Story by Liam Slade / Originally Published April 25 2024
One morning I went down to the mailroom of my apartment and I saw – amongst the fliers for pizza places and furniture stores in my neighborhood – a strange envelope.
My immediate impulse was to throw it away. I’ve had nothing but bad luck with unsolicited junk like that and I had no idea what it could be concerning. I paid my landlord monthly with e-transfers and all my credit card bills were paperless. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything important to come through the mail except for a video game I had pre-ordered.
When I got back up to my apartment, I was just about to drop it in the recycling bin unopened when I thought twice. Something about the thickness and heft of it caught me. There was something very official-seeming about this envelope, with its plastic window revealing my name and address. That wasn’t irregular in and of itself, of course. All sorts of mailing lists have me on file for whatever reason. That’s just part of being alive. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least look and see what was inside.
Inside, folded into thirds, was a three-page letter, and a fourth that appeared to be an invoice. My eyes immediately caught the total at the bottom of the bill, $4025.79, and bulged out. What could this be concerning? I flipped to the note.
It explained, in dense legalese, that some overseas investment group, Harwyn Holdings, had purchased something-or-other bureau that held the rights to I-don’t-know-what exactly. I had to read the thing three times and I still couldn’t make sense of these Byzantine transactions or what they had to do with me or how they led to me owing someone I’ve never heard of more than a month’s pay. What was it for? I had never gotten anything from any of these people or companies.
On the itemized invoice, it listed the main charge as being for “Occupation of Corporis Humani.” I’m no Latin major but it sounded like they were talking about charging me for living in my own human body. Based on the compounding charges, it seemed like they had been trying to reach me for quite a little while.
That night, I brought the envelope to the bar, where my girlfriend Tara and I were meeting up with our friends Jim and Krysta. The second I pulled the thing out, Jim laughed. “Oh, yeah, dude, I got the same thing a few months back.”
“Crazy scam,” we laughed. “Like anyone’s just going to cough up that much money for nothing.”
I felt pretty much at ease after that. I went home and tossed the thing into the shredder.
A few weeks later, another bill arrived in the mail. I rolled my eyes, but out of curiosity, I opened it. They had tacked another month’s “rent” on my body, along with additional compound interest. Yeah right, I thought. It didn’t work last time, I thought, why would I be scared?
Jim felt the same way. He showed me his, which had even been emblazoned with “past due” and “final notice.” We drank a toast to the desperation of these con artists and hoped that nobody out there was stupid enough to fork over a huge sum of money for something so obviously fake.
A few more weeks went by. A month. Another notice reached my door. This time I dumped it without thinking twice. I took a picture of the thing to send to Jim. He didn’t respond. In fact, I realized, we hadn’t spoken in a while. None of us knew what Jim had gotten up to.
It was a few days later that I ran into him at the corner store. I had to look twice to confirm it was him because it was so strange: he looked tired and rumpled, and he was in the diaper aisle – Jim didn’t have a kid.
“Jim, man, what are you doing here?”
No response.
“Jim? Jim? Hello?” I reached out to tap his shoulder.
“Huh?” he jumped with a start. “Sorry buddy, I’m not Jim.” He took his Huggies up to the register. I forgot what I was looking for and followed after.
“What do you mean you’re not Jim? Hey, come on man, what’s going on?”
Not-Jim seemed irritated with me. “Look, I’m new here, I got a kid at home, I don’t have time to explain.”
He rushed out the door, but stopped short to turn back and say “Don’t follow me, okay?” He looked exhausted – like he wasn’t trying to be rude or hostile to me, just that my presence was an unwelcome stress he didn’t need. I let him go, but I was left scratching my head. Could this have something to do with the mysterious bills we had been receiving?
I brought the latest one to a neighborhood law office. The charges were adding up, but luckily, I hadn’t gotten the dreaded “Final Notice” yet.
The gut looked at it and shook his head. “Yes, I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately. I don’t blame you for your skepticism, but you’ll wish you would have come to me sooner, because it’s real, and very legally enforceable.”
“What do you mean it’s real? What are these people claiming they own?”
“Your body,” the lawyer said matter-of-factly.
“That can’t be possible.”
“Would you be here if you believed that?” he said with a raised eyebrow. I sat back in my seat.
