Alien Skin - Chapter 1

Rachel Morgan was an odd child. At least that’s what her mother always said. Rather than spend her Sunday night hanging with friends like a normal eighteen year old she was in her room, lying flat on her back in bed, reading comics…that and not doing her homework. With one finger she pushed a strand of her short blonde hair out of her face, her hazel eyes narrowing, focusing upwards on the drama unfolding on the page.

Spidey was fighting Venom again. The hulking beast had just kidnapped Mary Jane and was holding her hostage at an old, abandoned warehouse...at least until her inevitable rescue. Pretty ho-hum as far as Spider-Man stories go. Still, she couldn’t help but read. She did like Venom a lot, even if he was underutalized. But who knows, she thought, maybe this time they’ll change things up.

Just as it seemed to be getting good she turned the page and found that she’d reached yet another cliffhanger.

“Fuuuuck that” she sighed “They get’cha hooked then make you buy the rest. Fuckin’ cheapskates.”

Tossing the book onto the floor she groaned and rubbed her face. With no more story to distract her her mind wandered to earlier that day. She’d gotten into an argument with her mother...again. What they argued about she couldn’t remember, probably something stupid. Even the arguments she did remember weren’t clear, since when it came to her Mom the problem seemed to change every other sentence. One minute she’d berate her with questions like “why do you read all those comic books” then the next shift to “why haven’t you applied to any colleges yet” or “why are your grades slipping?”

Rachel just came to the conclusion that her mom just didn’t like her, or at least the person she grew up to be. Best to just try and ignore her, she thought.

A hard thing to do since her dad died. Ever since then her mother had been making these weird efforts to “connect” with her.

“We should go out sometime” she’d say “you know, girls day out, just the two of us.”

Translation: four hours of her mom asking her about friends, school, and boyfriend prospects, none of which she was particularly inclined to talk about. All this while feigning interest in the parade of cheap clothing stores they walked in and out of without buying anything.

Rolling left along her mattress she carefully toppled off the side, landing with her knees and hands on the carpet. She pushed herself up, groaning, and slowly rose until she finally stood on her own two feet. She rubbed her face with her hands again and lumbered over to the mirror on the far side of her room.

She did that a lot recently, just looked at herself. Not that she ever changed much between inspections, but a compulsion was a compulsion.

After not bothering to do anything with her hair that day, it looked almost like a ruined bird’s nest. Earlier that month she decided to cut her hair short, but all that did was make her look even more like a boy (and gave her mom even more reason to nitpick her appearance). Late night internet benders had bitten off huge chunks out of her sleep schedule, and the evidence of that was very apparent thanks to the bags under her eyes. Her large, wire-framed glasses didn’t do much to hide them either.

With a sigh, she slouched, and her reflection slouched with her.

What was she going to do tonight she wondered to herself. A good question, and one her reflection seemed ill-equipped to answer. Probably nothing, she concluded, but while doing nothing she’d at least tide herself over with the idea that she might do something.

The meteor shower was the first thing that came to mind. She remembered hearing about on the news that morning. A once in a century spectacle they said. Unless she could convince one of her friends to go, though, she knew her mother would never allow it. She never let her out alone past nine, and this was supposed to be going on all night.

Besides, her friends (read: acquaintances) didn’t much like those sorts of things. After the first twenty minutes they’d probably get bored, check their phones a few times, then go to someone’s home and watch Netflix. Not that Netflix sounded bad. In fact it sounded like a grand old time, but she could do that whenever...and on her own too. Nobody ever wanted to do anything exciting or daring. Could she blame them, though? It’s not like anything ever happened in this town, and if it did she probably wouldn’t be a part of it.

As if on cue brief flash outside her window caught her peripheral vision, quickly followed by a rapid series of loud pops. She turned to look and saw something streak across the sky. “What? Already?” she wondered. She walked over to her window and slid the bottom pane up so she could get a better look. Whatever it was, it was burning up bright, or at least that’s what the news said happened to most meteors. More than likely this one probably wouldn’t make it to the ground before it disintegrated.

As she watched it, though, it kept going and going, sinking along its path across the night sky until it finally reached the tops of leafless trees of nearby woods.

Then she realized: this one wasn’t going to burn up.

Less than a second after it disappeared from view over the tops of the trees, there was an audible, thunderous boom, and then silence.

