As Is<br/> <br/> Greg woke with a raging hardon from a dream he was the strongest man in the world. The alarm hadn't rung yet, and he lapsed back into it. He was wearing an old-fashioned leotard and a handlebar moustache. Wrapped around each forearm was a steel cable leading to a ten tonne truck, and when he flexed they moved slowly, inevitably, towards him. Then, at some pre-arranged signal, he dropped the cables, and blonde bikini-clad women with mistletoe in their hair jumped out of the trucks. They streamed towards him and touched his cock and then he woke up and had a shower.<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> Greg was a single man. He was casually unfit without being fat. He had brown hair. As he rode the train to work that morning he felt seedy, though he hadn't been drinking. All morning he slid off the polished ceramic surface of his job, achieving nothing. All this unproduction made him ferociously hungry. He bought two more sandwiches for lunch, and tried to chew on those problems of the day, usually so routine, currently intractable. He finally achieved something in the early afternoon, and then spent the rest of it imagining what his female colleagues would be like in bed. He stared at the computer, switching windows and tapping keys in stressful spinning idleness.<br/> <br/> He didn't date or chase women anymore. That part of his life had become somehow amputated years before, though he noted longingly, from time to time, skirts receding down the footpath. The absence of a girl, a woman, wasn't painful, just an absence. An occassional frustration. Yet this evening he saw sex everywhere he looked, celebrating every swish and hint of cleavage, his mind awash with pornographic annotation.<br/> <br/> When he got home he called Catherine, and she said to come over. She was a friend, a stocky, blunt friend from work a few years back. They never really had a lot in common. He brought in some ingredients for dinner, and a bottle of wine, and left them on the kitchen bench. They watched Sale of the Century with their trousers off while her large breasts bounced up and down beneath her shirt, and when he came she cried out "Venezuela!".<br/> <br/> They drank, and ate, and said see you later. Maybe in a few months time, they didn't add.<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> Greg cooked himself bacon for breakfast and ate another bowl of cereal. He still couldn't stop thinking about women, but it didn't derail his entire day. Maybe he was getting used to it. In the evening, he went to the supermarket, drifting slowly through the aisles, anesthetized by the cardboard and air conditioning. He ate two pizzas for dinner. His shirt had shrunk in the wash.<br/> <br/> He showered carelessly, and, overwhelmed by tiredness, fell asleep without dressing, on top of the sheets.<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> He awoke with a pain in his spine and a bizarre sensation of movement under his skin. He was lying face down. Spreading out from his back, up to his head, across his arms, and down to his heels, something - worms? - squirmed. He went to turn his head and he could not; his body lay immobile, ignoring the suggestions of his brain. His eyes flickered desperately back and forth. He could blink, slowly and with effort, but little more. His pulse was racing at an impossible rate, but his breaths were long and deep. He lay and mutely panicked. After a while he had little choice but to focus on the squirming sensation. His nose, eyes, dick, mouth, in fact anything facing the sheet, were all unaffected. Anything on the other side - heels, arse - was caught up in an intense tingling, and a kind of painful numbness, like that of a foot going to sleep, and then perhaps, instead of returning to the will of its owner, being possessed by another; or being possessed by no will in particular, just picking up psychic vibrations, jumping in sympathy with the multitude of other bodies in the city.<br/> <br/> Not quite: now he was becoming attuned, it was as if his skin was slowly stretching, his legs and arms widening. As if something was pushing out. His left eye roved despearately around its tiny field of view. He could see the alarm clock. It appeared he was still in time for work.<br/> <br/> His eye roamed, fixing for a despairing interlude on his mobile phone. Eventually he noticed the face of the alarm clock gave a slight reflection. He could nearly make out the back of his head. Something was strange about the hair. Was that - a nose?<br/> <br/> The pain leaped in intensity, and as his spine tore he passed out.<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> He dreamed of tall blonde women with mistletoe in their hair.<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> Greg lay staring at himself in the face, mainly out of shock. He had never particularly liked looking in the mirror, and now he was looking at another person it was even less pleasant. He moved his jaw, experimentally.<br/> <br/> "You feeling ok?" he asked Greg.<br/> <br/> "Not too bad. Considering," the other replied.<br/> <br/> He sat up, a bit embarassed to be staring at his counterpart. He held himself on his arms, a bit weak and woozy. The bed sheets were splattered with blood and other bodily fluids. His new twin brother was too. Both of them were.<br/> <br/> "I'm a bit hungry," the other offered.<br/> <br/> "There's milk in the fridge," he replied.<br/> <br/> "Yeah. Guess I'll have some cereal."<br/> <br/> -<br/> <br/> They took turns sleeping on the couch. After a week or so they took turns going to work too.<br/> <br/> He was thinking of moving out.<br/> <br/> <br/>