“When you’re born, there’s a charge for your birth,” the lawyer said. “A few thousand dollars. Not everyone can pay. Time goes by, accounts go into arrears, and the hospital doesn’t send a collection agency because, well, they’re a hospital. But the debt exists. What this group, Harwyn Holdings, has been doing is buying up these debts and leveraging them to say that they own you – after all, the debt is for your birth. That is, they don’t own you-you, they own your body. What makes you ‘you’ is still your own… probably, I’m not a philosopher.”
“Uh huh…” I nodded along, trying to grasp all this mumbo-jumbo.
“They’ve developed technology that allows them to unhouse people from their own naturally-born body. So if you can’t pay, you’re out – someone who can pay moves in.”
I grimaced. “What are you talking about? What happened to Jim? Did they… kill him?”
“No, they can’t do that,” the lawyer assured me. “Uh, legally, that is. I believe there’s a pool of donor-bodies, people who, um… well, you can imagine the sort of person, the sort of body available.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Jim, my friend – a smart, handsome, likeable guy who I had gone to university with and had a good job, was… what? Forcibly evicted into the low-income housing of bodies? And where did this other guy come from? The lawyer couldn’t tell me.
“Well, if Jim couldn’t pay, somebody would – that’s what Harwyn is after,” the lawyer summed it up.
“So what does it mean for me?”
“Well, obviously, you have to pay,” he shrugged passively.
“This is a lot of money,” I said, exasperated.
“We can get you on a payment plan,” the lawyer said. “They’re not totally unreasonable, you know.”
I left the office dejected. I wasn’t making a lot of money, and this was something I definitely didn’t need added to my monthly expenses. Luckily, however, I was able to work it out with Harwyn. I was probably going to have to starve myself, but I would do it as me, the same me I had always been.
Life continued for a while. Spurred by my own episode, Tara checked whether there was any chance of her being caught up in this scheme, but her parents had been able to pay off her debt so she was a free woman. I envied her that.
Even with the matter resolved, there was a weight on my shoulders. We would be in the throes of passion, and she would moan something like “I love your body!” and the thought would come into my head, “But I don’t own it!” I felt weak, like a loser.
I had to downgrade my apartment because of the added cost, to one with three roommates – I was basically living in a single small room. Tara lived with her parents and if we pooled our resources we still couldn’t afford a place of our own. My folks were no help – they had less money now than when I was born in the first place. At the worst possible time, the rent on my body went up. I took a night job to make ends meet. I was miserable, constantly tired and irritable, and seeing no relief in sight.
I had to get rid of the cost of this body, but there was no way out. I was too deep underwater.
I was lying awake in bed with Tara one night. We couldn’t sleep because my roommates were having an all-night video game session.
“What if,” I finally said with resignment and defeat, “I put my body on the market?”
Tara sat up. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean a trade, or… I don’t know, a move, whatever you’d call it,” I said, a chill going up my spine for even considering it. “It’s a good body. Six feet tall, mostly in shape, no major health conditions, a lot of good years left on it. Somebody will want it. Maybe I could find something… cheaper.”
“That’s absurd,” Tara huffed. “I don’t want you to change.”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s all I think about day and night. I have no money, I have no time, I feel like I’m deteriorating. I can’t afford to be in this body anymore. I need to downsize and start fresh.” As I was saying it, the insanity of it faded and I became more determined that this was my only option.
Harwyn, of course, was all too happy to facilitate trade-ins. I browsed through what was available. It was disturbing to see that they had appraised people at all different rates, but I couldn’t find anything that I really liked that was in my price range. All the bodies that were anything like mine were more or less the same price.
I browsed a little deeper and widened my search parameters, and that’s when I found Jessica. Jessica’s body seemed like a “steal.” She was only 5’2, and she was – to put it delicately – a bit chubby, with asthma, but otherwise seemed perfectly serviceable for getting around. She was not particularly attractive to my eye, but I didn’t need to be attractive to me, I just needed to be alive. She was looking to trade up because she had recently had some professional success, so she was bound for a taller, slimmer model of woman. I had resisted the idea of going “female” (it’s not like female bodies were inherently more affordable – a body is a body, it would seem) but for whatever arcane reason, the monthly due on Jessica’s body was a third of what I was paying. I needed the financial break.
After some hemming and hawing, I showed the listing to Tara. “What do you think of this?”
“She’s… cute…” Tara said slowly as she tried to process what I was saying, “It’s not really… what I would have expected you in…”
“It’s all I can afford,” I sighed, “I think, uh, this has to be it.”
