By Nicole Anderson Ellis
“Just let it settle in,” the black-eyed technician said as he pushed the elevator button. Sid, his nametag read, though Lina was sure yesterday he’d introduced himself with something longer.
Over the past two days Sid and a blur of other nametags had prompted Lina through the onboarding checklist. They’d slapped stickers with her id number on the side of warm urine samples, and vials of dark blood. She’d initialed dozens of forms after the final psych review, the inspection of the host body, and when the lab work returned. And then, suddenly, they were finished. Reve Inc. had checked its last box. All good on their end. The only thing now was the mandatory waiting period. Twelve hours to sleep on it, if she could.
“Lie down, at least,” Sid said, handing over a plain black folder fat with her hard copy of the contract, and a list of night-before dos and don’ts. “See what your gut tells you. We need 100% buy-in, so nothing goes awry.”
Lina nodded. Yes. Reve was borderline obsessive on this point, including a sidebar on the website’s homepage: Clients must fully commit to switching, or the procedure will not work. They avoided defining “awry,” but the blogs Lina read put it bluntly. Hesitation on the part of the wearer resulted in a bad trip and prolonged PTSD. Basically, it messed with your head. So clients with doubts—any at all—were encouraged to hit eject right up until sedation. And clearly some did. Nervous clients walked away from the 50% deposit and however-many years on the waitlist. That’s how Lina had ended up on a red-eye to Boston only nine months after typing her email address onto Reve’s Learn More page. Some stranger had changed their mind. They’d walked out of a prep room like the one in which Lina just spent her day: half-med lab, half-therapist office, with real oil paintings hanging above what looked like an electric chair. Lina tried not to think about the client whose spot she was taking, the stranger who’d heard the same warnings and decided not to return.
“Just do the breathing exercises,” Sid said, as the brushed gold elevator doors slid open. Lina stepped in and turned. Sid pointed to the folder. “Follow the instructions and listen to your gut.”
On the ride down, Lina timed her breaths the way he’d shown her. Slow, two, three, four. She inhaled and exhaled her way across Reve’s cavernous lobby. Then the revolving door spit her into the northeast’s record-breaking heat wave, and the din of the police barrier. It was all so different than it looked on the news. The protesters were so much louder. Lina sucked in a breath and held it until a uniformed guard waved her over. She hurried toward him, his teammates, and the gap they were holding open so she could squeeze through the angry crowd. She ducked her head, clutched the folder to her chest, and tried not to hear what they shouted about Reve. About her. She didn’t inhale again until halfway down the block, when a stream of just-clocked-out office staff swept her up, and along, and she was finally invisible again.
The crowd stopped at the intersection. The sky between buildings was a wan blue. A digital sign on the far corner said 92 degrees. 5:19 pm. Eleven hours and forty minutes to go. Back home she’d be pulling into her driveway about now.
No. She was losing track. It was Thursday. Right now her substitute was likely seated at a picnic table, using rocks as paper weights on stacks of reading comprehension worksheets, only half-watching the extended-day kids. Lina pictured it, the screen of bare cottonwood behind the metal fence, and was almost jealous. The light turned. She crossed in front of a city bus idling in its red lane, the entire thing wrapped in a Reve ad. Two-foot-high gold font: Inhabit your dreams. Lina’s stomach did a thing. Excited. Anxious. Though some of that was just the crowd. So many people, the tourists easily distinguished from the locals, everyone ignoring the scattering of people that Lina hoped were only sleeping on the sidewalk, like leaves blown to rest against the granite walls.
A woman approached Lina at a fair pace. She walked like a person with a destination. Their eyes met for a beat as they passed, and it crossed Lina’s mind someone might be “wearing” that body. She almost turned to look.
By the time Lina found her Air-b-n-basement, the back of her blouse was sheer with sweat. It was cold inside. She bolted the door, dropped her bag, and stood a long moment, deciding whether to collapse beside it, or shower first. Her phone dinged. There wasn’t anyone she wanted to hear from, unless. It could be Reve. She stooped and dug in her satchel. Not Reve.
