A Karmic Redistribution of Bodies

  

"To us!"

"To us, man!"

The jocks clinked beer glasses in a toast. They had just won another game and as much as I hate sports, I was devoted to my prey and so I watched them intently from across the room, invisible..

"I think we're gonna go all the way, man. We're gonna win state."

That buzz cut gorilla you see there is named Charles. Charles is a beast of a man. In more ways than you would assume. A dominant alpha male. A football player on his way to going pro in just a year from now. I know, I can see these things. Charles is also a bit of a cad. My client was one of his many conquests, and she has hired me for a rather delicate little operation. For you see, I deal in such matters.

Now, before I continue, please know that my services are not to be requested for any mere paltry excuse. When someone requests my services, it is because someone recommended them to me. At that juncture, I can then decide whether or not I personally want to interfere. However, I will say that a great deal of young people these days are confused as to what constitutes the need for help. If you don't want someone speaking at your campus because it hurts your feelings, don't come crying to me. I'll perform a memory spell that makes you forget you ever heard my name. I shit you not, a girl contacted me a few months ago because some jock she didn't like used a sexist hashtag she got offended by. I gave him a bigger cock, made her forget me, and upped her sexual libido and need to get fucked by about 500% and she went from being a feminist SJW to a campus slut who participates in group orgies with the same jocks she used to scream about. So don't waste my time, bub.

Charles, however, was right up my alley. He was a classic bad date. He tried to get her drunk. He got real drunk. He got pretty fresh with her and brought her back to his place and when she said no, he got even more fresh. She came home with a black eye and bruised ribs and contacted her coven right away. Never manhandle a witch. Charles was a perfect match for what I like to call a karmic redistribution. It's somewhat of a specialty with me.

Who am I? Sometimes I'm a slightly older looking than your average college aged student. Sometimes I’m in my 30’s. Sometimes I’m middle aged. You’ll forgive me if I don’t share much in common with the local alumni, though, seeing as I originally went to college in the 1920s. You'll never know I'm right behind you, listening to your conversations and taking note. I could be in your dorm room or your shower, or even your car. You would never know. I'm perfectly happy with the wealth I have accumulated and yes, I do know quite a bit of magic. There's a group of us, you see. We all keep in touch. It's a magician thing. We tend to have our cliques based on what we do. There's Mr. Cachimbo, Mr. April, about 7 of the genies that work at that Spells R Us place (all of them are white dudes named Kevin and we just tell them apart by the color of their suits. So there’s Red Kevin, Brown Kevin, White Kevin, Blue Kevin, Gray Kevin, Green Kevin and Cream Kevin), The Manager (not his real name but he doesn't give that out to just anyone), Jeannie the Genie, The Trickster Prince Kaululaau, Peter Hookline (formerly of a certain not-so-fictional island and yes, he grew up eventually. Moved to an island full of bikini babes and let some Indian kid take over his gig. He’s actually the CEO of our main office but that’s rather a long story), Detective Matt Clockwise of the Reality Police, and of course good ol' Zoltar. I'm not counting the entities. There's that one Halloween maze that is somehow sentient, and I don't even like to think about it because it's so unsettling. I’m not in the know for everything. How the fuck does that even happen? A living Halloween maze? Fuck that shit. That thing is just plain creepy, and it does NOT like to make friends. I’m the most recent inductee of The Male Transformation League, or MTL for short. There are others in the League, but those are the ones I’m friendly with.

Who am I? I don’t like for people to see me, or speak of me. I don’t like to interact with my victims much. But for the purposes of this particular account, you may call me Buster. My full name now is Mr. Buster Trader. Because I like to bust guys and…yeah it’s an obvious meaning when you think about it. 

Oh. And here comes the best part. Watch with me now. This is great stuff.. 

A strange look comes over Charles's face. It's that look I live for. Because you see, I don't always reveal myself. Others in the League like to. I like to remain quiet in the corners of restaurants, bars, classrooms..and wait. My work is simple and I don't plan on explaining anything. They don't know who I am and that is fine with me. I remain anonymous. I am in contact with people here and there, I ask who I can trust to keep my secrets and my spells tell me who won't go sharing things they shouldn't unless it's to find me another victim. It's my ultimate joy to punish and reward. I am but a humble minor trickster god. And tonight is a very special night. 

