was a puncture wound and served to send the college athlete further into a frenzy.

“Easy?!” Cole practically roared, deeply offended by the implication. He didn’t care that he was speaking to somebody who could feasibly get him kicked out of the school with relative ease, it was in his nature to fight back against ridiculous claims. If anything, it only proved just how out of touch the old man was! “You think my life is easy? I’m carrying the goddamn lacrosse team on my shoulders and bringing more money into this school through sponsors then you’re sucking out of it with your inflated paycheck, when you evidently can’t even mark a goddamn essay fairly without your sad old man bias getting in the way!”

Anybody else might have responded to Cole’s fiery display with an outraged outburst of their own, but that wasn’t the kind of person Professor Martinsen was. Instead he merely deigned to raise his eyebrows while his lips curled into the slightest hint of a sneer. “Forgive me if I don’t weep over how difficult your life must be--” he began, but Cole had heard enough.

“I wish you knew how difficult it really is to be me!” the college athlete thundered, shaking with indignation, while unwittingly committing the biggest mistake of his life.

His latest explosion finally earned a more prominent response from the offending professor, but the slasher smile that spread across the older man’s face was not what Cole had been anticipating. The unsettling visage prompted something deep within Cole to twist and contort, but his attention was soon snatched away once again, this time by a small orb that resided on the professor’s desk. He had barely given it half a second’s glance previously, but now it had captured his attention due to the fact that its pale white shell had become illuminated from within. The light pulsated and grew ever brighter and Cole realised in terror that he was unable to look away from it, even as the light grew to such extreme levels that he was blinded by its glow.

The next sensation Cole experienced was rather unlike anything he had encountered before. He’d taken quite a few tough hits while playing lacrosse over the years, but none of them matched the strange feeling he was enduring in that moment. It was as if a hand had reached right down his throat to grab at his consciousness and was pulling it forcibly out of him without any regard for his well-being. He felt like he was choking and his skull throbbed with pain, but those miserable ailments were blissfully momentary, and were replaced by a sudden lightness of being. He felt as if he was a mere thought: impossibly weightless while also destructively heavy, a world of contradictions without any sense of clarity.

In actuality, what Cole was experiencing was his very being getting plucked out of his body, passing through the wishing orb on the professor’s desk and then getting deposited into its new destination. To Cole, it felt as if it lasted hours. In actuality, it was little more than ten seconds. Just ten seconds and his entire life had changed forever. That was still so bewildering to contemplate, even eight months on, let alone during the immediate aftermath.

Terror seized Cole’s mind as he stared across the desk at his own body, rolling its shoulders and grinning with pride, as if he’d just won a championship. “No, no, no,” the real Cole muttered in a voice was not his own and yet still depressingly familiar. He cast his gaze down to look at the body he had transferred into: the soft gut, the time-weathered hands, the unimpressive bulge. While Professor Martinsen relished in his new youth, Cole was terrified by the body he now possessed that was more than twice his own age! “What did you--” he started, flinching at hearing the other man’s voice again, and stopping when his brain caught up to the chain of events. “The wish!” He fixed his gaze on the small white orb on the desk, no longer emanating any light. “I wish to be myself again!” No light. No uncomfortable pulling sensation. No switching back. “I wish to undo this!” Nothing. “I wish I was Cole Elliot!” The orb remained as dull as ever.

Across from him, his replacement had only laughed, enjoying the college athlete’s utter despair. “Those orbs are only good for one use per person,” he explained finally. “Impossibly rare and very expensive, as you can imagine. I made my use to get tenure at a prestigious university, so I had to trick you into making that wish for me. I must say, didn’t expect it would be quite so easy!” The words were a punch to the gut for Cole. He had walked right into the other’s trap and he was furious as a result, but just as much at himself than at the duplicitous professor. “Then again, now that I’ve told you about its power, there’s nothing stopping you from tricking one of your poor classmates into doing the same, so--”

Cole realized a second too late what the other was planning to do. Even as he began to reach out towards the orb, his (now former) professor had already snatched it from the desk and hurtled it towards the wall, where the fragile material smashed into pieces, and with it, so did Cole’s hopes of escaping his fate. A croak of a sob escaped his lips as the miserable reality began to sink in. He was trapped as a middle-aged man, forced to watch somebody who he loathed at the deepest level live out the rest of the life that should have been his!

The chiming of the grandfather clock in his office snapped Cole out of the nightmarish memory. He had revisited that fateful encounter no less than a thousand times since it had first happened and while his anger still burned hot as a result of it, a depressing acceptance had slowly begun to settle within him. There was no denying or escaping the life he now led, that of Professor Gareth Martinsen. Sure, it still stung to see his own face smirking back at him during his lectures, and hearing some of his fellow faculty members sing the praises of the lacrosse star who was helping elevate the reputation of their school, and especially when he overheard the female members of his class giggling and sharing tales of their nights with “Cole Elliot”, who was supposedly the best lover on campus, but he knew there was ultimately nothing he could do but learn to live with his regrets.

Careful not to get lost in the painful memories once again, Cole turned his attention back to the stack of essays before him. As much as he wished he could ignore them for longer, they weren’t going to mark themselves! He’d just have to make himself a stiff cup of coffee and get on with it, lest he get too far behind. Of course, as luck would have it, the next assignment to mark just happened to be labelled with the name Cole Elliot...