A New Body
It was scary, and she wanted to scream, but there was no breath to take and it was over before it began. All of a sudden Mary Alice was Paul's company, or at least inhabiting the woman's body. She would have liked more time to get used to feeling things in a physical body before this, but to her eventual surprise and simultanaous disgust, she liked it. She couldn't remember the last time Paul had been inside of her, and despite the fact that this interaction had nothing to do with the woman's pleasure, it felt...nice. Or familiar. To a dead woman with a new body, there wasn't much of a difference yet.
Paul was getting rough with his motions. Mary Alice held on to the bed and waited for him to finish. She could tell he was almost done. She wanted to touch his face, to whisper in his ear just how he liked it, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. He wouldn't see his wife if she tried those things.
When it was over, Paul only took a moment to rest before getting up and gathering his clothes. Mary Alice curled up on the bed, trying to look 'normal.' What was the post-coital etiquette for prostitutes?
"When did you get out of prison?"
Paul tensed. She wasn't supposed to know that.
Oops. Of all the things she could have asked him, out of all the things she longed to break the silence with...
"What did you say?" he asked, accusatory and suspicious.
"I mean...it just seemed like you hadn't been with a woman in a while." Not quite the smoothest save, but she was still getting used to using a larynx again.
"Oh." Paul's face changed, as if he just realized he'd been fucking a human being.
Ah, there he was - her husband, Paul Young, the man she knew, the way she'd always wanted to remember him. Sensitive and concerned, before he'd been driven to kill, lie to his family and abandon his friends.
"Did I hurt you?"
The look on his face made her want to cry, but her failure to shed a tear reminded Mary Alice that no matter whose body she was inhabiting she was still quite dead.
"No." she lied.
Paul shrugged into his jacket, the look of concern fading away, back to the cold expression he'd worn since Mary Alice had left the world.
"How much was it again?" he asked, pulling out his wallet.
Mary Alice hesitated. What was the pricing scale for hookers? She glanced over at the clothes that remained on the floor.
"Um...three hundred."
Paul started to pull three bills from his wallet, but he stopped. He glanced at the body he'd just used, knowing that something had changed since she brought him to this hotel room but not knowing what it was. He pulled out two additional bills, and he left $500 in cash on the bed next to Mary Alice.
She watched him leave, neither of them saying another word. She had so much to tell him, so many things to ask, but something told her this wouldn't be the last time she saw him.
As Mary Alice dressed herself in the clothes from the floor, she heard the door open. A short old man with a ring of jangling keys shambled in, but he didn't look surprised to see her. Somehow Mary Alice knew it wasn't just the motel manager coming to check the room.
"So," he said, looking her over like a mechanic checking for dings. "Like the new body?"
""New"?" Mary Alice mocked him incredulously.
"Only babies come new, Angela. I didn't think reincarnating you would be the most efficient use of time."
"I feel like I'm going to throw up..."
"It gets worse before it gets better." He, or whatever it was that brought Mary Alice here, hobbled over to the bed and sat down. "Do you understand a little better now?"
"Understand what? What am I supposed to be doing?"
The old man looked pleased. "Exactly." He hopped off the bed, hobbling back toward the door.
"No, that was a question." Mary Alice protested.
"It was the question." He corrected her, and then she was alone again.
Mary Alice found a purse, and looked inside to see if she had an address. When she found a driver's license she almost laughed out loud.
"Angela." She read. "Someone has a sense of humor."
She took a taxi to an okay part of town and found her apartment. It was cozy, and reminded her of where she lived when she first met Paul after college. So she was Angela once again. Maybe it was no coincidence that it all felt so familiar. The disorientation was fading, and the body was starting to feel like home. Angela looked in the mirror. Tomorrow she had to find a new job, a real job.
She wondered as she laid down to sleep how she would find Paul again. She wasn't even sure if she'd remember how to fall asleep, but as she felt herself drifting off her last thoughts were of dreams. Was all of this a dream?