His face looks around him, disorientated. 

"Where am I? Who are you?" His voice is heavy, and he realizes that he might be dreaming. It feels like he’s dreaming. Certainly he must be dreaming. He doesn’t hang out in sports bars, after all. He has to wear glasses. He feels his face and notices he isn’t wearing them but his vision is fine.

"What do you mean, who am I? I'm your fucking wide receiver, dummy." The big college jock laughed it off but Charles face was still blurry from the ride. Generally, it's quite exhausting for a soul to transfer while in a conscious body. It's still a thrill for me after all these years. It takes research and effort to lead up to the Big Moment. The others in the League all have different methods for making the transition easier but I am a bit more cruel. I don't always give warning. Sometimes, I just yank them out of their lives and give them another. Charles's swollen, muscular arms steady him on the table as he stands and scoots out of the restaurant booth. He isn't sure if he's dreaming or not. His reality is new, but jarring. His body is not his. He is slowly realizing this. These are not his arms. It feels like a video game but video games don’t make you feel like your arms have absorbed some heavy sandbags and turned them into rock hard living embodiments of masculine grace.

"I was in my room. I know I was. I think...I don't know how I got here. Why do I sound weird? Am I sick?"

"Hey guys, is he kidding us?"

"I can't tell, Charles is usually confused more by tests than real life. Hey Charles, you feelin' all right buddy?" Three jocks looked at him. "Charles. CHARLES!" 

"Uh...are you talking to me? My name isn't Charles. Hey. My arms are so big! I have…I have muscles? I must be dreaming! Hey, waitaminute." 

From his perspective, he walks to the bathroom gingerly and steps into the bathroom not expecting to see the image of a man who for all intents and purposes looks like every magazine or internet stud he's ever jerked off to. An apex of masculine, rugged beauty. The man he could never be is now staring at him, mimicking his every expression, touching his face as he touches his face. 

"No. No way." he looks down at his chest, at his arms. Feels them for the first time. 

But just a few moments before...

Now meet my Chosen One. This is Billy. Billy is someone I followed for a while. I pick who I change carefully. Billy had a very hard life. Thrown out of his parents house for being gay. Lived with an aunt for a while and then off to college, on his own with no hope of moving in with anyone in his family ever again. The parents died in a car accident just a few months after throwing him out. A string of tragedies. He has no siblings. The aunt is poor. She can barely pay her bills and she told Billy she did her duty, but that if he wasn't a Christian trying to go through straight conversion, he couldn't stay with her. Oh, foolish woman. That was her loss, because now I have a soul perfect for my needs. Billy wavers between a normative amount of sadness given his life’s trials, but amazingly keeps up a positive attitude, in spite of having lost nearly everything.

"Ehhhh. I dunno. I think I might have to cast a fire spell."

"Another one? What are you, a Charmander?"

"Wrong game, and shut up. I keep rolling under 5! This game could not be any worse. I need more points here."

Young Billy is playing some kind of meticulously dreadful board game. I transported back and forth, watching him and watching my prey. I was able to find someone in Billy that had a connection with my client, the one who wound up unceremoniously left outside her dorm building on a park bench. That will be important later. It gets me off the hook of getting too deeply involved. Sometimes body swaps are best left a spectator sport, as it were.

"Dude, I'm so fucked. I can't get out of this fucking swamp!"

"So get a protection spell, duh."

A look comes over Billy's eyes. He spaces out for a second and then sits up on the bed.

"What the fuck? Where are my friends? Where am I? How did I get here?"

"Uh, is this part of your character?" a nerd asks him.

"Who the hell are you? Why does my voice sound so weird?" Billy's body walks only just a few steps before seeing himself in a wall mirror. He is confused at first. That can't be a mirror. It must be some kind of illusion trick. "What the hell is that?"

