Chapter 1

Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps, cross-eyed crickets and bow-legged ants! I'm here before you, because I'm not behind you, to tell you something I know nothing about.

Actually, that's not true. Actually, I know all about what happened to Carly and Craig Austin. But it's so weird, that I'm still a little freaked out by it all. Hence my somewhat odd opening. But it's appropriate, because the whole story is odd. Except that "odd" doesn't cover it at all. They haven't invented an adjective that's appropriate for what happened to my nephew and niece.

I was sworn to secrecy when I learned of it, but I'll be honest. Keeping this in any longer would drive me crazy. So I've changed the names, and the location, and there's no way you'll ever find out who they really are.

Besides, in one sense, the public has a right to know. I mean, after all, if it happened to Carly and Craig, it could happen to anybody. Including you!

But maybe only if you have a twin.

I don't know. I've thought about this until my brain hurts.

Why don't I just tell you what I know, and maybe you can come up with an explanation that makes more sense than the one we came up with.

It all started while the Austin family was on vacation in Grand Teton National Park. They were hiking, as a family. While it doesn't matter, in terms of the seminal event that changed their lives, the family included Fran, who is my sister, and Jack, who was my best friend in college. That's how he met Fran, when she came to my graduation. They fell hard for each other, got married and had two kids, twins, named Carly and Craig. And that's all the background you really need to know, except that all of them were as normal as the day is long.

I'm rushing. Sorry. I guess I should probably tell you more about the twins, since what happened, happened to them, and that's what I'm going to tell you about.

As I said, they were normal. They were fraternal twins, of course. They were seventeen, when ... the incident ... happened. Craig wasn't on any organized sports teams, but he loved sports and played whatever kind of games he could get others to play. That included sand lot baseball, racket ball, basketball, tennis, pretty much anything that let him explosively use the muscles he had carefully cultivated in the gym. He was a little vain about those muscles, to be truthful. But he worked hard building them and defining them, so I guess he had a right to be proud. He was taller than Carly by probably three inches. He was one of those boys who chafed when the weather was bad and he couldn't go out and burn off the endless supply of energy he seemed to have. You never saw him curled up in a chair, reading a book, unless it was homework and he was required to do that sort of thing.

Carly was shorter, as I said, and not so muscled as her brother. She ran, but that was about it, in terms of physical fitness. That said, she could run Craig into the ground. He was actually the one who got her started, because he kept pestering her to go out with him on long runs. It turned out she loved it, and eventually she started training to run a marathon. When Craig eventually dropped out, shaking his head in amazement, it was at the seven mile mark.

If you saw Craig, the first thing you might think was, "Now there is a guy who spends a lot of time in the weightlifting room at the gym." On the other hand, if you saw Carly, the first thing you wouldn't think was, "Now there is a girl who is so skinny she must be a runner."

You wouldn't think that because she didn't look like your average marathoner. She had curves out the ass. Actually, part of those curves was her ass. Looking at her from the back, at the pool, where clothes didn't cover her up, you saw the classic hour glass figure of a grown woman. From the side, you saw a flat plane from her feet up past her abdomen, until you reached her chest, where mountains grew. If you could take your eyes off those mountains, and looked at her face, you weren't disappointed that you'd stopped looking at her breasts. She was a beautiful young woman, with auburn hair that came clear down to her shoulder blades, and what they call a heart-shaped face, in which sat startling, green eyes.

Craig had the same eyes. And I suppose he was handsome. Being a guy, I'm not sure what constitutes "handsome." I can do "beauty" all day long, but it feels a little gay to apply that to a guy, you know? They were bright, intelligent, got good grades, and were as normal as pie. He was popular with the girls, and she was chased after by all the guys.

Anyway, that's a cursory description of them. That's the basics.

