Hangout in her Apartment

"And the pass is good! The Cougars have stunned the Mustangs!"

Taking a sip of wine, I continued lounging on Sherry's couch. I'd spent a good portion of the day watching sports documentaries to pass the time after easily knocking out her class assignments. Seems combining her knowledge with my work ethic made for a potent combo. As a reward for wrapping up her work, I'd found that she had some box wine chilling in her fridge and some cheese crackers in the cupboard, and so I figured, "Why not?." and went about indulging in her treat.

The wine helped to take a bit of the edge off the worries that had been brewing in me. Along with the inevitable loss of the biggest employer in the community, I also had lost my life to the nefarious whims of some creature who found it amusing to solve my life's problems in what I can only figure was its own twisted way. And to top it all off, I found myself inhabiting the body of a girl. Not only that, but I seemed to be fine with it! Aside from the revelation I'd had in the bathroom earlier, the fact I was indeed wearing someone else's body seemed to feel normal to me. Being the opposite sex coming to me as if I had been born that way. It all felt so natural.

And it was scary.

How easy it was to toss aside my own troubles and setup shop inside someone else's life. To take the simplest of pleasures they afford themselves and partake of them as my own. No lost job. No dream ending injury. It felt nice to be Sherry so far.

As the credits rolled on the documentary I'd been watching, I switched off her TV, got up from the couch, and headed into her room. Coming to a stop in front of her full-length mirror, I admired her looks from a front row seat. Sherry hadn't thought highly of her looks, but I found her quite attractive. Her daily jogs, combined with having started a pescatarian diet were steps she had been taking to start losing weight. She barely had enough fat to pinch, so I wasn't entirely sure why she felt it necessary to start slimming down.

"After coming out of her shell in high school, she never could muster up proper self-confidence. Even making some tweaks to her routine, she never felt like she quite measured up. Makes me wonder if her regrets on not asking Tucker out have been nagging at her."

I'd been able to pluck surface level memories apart to organize the whirlwind that had been our initially combined mind, but I hadn't really delved deeper. If I could really manipulate memories, then I could certainly find what had been troubling her. Closing my eyes, I focused on Sherry's pool of memories until I found myself standing in a busy hospital. Plucky young nurses and hunky doctors scurrying to and fro, some wheeling gurneys that carried vaguely humanoid shapes resembling a cacophony of shifting images. Floating through the halls, I saw many of these humanoids in rooms being tended to by the "staff" inhabiting Sherry's mindscape. Eventually stopping at a directory to try and find my way through the elaborate maze. The list labeling out:

Cherished Unit...

Traumas Center...

Insecurities Office...

Knowledge Hub...

General Memory Care...

"Insecurities Office... That sounds like the place."

Following the arrows to the location I'd chosen, I ended up coming to a locked door needing a key card.

"I wonder if any of the staff here could help me out with getting in here."

Turning on my heel and retracing my path, I floated back to where I'd first entered the mindscape to find what seemed to be a secretary working at a visitor's desk.

"Excuse me, ma'am? Is there someone I could talk to about entering the Insecurities Office? I'm trying to find the root of a problem that may be tied to that room."

She continued to work as if I was not there. I waved my hands, jumped up and down, even hovered up to the top of the desk to try and get her attention. Nothing.

"It's like I'm not even here..."

I then hovered into a nearby room and waved my hands right in front of the nurse tending to the humanoid. Still nothing. Looking down at the humanoid I felt the urge to reach out to it. Placing my hand on its "head" I felt an immediate surge of images.

It was this morning's jog...

"Well, if I can't reach what's troubling her, maybe I can at least patch up the whole skinning incident."

Touching the figure again, I was washed over with the events of this morning. Reaching the point of where I skinned her, I began to invision stitching over it with a new reality for her. The "homeless man" never assaulting her when she was catching her breath. Instead, she merely collected herself and turned back and jogged to her apartment. I then did the same with the bathroom epiphany. Stitching over the realization that she was a suit and instead just hopping in the shower. Beyond that I left her memories as they were.

It was wild that I just knew what to do. Like being a skinwalker gave me an instinctual knowledge of how to mask my presence even in a person's memories.

Another frightening revelation.

Now I was wondering if it would be best to pull out of Sherry's mindscape, or to keep trying to get into the Insecurities Office. I had a goal to figure out what was dragging her down, but would it be wise to hang in her mindscape any longer?