The EveryMan Vial

 

 It was a warm day in early summer. Jason was at a Cubs game with his Uncle Ron; the tickets had been his uncle's graduation gift to him. "Hey Uncle Ron, do you think you could sneak me a beer?" "Keep dreaming kid! There's a security guard right up there, and there's no way she'd miss your baby-faced ass throwing back a Coors Light." Jason craned his neck and sure enough, a mean-looking woman in a security guard's uniform stood at the top of the stairs. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, but he could see her head slowly turning as she scanned the crowd around them. Jason slumped down in his seat and took a defeated sip from his diet cola. He made an off handed wish in his head. He wished the guard wouldn't think he looked underaged. Unfortunately for him, something heard his wish. There was a flash and a pop. And suddenly, without anyone moving, Ron was sitting in Jason's seat, and Jason in Ron's. Even stranger still, t...

 

When Tyler picked up that chintzy necklace from a tourist shop on the Venice boardwalk, he also took on a curse. During the next lunar eclipse, the necklace would steal Tyler's consciousness, his very essence, his soul , and seal it within itself; at the same moment, my own soul would be thrust into Tyler's vacant body and become its sole inhabitant. Two months after Tyler's vacation in California. By then, he had flown back home to Idaho, and resumed classes. It was Friday night, and Tyler's football team was playing the homecoming game. The team won. It had been an awesome game, the crowds in the bleachers were going wild, and he was feeling pumped. It was then that the eclipse happened. For him, it was painless. A sensation so sudden and so incomprehensible that Tyler didn't even have a chance to realize he was in danger. For me, however, it was exhilarating. Like falling from an airplane, traveling outside of my body was a terrible and awesome rush. But that wa...

"Is this my original body?" The man looks away from the wad of cash he was counting to throw you a mocking glance." He taps his cigarette on the small, glass ashtray sitting next to a pile of paperwork he brought out for you to fill out. You'd been given this man's number by a friend of yours. You'd told your friend that you felt trapped in your life but couldn't see a way out, and she'd told you that this man could you give you a new start. You assumed he was some sort of drug-dealer, or a passport falsifier, but after reaching out to him you learned that his services were a lot more unusual than what you had imagined. "Of course not! I'm in the business of switching bodies, why would I stay in my original body? You look the man up and down. He's of average stature, grossly overweight, and had deep wrinkles etched into his face. "Heh, don't give me that look, kid. Different bodies come with different skills, y'know? Differen...

 

The divorce had been hard on my dad.  Really hard; like, "cashed out all his vacation and sick days at work to wallow in sadness inside his new studio apartment for the next two months" hard. To be honest, I don’t understand why he was so dedicated to Mom, that woman is a huge bitch. I know I sound harsh, but she's just not a good person. The divorce could have been really good for Dad if he could just move on from her; but like I said, it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon. Dad was a good guy, and he really tried hard to put on a brave face on weekends when I slept at his place, but he was such a mess that there was no hiding it. I hated seeing him like that. Late one Saturday, as we were getting back from grabbing takeout for dinner, he said he needed to talk to me. I thought, 'Oh good, you're finally ready to talk about the divorce!' and got some words of support ready for my old man. Instead, he told me some insane story about a homeles...

 

 

 "It sucks that I still have to ride my bike everywhere despite being in Grandpa's body." 18-year-old Jason Clarkson is another victim of the recent rash of unexplained phenomena: people waking up in the wrong bodies. When Jason woke up in the morning of April 17th, he was not expecting to find his chest covered in hairs and his grandfather's calloused hands in front of him. Six weeks have passed since this incident and the Clarkson family has had to make major adjustments. Like other teenagers in similar situations, Jason has been excused from attending a public school and permitted to complete his degree through at-home lessons. 62-year old Phillip Clarkson is Jason's paternal grandfather and lived at home with his son and his family and has been retired for 6 years. Philip has been invited to come out of retirement and offered a position as head foreman of the factory that employed him for 50 years. At the time of writing Mr. Philip Clarkson was not available f...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I knew it... I fucking knew it!" The deep baritone of my voice echoed off the bathroom's walls. "I always said he'd look so handsome with short hair, and  everyone  agreed with me, but no! He just would  not  get a haircut." I gestured wildly, my large hands moving rapidly through the air. It was weird, seeing my gestures on my boyfriend's body. This was much more comfortable, however. The first few days after the switch I felt so wrong and uncomfortable in this body. My arms felt unwieldy, my legs felt like stilts, suddenly everything in the world was too small for hands! I felt like I was made of stone, hard, heavy, towering stone.  But that feeling passed. The more I moved, the more I walked in my boyfriend's place, the easier it became to move. Soon after all my mannerisms, all those little gestures and sounds that he  hates  his work-friends seeing, that he says are  so  embarrassing, they all came back. I mean, it's not like I could tu...