Two days. Gone.

I stared at the girl in the mirror, my mind clawing for any fragment of memory from the void between then and now. What had I done? Where had I been? The harder I searched, the more complete the emptiness became.

Think, Alan... Think.

Nothing. Just this yawning gap where forty-eight hours should have been. No dreams, no flashes, no half-remembered conversations or glimpses of sunlight through windows. Just… absence.

The girl's lips moved as mine did, mouthing silent words I couldn't hear. Her eyes held the same desperate confusion I felt clawing at my chest. I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to squeeze something, anything, from the blank space in my skull.

Had I eaten? Slept? Left the apartment? The bottles on the coffee table suggested I'd been here, but doing what? Drinking myself into a two-day blackout? That didn't feel right either. I'd had plenty of hangovers in my time, but never anything like this. Never this complete erasure.

The void felt surgical. Clean. Like someone had taken a scalpel to my memory and carved out exactly what they needed.

I looked again at my hands, still pressed against my head. They trembled slightly, but not from alcohol withdrawal. Something deeper. Something that made my bones feel hollow.

What happened to me?

There was a vague memory of her. The woman. Drunk, swaying against that wall on the side street. I'd invited her in. After that... blur. Everything erased... just like my job had been. Just like my marriage. Now my life.

I lifted my hands, staring at the fingers in the mirror. These weren't my hands. Too small, too delicate. The knuckles were barely visible beneath smooth skin that had never known the calluses from forty-four years of living. I flexed them experimentally, watching her… me, mirror the movement with perfect precision.

My face. Christ, my face.

I reached up, fingertips tracing the curve of my cheek. Soft. No trace of stubble, no weathered lines carved by decades of disappointment and cynicism. The jawline was different too: narrower, more delicate. My nose had changed; it was smaller, with a slight upturn that belonged to someone who'd never broken it falling off a bike at age twelve.

The eyes were the worst part. Still recognizably mine somehow but set in this foreign face, framed by lashes I'd never possessed. When I blinked, she blinked. When I opened my mouth in silent horror, hers gaped too.

I pressed my palms against my temples, feeling the alien smoothness of my forehead. No deep furrows from years of frowning at spreadsheets. No crow's feet from squinting at computer screens. Just unmarked skin stretched over bones that had somehow reshuffled themselves into someone else's form.

My body beneath the rumpled clothes felt different too. Lighter, yes, but also redistributed. I could feel it in the way my T-shirt hung loose around my shoulders, the way my boxers sagged at the waist. Everything had contracted, condensed, reformed into proportions that made no biological sense.

The woman in the mirror traced her collarbone with one finger, following my movement. Her neck was longer than mine had been, more graceful. Even her posture was different. Straighter somehow, as if this new skeleton had been assembled with better engineering.

I thought of AI replacing me at work. Clean, efficient, no messy human complications. Was this the same? Some cosmic algorithm deciding I needed upgrading? Trading in my worn-out middle-aged model for something sleeker, more aesthetically pleasing?

The absurdity of it made me laugh, a sound that came out higher, breathier than my voice had any right to be. In the mirror, the girl laughed too, but there was no humor in her eyes: just the same bewildered terror I felt clawing at my chest.

"What the hell..."

The words came out as a whisper, but they weren't mine. Not my voice. High, breathy, girlish in a way that made my chest constrict with panic. The sound hung in the bathroom air like an accusation.

I clamped my hands over my mouth, eyes wide in the mirror. The girl did the same, her small fingers pressed against lips that moved in perfect synchronization with mine.

"No, no, no," I muttered through my palms, but even muffled, the voice was wrong. All wrong. Pitched higher than it should be, carrying a melodic quality that belonged to someone half my age.

I dropped my hands and tried again, deliberately pitching my voice lower. "This isn't real."

But it came out soft, feminine, with an upward inflection that made it sound like a question rather than a statement. The girl in the mirror mouthed the same words, her hazel eyes reflecting my terror.

