They say that when you hang out with someone a lot you start to adopt their mannerisms. Well, things can tend to go a little bit further with my friend Ness.

See, we have been hanging out a lot lately. Just doing whatever, sharing art, music, and gaming. He told me about this so it was to be expected. With Ness, you can end up waking up in each other’s skin after a while. And that’s what happened. Yesterday morning, I woke up in my bed and found myself to be a raccoon instead of a huskytaur. I didn’t notice it at first, at least until I started trying to get up. I felt strange and much smaller than I was used to. I reached over to my nightstand and fumbled around for my glasses. I hadn’t worn glasses for a long time since I got LASIK but I was too tired to really notice. I couldn’t see a thing, everything was blurry.

Eventually I found them and fitted them on my nose. I finally looked down at myself in my bed and was surprised to see that past my stomach was a pair of boxers, only two gray furred legs, and a ringed tail. I was confused at first but then remembered what Ness had told me. Shaking my head in both amusement and mild annoyance, I decided to just get up and at least start the day. Luckily it was a Saturday so I had no pressing obligations. I figured I could use the day to get my bearings and figure out what to do from here. I would have to call Ness and see if we could meet up and discuss this. I only figured he probably was now me, since I was now him.

But first, I had to get up. Besides, my bladder was full and my stomach was empty.

I finally got myself out of the bed sheets and tried to stand on my new two legs. With the first several tries I lost my balance. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it, and was able to start moving, albeit slowly and a bit carefully. Walking on four legs all your life doesn’t really prepare you for walking as a biped! And yes, while my first meeting with Ness started with him switching our heads around and us having each other’s bodies for several hours, it wasn’t enough time to really get used to it. That day was really a hilarious exercise in tripping and clumsiness. And we didn’t even dare attempt walking around in such unfamiliar body types for most of it.

I slowly found my way to the bathroom and did my business. I felt thankful at that moment that bathroom facilities were designed to be useful for both taurs and bipeds. When I finished, I went to the sink to wash my hands and got my first good look at my new face in the mirror. I was undoubtedly a raccoon. On top of my shoulders sat a head with a face familiar to me from the past week, only it hadn’t been mine then. My ears were a little smaller and more rounded. My nose was rounder and pure black, instead of the pink I used to have on it. My snout was just a little more pointed, and I had much more pronounced whiskers. My eyes, behind a pair of square-lensed glasses, were now green, and a dark gray mask swept across the fur around my eyes and down my nose. At least one thing looked familiar. Both Ness and I have a small poof of head fur on the top of our heads. But that was about it for the similarities.

As I was taking in my reflection, I reflexively let slip a “wow”. The sound of it made me jump and I quickly turned my head, thinking that Ness somehow snuck in and was spying on me in my bathroom, but no one was there. I caught myself and chuckled a bit. I started talking again into the mirror, saying “This is my voice. Blah, blah, blah. Wow.” The sound of Ness’ voice coming from my mouth was almost surprising. Whenever you see a body swap happen in a cartoon on TV, the people always retain their original voices. I guess I subconsciously expected that to have been the case here. It made sense in a weird way, though. Our voices were part of our bodies, so it was only natural they’d have swapped along with everything else.

I smirked in the mirror. In my mind, it sort of felt like I was wearing a costume. A really, really well done costume. It was going to take a little bit getting used to seeing someone else in the mirror. However, I couldn’t deny that it wasn’t at least somewhat exciting. This was a new and rare experience, to be sure. Besides, Ness had gone through this before. He could help me acquaint myself with the experience.

I reached out and turned on the water. After washing my gray furred raccoon hands and drying them off on the hand towel, I went to the kitchen and made myself some bacon and eggs for breakfast. I was starving, after all.

As I ate, I thought about what had just happened. I began to notice some odd things. For one, while Ness hadn’t been to my house for a few days, I was wearing his clothes and his glasses were on my bedside dresser, as if they were always my own. The chair I was sitting on wasn’t there last night, because as a taur I would just sit on my haunches, only bringing the chairs out when I had company. I also realized that my bed was different. Yesterday, I went to sleep in my taur-sized bed. It was larger and closer to the ground. The one I woke up in the morning seemed to be a biped’s standard queen sized bed. I began to wonder how far the changes extended beyond my new body. It seemed as if the world itself had subtly changed as well to make it seem as if I was always a raccoon.

After finishing my breakfast, I got up and started to explore around my house, before going back to my room to see if I had a new wardrobe to go with the new body. Things definitely were different. There was more furniture and it was situated more closely together. It also looked pretty lived in, as opposed to have only just recently been installed and rearranged.