The new text read: Lino! in B’ton meet up @ 7?
He’d dropped a pin. Lina read the message twice, then stared at his contact photo, the beach in the background. Well played, she thought. Sending him. Brilliant. Really. Anyone else, anyone, she could ignore.
She answered, showered, put on a clean dress and the same sneakers, and walked back into the heat. The restaurant he suggested was exactly where she’d just been, directly across from Reve. The barricade was littered with abandoned placards—Inhabit your nightmare!—but otherwise empty. Fighting the rise of ‘skin walkers’ was clearly a day job. She followed her map into the well-chilled lobby of a swank hotel where the person she asked pointed to a spiral staircase, descending. The subterranean dining room was barely candlelit and touched in Lina some memory of wading into a lake at night. It seemed empty. Then she spied him,her Aidan, waving. He stood and walked to meet her. It still surprised her, how grown he looked. Like a man.
“Lino!” / “Aidan!” they said as one.
They hugged hard. She hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving, having skipped family Christmas on her counselor’s advice.
Lina was grateful to sit. She hadn’t slept since the night before last. She checked her phone, nine hours and fifty-two minutes to go, and put it away. Across the table her nephew was glowed, as if he’d absorbed all the light in the room.
“I’m so happy to see you.”
“Me too, Love,” she said. “I missed you.”
A girl—young woman—appeared, setting down a pint of something pale. “Anything for you?” she asked Lina, who was hungry, but said no. No food the night before wearing. Not even water, after five.
“This okay?” Aidan’s hand hovered by the sweating glass. A younger version of himself blinked at her. Nine-year-old Aidan. Four. Always wanting to do it right.
“Of course.” Lina smiled, and watched her nephew take a swallow. God, she remembered that taste.
He set the glass down carefully, centered on its wet ring. “So, what brings you to town?” he asked, in their sloppy Irish brogue.
Lina smiled, but didn’t join in. “You first.”
“Me first.” He dropped the accent. “It was Mom. She asked me.”
Such a straight shooter, she thought. She opted to side-step. “Don’t you have school?”
“Fall break. We were free.”
“Who’s we?”
“Andre. He’s here.”
“Andre.” She pictured the infamous roommate sprawled across a queen bed however many floors above.
“You know Reve called Mom, right? And Gamma. That’s how they found out.”
Lina hated this, him playing messenger. But she answered.
“I thought about giving your mom a heads up. Then… I guess I imagined what she’d say, and how I’d feel, and decided I was more okay with her being surprised than having to hear her opinion.”
Aidan was still only a moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
She thought he was going to say more, maybe about his mother, but right then his phone lit up on the table. He didn’t lift it, only glanced down and back, but she could see that he’d moved on.
“So, this is for real?” He leaned his forearms on the table. “You’re actually wearing? For real.”
Lina met his smile. “For real.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? That’s nuts.”
“Right?!” Lina felt the full weight of her desire to talk about it with someone not employed at Reve. “I can’t wait. Literally. I wish it was tonight.”
“Tell me. Tell me all of it. What are you doing? What’s the plan?”
Lina lifted an eyebrow. “Guess.”
“Oh. I don’t…” He shook his head. “I have no idea. Mom thought it might be….”
No. She shook her head. She didn’t want her sister’s guess, but he kept stumbling through.
“Like something with…what happened. Like…”
Don’t say it, Lina thought. Don’t say it.
“Like the Amy Dove Affair.”
Jesus Christ. Adrenaline or some other caustic chemical dumped into Lina’s veins. Her face burned. She’d kept away from family just long enough to forget this feeling. Past her nephew Lina had a clear view down a back hall to a door with a window, round and bright. When it swung open, she caught white tile, and the faint song of kitchen prep: pots and knives and male ego.
When she trusted her throat, she said, “I guess I’m grateful they didn’t say that when Reve called.” Another cycle of breath, and she forced her attention back at the table. “They screen for that now.”
“I bet.”
