Christine would have shuddered if she could. Instead, all she could do was watch, her head facing forward on the top shelf of the locker, as her coworker unknowingly prepared to wear her.
At this point, she had grown used to being manhandled in pieces, so the sensation of Ian grabbing the collar that was her neck as he held up her headless body no longer stood out much. But that changed the moment he reached inside her and planted a foot into one of her commodious paws. All of a sudden, she no longer felt like a person whose body happened to be doing some impossible things. She felt like an empty vessel that was being slowly filled from the bottom to the top. As he squirmed his way into position, much as Christine hated to contemplate the thought, it somehow felt good. Worse than that, it felt right - like she was simply a hollow object that needed to be filled in order to be whole. It made her feel like she was a living being again, almost - the blood passing through Ian's veins felt like hers, his pulse and the pumping of his lungs restoring a natural rhythm of life so fundamental that she hadn't even fully realized it was missing since her inexplicable change.
By the time her wearer reached down to the small of his - her - their back and started pulling the zipper upward, Christine was practically giddy. What was happening to her was existentially horrifying, to be sure, but her worries about being worn had turned out to be misplaced. It was a tremendous relief, compared to lying lifelessly on the floor or being hurled uncontrollably through the wash. At least now she could pretend that Ian's movements were hers, pretend that she was the one in control, and feel more or less normal for as long as she could stop herself from thinking about the reality of her situation.
But the one abnormality that Christine could hardly ignore was that she was watching all of this happen from the third person. She tried to close her eyes and focus on the tactile sensations of her body going through the ordinary motions of getting ready for work, but they were just as stubborn as everything else and left her staring right in the face of the man who was now inside her body. But that didn't last for much longer, as he finished donning the rest of her and soon reached out her paws to grab her head off the shelf.
Now the illusion was complete. As the plastic ring underneath her chin clicked into place against the one at the top of her neck, she felt like she could fully lose herself in the belief that she was alive again, the only solace she could think of under the circumstances. But her hopes of going along for the ride, of feeling the sensation of walking out of the building and starting to entertain the customers, were stalled for a long moment. For some reason, Ian was just standing perfectly still.
It took quite a while before Christine even tried to move a muscle, having more or less resigned herself to this strange fate. And when her arms started to get tired of holding that awkward position of putting on her head, it didn't occur to her right away that she was the one who put them back down to her sides. Tentatively, she started to flex her hands and wave her arms around, like she had just spotted her reflection in a distant mirror and was trying to confirm that the tiny figure was her.
When the extremities in front of her eyes followed every move she made, Christine could hardly believe her luck. She was back! She spared a thought for Ian, since he was now the one who was dead weight - she knew he was probably just as confused and frightened as she had been at first. But when she made an almost involuntary noise, and it came out of her mouth sounding like her voice and not like Ian, the thought receded from her mind. If she could talk, then she could communicate! She needed to explain to someone, anyone, what was going on, although she barely understood it herself.
As luck would have it, the first person she ran into as she rushed out of the changing room was her boss. "Clark!", she shouted, and he clearly recognized the sound of her voice right away.
"Christine?", the boss replied. "Where on earth have you been? And why are you in the suit? You're not even supposed to be here today..." Confused and, at this point, more than a little suspicious, Clark reached out to remove the mascot's head so he could speak with his employee face-to-face.
"Wait!" Christine shouted. "Don't take my head off! I can't-"
Her voice abruptly cut off as he pulled the head away, revealing Ian's face underneath - pale, drenched in sweat, his eyes wide and his expression blank.
"Ian?!", said Clark. "Oh, for the love of- Has this whole thing been a prank on me? You can pull the candid camera out now, guys, because this isn't funny!"
"N-no!", Ian stuttered out, realizing that he was in control of his body once again. "It's not a prank, boss. I swear! I put the costume on and all of a sudden I couldn't move! It was like the suit had a mind of its own or something! It started walking on its own, and then it was moving my mouth for me, but it was Christine's voice that was coming out... But I... how could that..."
Clark looked down at the mascot head in his arms. He figured he had to put it back onto Ian, at this point, just to see what would happen. Ian got a panicked look when he realized what his boss was about to do, but he had no time to resist before the head went on and control shifted back again.
"Oh my god," came Christine's voice from behind the suit's head.
Skeptical but running out of alternative explanations, Clark went on with his informal investigation. "Christine? Is that you? What's going on here?"
Christine tried to clear her throat, which actually worked, aside from the fact that it was technically Ian's throat. "Yes, it's me! I don't know how this happened! I was about to take the costume off at the end of the day and I suddenly felt numb all over." She went on to explain, in rambling, frantic detail, her experiences of the morning so far, and watched as her boss's expression slowly melted from anger to total bewilderment.
Clark realized that he was now faced with a dilemma they never taught you about in business management school. Unless this was a seriously elaborate sort of practical joke, two of his employees were trapped together in this bizarre sort of symbiotic state. Whether the costume was fully on or not, only one of them would be able to move or communicate, and the other would be stuck going along with their motions. Like the proverbial trolley barreling towards the tracks with people tied to them, he had to make a choice, and either way there was going to be a sacrifice. Which one of them should he let speak now?