This is the grossest I’ve felt in my entire life, and I’ve given birth to twins. Full term.

I look myself up and down in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. I insisted on having this mirror here to make sure I always looked my best, and now I’m using it to see myself at my worst.

My hair remains long – where I still have it. A bald patch has crept all the way up to the top of my head on the front.

My face has a full day’s growth of stubble, from the bottom of my neck up to my upper lip and up the sides of my face.

My arms remain well-muscled, and the hair I shaved off yesterday is growing back. My manicure is still present, but it looks out of place on hands that are larger than I’m used to.

My breasts sag and appear deflated and shrunken. My stomach has grown thick.

My legs remain as they were, but with much more hair.

And of course, my vagina has been replaced by a penis.

I know that respecting the expertise of doctors is important, but I’m pretty sure that this is neither stress, an infection, nor a delusion. I’m pretty certain it isn’t early menopause or PCOS either.

“Ugh, what the fuck.” My voice is deeper and strangled too.

I shoot Zoe and Sam a text – “Not feeling well, staying in bed, please do whatever without me today. Don’t need checking on, thanks.”

I get thumbs-ups from both kids, and I lay back down on the bed. I feel like I should get dressed, but I’m pretty sure nothing I own will fit – either my proportions have grown out of it or it’s something made for someone with curves I no longer possess. I think briefly about Josh’s closet, but even like this, I’m too small and too curvy for his clothes.

I end up raiding his dresser for jogging pants and a hooded sweatshirt. They’re poorly fitting, but cozy and warm. They still smell like him, and I take a moment to let his lingering scent cover me as though the last two months hadn’t happened.

I start looking online for the pendant. I’m at a loss for what words to search for, so I find a picture of myself wearing it (God, I miss looking that happy – and that female) and do a reverse image search. There’s a lot of noise to go through, and as I scroll through useless results, the phone rings. It’s Terry, Josh’s probate lawyer. I have no interest in talking to lawyers today, he can call back tomorrow. More scrolling… there!

An entry on a website listing magical artifacts? I’d be skeptical, but I can’t think of any other rational explanation for what’s happening to me. And it has two images of the pendant – one with the red stone I’m used to, and one with the clear stone from the dream.

I click through. The website introduces me to the Talisman Of Shared Wishes. There’s a lot of flowery language for a relatively simple concept. If the talisman is “empty” (clear), you can touch the pendant and make a wish. The wish has to be heartfelt and made on behalf of someone other than the wisher. If the wish is granted, it “fills” the talisman and turns its stone red. The wish persists as long as the wisher and the people affected both remain alive, after which point the effect of the wish slowly fades. The talisman stays “filled” and unusable for more wishes until every person affected and the wisher die.

It lists typical wishes – wealth, success, and love are the most frequent, followed by…

Personal change – a change in the physical appearance, mental behavior, or both in the person changed by the magic.

I recall my dream from the previous night. I set down my phone and start to cry. He did this to me.

I’m not Jordyn, I’m Jordan.

Josh clearly loved me, and I didn’t love him as a man. So… he took the pendant and wished for this to happen. Taking my body and mind for his own.

He violated my consent and my body for nineteen years, and made me think I loved him for it.

I gave him two children and the life he wanted because I didn’t know what he’d taken away from me.

And now that he’s gone, his wish is fading. I’m fading, and becoming… what? Jordan? What does that even mean? Will I become the man and father I would have been? Myself, but in a man’s body? Someone else, completely unfamiliar to my children?

It’s lunchtime. I’m hungry. I check my phone’s locator app services to see if my kids are still at home. I feel a fundamental wrongness about violating their privacy this way, even though I know that they not only know about this app, they’ve agreed to its use for their safety. They aren’t home – they’ve gone out to lunch together – and I can see that Sarah is with them. Thank God my son started dating someone old enough to drive. If I get through this, I need to remember to ask Carina if she’s willing to be added to the app.

I stumble downstairs, having difficulty keeping my balance in my unfamiliar body. I grab a sandwich and a beer to go with it. It’s the last beer, and I add a note to my phone to buy more once I’m feeling and looking more like myself. Of course, I think as I savor the beer’s bitterness – a flavor I never fully appreciated before – if I’m feeling more like myself, I may not be interested in having more beer in the house.

I spend the remainder of my day trying to find more information about the Talisman of Shared Wishes. I’m not very successful, finding mostly websites related to Dungeons and Dragons and similar games. I do find one site from a nearby antiques shop that claims to deal in magical artifacts. I call the shop and ask if they have any in stock. The shopkeeper laughs and asks why I think he’d just have something that rare on the shelf. I ask him to call me if he happens to get any in. He stops laughing, takes my information, and promises me he will.

I order a pizza and have an early dinner by myself before the kids get home. I text them to let them know that they’re welcome to the leftovers, and I hope to be feeling better the next day. I go to use the bathroom before retiring for the night, and have to deal, again, with the unfamiliar appendage between my legs. What makes it weird, though, is that the appendage doesn’t feel unfamiliar; it feels like it’s been there my whole life. When I touch it to aim, a pleasant sensation courses through my body. I think of my late husband, and how I worked to stimulate him on our intimate evenings. Without thinking, my hands move to perform the same motions on myself, my pleasure and anticipation growing with each stroke. I caress what remains of my breasts, and the sensation in my groin grows. I quickly reach a climax and – oh, fucking gross – ejaculate all over the toilet, having lacked the foresight to keep myself under control and aim my emission into it.

Cleaning up semen after my own masturbation is not the most disgusting thing I’ve done in my life – again, I raised twins. It’s not even the grossest part of my day. That certainly doesn’t mean I liked it. What was I thinking? And why am I thinking about what I’m going to do differently the next time, instead of hoping there won’t be a next time?

I find a nightgown that fits my increasingly masculine body, get into bed, and try to read. I’m unsuccessful; I’m overwhelmed by my day – the crashing emotions of knowing what Josh did and still loving him anyway, the fear of becoming someone I’m not, this stupid fucking penis that keeps getting in the way every time I walk, makes going to the bathroom extremely uncomfortable, and somehow deposited my own semen all over my once-clean toilet…

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Eventually, I succumb to my exhaustion, fall asleep, and dream. For the first time in days, I don’t dream of being Jordan, or of Josh. I dream, fully Jordyn, of swimming in a rushing river of ruby-red water. I struggle against the current, but I’m slowly being swept away. I redouble my efforts, knowing that I will be lost forever if I let the river push me into the rapids downstream, or fall off the waterfall past them. Against all odds, I slowly start to fight back, making slow progress. As I move away from the waterfall, the water begins to clear. Eventually, the current is weak enough that I can make my way to a beach. As I stand up in the white sand, water dripping from my hair and body, I can only imagine what this will feel like in the real world when I awaken.