Aidan had been, what? Eleven, when Amy Dove made headlines? Amy and Lina had been in college at the same time. Different states. Similar violence. But Amy’s assault had made headlines. Then docudramas. The actual crime came right after Reve’s beta testing. First the investors had taken their turns “wearing.” Then celebrities were invited, so they could gush on talk shows. And after that, when Reve opened to the public and all of a sudden everyone knew the logo, and middle school kids were making lists of who they’d pick to wear, that’s when Amy Dove experienced her second rape.
She’d reported the first one, not that it mattered. He’s saying you were willing. And you were both of you drunk. No mention in the local paper. No one reported on her quitting school or moving home, or that first suicide attempt. But when the boy she’d accused got assaulted himself walking home from the soccer field? Well, that was rare. “Rapist” sharpied across his brow. Then the security footage was leaked on the internet, and the assailant—the huge guy pinning the smaller one down in the patchy campus grass, crushing those familiar bruises on his throat, his thighs—he got ID’d as a physical trainer from Boston. That’s when the story went nuclear. Because the trainer had never even been to Texas. Not consciously. And his alibi was airtight. The night of that attack was his first time renting his body to Reve.
The defense team framed it as a crime of passion, but Amy had spent a season planning, and the prosecutors had all the receipts. Twenty thousand dollars of college savings and credit card debt invested in half an hour of revenge.
Lina couldn’t recall what Reve paid the frat boy in damages, but she knew exactly how many letters of recommendation the company now required, and how many psych evals before you could wear. Not to mention travel bans, and biochipping; though that was mostly to stop stealing. All those early host bodies not returned.
“I’m sorry, Lina. It was Gamma who brought it up, and you know. She’s just….”
He made a gesture. Dismissive. As if spite must be tolerated in the elderly. As if Lina’s mother hadn’t always been this way. Aidan’s phone glowed again. This time he moved it to his back pocket. “Nobody thinks you would ever hurt anyone,” he said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” she echoed. And then, knowing her counselor would call it toxic curiosity, she asked, “Was that their only guess?”
He shrugged, hesitant. “Maybe a drinking thing?”
A drinking thing. Lina’s empty stomach felt like a fist, but also she remembered: Your family is not a mirror. “That’s not it,” Lina told him. “I’m not doing this to drink.”
“Here you are.” Their server reappeared, sliding a steaming lobster tail in front of Aidan. His mother’s tab. And God it smelled good. They said you awoke in the new body desiccated and ravenous. Yesterday Lina had witnessed that stage. Her tour started with the Reve Café, housed one floor below Prep Level, and two above Body Storage, or what they called “The Spa.” So many clients opted for work in their absence: facials, tummy tucks. Reve had built a special lounge for those wearing to get acclimated. Practice on their smaller feet or longer legs. But according to her guide, most everyone stumbled straight to the café.
Lina had read about the cravings. You took your intellect into your host body; your thoughts and memories. But some “personality traits” had proven more muscle memory than expected. Turned out lusts and food preferences lived more in the body than head, so they screened for that now. Hosts were matched for tastes. Vegetarians inhabited vegetarians. Lesbians, lesbians. Sober clients were recommended sober bodies.
Their server set down Aidan’s plate of sides and turned to Lina. “You still good?” She was lovely in the way of young people. Smooth skin. Clear eyes. There was a tattoo – or was it a birthmark? – on the corner of her jaw.
“I’m good. Thanks.” She wondered if the young woman thought of hosting. It must be a huge temptation, living right there. They said people applied from all over the world, then waited, praying for a hit. If you were rented, in just two days you could earn a month’s worth of tips off two-tops. For doing nothing. Sleeping. Maybe this young woman was already listed. Lina wouldn’t have seen her, having only looked at the male listings, and only the very low end.