For a moment she just stood there propping herself up against the window frame. What was that thing? From what she heard in school only the really big meteors would make it to the ground. This one didn’t look big, so what was it that made it different?

Rachel’s imagination went wild, filling her with a sudden, newfound excitement. New assignment: go to the crash site and investigate what was there; report back with any unusual findings. She was already beginning to concoct a dozen little stories for her imminent expedition, each one more thrilling than the last. Who knows, maybe there was a symbiote in there with her name on it.

That made her grin and chuckle slightly. A surprising reaction, but not something she dwelt on.

Throwing on a sweatshirt, she made a bee line for her bedroom door and made her way down the stairs to the foyer. She slipped her feet into each of the already tied shoes, pulled the heels over hers, and bolted out the door. From the looks of it it landed somewhere near the big clearing where all the summer bonfires used to be. She wondered if she still remembered how to get there…

“Just got to get back before mom gets home” she recited to herself over and over.

Walking along the concrete path that led from the door of her house she quickly made her way down to the street. After a few steps along the sidewalk she stuffed her hands into her pockets to shield them from the blustery autumn chill.

Calculating her route she came to a conclusion: 20 minutes there and then 20 minutes back, plenty of time. All the same, though, she picked up her pace, not because of the cold, but because of the excitement. Adventure awaited. She grinned broadly, nuzzling her neck down to shield herself from the wind.

“Screw Netflix” she said with a smile “why settle for that when you can have the real thing!”

In no time she had made her way to the edge of her development and the field that separated her neighborhood from the treeline. Years ago, there would have been kids running around and playing games, but lately, as the kids have gotten older and more indoor oriented, that changed. Because of this, the grass in the field had been left unkempt and a little overgrown, though not enough to discourage Rachel from plowing through.

Fifty feet from the tree line. The light of the neighborhood had faded into a pale orange glow behind her. Without removing her bag she reached behind her back and pulled out a head mounted flashlight from one of the bags side pockets. Strapping it to her head, she flicked the switch and a thin beam of white light shot from the bulb affixed to her forehead.

Twenty feet. Rachel was surprised at how much noise there was. The limbs and branches shifted and swayed in the light breeze. Even without the leaves the creaks and moans of the hundred foot high structures were very apparent.

The air in the woods seemed much colder than in her neighborhood. She heard (but couldn’t see) the dead leaves crunching and shifting beneath her feet. She knew most wild animals were hibernating, but all the same the lack of any sounds beyond the trees and leaves was disconcerting. Her flashlight started to blink in and out, and then suddenly turned off, leaving her with nothing but the light of the crescent moon to light her way.

She stopped a moment, seriously considering turning back, but urge to see her adventure through pushed her on. Once she finally made it to the clearing, she saw it. In a small crater at the very center of the grassy field sat a five foot wide hunk of black space rock, still emitting steam from its recent atmospheric entry.

Wasting no time, she approached it.

“OK...what now” she thought. Maybe she could take a chunk home, keep it as a souvenir or hock it online.

As she got closer though, she started to feel a bit strange. Not bad, just strange. Her heart fluttered and she realized her breathing had become just a little bit heavier. Her desire to investigate the crash, which had before been just curiosity, now started to take on a more fervent form. Now there was nothing else in the world to her except getting as close to that meteorite as she could.

At three feet away, she stopped. She could hear what sounded like the crunch of collapsing rock. Leaning in closer she could just make out that part of the thing’s outer shell had fallen away to reveal a hollow interior. Leaning in even closer, her head now hovered over the opening, her wonderment and excitement peaking until she got a good look at it, quickly followed by confusion.

She furrowed her brow. The gloom of the early evening made it hard to make out, but from where she stood it looked like the inside was laced with some kind of mucus-like membrane, like someone had sneezed really hard into it. Something like this should have surprised her, but the possibility of organic extraterrestrial life seemed almost ordinary at this point for some reason.

Besides, it wasn’t the alien snot, but what was buried inside of it that suddenly intrigued her the most. Barely visible within the crevice was what seemed to be a football sized egg. It was egg shaped at least. As soon as she laid eyes on it she knew that was what she would take home. Any sense of danger the object might pose to her was overwhelmed by a curious sense of wanting.