As I said, they were on vacation, and that was normal too. They went somewhere every summer and spent a week camping and hiking. Jack called it "recharging." Fran was just crazy about Jack. She was in pretty good shape too, considering she'd had two kids. But she drove a UPS truck, and got lots of exercise, so hiking wasn't a big challenge for her.

They had been at the park for three days, and had just come back from hiking the trail that went through Garnet Canyon to The Lower Saddle, below the Grand Teton itself. It was a strenuous all day trip, and they were all tired. For that reason, Jack and Fran went to bed early. Or maybe they wanted to get frisky before the kids came to bed. They were all sleeping in one tent.

The kids, of course, being in a little better shape than their parents, or at least younger, stayed up, roasting marshmallows and talking. When they told me what happened, they couldn't remember what they talked about, but it probably doesn't matter. They brought lawn chairs with them when they camped, so they didn't have to sit on the ground or improvised seats.

Suddenly, they were surrounded by a bright light. They described it as if ten or fifteen spotlights had all centered on them at the same time. There was no sound, and they were completely blinded by the light.

The next thing either of them remembered was waking up, still sitting by the camp fire, which was now only ashes. It was early morning. Dew covered everything around them, but neither of them was damp in any way. They weren't chilled, even though they felt the chill immediately, as they woke. They woke at the same time.

The next part is somewhat garbled. You'll understand why in a moment. And, because two people are involved, each telling his or her own story, things are going to shift back and forth between them a bit. I'll try not to jiggle you too much, but be patient. The twins were jiggled a hell of a lot more than you'll be by what happened to them. So count your blessings.

I'll start with Carly.

When she woke, she felt confused. Not the normal kind of confusion we all feel now and then when we transition from being asleep to being awake. This was more like the world-looked-a-little-tilted type of confusion. As her eyes moved around, colors looked a little different. The cooler, for instance. It was blue, but it was a slightly different shade of blue than it had been the night before, when she got the marshmallows out of it.

The next thing she noticed was that her head was lying to the right, on her shoulder. Except it felt wrong, somehow. Her shoulder didn't feel as bony as it normally was. And her head felt too heavy. She thought about all this as she raised her head and looked around. This was when things got weird.

She saw herself sitting beside her, right where she'd been sitting the night before.

She blinked, but the image remained right there. Her image was moving, as if it had just awakened too.

She said, "What?"

Her voice sounded wrong. It felt wrong.

She leaned forward and stood up, pushing herself out of the chair with her hands on the arm rests. Her body was off balance. She almost fell into the ashes of the fire. She froze, trying to get control back, or at least the feel of control and, in the process, looked down. She saw thick, muscled legs and a pair of Nike running shoes.

Except they weren't her legs, and they weren't her shoes.

They were Craig's.

She heard a female voice, next to her say, "What the fuck!" and turned to look at the impossible image of what she could only describe as "herself." She saw her lips move, and, again, heard a female voice say, "What the fuck?!"

I have to take a second to remind you that, while we all "hear" ourselves speak whenever we do it, what issues from our mouths doesn't sound quite like what we hear. What we hear is transmitted through the bones in our skull, for the most part. What others hear is processed through their ears. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever listened to a recording of your voice. It doesn't sound like you. Not to you. But to others, it sounds completely normal. That's why Carly said she heard "a female voice." It was, as it turned out, her voice. She just didn't recognize it as hers. Not at that time.

As odd as it might sound, what bothered her in that few seconds, was that this spitting image of her had used the word "fuck" so casually. She didn't bandy that word around. In fact, she tried not to curse at all. Craig did it all the time, and she thought it made him sound coarse and uneducated. Perhaps it was that feeling that caused her to speak herself.

"Don't curse," she admonished her image.

What she heard, vibrating through the bones of her skull, was not her voice.

It was too deep.

Much too deep.

That was what caused her to lift her hand and look at it.

It wasn't her hand.

It was a male hand, attached to a male arm, a muscled male arm. She leaned over and frantically looked at the rest of her body.

