My name is Jon. This is the story of a very unusual night I had.

Marie and I hit it off at this party. This was at Alana Grayson's uncle's house in the old business district. It was a huge old house, three stories that all of which creaked with every step you took. Her uncle had been constantly expanding and adding to it since it was built, and so it had the most confusing internal layout of any place I'd ever seen.

There were steps in the middle of rooms, walls turned into doors and back into walls. You could get lost for half an hour and never feel like you'd seen the same room twice.

But back to Marie and I. I knew her a little bit through some musicians, and we'd talked a few times. It was at this party that I actually got to know her, and things were going really well. She had blond curly hair, bright eyes, a pretty smile. I liked the shape of her body, and she had a certain quality to her of a graceful and confident woman.

We were drinking, and the party was starting to get out of control. We shuffled into one room, only for the noise to grow there, and so we left wandering room to room.

"You know it's been so long since I've been here," she said.

"You actually know your way around?"

"Alana and I were friends growing up. My first two years of high school I used to come over after school."

"Wow, what's it like for you?"

"You know, there's one room, I really want to find."

"What room is that?"

"Let me surprise you. It's pretty awesome."

She led me by the hand through a confusing twist of passages that at least once involved heading out onto a balcony to get to another section of the house.

"So you must have known the guy who built this place," I said.

"Sure. Alana and I called him Uncle Greg."

"Was he just crazy, or … why is it like this?"

"Well, Uncle Greg was someone who liked puzzles. Have you seen the puzzle room?"

"Is that where we're going?"

"No, but it's in here somewhere. It's nothing but a bunch of trapdoors and secret exits."

"So he just thought it was fun, huh."

"Sure. But it was more than that. Every room in this place had a name and a purpose, a story associated with it. And every single room is unique in some way."

"That's actually pretty awesome. Which one is this?"

"The Cove," she said. "We just came from the Weaving Room."

"The one with the loom?"

"Yes."

"Did he know how to weave?"

She shrugged. "Never asked him."

"Which room are we headed for?"

"The Enchanted Room."

"Sounds… wait, Enchanted? What does that mean?"

"I'll show you when we get there."

Through the maze we went, further and further. It seemed like it took forever, but I think it must have really been about five minutes. I was really having a great time, giddy with a sense of late-night adventure.

Finally she stopped at a big unpainted wooden door. This one didn't have a knob, but a latch that slid to the side.

"This is it," she said, grinning. She pulled the latch and the door swung open by itself. She pulled a string hanging inside the room to turn on a light. We went in.

"This is it?" I couldn't tell what was so special about this place. The light in the room was coming from a couple bare lightbulbs on an unfinished ceiling. A number of irregular shaped boxes and tables were all over the place, covered with linens to protect them from dust.

"Yep!"

"So what's so special about this room?"

"Shut the door first."

I did so. Once I shut it there was a strange quiet. I remember noticing for the first time that night that I couldn't hear the rest of the party at all.

"Okay. This room is called the Enchanted Room because in here, magic is real."

I laughed.

"No, I'm actually serious. You don't believe me, I'll prove it to you?"

"Are you two part of some weird … what's the word… wiccan?"

"No, no. Look, this is what I mean."

She pulled the sheet off one of the tables, showing it wasn't a table at all, but a set of stocks. I didn't know what to say so I just gave her a confused look. She pulled the sheet from another box with a hole at the top, and another table that seemed to be made of a box in two pieces.

"Are these stage props?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Wow, that's a pretty nice find. What's this one do?" I pointed to the box.

"Why don't you get in and find out!"

"You can't be serious."

"I am! I'll make a bet with you. If you win you can do anything you want with me tonight. And vice versa."

I raised an eyebrow. She grinned back at me.

"I like the intonation of that," I said. "You're on."

"Okay. We'll start with this one."

She opened the front of the box I had pointed to, and then lifted off the top pieces. Inside there was a block which she told me to sit down on, then replaced and relatched the two pieces, leaving my head sticking out of the hole at the top of the box.

"So what's the trick then? Now I'm stuck in stuck in a box, that's the trick."

"Wait for it. Now we get these out."

