His Wish Had Been Granted

Always be careful what you wish for

Brian dragged himself through the front door at 7:30, his shoulders hunched from twelve hours of boardroom negotiations and client emergencies. He loosened his tie, dropped his briefcase by the coat rack, and sank into the worn leather sofa with a deep sigh. Across the living room, his wife Brenda was on all fours, laughing, her ponytail swinging as she chased their twin boys around a pillow fort. His daughter Emma sat cross-legged on the carpet nearby, her face half-hidden behind "The Secret Garden," her small finger tracing each line as she mouthed the words.

Brian watched his wife crawl after the twins, her laughter mingling with theirs, and something sour twisted in his gut. His shirt collar chafed against his neck, still damp with stress sweat. The memory of fluorescent lights and endless spreadsheets clung to him like a second skin while Brenda's day had been filled with pillow forts and story time. The unfairness of it lodged in his throat, his muscles ached from hunching over keyboards while she got to do fun stuff all day.

While Brenda wrangled toothbrushes into resisting mouths and cleaned up the dinner mess, Brian sprawled across their king-sized bed. His eyelids drooped as he stared at the ceiling fan's hypnotic rotation. “Dear God,” he prayed, his hands folded loosely on his chest, “please give me a day off from fluorescent-lit hell. Let me be Brenda for just one day. Let me wear sweatpants, watch cartoons with the kids, and take an afternoon nap, and let her suffer through my endless meetings and impossible deadlines while I lounge in domestic bliss.”

Brian drifted into sleep, unaware that somewhere beyond the cosmos, God stroked his silver beard and chuckled. The Almighty turned to Gabriel, whose iridescent wings shimmered, and eyes lit up with barely contained mischief. "This fool," God whispered, "doesn't know what he just wished for. Switch their souls at dawn, but make sure they retain the knowledge and urge to do of each other's daily duties. Breanda I’m not worried about, she’s a woman, she can easily adapt to any situation. But let’s see how Brian’s day will turn out."

The early morning light filtered through the cream-colored curtains when Brian woke up, his face buried in a cascade of silky blonde hair that wasn't his own. He sat up in bed with a jolt, heart hammering against his unfamiliar ribcage. "What the…" he gasped, flinging the floral duvet off to reveal slender legs and delicate feet with coral-painted toenails. His new body felt impossibly light, almost buoyant, wrapped in Brenda's lavender silk pajamas that smelled faintly of her jasmine lotion. "Thank you, God!" he whispered, turning to see his own six-foot frame sprawled across the other side of the bed, chest rising and falling with deep, rumbling breaths. A sudden thought pierced through his mind: "The kids' breakfast!" Panic surged as he scrambled out of bed, adjusting to shorter legs and a lower center of gravity. He fumbled through Brenda's dresser, pulling on her well-worn gray sweatpants and faded university t-shirt before padding barefoot to the kitchen. "Why am I doing this?" he muttered, watching his unfamiliar slender hands crack eggs into a ceramic bowl, whisking them with a practiced efficiency he didn't recognize. "I was supposed to sleep until noon!" But some deep-seated instinct drove him forward as the butter sizzled in the pan.

Brenda woke to the rich aroma of coffee mingling with the smell of frying eggs and buttered toast. She stretched languorously, her consciousness still foggy with sleep, when her fingertips brushed against an unfamiliar terrain of coarse chest hair. Her eyes flew open. She lifted her hands, they were larger, squarer, with prominent veins and neatly trimmed nails instead of her coral manicure. A faint whisper caressed her ear: "It was your husband's wish to switch places, just go with it and enjoy your day." Brenda's lips, now Brian's lips, curved into a smile as she swung a pair of legs that felt like tree trunks over the side of the bed. She padded toward the bathroom, marveling at how the floor seemed farther away, absently scratching at the sandpapery stubble on the strong jawline she normally kissed goodnight.

By the time Brenda entered the kitchen dressed in Brian's charcoal pinstripe suit, the kids were demolishing breakfast. The twins, faces sticky with syrup that dripped from their chins onto their pajamas, had transformed the oak table into an abstract masterpiece of amber fingerprints. Emma, her hair a bird's nest of tangles, pushed scrambled egg remnants around her plate with a scowl. Brian, trapped in Brenda's petite frame, rolled her hazel eyes skyward and released a sigh that seemed to deflate his borrowed body even further.

Brenda gulped down a cup of coffee, grabbed a piece of toast she barely had time to bite into, and clacked across the tile in Brian's oxfords that felt strangely comfortable. The leather briefcase felt foreign in her grip as she rushed to the silver sedan waiting in the driveway.

Meanwhile, Brian battled breakfast. He scraped the leftover food from plates into the garbage disposal, attacked maple syrup with a sponge that quickly became a sticky disaster itself, and wiped down the table and chairs. After wrestling the squirming twins into mismatched outfits and attempting to tame Emma's hair into something resembling a ponytail, he herded them toward the minivan. Ten minutes and six failed attempts at properly securing car seat buckles later, he navigated morning traffic with white knuckles, dropping a teary-eyed Emma at the elementary school's chaotic drop-off lane before delivering the twins to a kindergarten.

“Finally!” he sighed leaning back in the driver seat. “Now I can relax.”