My palms slid lower, grazing collarbones sharper than I remembered, then hesitating at the swell beneath the thin cotton of my old T-shirt. I froze, breath shallow.

The weight pushed back. Soft. Undeniable.

My hands trembled as reality crashed over me in waves. This wasn't some trick of light or a neurological glitch. The fabric stretched over curves that belonged to someone else, someone who couldn't possibly be me. Yet when I pressed my palms against them, the sensation shot straight through my chest.

Jesus Christ.

I squeezed gently, experimentally, like testing the ripeness of fruit at a market. The girl in the mirror did the same, her small hands cupping what I could feel beneath my fingers. Real. Warm. Mine.

A jolt ran through me, electric and wrong. Not pain, but something else entirely. A spark that made my breath catch, made heat pool low in my stomach in a way that felt both foreign and disturbingly familiar.

I squeezed again, harder this time, desperate to prove this was all some elaborate hallucination. The sensation intensified, sending ripples of something I couldn't name through my new body. The girl in the mirror gasped, her lips again parting in perfect synchronization with mine.

What the hell is happening to me?

I couldn't stop. My hands moved lower, tracing the flat line of my stomach where there should have been the soft accumulation of middle age: beer gut, stress eating, too many nights alone with takeout containers. Instead, there was just smooth skin stretched taut over what felt like someone else's ribs.

I tugged the T-shirt up with trembling fingers. The girl in the mirror did the same, revealing a torso that belonged in a different life entirely. Her ribs shifted when I breathed, visible beneath pale skin that had never known the weight I'd carried for two decades. Not my body. Not my anything.

"This isn't real," I whispered, but the voice that came out was hers, soft and melodic, the words floating in the stale bathroom air like an accusation.

My fingers hooked into the waistband of my boxers before I could stop them. I pulled the elastic forward, peering down with the desperate hope of finding something, anything, to prove this was still me. To prove this was just some elaborate nightmare I could wake up from.

But there was nothing there. No familiar weight between my legs. No remnant of forty-four years of being male. Just the smooth cleft of a pussy, as undeniable as the face staring back at me from the mirror. A void where my cock should have been. A total, absolute erasure of everything I'd ever been.

The floor tilted beneath me. The bathroom walls seemed to contract, pressing inward like the world was collapsing into this single, impossible moment. I gripped the edge of the sink, knuckles white, fighting against the vertigo that threatened to drag me under.

"No." The word came out broken, fractured. "No, no, no."

But denial felt as useless as shouting at the tide. The evidence was right there, reflected back at me with pitiless clarity. Every curve, every absence, every alien detail that proved my life had been stolen and replaced with this... this thing I couldn't even name.

Rage surged through me, hot and primal. I slammed my palm against the mirror, the glass reverberating with a sharp crack that echoed through the small space. The girl's hand met mine perfectly, matching my fury with her own desperate anger.

"Give it back!" I screamed at my reflection, at whoever had done this, at the universe itself. "Give me my fucking life back!"

~oO🐺Oo~

I stumbled out of the bathroom, legs unsteady, the floor still tilting beneath me. The apartment swam in and out of focus, every corner both familiar and utterly alien. My chest felt too light, my limbs too short, like I was wearing a suit tailored for someone else and sewn too tight against my skin.

I needed something normal. Something Alan.

The fridge.

A beer. That, at least, would be the same.

I lurched toward the kitchen, hip clipping the doorframe on the way. The jolt sent a strange reverberation through this smaller body: sharper, quicker, like bones too fine to take impact. I winced, pressing a hand against the tender spot, but the hand itself distracted me: small, soft, incapable.

The fridge loomed larger than I remembered, white and humming with the steady patience of an old friend. I yanked the handle, but the motion was clumsy, weaker than I’d meant. It resisted. For a second, I thought it wouldn’t give at all, and panic bubbled in my throat at the absurdity of being defeated by an appliance.

I pulled again, harder. My shoulder twinged. The seal broke with a rubbery pop, the door swinging open wider than I’d intended. I stumbled with it, catching myself on the counter, my grip sliding on the countertop.