"Dude, are you in character? I'm seriously confused right now. Are we gaming or not?" another fatter nerd asks him.

"What the fuck are you talking about? I don't play fucking board games. I have way better things to do with my time. Oh my god. My arms! What happened to my arms??!" He is screeching now. His booming voice is gone. His voice is high pitched and tinged with panic. He grabs the door handle. This is a house he doesn't know. He sees a bathroom across the hall and walks in and sees himself in better light. The reflection doesn't lie.

"Oh my god. Oh my god! I think I'm having some kind of drug trip! THAT'S NOT ME!"

"Dude, you don't do drugs. That I know of. Did you take any drugs?" The fat nerd beside him asks.

"No. I never do drugs. Coach would fucking kill me if I did"

"The coach of what?" the first nerd asks.

"Of the football team, what else! And where the hell am I?"

"You're in my house," the fat nerd states, looking concerned.

"Where's your house?"

"Dude, are you okay?"

"NO! I'm...That's not me. That's not my reflection. Is this some kind of trick mirror? My arms! My chest! Oh my god, I am...I'm someone else. I was just sitting with my buds in the diner and now I'm here and I'm in some total nerd's body and I'm totally fucking puny WHAT THE FUCK! I worked out for ten years! Where are my muscles!? Where's my face!?"

"Okay, okay, I think I'm gonna drive you home. Or to…a hospital. I'm not sure which."

"I just need to get back to the restaurant. Can you take me to Happy's Diner? What’s your name again"

"I’m Guillermo and this is Phil. So you don't know who I am."

"I have no idea."

"Dude, if this is an amnesia spell you just invented that is totally going outside the rules," Phil says.

Charles's spirit looks out from Billy's face at the fat nerd in total disbelief and frustration.

***

I go back to the diner. I can't be in two places at once, after all. The jocks are freaking out because they think someone slipped their friend some drugs and they are thinking about taking him to the emergency room and two of them debate it, saying that it could get him thrown off the team if anyone thinks he took drugs voluntarily. One of the jocks (I don't know their names and I don't care. All I know is they are all hot, and that's really all I need to know) calls his pre-med girlfriend and they bring him out to the parking lot for some air. It's night, and there's a nice cool breeze. It's a warm autumn night. The jocks are telling Charles his name and he's taking it well. The one dude's girlfriend arrives and performs a check on him. For a bunch of partying assholes, they actually do look out for one another. Maybe I won't turn the rest of them into animals or animal hybrids for my amusement.

"I don't think he has any hallucinogens in his system. Whatever it was might have been just caused some dizziness." She lists off a few medications including anti-depressants that could cause him to temporarily zone out. "But my guess is Ambidextrin," she concludes. "It would explain the amnesia delusion or why he called himself by a different name. It's like he's dreaming. He has all the symptoms and his body checks out, it's not narcotics. Go home and sleep it off, Charles. I'm sorry this happened to you."

"Who do you think gave him Ambidextrin?"

"I don't fucking know! Let's just get him home so he remembers who he is and shit." The jocks consult each other and decide not to talk about this with anyone.

***

In the car again with the nerds.

"I'm not Billy. I told you. I'm Charles Strickland."

"You're actually not, and I still think I should take you to the hospital, dude. You're telling me you switched bodies with someone..and you don't really look like the football type. You don't know anything about football."

"Then how would I know..." Charles-as-Billy starts talking football stats. Starts talking about his own football stats and his team’s strategy over the past three years. Fat nerd Guillermo seems to be unnerved.

"Dude, maybe you have like, another personality or something."

"No, I just had my personality removed and my body stolen and I'm trying not to freak out. I'm too fucking mad to freak out! When I see me, I'm going to have a long talk with him. Me. You know what I mean. I have to fix this."

They get to the diner and no one's there. New Billy asks about the jocks and the waitress says one of them got sick and left with his friends, who took him home.

"Shit," says new Billy.

 

They drove in silence for a while and New Billy hoped this was all a hallucination. He hoped that he was lying in a hospital bed somewhere and this was all some kind of fucked up drug fueled nightmare.

Too bad for him...it wasn't.