🤖✅ Exchanging Places

Chapter 2 - The Innocent Child

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Mimic. Thank you for your support, and I hope you're enjoying the new story!

A sudden wave of dizziness washed over George, making his head swim as if the world around him had been tossed off-kilter. He clutched at the edge of the table, trying in vain to steady himself. His chest ached as if there was some vast hollow inside, and for a moment he found himself gasping for breath with no idea what was happening. He gulped down cold air desperately, as if trying to save himself from drowning, and after just a fraction of a second the strange sensation was gone.

When he managed to open his eyes again the situation was even stranger, and he found himself wondering for a moment if he'd fallen without realising; the walls loomed high above him like cliffs, and the furniture appeared distorted, as though viewed through a funhouse mirror. Panic gnawed at the edges of his mind, threatening to consume him whole.

"Where am I?" he whispered, but his voice sounded small and lost in the vast expanse of the room, and he couldn't even make out the words. Whatever was happening, it was only going to get stranger now. His heart pounded in his ears as he caught sight of a giant figure standing nearby, features obscured by the dizzying perspective, and a hand larger than his head swept towards him. Fear clawed at his insides, urging him to flee or hide from the menacing presence.

"Who are you?" he stammered, struggling to make sense of the situation. "What's going on?"

As the figure drew closer, George's terror gave way to a strange sort of recognition. He stared up into the face of the giant, feeling as though he were gazing into some twisted reflection of himself. Not a monster, just a mirror showing him a view of the world from an impossible perspective. He could even make out the familiar birthmark on the inside of his wrist, now zoomed in so that it looked almost larger than his body.

"I'm George now," intoned the figure, its voice eerily familiar. "I'm so glad you were willing to swap."

"Swap?" George echoed weakly, his confusion nearly drowning out the growing dread that coiled in his gut. And then he put the words together with what Eve had been asking him before, proposing some kind of swap. He'd thought the idea sounded cute in the abstract, but never imagined that it could actually be possible. "Eve?"

"No," the giant George answered, a hint of amusement colouring its words. "You are Eve now. That's what a swap means. Don't tell me that your intellect is reduced to fit that tiny brain already?"

Taking a shaky breath, George forced his gaze downward, only to be met with a sight that made his blood run cold. Tiny, chubby hands clenched into fists before him, their proportions all wrong for his body. Baby-soft skin stretched across rounded limbs, and the feeling of a diaper encasing his lower half sent shivers down his spine. It was unbelievable, but somehow true.

"Who are you? You're not Eve." George demanded, his terror fueling a surge of defiance. He refused to be held captive by this mysterious entity. If he could just understand what was happening to him, and how, there must surely be some way that he could get his own body back from the figure wearing it like a cheap suit.

"I thought I explained, you're Eve now," his body answered. "I am, you might say, an entity of opportunity. Your kind typically call us demons, although such a simple term is a massive misunderstanding of both what we want, and what we are capable of."

"Change me back," George insisted, his small fists balled and pounding on the plastic table of the high chair. "You can't do this to me! I never wanted this!"

"You recognise that you asked for it though," the demon answered with a knowing smile. "That's all I needed. Almost two years ago, I wouldn't have had the strength to fight a human soul for ownership of its body. Sometimes, your exorcists know what they are doing. But a newborn baby who hasn't yet drawn her first breath? No soul yet bestowed with which to resist me? It's the easy option, but going through a whole childhood as a human is considered the worst fate one of us can suffer; an act of desperation."