“Christ,” I muttered… or tried to. The soft, breathy tone that came out was her voice, mocking my frustration.

Inside, the fridge light flicked on, a sterile yellow glow revealing bottles lined up like soldiers. Beck’s, Berliner Pilsner, one lonely Augustiner tucked in the back. Proof of continuity. Proof that some things hadn’t changed.

My fingers wrapped around the glass too delicately, like I was afraid of dropping it. When I lifted it free, the bottle felt heavier than it should have, pulling at my wrist: not the weight of the beer, but the weakness of the hand holding it.

I twisted the cap automatically, but my grip slipped. The metal teeth bit at my palm without budging. My breath caught, panic flaring hot again. I tried again, jaw clenched, forcing every ounce of strength into the motion. The bottle didn’t care. My hands were too small. My wrists too frail.

“Come on,” I hissed, frustration cutting sharp as glass.

I braced the bottle against the counter and tried again, grunting with effort. This time it gave, the cap snapping off with a fizz and a spray of foam that dampened my shirt. I staggered back, clutching the bottle to my chest like a trophy.

Beer. Normalcy. An anchor.

I raised it to my lips.

The taste was the same: bitter, dry, and familiar, but the mouth it touched wasn’t mine. Softer lips, smaller mouth, the neck of the bottle pressing differently against teeth that felt too even, too untouched by time.

The first swallow caught wrong, burning down a throat too narrow, and I coughed violently. Bitter foam sprayed back up, cold liquid dribbling down my chin and soaking into the thin, old T-shirt stretched taut… unbearably taut across my chest.

“Verdammte Scheiße!” The curse came out shrill, girlish, making the humiliation worse. I slammed the bottle down on the counter harder than I meant to, the glass clinking dangerously.

Beer spread across the kitchen counter in a shallow puddle, dripping toward the floor. My hands hovered, trembling, before logic snapped into place. Mess. Clean it up. Anchor myself to something practical, ordinary.

~oO🐺Oo~

The bathroom mirror still showed her when I stepped back inside, but I didn’t look this time. I stripped the soaked T-shirt off like it was a skin I could shed and let it fall, limp and sour-smelling, to the floor. My boxers followed. I didn’t linger. I didn’t dare.

The shower was routine. Anchor. Twist the knob, wait for the pipes to rattle, the hiss of water filling the small space with steam. Same as always.

I stepped in.

Water crashed over me, pounding against shoulders narrower than they should’ve been. I tilted my face up into the spray, expecting familiar resistance: short hair, water running straight down. Instead, long strands clung heavily to my cheeks, plastering themselves against my neck and collarbone. I tried to push them back, but they slipped forward again, ropes of damp blonde sticking where they wanted. The weight of it unsettled me, tugging every time I moved my head.

I grabbed the shampoo, popped the cap, and squeezed. Habit. My hands rubbed together, but when I dragged them through this new hair, the motion snagged. Not the brisk scrub I knew: it was a slow, slippery rake, fingers catching on knots, tugging scalp in ways that sent strange shivers down my spine. I grunted, frustrated, but the sound that came out was soft, breathy, almost… intimate.

Foam slid down my temples, across my lips. Reflexively, I licked it away, and startled at how soft my own mouth felt beneath the runoff. My lips yielded in a way they never had before, plush and unfamiliar. Even that tiny brush of tongue carried a suggestion of vulnerability that made me want to recoil.

I forced myself back into rhythm, scrubbing harder, rinsing, pretending this was just another shower. But the water traced lines my old body never had. Arcs across breasts that rose and fell with each breath. Trails down a waist too narrow, over hips that swayed when I shifted my weight.

My hand shot out, steadying against the wall. The heat soaked into me, relentless, making my skin flush, making it impossible to ignore the body I wore. Every movement was a betrayal: the slip of hair against my back, the curve of my chest brushing my forearm, the tug low in my stomach that sharpened whenever the spray hit between my legs.

“This is just a shower,” I muttered, teeth clenched. But even the voice mocking me back sounded unconvinced.

