The swap hit like a flashbang — one moment I was myself, the next I was staring at a completely different reflection: a younger woman’s body, strong, curvy, with a heavy chest that shifted with every breath. The inmate who had touched me vanished into my old life, and reality instantly rewrote itself to accept me as her. The guards called me by her number, inmates nodded at me like I’d always belonged in this concrete world. Even my own memories felt tugged, threads fraying and reforming into something that matched her role.

But the hardest part wasn’t the shock of my new body — it was her addiction, now pounding in my skull like a second heartbeat. Cigarettes weren’t a luxury here; they were currency, power, survival. I felt myself doing whatever it took to get them: negotiating with guards, trading favors with inmates, slipping into the rhythm of a life that wasn’t mine but felt increasingly natural. Every time I held one between my fingers, a wave of relief washed over me that wasn’t mine… and every time, I wondered if the inmate in my old life ever intended to return things to normal — or if this new identity was becoming the only reality I had left.