She picked up two wooden stocks and a black scarf. The stocks apparently fastened into place securing my head, and then she tucked the scarf around my head. I was pretty firmly locked in place.

"Okay, so now I'm really stuck in a box."

"Oh really," she said, grinning. "Want to know what this box is for?"

"Yes, I'm still curious."

"It's going to make you disappear."

She reached down and did something. It sounded like she flipped a switch, but of course from my vantage point, I couldn't see.

"There!"

"There what?" I'm still here!"

"Oh, right. Your head is still here, Jon. But your body, poof. It's gone."

"What? No, I'm still here, I'm just locked in this box. Wait…" It was starting to dawn on me. I thought about her words. They were slowly reconciled with the fact that well, I just couldn't feel my body anymore.

"See?"

"Why can't I feel anything? What's this thing do? Am I paralyzed?"

"Relax. I told you, you're just a head. You want more proof?"

She picked me up. That was disorienting, but at the same time it became very comforting. It was as if the reality of the situation was just then dawning on me. I was just a head, and she was holding me in her hands facing her.
Suddenly, she kissed me. I can't say I was disappointed with anything at that point.

"Believe me now?" she asked.

"Yes, I'll take this as pretty convincing evidence."

"Good. I won the bet, by the way."

"I guess you did didn't you? Are you going to leave me like this, is that what you're saying?"

"I might. How would you feel about that?"

"I'm not even sure. Kiss me again and I'll let you know."

She did. Then she set me down again, and said, "I've got an idea."

"Which is?"

"I'll show you! Don't go anywhere!"

"Oh, that's hilarious."

I saw her go back over to the box which had made me disappear. She adjusted something, a dial possibly on the side of the box, then I saw her get inside herself and pull the stocks up to her neck.

"Wait, are you making your own body disappear? Because that just strikes me as unwise," I said.

"Well, in a way I am," she said. She was already unfastening the box from the inside. I hadn't even noticed a way to do that.

She climbed out. Or maybe, I climbed out. She gestured to herself, now sporting the body I had just recently been attached to.

"Ta-da!" she said.

"Oh, I wish I could clap," I jeered.

"Would you like to try on my body?" she asked.

"That's the only thing I would like," I said.

"Really?"

"Yes. The moment I first laid eyes on you, I wished with all my heart that you would decapitate me, and then decapitate yourself and attach your head to my body, such that no other recourse were available other than that I should be attached to yours!"
S

he laughed very hard.

"Just for mocking me, I'm really going to do it."

"Fine! Getting any kind of body at all is a step forward for a head!"

She picked me up and set me back down on top of the box. After she positioned everything again, she flipped the dial or switch or whatever it was, and suddenly I could feel a body again. It was distinctly not my own body. It didn't feel the same in much of any way at all. The weight of different pieces was all different, the way all the parts felt was distinctly new.

She undid the latch and allowed me to take a step out. It was as if I was walking for the first time.

"This is … wow, I didn't know it would feel so different. I mean, it's not hard, but it's as if just moving around is a totally novel feeling."

"I know! I love trying on new bodies. Yours feels so thin, but so strong!"

"You feel … it's like all of the joints are different. My hands especially. Your hands. Whatever."

"I'm surprised you haven't felt yourself up yet," she said.

"You know, I was just getting to that," I said, laughing, looking down at the two lovely boobs that were now a feature of my own chest. I gently started rubbing my hands over them, the sensation an altogether new and pleasant one.

"Don't get too frisky now," she said, pulling my hands away. "Not without me anyhow."

She put one of my hands on the crotch of her jeans. My jeans. Whatever. I was touching my own junk.

"Ahhh….." She made a face that suggested pleasure. I almost drew my hand away instinctively.

"That's weird for me to do that," I said. "It's almost like I'm touching another guy."

She laughed. "I know what you mean," she said. "The arousal stuff is all up here." She pointed to her head.

"Still though, I mean it's mine anyway." I gave it another pat and watched her react.

"Mine tonight," she said, and caught my hand and kept it there. I felt one of hers reach out and cup one of my new boobs.

It was just then that we heard the door unlatch. We both quickly withdrew our hands, but there was no way we could switch our heads back. We were just caught there as the door swung open.