Routine was supposed to anchor me. Instead, every second under the water was another reminder: this wasn’t routine anymore. This was her.

The water coursed over me, relentless. I told myself I was just rinsing, just scrubbing, washing her off. But the longer I moved, the more impossible it became to separate the routine from the body carrying it out.

My hands slipped down, palms flat against my stomach. The skin there was taut, smooth, unscarred. I traced lower, trying to ignore the way my waist narrowed beneath my fingertips, the flare of hips that shifted subtly when I breathed.

Curiosity whispered. A dangerous, insistent thread.

I shouldn’t.

But my hands didn’t stop. They moved with the water, gliding over skin that yielded too easily, too sensitively. Every stroke lit sparks. My fingers brushed across my breasts again, not with the accidental clumsiness of earlier but with a tentative, deliberate pressure. Soft. Responsive.

Ick gloob’s nich!

I tried to pull away, but instead my thumb grazed the peak of one nipple, slick and stiff beneath the spray. The jolt that ripped through me was immediate, violent, curling low in my belly. My knees bent slightly under the force of it.

“No,” I whispered, but the sound was weak, unconvincing, my voice carrying a tremor I couldn’t hide.

The water streamed down, hot, coaxing. My hand lingered, cupping, squeezing, chasing the sensation even as I told myself to stop. Logic drowned under the sheer immediacy of touch.

I pressed harder, then slid lower. The slope of my stomach, the hollow of my navel, down to where the spray hit most directly. Heat gathered there, sharper, insistent, the pull between my legs tightening until it was impossible to ignore.

Hesitating. Trembling. One breath. Two.

Then my fingers shifted, almost of their own accord, and the world narrowed to a single point of sensation.

The gasp that escaped me was high and broken, ricocheting off the tiled walls. My back arched under the spray, hair clinging to my face, lips parted. For one suspended moment, all I could feel was my body… her body, alive beneath my hands.

I should have stopped. I didn’t.

The water carried me down into silence, a hush broken only by the drum of spray on the floor. My hand hovered, trembling, before I let my fingers press against the place where all that heat was pooling.

The shock of it nearly buckled my knees. Softer. Wetter. The texture is all wrong: no familiar skin, no familiar weight, nothing to hold. Just lips that opened beneath my touch, yielding instantly, drawing me in.

I swallowed hard and tried again. My fingertips traced the seam slowly, almost clinically. The sensation roared back up at me, not sharp the way I remembered, but liquid, radiating outward in waves that made my thighs tighten.

Christ.

My fingers circled lightly, awkward at first, hunting for a rhythm, for something to anchor me in this alien landscape. My breath became uneven :chest rising against my own hand still cupping a breast, nipple stiff beneath the pad of my thumb. Every stroke seemed to echo through me, not contained in one place the way it used to be, but spreading: stomach, legs, spine, until the whole body buzzed with it.

It was slower than I expected. Softer. No urgency, no pumping fist, no heat that burned out quickly and violently. This was different: a buildup, a tide creeping higher with each tentative pass of my fingers.

I gasped, a sound that startled me, girlish and thin, but threaded with pleasure I couldn’t deny. My hips shifted without asking, tilting toward the spray, toward my hand. My other palm pressed against the wall for balance, nails scraping slick tile.

Memory betrayed me: what it used to be, quick, efficient, a rough release I barely paid attention to. That was gone. This was consuming. My whole body seemed involved, every nerve awake, every breath a tremor.

And almost by accident, I found it… that spot, the sudden jolt of pressure that made me cry out, sharp and breathless. My thighs snapped tight, clamping around my hand, and the sensation rolled through me in surges.

It wasn’t earth-shattering. It was messy, uneven, and raw. But it tore the strength out of me all the same. My back arched, my hair plastered across my cheeks, and the sound that broke from my throat was not mine.

High, shuddering, vulnerable.

The orgasm left me weak, spent, water pounding down as if nothing had happened. My fingers slipped away, trembling. I sagged against the wall, chest heaving, every part of me humming with the aftershocks.