Moving into Jessica’s body was unsurprisingly a change of pace. Different types of clothes fit it, of course, different types of underwear, and a brassiere to support my breasts, which were certainly noticeable in size. I didn’t dive right into big changes at first though. I got a short haircut to emulate the hair I had in my first body, and I exclusively wore trousers and button-down shirts like I always had.
Superficially, I worked hard to emulate what had always worked for me, but there were differences that couldn’t be negotiated that way. I was used to being able to reach high shelves, and now I had to pull up a stool or balance on a chair – which felt a little funny with my new center of gravity. I didn’t hate the wide hips and chubby thighs as much as I thought I would, but the belly – which was comprised of a few soft rolls of flab rather than the firmer abdomen I had had to give up, was different, and not welcome at first. It probably goes without saying that having the option to pee standing up was definitely preferable, but not a deal-breaker – you’re sitting down half the time either way, right? At first I was simply uninterested in lots of the feminine add-ons like make-up and nail color. I had gone twenty-something years of life without them, why would I suddenly take interest now?
I slept differently, waking up earlier and getting drowsy sooner, or physically not having the stamina I was accustomed to. Foods I liked tasted differently – not worse, just different, and lots of scents became different in my nostrils, some better and many worse. Along with the other issues with Jessica’s body, her digestive tract was not as capable as my old one, so that took some getting used to. And naturally, when it came time to face my first menstrual period, I did so with as much dignity and bravery as I could muster. The cramps were not fun – I wondered if Jessica’s new body had an easier time with them.
People who knew me my whole life were looking at me and talking to me like I was a totally different person. They would affect different tones of voice or postures when I was around. I tried not to take it personally. There were some pitying frowns whenever I was forced to explain what I had had to do, but I always reassured them I was taking it in stride – yes, I had been dealt a rough hand, but I was making the most of it. I think they really had the sense that being in a woman’s body was a huge downgrade from being in a man’s, but the longer I was here, the less I thought that way.
Tara pointed out that things that I used to find funny now didn’t appeal to me quite as much, but when I did find something funny I laughed easier. I was more upbeat a lot of the time but also a bit more open with any sadness that came to me. I didn’t notice. The feelings weren’t new, but the way of exhibiting them seemed to be.
Everything that was a downgrade felt so minor. I now had a huge weight off my shoulders and could breathe easily knowing that I had cut my monthly expenses so drastically. I could plan for the future. I was happy.
Tara and I kept going for a while after that. There didn’t seem to be a huge disruption to our relationship – we had a good time as girlfriends, and for a while it was like getting to know each other all over again. The sex was, after an awkward feeling-out period to figure out what I actually liked in this body, kind of mind-blowing, and made me feel like I had really gotten a good deal.
But somehow we drifted apart. Tara’s last words to me on the subject were that I was still a good person, but not the one she had fallen in love with, and that she wanted us to both be happy. I understood it, but I still cried a bit about it privately: another thing that wouldn’t have likely happened in my original body, and which could be considered a bug or a feature depending on your perspective.
A lot has changed since Tara and I split. I started rebuilding my life and getting out there. I got around to redesigning and redecorating myself: it began with putting a pair of earrings in, since the piercings were already there, and then growing my hair out to see what it looked like (I liked it just fine and didn’t mind the upkeep as it turned out) and then went further with learning to apply makeup, getting manicures, and wearing skirts from time to time. I went from not wanting to be pretty in any sense of the word to enjoying some of the attention I get when I am. I think people like me better the more I look like what they think a woman should be, and I don’t mind fitting into that expectation either because it’s simply less trouble to fit in. I’m still curvy despite being active – I don’t mind a cheeseburger, you know – but I like the way I look, and I still get attention from guys and girls. Despite the chafing I even enjoy the way my inner thighs rub together, which is how I know that this body, against my expectations, was really working for me. I even go out from time to time, but I’m focused on me.
With all the money I’ve put away, I sometimes feel like I could trade up into something else, but I’ve put a lot of energy and effort into making this body a home for me, and I like it that way. It’s just as likely I’ll go back to the Harwyn people and offer to buy my body outright. I think it’s a good place to settle.
The End
Copyright 2024 Liam Slade, all rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without explicit permission from the author
If you liked this story, you should check out my collection BEYOND OURSELVES available now!