Wish Gone Wrong - Part 3 of 3 (Finale / Choose your own ending!)

Note: I've removed some photo illustrations from this story because, in hindsight, I'm not sure whether they were made public with the consent of the people in them. Feel free to suggest appropriate replacement photos, as I seem to be bad at finding them.

[Two side-by-side images. Left: Amber. Right: Danielle's body with a ghostly image of Brandon's face behind it.]

Amber's dad took us into her room and closed the door behind us. "What unusual thing have you noticed about the statue?" he asked her.

Amber sighed. "My boyfriend made a wish near it, and now he and Dani have switched bodies."

"Hi," I said, extending my hand. "I'm Brandon."

Amber's dad shook it. "Pleasure to meet you, 'son'," he said, "but I thought you weren't coming here with my daughter."

"He didn't come here," Amber said. "I took the statue to Milwaukee with me."

Amber's dad's eyes widened briefly. "You must have thought it was just decoration, huh?" he said to her. "Damn it. I should have hidden it better. I thought if it looked like just another piece of attic junk, everyone would ignore it."

"So you knew it can grant wishes," I said.

"I knew it can switch people's bodies," Amber's dad said. "If you make a wish in front of it, it will try to interpret the wish as a command to switch bodies. That's what the witch told me. The witch I bought it from."

"A 'witch' told you the statue switches people's bodies," Amber said, "and she tried to sell it to you. And you believed her."

"I was desperate," Amber's dad said. "And you have to admit I wasn't wrong."

"Desperate to do what?" Amber asked.

Amber's dad paused. "Perhaps I can't hide the truth forever. But if I tell you, you both must swear you'll never tell anyone. Especially not my wife."

Amber looked worried, but she nodded. "I swear."

"I swear too," I said.

"Alright," Amber's dad said. "You might want to sit down for this." Amber and I sat on her bed, and her dad joined us on her desk chair. He took a deep breath, and began: "This isn't my original body. Up until 1993, I was a girl, named Amy. Amber's mother was my friend in college. I had a huge crush on her, but she was straight."

"I don't like where this is going," Amber said.

"It was completely consensual, I promise," Amber's dad said. "After I got the statue, I found a young male-to-female transsexual - a transgender woman, I guess you'd say nowadays - who was still in the closet and hadn't done anything medical. She was happy to switch her male body for my female one. Ever since, I've been living her old life as James Harrison, and she's been living as Amy Green. The James your mother fell in love with - that was me the whole time."

Amber sat silently for a moment, then nodded. "I understand. I don't know if I can fault you for what you did."

"I might be able to fault myself," James said. "I threw my whole life away just for a chance with a girl. I'm lucky it worked out this well."

"After you used the statue," I said to James, "wouldn't it have been safest to destroy it? Were you planning to use it for something else?"

"Nothing in particular," James said, "but the witch told me that if the statue was destroyed, the magic inside would escape, and there's no telling what it would do without the statue controlling it. I figured it was best to keep the statue hidden somewhere I knew - or thought - it would be safe and untouched."

"Anything else we should know about how the statue works?" I said. "When Danielle in my body wished to undo the switch, nothing happened. What's up with that?"

"Wait," Amber said. "We should call Danielle back now. She needs to know all of this." She looked at James.

"She is the one with the statue now, isn't she?" James said. "Alright, but we have to swear her to secrecy too."

[Image: Brandon's body with a ghostly image of Danielle's face behind it.]

We called Danielle, put her on speaker, swore her to secrecy, and filled her in. "After this first-hand body swap, I'll buy just about anything," she said. "So how do we fix this?"

James looked at us sadly. "We can't. If the statue has already switched a pair of minds, it can never switch that pair again. That's why the wish to switch back wasn't granted." There was silence for a moment or two.

"Wait," Amber said. "What if we get around that by involving a couple of extra people? With several careful switches, I think we could get everyone back in their own bodies without switching the same two minds twice."

"Yeah," I said, "like in that Futurama episode."