And in the hollow that followed, the difference hit hardest.

Before, it had been quick. Contained. Over almost before it began. Now, it lingered: pulsing in my belly, echoing in my thighs, a reminder that this body didn’t let go as easily. That it demanded more.

I pressed my forehead to the wall, steam curling around me, shame curling tighter still.

This wasn’t me.

And yet, I’d come apart in her skin, and maybe… just maybe, this wasn’t so bad.

~oO🐺Oo~

Steam lingered lazily around the bathroom as I stepped out of the shower, towel clutched around my hips, narrower than I remembered, my chest rising and falling in a rhythm that didn’t belong to me. The hot water had loosened something inside: memory, muscle, instinct. It had left me raw, trembling, unsure where one began and the other ended.

A ghost of my former self whispered in my mind: “You have to breathe, Al. You have to…”

Then Sarah’s voice: sharp and precise, sliced through the fog. My ex-wife. The words sounded ridiculous now, echoing in this body I barely recognized, on shoulders too slight, arms too delicate.

I sank onto the edge of the bathtub, towel slipping, unsure whether to tighten it or let gravity decide. My fingers dug into the cool porcelain, desperate for something solid, something familiar. Thoughts spun, whirling, refusing to settle.

And then they snapped back. Martin.

He’d be back tomorrow. Tomorrow!

Would he believe me? What the hell would he think, what would he say, when he saw me like... this?

My eyes darted around, searching for anything to hold on to, anything to anchor me in the present. And then I caught sight of the mirror.

I froze.

Not me. Not the man I had been. Just her. The reflection staring back, with unblinking hazel eyes, a jaw too narrow, hair heavy and damp against shoulders that weren’t mine. Every motion mirrored mine, yet every line and curve was alien, impossible.

I swallowed, throat tight. My fingers tightened around the towel, knuckles white. Anger flared: at the world, at this body, at myself for even thinking about it, and just as quickly, a pull of curiosity followed.

It was alive in there.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, caught between what I had been and what I now was, staring at her, at it, and feeling how utterly unmoored I had become.

~oO🐺Oo~

I sat at the small kitchen table, the one cluttered with bottles and unopened mail, and pulled a scrap of paper from the drawer. My hand shook as I gripped the pen. What could I even say? Nothing that would make sense. Nothing that wouldn’t sound insane.

So I kept it simple.

Martin,

Thank you for everything. For putting up with me, for giving me space when I needed it, for reminding me I wasn’t entirely alone— and for just being a friend.
But I can’t stay. Not here. Not like this. I have to find my own path, wherever that leads.

—Alan
4.10.25

The letter looked pitifully small on the table, like it barely took up any space in the world at all. But it would have to do. I folded it once, left it under the beer bottle I’d failed to finish, and turned away.

What now? Where the hell could I go?

Prenzlauer Berg was too polished, too neatly repainted over its past. A neighborhood of freelancers, strollers, and craft beer shops. Here, you needed papers to rent, contracts to stay, and a face that matched the ID in your pocket. My ID meant nothing now. Alan was gone. Only this girl stared back from mirrors and shadows.

Neukölln.

The word stuck in my mind.

The district had been called many things over the years: rough, changing, dangerous, alive. Cafés and art spaces blooming between auto repair shops and Turkish bakeries. Dimly lit streets marked by graffiti and cigarette smoke. Corners where rules could be bent, where questions weren’t asked if you paid cash.

Maybe there I could disappear. Maybe there, I wouldn’t stick out quite so much.

I looked at my possessions. What was worth taking? Not much. Not anymore.

I stuffed the essentials into a small backpack: my phone, my wallet with my useless ID, and the jacket slung over the chair. My old clothes sat in the wardrobe, but they weren’t mine now. They’d never fit again.

I stood in the doorway, backpack slung over one shoulder, staring back at the apartment one last time. The emptiness pressed in, but I forced myself not to linger.

The old Alan was gone.

All that remained was her.

And she would have to survive.