Jonny lands.

Jonny could discern figures below for a few seconds before he felt himself slam into the earth, or something very near it. Moments after, he felt solid again—like having a body once more. His eyes opened. Above him, he could see a vast and beautiful sky. Birds flew above—except they actually didn’t. As Jonny lay on the ground, he could see birds above him, wings extended as they indeed had to be, but the birds did not seem to move. “Wha—“ Jonny began, only to notice a voice foreign to him. He blinked, reopening his eyes only to see that the birds above him were still unmoving against all odds.

Jonny slowly sat up. He could feel a couple pig-tails hanging down from his head. He looked about. Some distance off was a grave-yard with a big marble or perhaps granite vault. Headstones sat ornately on the ground for some distance around him. There was precisely no breeze. No leaves rustled. No cars drove slowly and respectfully by. There were cars nearby, but they too were still.

Jonny looked down at himself. He saw a dress that hung down from straps perched upon his shoulders. Jonny stood slowly. He held up his hands—he was black, or at least his skin was somewhat dark. The dress was plenty of evidence that he was a woman—a girl, really. There were no breasts, no curves, or anything like that. Jonny’s new vessel was short, probably no more than four and a half feet tall, if that. “What the hel—“ he began as he looked about and saw that nearby was a sizeable group of people in black suits and dresses. It was a funeral or something of the sort. People had tissues and looked sad, though again they were also frozen. Jonny walked toward them to try to figure out what the hell was going on.

It was spooky, really. Jonny felt as though he had been caught in the web of a spider that was just toying with him. He did not even know what body he was in; he sure hadn’t picked it. Hadn’t his captor promised him he would be stuck inside Leah’s body anyway? What the hell was going on?

“There’s my little princess!” came a voice that was scarily familiar. Jonny spun around to view the source. Lena Mesmera walked slowly and sexily toward Jonny—her curvy body barely contained by a tight-fitting corset. Her chest jiggled as she walked. “You!” Jonny yelled, though his young body’s child-like voice made the accusation less than threatening. “Yes, me my lovely little Jonny, or Leah, as you soon will be,” Mesmera said as she came to a stop a couple feet away from Jonny. “What the fuck do you want?!” Jonny demanded. Lena gave a look of mock pain. “Oh don’t you like our game? I don’t blame you for now . . . fun starts soon, though,” she said with a smile.

“Fuck you!” Jonny yelled. “That’s hardly fitting language for a young lady like you, Leah,” Lena said with an arrogant smile. Jonny paused and looked down at himself. “That’s right,” she said, “it may not be quite what you possessed, but that’s the very same body—just younger,” Lena said. “What is this?!” Jonny demanded, engulfed by rage in his tiny body. “It’s our game, honey,” Lena said.

She paused for a minute as if to ponder her next words. “Let me explain,” Lena began, “what you did to Leah is really quite cruel. Think about it—you took her life. You ripped her away from her family. You crawled inside her, tore her own mind apart, and **** something else in just to make her a pawn. That seemed unfair to me, hence our game,” Lena said. “I decided that, if you want to earn that body, you have to give Leah Brady some of the experiences she never got. Some you ripped from her—others she just had to miss.”

“I still don’t know what you mean,” Jonny said angrily. “Let’s make it simple,” Lena said, “You are Leah Brady, age five. It’s 1998, and this is a memorial for your father, who died three years ago. This is an annual occasion in which your body’s family gets together to remember William Brady, taken too soon by a **** lord’s stray bullet. This is Leah’s earliest memory, so it seemed an appropriate place to start you off. You’ll make your way through this experience and live it as Leah did. Then you’ll be shuttled, invited, or maybe **** to the next one. It could be years ahead or only days or months. In each case, you will be stuck inside Leah’s body to live some experience that Leah missed as a child. If you want to live her life, you owe it to live the missed parts for her. It could be a senior prom. It could be trying out for the swim team. It could be meeting the man of her dreams of feeling the beautiful kick of a child inside your pregnant belly—an experience Leah is never likely to experience for herself if you stay inside her. We’ll see if you can survive the game with your own mind intact, Jonny, or if you’ll come out a new woman—eager to use those powers and those big, bouncing tits to help me take down my dear ‘ol Daddy,” Lena said with a smile. “And if you end up with me, I’ll get Selina and Lisa too,” she said with a smile.

Jonny’s mind swam with all that might lay before him. “Have fun, little one,” Lena said as she disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.