Kalvin awakes as young Nikki

The transition from the quiet, suffocating stillness of his bedroom to the jarring reality of his new existence was a violent shock to his system.

Kalvin woke not to the warmth of his wife’s body, but to the sharp, thin chill of a morning breeze through an open window. The scent of vanilla shampoo—the scent that usually anchored him in his adulthood—was gone. In its place was the smell of old wood, lavender-scented laundry detergent, and the faint, dusty aroma of a suburban bedroom in the late nineties.

He sat up with a gasp, but the movement felt… different. His limbs didn't move with the heavy, seasoned weight of a man in his thirties. They were lighter, more elastic. When he swung his legs over the side of the bed, there was no creak in his knees, no dull ache in his lower back.

Panic lancing through him, he scrambled toward the full-length mirror bolted to the closet door. He expected to see his twenty-year-old self—the lean, somewhat awkward college student he had just been in his dream/memory.

Instead, he froze.

The reflection staring back at him was not a man.

He looked down at his hands first. They were smaller, softer, with delicate fingers and manicured nails. He pulled the fabric of the oversized pajama top higher, and his breath hitched into a silent scream. His chest was much larger than he expected—the familiar, heavy weight of Nikki's curves now belonged to him. He moved his hand tentatively, tracing the soft slope of her waist and the flare of her hips.

He wasn't Kalvin in an old dorm room. He was in a bedroom that looked remarkably like the one he had just left, but it was decorated with posters and books from decades ago. He was inhabiting the body of eighteen-year-old Nikki.

"This is impossible," he whispered. The voice that came out was her voice—soft, melodic, and slightly higher than his own.