James sighed. "That's the other thing. The statue's magic supply is limited and recharges very slowly. The witch told me it can do a maximum of three switches rapid-fire, and it takes about sixty years to recharge one switch. Since it's done two switches in the past thirty years - the original 'James' with me, and Brandon with Danielle - we've only got one switch left, unless we want to wait a few decades."

"Are those all of the restrictions?" Amber said, annoyed.

"I think so," James said. "It's terrible, I know, but I can only imagine that getting the powers of pagan gods to cooperate is really hard."

"So we can make just about any one switch," Danielle said, "except the one that would fix everything? I guess we're staying like this, then."

"Another switch might not fix everything," James said, "but maybe it could make some things better. For instance, what if we switch Amber into Brandon's body, and Danielle into Amber's body? That way, Amber and Brandon's relationship wouldn't be incestuous, and they could still have children together someday."

Being Danielle forever, in a relationship with my own body? Standing on my tip-toes to kiss my own lips? Spreading my legs and getting penetrated by my own dick? And the whole time, it would be Amber, my love, in there. It freaked me out, but somehow excited me at the same time. "I'm not thrilled at the idea of getting pregnant and giving birth, though," I said.

"Oh, don't be such a baby," Danielle said. "Amber, for what it's worth, Brandon's body is pretty great. Sure, you won't see as many colors, but you'll be stronger, and so handsome too... Pleasure will come so easily, you won't miss being a woman."

"Just what have you been up to in my body?" I demanded.

"If you don't want to get pregnant, Brandon," Amber said, "I won't try to make you. If we want kids, we can always adopt." Addressing everyone, she continued, "I wouldn't mind having Brandon's body, but it wouldn't change the fact that Brandon looks like Danielle. What if instead, we switch Brandon with another man - or better yet, a pre-transition trans woman?"

"Yeah, Danielle," I said mischieviously. "If you like my body so much, you can keep it all to yourself."

"I'd rather find a good man to share it with," Danielle said. "I doubt that'd be hard, since - no offense - your body's kind of a twink."

"The thing about pre-transition trans women, though," James said, "is that they're not exactly easy to spot. I only found the original 'James' through my college's LGBT subculture. Plus, medical transition's good enough nowadays that a lot of trans women might not trade their bodies for a female stranger's even if they could."

"Hey, what if we switched Brandon with my ex Luke?" Danielle said. "That'd be some sweet revenge."

Amber had told me about Luke. He dated Danielle for a few months before Amber met me. Danielle brought him along on a previous family reunion, where he tried to hook up with Amber behind Danielle's back. Amber rejected him and told Danielle about his infidelity, and she dumped him right away. I had never met him, but I had looked him up on social media once, and he was admittedly a handsome devil.

"Stuck in the body of the girl he got bored with," continued Danielle, "while a stranger uses his body to bang the girl he couldn't get."

"I'd rather have his body than this one," I said to Danielle, "but does he really deserve that? He's already paid for cheating by losing you."

"I'm with Brandon," Amber said. "Revenge fantasies are fun and all, but if we're being serious about this, we should minimize the number of people affected."

"Here's an idea," James said. "Amber, you said you're bothered that Brandon looks like Dani, right? What if we switched you into Dani's body, and Brandon into your body?"

Me in Amber's body... I'd never be without her beauty, because I'd see it every day in the mirror. I'd hear her sweet voice every time I spoke. And Amber would be with me in Danielle's body, which, while not as stunning as her own body, was still good-looking. But...

Amber put my thoughts into words. "Our relationship would still be considered incest, so we'd still have to hide it."

"If Brandon doesn't want Luke's body," Danielle said, "I might like to take it for myself. Whichever of you two is Amber and which is Danielle, you're still sisters. Luke has a house in my city and a degree in my field, and I'm pretty sure he has normal color vision. Why not let me use the switch to get those things back?"

"Dani," Amber said, "what did I just say about minimizing the number of people affected?"

So many options, so many factors to consider. What should we do?

Switch Danielle (Brandon's body) and Amber.

Switch Brandon (Danielle's body) and Amber.

Switch Danielle (Brandon's body) and Luke.

Switch Brandon (Danielle's body) and Luke.

Try to find a pre-transition trans woman who wants to switch with Brandon (Danielle's body).