It was also a male body, wearing Craig's T shirt and running shorts.

What's more, there was a huge bulge in the front of the shorts.

Those muscular, big, male hands went to the elastic waistband of the shorts and pulled it outwards.

She found herself staring at an erect, undeniably male, human penis.

That was when she screamed.

When Craig woke up, he felt too light. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing was when he moved his head, and found that, somehow, overnight, his hair had grown a foot or two. That was bad enough, but when he looked down at all that hair, spilling down off his shoulder onto his chest, he saw what looked for all the world like ... breasts!

He lifted his hands to feel them, and saw slim, beautiful fingers. The nails had pink fingernail polish on them, and were long and pointed. They continued, even as he goggled, to cup, squeeze and move the bulges on his chest around.

He could feel those hands. What freaked him out the most, though, was when, perhaps unconsciously, his male mind did what his male body liked to do whenever possible. It moved those fingers to find, and then squeeze the area where, in theory, nipples might be.

And when he did, the electric sensation that shot from the tips of ... somehow his breasts ... streaked to his groin.

"What the fuck?!" he said.

Except that it wasn't his voice. It was a girl's voice.

He got it first. He realized that, somehow, overnight, he had become a girl.

"What the fuck?!" he gasped.

He stood, and the message his brain sent to his legs was calculated to lift his normal 180 pounds out of the chair. Except his new body only weighed 115 pounds, and his feet left the ground. It was aided by a male yell, right next to him. It was a sort of "Auuuugh!" that croaked, rather than issued smoothly from the throat.

In a panic, he turned to see who had yelled, and things got ultimately weird.

He stared at himself, standing up and almost falling into the fire.

"What's going on out there?" came a plaintive call from inside the family tent.

Craig looked at the tent. He didn't have enough information yet. Something was terribly wrong. He was pretty sure he was hallucinating, for some reason. But he knew he needed help. He didn't like this hallucination.

"I think I'm sick," he called out.

Again, it wasn't his voice. In the hallucination, when he spoke, it was with the voice of whoever's body he found himself in. A female body! This was one weird dream.

"What's wrong?" That was his mother's voice.

"I think I'm having a bad dream," he said, listening closely to his voice.

"Why did Craig yell?" asked his mother.

"I told you," he said. "I think I'm having a nightmare or something."

"Not you, Carly," said his mother's voice. "I heard Craig yell. What's going on out there?"

That was the first inkling that Craig had that the body he found himself in ... was his sister's body.

Carly was so shocked by the sound of the "scream" she'd produced that she just froze in place. She'd expected, on some unconscious level, to hear a high-pitched squealing kind of noise. You know what I'm talking about. Everybody has heard girls scream. Under the right circumstances, it can sound a lot like a pack of coyotes howling. Or the other way around. Whatever.

But what she heard was like the sound a scared boy might produce.

"What's going on out there?" came a plaintive call from inside the family tent.

She looked over at "herself." That image called out, "I think I'm sick."

"What's wrong?" That was her mother's voice.

She watched herself say, "I think I'm having a bad dream."

"Why did Craig yell?" asked his mother.

That caused her to think about where Craig was. She looked around as her doppelganger said, "I told you. I think I'm having a nightmare or something."

"Not you, Carly," said her mother's voice. "I heard Craig yell. What's going on out there?"

She looked at her hands again. The left one was wearing Craig's favorite ring, a silver skull that she thought was creepy.

She remembered the bright light.

While Craig was realizing he was in his sister's body, his sister was realizing that she was in her brother's body, and that somehow, that bright, white light was responsible for it.

She looked over at her body.

"Craig?" she said, with her male voice ... Craig's voice?

He stared at her.

"Who the fuck are you?" he asked.

"What is going on out there?" There was rustling in the tent.

"I think I'm ... you," she said. "And I think you're ... me."

He looked at his hands and arms. His hands went to her breasts, the ones he suddenly had.

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