Allison woke up in Jezzer's body at night

Somewhere else in the hospital, in a room that smelled of antiseptic and old man, Allison’s consciousness stirred. It was a confused, murky awakening, a mind trapped in a foreign landscape.

She was dreaming. She had to be. In the dream, she was standing in front of her full-length mirror at home, but she wasn’t alone. A shadowy presence was behind her, its hands—rough and masculine—sliding over her shoulders, down her arms. She tried to turn, to see who it was, but she was frozen.

The hands didn’t feel threatening. They felt… possessive. Knowing. They cupped her small breasts through her thin sleep shirt, thumbs circling her nipples until they pebbled into hard points. A flush of warmth spread through her, a confusing mix of violation and arousal. This isn’t right, she thought, but her dream-body arched into the touch.

The hands moved down, over the flat plane of her stomach, slipping beneath the waistband of her pajama shorts. She gasped as a thick finger, calloused and unfamiliar, found her core. It was wet. So wet. The finger traced her slit, then pressed inside with a gentle insistence that made her knees weak.

Stop, her mind begged, but a low, hungry moan escaped her lips instead. The finger began to move, a slow, maddening rhythm that coiled a tight spring of pleasure deep within her. She was panting now, her head falling back against the solid chest of the unseen man. She could feel his breath on her neck, hot and ragged.

“That’s it, sweet thing,” a gruff, familiar voice whispered in her ear. It sounded like… but it couldn’t be.

The pleasure built, a terrifying, unstoppable wave. Her hips began to move of their own accord, matching the rhythm of the invading finger. She was close, so close to a climax that felt both alien and intensely hers.

Allison’s eyes snapped open.

Sweat coated her skin. Her heart was trying to punch its way out of her chest. She was lying in a hospital bed, but everything was wrong. The ceiling was too far away. The sheets felt coarse against skin that felt… loose. Thin. She lifted a hand to rub her face, and a gnarled, age-spotted hand entered her field of vision.

She stared at it, uncomprehending. She tried to sit up, and a deep, phlegmy cough rattled in her chest. Her chest felt hollow, bony. The room was dark, the only light coming from the moon outside the window. Nighttime. How long had she been out?

A profound, soul-deep tiredness pulled at her. The strange, intense dream was already fading, leaving behind only a ghost of sensation between her legs and a deep sense of unease. Her mind, foggy and battered, couldn’t process it. Couldn’t process the unfamiliar weight of the body she was in. It was all too much.

Oblivious, her eyes fluttered shut again, and she sank back into a troubled sleep, the body of Jezzer breathing steadily around her.

~

Sunlight. That was the next thing Tim knew. He blinked, his head throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. The sterile white of the room was overwhelming.

“Tim? Honey, you’re awake!”

His mother’s face swam into view, her eyes red-rimmed but smiling. His father stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder, his own expression one of profound relief.

“Wha…?” Tim’s voice was a dry croak.

“You gave us a real scare, son,” his father, Donald, said, his voice gruff with emotion. “You’ve been out for two days.”

“Two days?” Tim tried to sit up, the world tilting precariously. His mother, Jennifer, fluttered around him, adjusting pillows and pouring a glass of water.

“The doctors said it was the shock, combined with your own injuries,” she said, holding the straw to his lips. The water was cool and blissful. “They said you just needed to rest. We’ve been so worried.”

Then the memory hit him. The doctors. Kerry and Saunders. Their insane story. Brain transplant. Jezzer. Allison.

“Allison…” he breathed, the horror flooding back. “Is she…?”

His parents exchanged a somber look. “She’s alive, Tim,” his mother said gently, patting his hand. “That’s the important thing. She’s very badly hurt, but she’s a fighter. We have to hold onto that.”

Their words were kind, but they didn’t match what he’d been told. They spoke of injuries, of recovery. Not of… a swap.

“The doctors…” Tim started, confusion cutting through the fog. “They said… they told me something. Something impossible.”

Jennifer shook her head, a soft, dismissive sound. “You were very out of it, sweetie. You probably had a nightmare from the pain medication. It’s common.”

“A dream?” The hope was a fragile, desperate thing in his chest. It had felt like a nightmare. A sick, twisted nightmare. Maybe that’s all it was. Allison was hurt, but she was still Allison. Jezzer was just Jezzer. The relief was so potent it made him dizzy. “Yeah. Yeah, it must have been a dream.”

His parents stayed a while longer, fussing over him, until a nurse came in to check his vitals and suggested they let him rest and get cleaned up. They promised to be back soon, leaving him alone with the gnawing hope that everything was still right with the world.

Once they were gone, he pushed himself out of bed. His body felt stiff but whole. He needed a shower. He needed to wash the nightmare away.

He didn’t see Dr. Kerry watching from the nurses’ station, a chart in his hand. He didn’t see the look that passed between Kerry and the more stern Dr. Saunders as he disappeared into the bathroom.

“He believes it was a dream,” Kerry murmured, a note of satisfaction in his voice.

Saunders’ jaw was tight. “It buys us time. But not much. We need to proceed with the next phase. We need to observe the interaction between the consciousness and its new vessel without the subject’s own psyche fighting it. We need to test its… stability.”

“The old man in the girl is certainly stable,” Kerry said, a strange, almost hungry glint in his eye. “More than stable. He’s thriving. It’s the other subject I’m concerned about. The girl in the old man. She’s still dormant. We need to… stimulate a response. See what happens when the new vessel is awakened fully.”

“Agreed,” Saunders said, his gaze drifting down the hall toward the room where Allison’s mind slept in a dying shell. “We have to find the solution if it's possible.”