The best laid plans...

I stood off the bed quickly, my heart beating fast as I rolled the possibilities around in my mind. Excitement coursed through me as I thought about my powers and what I could do with them… I didn’t want to be out of a skin! I wanted to steal pleasure and identities, have orgasms as I impersonated strangers and acquaintances alike, have sex in every position, as a guy and especially as a girl.

I knew this mania might pass, and I should get how I felt under control, but right now I didn’t want to. And best of all, I’d already planned for this. A wicked grin spread on my face as I walked out of my room and hurried over to Grace’s, glancing around the corridor to see if I would be spotted but not caring even if I would be. I pushed her door open.

As I shuffled in, at once triumphant, excited, and guilty, it took me a moment to notice that things weren’t quite right. Things seemed to be just as I left them, right?

The space was messy, the room just a little defiled from what I’d done with Grace last night. But rather than the sheets pulled up high on the mattress, disguising Grace’s perfect, deflated skinsuit, they were left open.

Grace’s skin is gone…??

My eyes went wide as my heartbeat spiked, a cold, clammy nervousness erupting my heart as thoughts began racing in my head.

I definitely deflated her, right? I left her there?

Eyes glanced around the space before I shuffled over to her wardrobe, flinging the doors open to find her clothes but no trace of the girl herself. Under her bed revealed much the same; There wasn’t a sign of Grace anywhere.

Memories, clear even while coated in the pleasant colors of dopamine, and thrilling, sexual pleasure, painted a picture of the girl’s perfect, deflated form as I positioned her under the covers and laid my panties, so slutty and wet, on her pretty face. I knew I’d left her here, so that only meant…

Someone… someone has taken her.

My heart dropped as a strange queasiness descended on me. These powers were so perfect, so ideal for remaining undetected. No-one needed to know I had them, I was the guilty one. But now I’d gotten too cocky, I’d left a skinsuit where it could be discovered, where anyone who was at that party could find it.

“Okay, no, I just have to calm down and think about this rationally…”

Easier said than done. My breathing was flowing fast as the telltale energy of adrenaline pumped in my system, the signs of fight or flight reflecting the terror at possible discovery. Against my best efforts, fears burst in my head as visions of the police, the military, even a peasant mob or the modern, militia equivalent dragged me away to be dissected, shot down, burnt at the stake; a hideous monster meeting it’s end in the most brutal way.

No… NO! With these powers I don’t need to be discovered, I can get away from here, I can hide out, they never need to know it was me. I can get on a bus to the next town over, catch a flight, hop from skin to skin, I could be anyone and they’ll never find me…

I could be an industrial worker in the Ruhr valley, a schoolteacher in Colombia, a model in Shanghai… They’d never find me…

Even with the lifeline of someone else’s life providing some kind of comfort to my panic addled mind, thoughts of leaving my own life without any kind of warning to my family and friends was a horrible idea.

The campaign to find me, another missing person, the grief on their faces at a funeral with an empty casket… I can’t just put them through that!

“Calm down, calm down! It doesn’t have to come to that!”

I whispered it urgently, hearing it said aloud helping to calm me down just a little, just enough to let the barest threads of rationality take hold of my thoughts.

No-one saw me with Grace, no one can link me to this. Jessica… that was who they saw leave with her. And no-one knows I was her! How could they?

Thoughts of Jessica, innocent in this, but guilty in so much else, being punished for this crime allayed my fears just a little, even if it was an evil and cowardly thought.

Wicked though it may be, I can’t think of someone who’s personality made them better suited to a punishment, even an **** one like this…

Still though, it didn’t need to even come to that either.

If I can just get Grace’s skin back… I can make this all go away…

But where could she be? And who would take her? Really, it could have been anyone at that party. Some drunken guest, stumbling into the wrong room, or a couple falling on any bed to make love, finding Grace’s deflated form just under them…

Still though, there are some who are more likely that others, aren’t there? I’ll get no-where if I try and track down every random person…

Some possibilities started coming to me, some suspects just to start me off anyway. Gratitude at having somewhere to start bubbled up inside even whilst it became tempered with concern over the same possibilities that reared their heads.

Alicia and Frank… They could have seen Jessica chase Grace out of the party. They’re good people, and I’m sure they can tell Jessica is bullying Grace. Maybe they came to find her, wanting to help her? Thinking she might be sad, and she might need a friend… finding her like that, of course they’d take her, try and help her, even deflated. No matter how good people they are, maybe even they would get the urge to try her on…

Jimmy could be a possibility too… maybe he came looking for me, surprised I wasn’t at a party in my own apartment, wanting to cheer me up. Drunk, he could have stumbled in here, mistaking Grace’s room for mine. Finding her skinsuit, waiting to be filled like that… wouldn’t any single, drunk, horny guy get a little curious? I know if I found something like that, even before becoming a skinwalker, I might try her on just to see what happened…

Maybe… no, this one is too far-fetched, but… maybe Lisa could have come here? I don’t know what she knows, if she remembers anything, what that monster did to her, or how long it wore her really. Maybe she heard she’d been on a date with me, wanted to know what had happened, curious about her, maybe even curious about me…? Stumbled into the wrong room, and found Grace. As herself, Lisa naturally finds herself the star of the show, but Grace can blend into the background. Maybe she longed to experience life a little less in the stars, something more real… and it’s not like Grace isn’t gorgeous too. Could she have come looking for me, found Grace’s skin, and decided to step into her life? No, It’s too crazy, but… not impossible.

I guess I had some suspects now. Somehow, I felt a lot better having some kind of leads as I thought about it, some kind of idea of where to start. Even if none of them were true, just the idea of having something to do, anything to take my minds of the potential panic of having nothing too solid to go on, was a relief.