The Memory Editor

My senses came back to me in a huge rush, standing in a vast hall of greens and trees that seemed to have grown into an organic structure, full of ornate emerald colored doors with subtle gold detailing on each. That had been terrifying… my heart rate was up fast and it would be for a while, both from the horror of the experience, through to the completeness with which the memory had played out; not like something I was any kind of objective observer for, rather I had really been Lisa in that moment, living it exactly as she had.

It was only once it had ended that my mind had returned here, and only then had I recognized that I was Alex, not Lisa. Rather than being my mental home, I was merely a guest, or accurately, a trespasser.

I looked around, floating from door to door, examining them. Floating… I casually noted that I didn’t have to walk here, rather I could float. The memory editor. That’s where I was right now… at least, that’s what I seemed to know, instinctively. Ever since I began to visualize this place, those same imaginary visuals had grown stronger to the point where it really felt like I was here.

I knew it was somewhere different from reality, as I had my own body here. After my experiences wearing Lisa, I almost really missed wearing a woman, but there was a gratitude to being myself too after some of the more harrowing events of the last couple of days. I knew my real body was still encased in Lisa’s back in her room anyway, so for now I was free to explore here.

It seemed my probing of Lisa’s memories had opened up another set of skinwalker instincts, but being memory based, these ones seemed to filter in much clearer and smoother compared to the knowledge of how to use my core skinwalker abilities, which had been a highly naturalistic learning process.

Right now I was at the core of Lisa, like going behind the curtain at a magic show, or accessing the core code of a computer. Time worked differently here; A day here was more akin to a second of real time. I was hovering around the last genuine door of Lisa’s memory; the horrorshow I’d just experienced. I had some control here; A door could be more than just a singular memory, rather it could be a weeks worth, or a months worth, but for filtering down to something altered like this, it was worth more just to be specific.

The false memory was a well made one. I knew Lisa wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and really no regular person was liable too, unless they were extremely suspicious their memories had been tampered with, or had been trained specially or something. To me though, it looked just like a film re-enactment of a historical event; obviously very different compared to the real thing.

The false memory Candida had implanted had Lisa getting home safely, messaging her friends, being asked out by me and graciously accepting, a fun date with a fun guy, but one that ended very chastely.

Studying those false memories, and the instincts that had flowed into me, inspired me to make my own. The memory editor shifted, still maintaining the same aesthetic but warping until it was more akin to a theater, a stage with the characters being the people in Lisa’s life.

It was funny getting up close to them; they actually looked quite different from how they looked in the real world. I suppose this was Lisa’s personal feelings and perceptions of people taking real, tangible shape in her imagination and memories.

“We’re all living in the same world, but our perceptions of it make it seem like a hundred others versus that of the person beside us”

The thought came idly to my head, and I chuckled a little. Perhaps I was becoming more philosophical after these last days, though I suppose few things make you question the meaning of life quite as much as losing all semblance of an ordinary one.

Breaking my existential thoughts, I organized the players on the stage with my mind, and in seconds had them create the memories I wanted, skipping through them like fast forwarding a VCR and encoding them in real time over the blank space where Lisa had just been my second skin.

I included Lisa meeting up with her friends, class and fun times, the party. Going home with Trent, although leaving out the part about him being a skinwalker. I also toned down some of what we’d done together; In her memories Trent was a sweet guy and they’d had missionary sex in bed before cuddling, a wild college story with a good guy for a sweet girl who usually wouldn’t sleep around.

I thought it would maybe be a little much to show her what I’d actually done in her body, fucking a stranger on his kitchen counter and floor, before getting tied to a bed and sucking his dick till he came…

Opening my eyes in reality, I leaned up off the bed and gripped the sheets, gripping it just to feel it was real. I needed to get out of here. I reached up to the back of my neck, pulling Lisa’s dark hair to the side and digging my fingers in, feeling a gooey sensation as the skin parted, strands and sinews breaking apart as I pulled my real head out from underneath.

It felt so cold now, like my head had broken the surface of a warm swimming pool into cold air. I started working the rest of my body out, feeling it coated in a warm slime that quickly dried away to nothing. Using the edge of the bed for support, I slid Lisa’s legs off of mine and held her skin up in front of me. Even deflated like this, her beauty was clear. I felt so empty and cold now that I was out of it, and I gulped as I thought about how badly wanted to climb inside her again.

“You have to get out of here”

I stabbed Lisa with the spines and filled her up, feeling a similar emptiness in my heart as her memories and soul poured out of me, back into her body. I lay her down under her covers, sleeping soundly, and got back into my clothes before slipping out of the room.

Walking under the early morning sun, I was grateful I lived in a student area, the kind of place people only get up at this time if they absolutely have to. Before I knew it, I was back at my flat, sending a quick glance at the kitchen where just last night I’d been pressed up against the wall in Lisa’s body, trading saliva with a perfect stranger.

I felt myself pop a semi at how hot the memory had been, shaking my head in an attempt to clear those thoughts before I made it to my room and blacked out. I could do with a good night of sleep after all this…