When I got back to my bedroom, I noticed things here had changed as well. The bed, as I thought, was now queen sized. My work desk had a chair in front of it, and there was a pair of jeans thrown on the floor as if they had been tossed there in preparation for going to bed. I picked them up and held them in front of my waist. They were the right size. They clearly were mine. I tossed them onto my bed and turned to my closet.

I opened the closet doors and found that instead of my usual collection of shirts and back covers that taurs wore, it contained more pants and shirts of various styles, a light jacket, a heavier winter coat, and pairs of sneakers and semi-formal shoes. What I found most surprising about this wasn’t that I had a completely brand new wardrobe that I didn’t have before, was that if I were to go to the store and purchase this kind of clothing for myself, I’d have chosen the same styles. I didn’t see anything that looked like Ness’ typical wear, but rather, differently sized versions of my own clothing, as well as a few new articles that were similar but I never owned before.

I turned around and went over to my dresser. The first thing I noticed was my wallet, wristwatch, and cellphone sitting on top connected to its charger. They all were familiar to me already, though I began to wonder what my driver’s license looked like, now. Did it change just like everything else did? I opened my wallet and pulled it out.

I didn’t recognize it as my own at first, once I pulled it from its sleeve. Right there, instead of the familiar Siberian husky that was my face, a picture of Ness’, now my own, was featured. My height and weight were different, and the “taur” indicator was not present anymore. The birthdate even had changed. Ness was only a couple years older than me, and the year reported on the license seemed to reflect this. However, one thing didn’t change: my name. I still had the same name as I always remembered it being.

This revelation was somewhat of a relief. All these changes were going to take time getting used to, and having to respond to a completely different name than the one I had been for over two decades of my life would have made it all the more difficult. It also made me think that maybe it was just my body and things that changed. Maybe the rest of my life is still the same. I was definitely not looking forward to giving up my family that I had known and loved for all my life.

I rubbed myself on the back of my neck. My fur felt a bit oily and matted from sleeping. I usually shower in the morning, so I went to the closet and after looking around, found a bathrobe, put it on, and headed back to the bathroom to take a shower.

I hadn't really gotten a good look at my new raccoon body until now. My mind was going a mile a minute trying to make sense of all these sudden changes. But at this point I had started to calm down. I wanted to get cleaned up before I started the day, and showers always were relaxing for me.

I got into the bathroom and shut the door. I took off my glasses and laid them on the counter. Then after stripping naked and getting the shower going at a nice hot temperature, I stepped in and let the water pour onto my head, soak into my fur, and run down my back, tail, and collect on the floor of the shower by my two feet. I immediately noticed that it felt very different than what I was used to. The water flowing down my back and butt and streaming through my tail was really different since they were in a completely different place.

I looked down and saw, once my friend's but now my own, genitalia. I blushed and looked away instinctively, but after a minute I took another peek. It was odd seeing it but I told myself that he was in the same situation, and honestly they were, for all intents and purposes, part of my body, so I shouldn't feel embarrassed. It was different from my original parts and much closer to my vision than I was used to. I started to get thoughts but quickly pushed them aside because I really wanted to finish showering so I could get on the phone with Ness about what happened.

I reached up absent mindedly pulled down the shampoo and opened the cap. I almost didn't realize that the shampoo was different until I noticed its slightly different scent. My fur was of a different type now, being a raccoon instead of a canine, and so the shampoo was of a different formulation. But it still was my preferred brand. I smirked to myself and started rubbing it into my scalp and into the rest of my fur.

Before I knew it, I was rinsing down and turning off the water. Showering went much quicker when your body is half the size than it used to be. I turned on the heat lamps and ceiling fan and started to dry off my fur. I grabbed a towel to get the excess water but let the fan evaporate and fluff my fur back up while I brushed it out. I felt much better now that I was cleaned up. I then fitted my glasses back onto my nose and looked at myself in the mirror. Smiling at my own reflection, I couldn't help but think that I looked quite handsome, all nicely groomed. I smirked and wondered why I never noticed that before in Ness, then figured that it was likely just because I had not really looked at this body in such a way until I came to inhabit it. Perhaps that sense of vanity about my new body meant that I had started to get comfortable with being a bipedal raccoon.

After I finished drying my fur and shaking the last of the water out of my ringed raccoon tail, I went back to my bedroom and got dressed in some clean clothes. Just then I heard my cellphone ring. I went over to my dresser and saw the screen indicate that it was Ness. He must have gotten up recently as well! I finished pulling on my shirt and answered the phone.