For a moment I kind of froze. I didn't know what to think. But when Alana, the hostess of the party, came in and saw us, I guess I breathed a sigh of relief. Alana and I had become close friends years ago, and if there was anybody at that party I would be alright with walking in and seeing my head switched with Marie's well, I guess it would have had to have been her.

"Oh here you guys are…"

"Alana," I said, but I wasn't sure what to say next.

"The party was dying down a bit, and I thought I'd better go check on you to make sure nobody got lost or anything.

You two certainly look like you're having a good time."

She shut the door. The sense of silence returned. I hadn't even noticed any noise.

"I just won a bet with Jon that magic was real here," grinned Marie. She pointed to our bodies and gestured to suggest the swap.

"Looks like it's real Jon," said Alana nonchalantly.

"I get to do whatever I want with him tonight," continued Marie.

"Is that so… Jon, that was quite an ill-advised bet." She shook her head.

"I'm beginning to see the place I went wrong," I said. "You see, I used to believe that the world made sense."

"Oh, it still makes sense," said Alana. "Believe it or not, there's a scientific explanation for all of these devices. Now, mad science may also be an applicable term, and the conditions under which we're operating are not reproducible under normal conditions, so they're not commonly accepted as true. But in this room, a lot of things can take place that aren't normal."

"Why this room?" I asked.

"Well, this is the center of the house. And to be perfectly honest, my uncle is a little more than an ambitious carpenter. He's an experimental physicist and also an accomplished magical historian."

"Magical historian?"

"The whole house is constructed around this room, and it is made in such a confusing way to hide the skeleton of the real device here, which is called a Concentrator. That's this room, which gathers up the ley energy. This house lies on a fault, of sorts, an area where the ley fields of the earth are right for this sort of thing. I don't know the whole explanation, but it works like this — the rest of the house is built around this room, and works to expand it outward to the size it is now. In regular dimensions, this room is actually the size of a shoebox, but the properties of the house, arranged as it is, cause it to expand to the size we perceive it to be. The effects of the room are natural however."

"You know, if I was still attached to my regular body, I don't think I would believe you. What happens if we leave?"
Alana shrugged. "Nothing much."

"So if we walk out of this magic room, our bodies will still be switched?"

"Yea."

"What if Marie had carried me out of here when I was only a head?"

"You'd be fine. The room is still part of the regular world, it's just that inside it, you can do some kinds of magic. That's the only difference."

OKAY GUYS, said the writer, THAT'S ENOUGH EXPOSITION NOW GET ON WITH IT.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Oh, don't worry about it," said Alana. "He's just trying to speed up the story. Marie, you want to see the newest trick we've made?"

"Of course!"

Alana shoved a heavy trunk out of the way, and pulled a linen sheet off a long upright box with a door on the front. Just like the other device, this one had a space at the top that appeared to be where a person's head would go.

"This one is so cool," said Alana, opening the door. "I couldn't wait to show you after we built it."

Alana got into the cabinet and stood there. Marie shut the door, securing her inside with her head still visible.

"What do I do?" asked Marie.

"There's a dial on the back end, set it to '3,' and push the green button."

"Okay. You ready?"

"Sure."

Marie must have pushed the button. I didn't notice anything happen, but when she opened the cabinet and Marie stepped out the change was pretty apparent.

We could see right through her. She wasn't absolutely invisible, but her arms and legs and shoulders, whatever hadn't been covered up by her dress, it was like she was made of glass.

"That's awesome!" said Marie, grabbing a hold of her wrist. "Jon, come feel her arm!"

I did. It was quite a strange feeling, the smoothness of glass, but her arm still had the suppleness of skin.

"Isn't this awesome?" asked Alana?

"Yea! What does it feel like for you?"

"Everything is … really smooth," said Alana.

"What about the other settings," asked Marie.

"Feel free to try them out. I mean, you've got a guinea pig here," she gave me a pat on the butt. "I'm gonna head back and make sure everything's okay downstairs. Don't get into too much trouble, okay? I'll come looking for you in a bit."

"Sounds good."

Alana left us there. Marie had a look in here eye.