As Aidan dug in, Lina watched their server walk down that back hallway, saw her silhouetted momentarily in the kitchen door, and found herself hoping she wasn’t in the catalogue. It might look like easy money, but there were risks. The big threats—body snatching, paid fights, that stuff—were illegal at Reve, though supposedly one Dubai hosting company offered no-limits wearing starting at a million a night. The podcast Lina liked best, Reve-lations,claimed some unnamed desert princes and billionaires traded into younger, healthier, and taller bodiesfor the long-term; the idea haunted Lina for weeks. Agreeing to a years’ long coma? In exchange for what? Emigrating whole families? Erasing generational debt? Worst case, obviously, there was no consent. Either way, Lina had lost sleep imaging how it would feel to awaken at thirty-something and look in the mirror at a thread bare version of yourself; not one bit wiser for the years.
Sounds like me, her roommate had said, after my divorce.
Even at Reve, even with all the rules, hosting carried a taint. In the early days, a few hosts went on talk shows, but it was awkward. All the fun was in the wearing. The hosts just “slept,” while total strangers ate, and then pooped, and almost always had sex in their bodies. It wasn’t prostitution, but it wasn’t clean. And it wasn’t safe. Lina knew. The catalog listed if a body was off-limits for sex, or drugs, or skiing. Whatever. But those bodies didn’t rent. Wearing was a vacation. And the few studies they’d done showed the obvious: when wearing another’s body, humans said yes more. They drove faster. They didn’t sleep. They forgot to look both ways. And whatever happened to the host body, short of death, clients got to pop back to their safely stored forms.
“- if it’s okay to ask.”
“Sorry.” Lina blinked at her nephew. “I spaced out. Ask again.”
Aidan used the flat between knuckles to wipe a shine of butter under his lip. “I was wondering how much.”
“How much it costs? A lot.”
The price tags on hosts ranged as widely as for cars, and the men and women whose bodies sold for top dollar were the same ones that always had. How pretty did you want it? How strong?
This had been Reve’s first and probably biggest fail. Their debut marketing promised to Reve-olutionize our world. An end to prejudice. If bodies are switchable, what did gender, race, or looks really mean? In the beginning, Reve didn’t pitch looks, but accessibility. Working legs. The blind could see. Deaf kids heard their first ocean waves, and it was glorious. Everyone watched the live footage. Everyone. And then everyone learned the consequences of a short-term miracle. Because each of those wearers got returned to their darkness, or their silence, or the cage of their snapped spine. Likely someone could have predicted the suicides. That sparked Reve’s first rebrand, and first psych exams. The ADA won’t let a company screen for fully-abled clients, but a personality assessment can weed out who you want.
Then came the pregnancy craze. For a few years, a healthy woman in her third trimester could get $10,000 for letting another woman suffer through the birth. An instant trend with couples adopting. Ceremonial. Reve partnered with Brigham and Youngs Women’s hospital. Built their own birthing bay and could not keep up with interest. Two weeks before the due date, clients would arrive for an I-and-I: Inhabit and induce. A day or two later, the host mom wakes up with a healthy baby and “barely more gap in experience than with general anesthesia.”
Predictable social outrage ensued. What if women got pregnant just to sell deliveries? But the process stayed crazy popular until the first stillbirth. That mother sued. Then the FDA waded in, and before its anniversary, the birthing bay temporarily closed, forever. The data on that brief experiment suggested inhabited birth was actually safer. State-of-the-art facilities, and all. But the babies, they did worse. An uptick in failure to thrive. One hypothesis said they felt it. The switch. The babies knew their moms had tapped out at the moment of their first need.
These days, Reve was purely recreation. Come and play, come and play.
“Seventy-five hundred,” Lina told him. “Plus travel, which was a lot, last minute.”
Aidan swallowed a mouthful of what looked to Lina like the world’s best mashed potatoes. “That’s not so bad,” he said.
She half-laughed. God, her throat was dry. “Well… It’s all my savings. But, yeah, I got a deal.”
An older model, Sid had noted, forgetting the body was a full year younger than Lina. It was exactly what Lina needed. Not tall, but bulked up, like an extra from a boxing movie. And only $7500 if she could be there the next day.
“For how long?” Aidan asked
“Twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours.”
Lina figured he was doing the mental math. $7500 in a mutual fund, or even a high yield savings account. Ten years. Compound interest. Not a fortune, but something. As of today, her savings was zero and she had some new debt on a card. Yet even so.
