The man wakes up. He is on his back, staring at the ceiling fan, and the lantern. It looks like it exploded. So did - he looks over his shoulder - the foo dog. What happened? They walked into the Chinese food joint. He asked if it was racist to suggest coming there. She gave him the scripted response to his scripted question; only if it was racist for her to suggest a soul food joint. He looked at the big foo dog statue. She noticed, said it was actually a guardian lion. He compared it to those waving cats from Japan, and she gave a half-serious sigh and batted at a cheap paper lantern with a dragon in it. Called him a week. Then he felt a great deal of pressure, everything went white, and he woke up on the floor. Where was she? He tries to sit up, finds it difficult. His balance is off somehow. Along with every bit of flesh, blood, and bone below his personal Equator. Everything from his belly button down. Gone. He stares. Swallows. Looks up. His wife is also prone. And, like him, her lower half is gone. If you ask him, later, he is never able to say what, exactly, was covering her torso, the section that should've been a cross section of her torso. Muscle, guts, fat, skin, spine. His legs - the explosion tore his pants half to shreds - are across the room. Next to his wife. And not just his legs, his hips too. There's hardly any of his Hanes left. His heart beats faster. He looks down. His legs, of course, are missing. But there's a notable absence of trailing guts, no smell of ruptured intestines and blood and fluid like he's read about. There are, however, his wife's legs. The explosion - or whatever it was - partially denuded them too. But their lower halves were blown in opposite directions, with no wounds or scrapes at all. What sort of explosion did that, but left their upper bodies with clothes? It was a awfully selective explosion. One that didn't make his ears ring. If anything, his hearing is sharper than before. His sense of smell also feels keyed up. Not that he needs either of those to notice his wife's legs moving. They flex and kick, scrabble at the floor. He stared at them. The top of the lower half brushes his hip, sends angry bees buzzing through his body, like it had fallen asleep. He flinches, but it was already too late. The legs shove themselves until they made firm contact with the cut. He tries to fight them off, but shock robs him of strength. Also, legs have more strength anyway. The bees draw a hot line across his torso, up his spine. He tries to push the legs away, but they spasm and kick and then they still down. He can feel them. He can feel the rags and tatters, the cold floor on the back of her calves. Even her toe ring. A chair scapes along the ground. He looks up. Somehow, his lower half is attached to his wife. Most of his pants are missing, so he can clearly see his own cock, just from the wrong angle. *So that's what the piercing looks like to her.* "Baby?" She braces herself on a table, nearly pulls it over, staggers to her feet anyway. His feet. "What...what happened?" He could do nothing but shrug. A commonplace gesture for an impossible situation. There's a strange contrast between his brown skin and hers. But not, oddly enough, the actual hips. The portion of his waist above the line flared out into curves. Well, what curves she had had, anyway. Currently, she has his hips, which are basically no hips at all. And there is something wrong with his dick. The perspective might be making it look bigger, but what's going on with the head? He looks down. Yes, that's hers, all right. He runs his fingers over the scar on her upper left thigh. All she said was "curling iron", with a funny smile on her face. He doesn't even realize he's reaching for her slit until he's already stroking the outer lips. *Should I-* Someone moans. She's holding his cock in a very familiar way, eyes glazed, mouth open. She stares at the wall above his head, realizes he's looking at her, makes eye contact, blushes. Green scales curl over her cheeks. She licks her lips with a forked tongue. "You look *so* hot." She doesn't even seem to notice the horns on her forehead, the long whiskers. *Maybe she'll grant me a wish if I collect all the dragon balls,* he thinks. He looks down; he didn't notice the changes to his own body. Scales just appear on his legs, but never where he's actually looking. Like something constantly moving in the corner of his eye. On his upper torso, he sees what looks like fur. In some places it's curly and long. He reaches up to his head, feels his close cropped hair growing into a mane. The same type of fur that slowly covers her from the waist down, like scales cover her from the waist up. He sees his old legs thicken and shift with muscle. Her new claws burst through his Jordans. Not hot. This is just weird. This is too weird. His heart starts going double-time. Triple. Something primal, something atavistic notes the scales, the muzzle - or maybe it's *technically* a snout - the golden, slitted eyes, the elongating body, and goes *snake*. It sees her lower body, and goes *predator*. And maybe *rape*. That something sends him skittering back. The talons of his lower half scrape against the floor, the sinuous, fur-ridged tail- When did he get a tail? His back hits the pedestal withe the remains of the lion, and she's still coming toward him. He turns his face away- Something gnaws at him, in his stomach. Her paws are almost silent on the floor. Her tail whisks behind her - if foo dogs even had tails. He can tell when she stops. He smelld her, and him, and what they're *becoming*, the mixed up, Frankenstein *monsters*. If he turned, he'd find her cock in front of his face. She squats, puts one hand on his shoulder. Her claws barely prick his face as she turns his head to face her, and they look deep into each other's eyes. And, somehow, he sees the woman he loves, the woman he married. His blunt, leonine muzzle meets her sleek, reptilian one in a kiss. Somewhere in the haze, the heat, he hears people watching, commenting, recording. He smells his Old Spice, her Dior, and he can't tell which scent is coming from who. Nor does he care. Her breasts press against his chest. He is aware, dimly, when she reaches down, takes his transplanted tower well in hand, like she had been doing it all her life. He is dimly aware of his own legs opening, like he has done it all his life. That gnawing feeling wasn't fear. It was *hunger*. And for something a lot bigger than a spring roll. And despite their mish-mash, mongrel form, his altered cock fits into her altered cunt like a glove. Fills him up like a blade fitting into a sheath. A warm feeling spreads through him, like sitting up in front of a fire, on fast forward. There are people staring, cell phones recording, of course, but none of that matters. Nothing matters but him and her. ENDF ----- #"Szechuan Switch" 2018 Nequ Creative Commons By-Sa-NC Fanart and Fan stories welcome