A sudden thought made him sit up with such force that the delicate neck muscles of Brenda’s body protested. The mental to-do list unfurled like a medieval scroll of tortures: I have to pick up the dry cleaning, stop at the farmer's stand where Brenda somehow haggled for the freshest produce, and do the weekly grocery run with its labyrinthine aisles and impossible-to-reach items on the top shelves. Brian's unfamiliar eyes stung with hot tears that threatened to spill over Brenda's finely shaped cheekbones. His smaller hands trembled as he turned the key in the ignition, the minivan's engine rumbling to life with more authority than he now possessed. "My God," he whispered through lips that tasted of Brenda's cherry chap stick, "why did I wish for this? I thought I could spend the day horizontal on the couch watching the baseball game."

Meanwhile, Brenda surveyed the wasteland of Brian's desk, coffee-ringed reports stacked like geological layers, posits in three different colors fluttering from every surface, and a half-eaten protein bar fossilizing beside the keyboard. "Let's see if I can make sense of this disaster zone," she muttered, fingers already sorting papers into neat piles as the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The life of a busy office was all familiar to her, managing a real estate business for years before the kids were born. Then she decided to be a housewife until the kids were old enough to manage without constant supervision. Through the thin walls came the muffled sounds of ringing phones and clacking keyboards. After a few hours of archaeological excavation through spreadsheets and email chains, Brenda strode into the glass-walled conference room where Brian's colleagues sat slumped in ergonomic chairs. She unfurled a presentation with crystal-clear flowcharts that made the quarterly projections Brian had been wrestling with for weeks suddenly appear logical and attainable. The conference room transformed, shoulders straightened, eyes widened, pens scribbled furiously. "This actually makes sense," whispered Tanya from Accounting, while Mark from Sales nodded vigorously, his tie bobbing. "Why didn't we think of that?" Afterward, Brenda settled into Brian's high-backed executive chair, feeling the pleasant weight of accomplishment as she swiveled to face the city skyline. "I could definitely get used to this," she smirked, stretching Brian's longer limbs luxuriously.

Brian was exhausted by the time he finished shopping and put the grocery away. “Now I can rest.” he plopped down on the sofa and turned the TV on. “Darn it!” he stood up. “The laundry basket is full, and I didn’t make the beds yet. The tub needs to be scrubbed, the carpets vacuumed, the kitchen mopped after the breakfast disaster, and the kid’s room is a mess.” He sighed and got to work.

By the time he finished with every chore and glanced at the sunflower-shaped kitchen clock, he shouted, "Oh, no! I'll be late picking up the kids!" and bolted out to the car, Brenda's floral keychain jangling in his unfamiliar smaller hand. On the way home, a throbbing pain bloomed behind his temples as three high-pitched voices created a cacophony of complaints, accusations, and whining that ricocheted off the minivan's interior.

Finally, herding everyone safely inside, Brian slathered peanut butter and grape jelly onto whole wheat bread, cutting each sandwich into triangles the way Brenda always did. "Go play," he ushered the trio into the living room, his borrowed body collapsing onto the kitchen chair. His momentary peace shattered at the sound of glass breaking, followed by a piercing wail. Scrambling up on Brenda's shorter legs, he rushed to find one of the twins sprawled on the beige carpet, crimson droplets blooming around his pudgy fingers clutching his forehead. "Just a scrape," Brian mumbled through Brenda's lips, scooping up the trembling little body that felt heavier than expected. He dabbed the wound with antiseptic-soaked cotton balls, wincing at each sob before applying a dinosaur-patterned bandage, then attacked the rust-colored stain with foaming carpet cleaner and Brenda's prized steam machine. After the children settled into a trance before dancing cartoon characters, Brian dragged Brenda's fatigued body toward the kitchen, shoulders slumped beneath the thin cotton t-shirt. "How does she do this every day?” he whispered. “I better get dinner going."

When Brenda strode through the front door, still adjusting to Brian's longer gait, she caught sight of her own body slumped in the kitchen doorway, hair disheveled, mascara smudged beneath weary eyes, and a spaghetti sauce stain blooming across her favorite blouse. A smug warmth spread through her. Now he knows what I've been putting up with day after day, she thought. She sank into the leather sofa with legs sprawled wide, relishing the sensation as she watched the kids playing. Her eyelids grew heavy, Brian's body apparently programmed for an evening doze, until her own voice, higher than she'd ever heard it sound, called them to dinner.

Later, while Brian scrubbed sticky handprints from the dinner table and negotiated toothbrushing treaties with overtired children, Brenda channel-surfed with Brian's larger thumbs, her borrowed body manspreading across the cushions. That night, catching her reflection, Brian's reflection, in the bedroom mirror as she changed into his striped pajamas, a delicious curiosity flickered through her. "What would it feel like," she whispered through Brian's deeper voice, "to make love to my own body as a man?" The experience proved disorienting and strangely exhilarating. They both discovered the secret language of the other's pleasure from an entirely new perspective.

Brian woke first, sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains. He bolted upright in bed, Brenda's silky nightgown twisted around his borrowed thighs. His fingers trembled as they touched the soft curve of a cheek that wasn't his own.

"I'm still in Brenda's body," he frantically cried out, voice high and strange in his ears. "Dear God, give me back my own body and my easy life. I learned my lesson!" His throat constricted, tears welling up. "I really appreciate all she does now, but I want my life back, please!" he pleaded into the quiet bedroom.

"Well, you have to wait nine months for that," came an eerie voice, whispering directly into his ear. Brian's breath caught in his throat and skin prickled with goosebumps as the voice continued, "You got a bit carried away last night, and now a new life has started in your—er, your wife's body." The voice seemed to circle him, though no one was there. "I can switch your souls back into your own bodies only after your baby is born. So, my friend," the voice concluded with what sounded almost like amusement, "I’m afraid you have to go through the entire pregnancy and birthing process in your wife’s body."

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