The Red Light

 

The red light filled the room as Kelly clutched her head. The pain was unbearable—sharp, searing, as if something inside her skull was about to burst. Was she having an aneurysm? The agony built and built until she could no longer hold it in. She screamed, the sound ripping through the room, just as the pain reached its breaking point.

Then—silence.

Kelly awoke to sunlight flooding her vision. The red light was gone. Blinking, disoriented, she tried to push herself off the floor. That’s when she heard it—a scream, high-pitched and full of terror. She froze, then glanced at her own hand bracing against the ground. It was thick and stubby, the nails bitten down to the quick. Her body felt heavy, sluggish, wrong. Staggering upright, she looked herself over and gasped. This wasn’t her body. She was short, dumpy, balding—a man in his fifties. Confusion clawed at her mind, but another scream pulled her attention away.

She stumbled toward the sound and found a woman about her new height, sobbing in a bathroom, staring into the mirror.

“I’m old…” the woman cried. “I don’t want to be like this. Help me!”

Kelly caught her reflection beside the woman’s and felt her stomach drop. That face in the mirror—alien, sagging, worn—was hers now. Her chest tightened. Tears stung her eyes. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe she had collapsed from a medical episode. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

But the woman in the bathroom, still trembling, choked out through sobs: “It was the red light… it did this to me…”

Panic surged through Kelly. What if this wasn’t a coma? What if this was real? She fumbled for the TV remote, flicked it on, and her heart stopped at the headline:

“PEOPLE OF THE WORLD SWAP BODIES IN MASS INCIDENT.”

Her knees weakened as the truth settled in. This was no dream. It was happening everywhere. And with that, Kelly finally broke, her tears falling freely.