There was music in the restaurant now. Instrumental. Slow. Lina thought she might be able to sleep after all.
Aidan was pushing aside his impressively empty plate. His head was cocked. Worry, Lina thought. Maybe pity. And here she was, happier than she could remember.
“Hey, Laidan. You know…maybe you don’t know, but…you don’t have to worry about me. I know your mom does. But honestly, and you can tell her this or not, but I want you to know, I’m good. For real. And this…I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I want this. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I get to do this.”
Aidan’s face was still. “Okay,” he said. Then, “I’m on team you.”
It was her line, since he was tiny. For a breath, there was risk she might cry. But she managed a “Right?!” And then, “I do wish I could drink to that.”
“I can,” said Aidan. He drained the last inch of his beer and glanced around. “I need a bathroom.”
Lina pointed him to the back hall and watched the closest thing she’d ever have to offspring walk away.
“Reve, right? Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Their server was standing beside the table. She had a nose ring. Lina could see it now, the glint of light as the young woman tilted her head. “It’s just…No food? No water? And—” She gestured around them. “We get lots of people the night before.”
Lina looked behind her, surprised to find the dining room half-filled.
“Yeah. Reve.” Lina turned back. “I’m scheduled for…” She dug out her phone. “Eight hours and forty-seven minutes.”
“That’s so fire! Both of you?” She gestured to Aidan’s empty chair.
“Just me.”
“Really?” The young woman grabbed the edge of the table and squatted on her heals. “Mostly we get couples.”
Lina knew pairs were the most common hosting application, and the least expensive since, no rental fees. Couples came to town and traded bodies for the primary pleasure, according to the blogs, of fucking themselves.
“They’re in here all the time. And over at Kkum,my boyfriend works there, they come in there, like every night, wearing each other.”
The young woman popped up as Aidan slid back into his chair.
“Hey,” he and the server said together.
“Can I get another?” Aidan asked, lifting his empty.
“Of course.” She took it, and reached for his plate, but Lina stopped her.
“Wait. Please.” She turned to her nephew. “She was telling me about Reve. They get lots of clients here. So…what else? What else have you seen?”
“Well,” The girl set the glass back. “Not much, in here. We don’t get people actually wearing. But at Kkum… you know what that is?”
“It’s the bar? For people wearing?”
“A club, yeah. Exclusive to Reve. And it’s amazing. I’ve never actually been. You have to be wearing or work there, which, I wish,but I’ve seen pictures. You should totally go. Or maybe not. It’s mostly couples. Or single men wearing women.”
“Single men wearing women?” Aidan’s brows were raised.
“Yeah. Though mostly they go to Virago. Or stay in their rooms. They’re not allowed to leave the Reve building.”
“Who can’t leave?” Aidan asked.
“Men wearing women. They can’t leave Reve. Not if they’re alone.”
“But a woman in a guy can? How’s that fair?”
“It’s not safe,” the young woman said, “for the women’s bodies.” Lina liked the strength in her tone.
“But you’re out here.” Aidan looked back and forth between them. “In women’s bodies.”
“Yeah but…” The server looked to Lina.
“We’re used to it,” Lina said. “And we’ve trained.”
A young man in black walked past and touched their server’s shoulder. “Seventeen’s yours,” he said.
“Thanks.” She turned back to Aidan. “I once heard a guy say it’s like you’ve spent your whole life as a polar bear and one day you wake up a seal. Being a seal is fine, so long as you know how to be a seal.”
To his credit, Aidan didn’t argue.
“And even before that rule,” she went on, “when they could leave, mostly they didn’t. My boyfriend was told that the ‘cloister rule,’” she made air quotes, “was made so they could relax. Before that, all these guys were having massive panic attacks, and blowing their whole time hiding in their rooms.”
“Suddenly seals,” said Lina.
“Seals.”
“Then why do it?” Aidan was used to being good at puzzles. “If they can’t leave? What do they even do?”
The server glanced at Lina again. According to the blogs, men in women’s bodies spent a lot of time touching themselves. All that money to hole up in a fancy room, grab their own breasts, and masturbate, mostly without success.
“They sit in the Virago Lounge,” their server said. “It’s like VIP just for women. They go there, and they order fancy drinks, and they cry.”
“They cry?” Lina hadn’t heard this part.
“Like, sobbing.”
“They sit and cry.” Aidan’s voice held no judgement.
“Pretty much. They say it comes easily, in the right body. And for guys—some guys—it’s like… cathartic. Grieving. That’s the word I wanted. They grieve. Some do it alone, but a lot come down and do it in public. They just let it all go.”
“I didn’t know that,” Lina said.
“Right? You never hear about it. And then—” She lifted a hand toward Lina. “There’s the solo woman thing.”
“Tell me.” Aidan was half-leaning across the table, the little boy in him so clear.
When Lina had Googled her fantasy, it was absolutely a thing. Not a talk show-worthy trend, but a subculture. She pictured a stream of single women flying in, ready to trade a life’s savings, or a surprise inheritance, or the settlement from a better-handled divorce. A tribe of them. Lina’s chest felt crowded, but in a good way. Her scalp tingled.
She looked up at their server. “You guess,” she said. She wanted to hear it aloud.
The young woman squatted again, her chin level with the table. When she spoke, she looked at Lina. “You got a guy, right? Like, fit? And you’re going on a walk.” Her voice was solemn and eager, both. “You’re gonna walk around at night.”
“In parks,” Lina said. “Wherever I want.”
The woman met her gaze. “Along the river.”
“Lina, that’s not—” Aidan was sitting upright. In that moment he looked like his mom. “There’s places I’d never go.”
Lina felt a blissful lack of interest in convincing him. “In the body I’m getting, I’ll be fine.”
“What else?” The server’s focus was honed.
“I’ll go for a run with earbuds, listening to music.”
“Yes. And when you see a woman?”
“I’ll sing,” Lina said, because that was the deal. And it felt crazy good to know it. “I’m thinking ‘Paper Rings.’’”
“Love it.” The server shook her head, slowly. “I met a woman who spent a night in a UFC fighter, this huge guy, and every time she saw a girl she’d sing Lizzo.” She half-sang, “I do my hair toss, check my nails.”
Lina laughed. She saw the closest table turn.
“Shit.” Their server popped up. “Sorry. My manager.” She surprised Lina with a quick hug,“ Good luck,” and disappeared into the darkness.
Lina was grinning, full out, as she turned to her nephew who stared back, mouth slightly open. She took a deep inhale, let it go. Her smile softened but hung on. She didn’t know what he needed to hear from her. Something. But what she needed, badly, was sleep, so she said so.
“Of course.” Aidan gazed around. “I’ll find her and pay. You go ahead. But I’ll see you tomorrow, right? After?” He had pushed his chair out as he spoke, stood. Lina looked up at him. He looked older than when she’d arrived.
“I’d like that.” She rose too. “We’ll see. But tonight…” She reached for her bag. “You settle up, and then I need you to walk me home.”
Since her first narrative poem (second grade, it rhymed and featured a dolphin-riding king), Nicole Anderson Ellis has remained spellbound by the freedom of fiction. Her work continues to braid natural science with humans’ emotional landscapes, and has most recently appeared in Black Horse Review, Millenium, and Feels Blind Literary Journal. In the factual realm, Nicole has a degree from UCLA in Environmental Studies, and was elected by her county to serve 12 years on the Soil & Water Conservation District Board. She earned an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and spent 17 years as a professor of critical thinking/ethical reasoning.
Shannon Berrios is an artist with a Bachelors in Studio Art that specializes in digital illustration and sequential art. Her art takes inspiration from western and eastern animation, with an interest in drawing colorful heroines and monsters with a retro flair. She works through freelance and commissions, from creating illustrations to designing characters. Her artwork can be found at https://bsky.app/profile/shenanisketches.bsky.social and https://shenanisketches.newgrounds.com/