She’d never been very good at keeping her hands off of weird stuff she found, no matter how much her mom told her not to. Despite this rationalizing, though, alarms in the back of her mind screamed at her that even this was a little extreme.

Unzipping her backpack, she reached in and drew out a pair of gardening gloves, then slipped them on. she leaned over, being careful not to touch the rock (which seemed to have cooled, but she didn’t want to risk it). As her gloved hands made contact with the mucus, it ripped and fell away like it was made of tissue paper, which made it easy for her to wrap her fingers around the egg-like thing and draw it from its rocky cocoon.

Holding it up high to catch the moonlight, she turned the object about in her hands, trying to get a better look at it.

“The fuck is this” she muttered.

The surface seemed reflective, shimmering slightly in the moonlight as if it were covered in some sort of Vaseline coating. It wasn’t made of rock or anything, because when she applied pressure with her hands the outer membrane gave a little bit, taking the consistency of a thick skin. All along it there were crisscrossing veins of various thicknesses creating a web-like network across its surface.

Her heart beat fast, she could feel her pulse in her hands…or at least that’s what she thought it was. After she stood still for a moment longer and allowed her heart rate drop, she realized she wasn’t feeling her own pulse, but the egg’s. The egg itself pulsated slightly, though in the low light you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at it.

“Maybe…” she thought “Maybe I should keep a hold of it… just for a little while…for safe keeping.” She wasn’t sure who she was guarding it from, it just seemed like it needed protecting.

Kneeling down she placed the thing on the ground and swung her backpack from over her shoulders onto the grass in front of her. Opening it wide she picked the egg back up again, slipped it carefully into the mostly empty bag, and sealed it up tight. It wasn’t very heavy, but all the same she didn’t want to risk people seeing her precious cargo.

The walk home from the woods usually took about twenty minutes, but she took her time today, anything to keep her away from her house for just a little bit longer. A short ways back through the woods, her headlamp flickered back to life. “Maybe a wire disconnected or something” she thought to herself. She didn’t dwell too much on it.

Eventually, she found herself standing in the familiar tungsten glow of the streetlamps of her street, and the reality that she had probably been out a little longer than she intended hit her like a meteor crash. She pulled out her phone and looked at the time…yep, her mother was probably home.

“Great” she thought, stuffing the phone back into her pocket.

When she finally arrived back at her house, she saw her mom’s ugly-ass minivan in the driveway, just like she figured, and her heart sank.

She ambled up to the door and tried to open it as quietly as she could, but the metal hinges squeaked just ever so slightly so as to alert anyone in the building of anyone entering. She slipped off her shoes and tiptoed her way through the hall trying to make it to the stairs while avoiding detection.

Passing by the kitchen, she turned her head to look in and saw her mother leaning on the counter with her arms crossed watching her with eyes like daggers.

“Where have you been?” she asked sharply.

Rachel didn’t respond at first, but she realized her mother wouldn’t let her leave until she did.

“I dunno, out” she mumbled.

“With who?”

“Nobody, I was just out by myself, o.k.?”

“Rachel Morgan, don’t lie to me.” She said firmly “I can tell when you are lying and right now you are definitely lying to me.”

65%. Those were the odds Rachel calculated that her mom was about to lecture her. She had to think of something fast, something to soften the blow.

“I was just” she started, pausing “taking a break homework, o.k? You know, getting some air?”

Her mother frowned, but the inclusion of homework in her alibi seemed to at least satisfy her.

“Alright, well you better get back to it. It’s getting late and you need to be in bed early for your math test tomorrow”.

“Gotcha.” Rachel said waving her hand dismissively

She’d completely forgotten about the Math test, but right now that didn’t matter.

Wasting no time, she bolted up the stairs, slipped through her already opened bedroom door, and shut it behind her. Kneeling on the ground she swung her backpack off her shoulders and onto the carpet in front of her. She was trying to be quiet, but when opening the bag every pop and click of the zipper seemed to reverberate throughout the room, inviting the attention of anybody who might have ended up hearing it. After a few more unsuccessful attempts to be quiet, she ended up just ripping the proverbial Band-Aid off and pulled the zipper along it’s path as fast as possible.

Reaching down along the inside of the bag, she grabbed the bottom of her prize with both her hands and slowly drew it out. It was light, but...for some reason it seemed bigger than before. She held it up so that it could catch as much light as it could. Now she could see that the thing was actually not black, but a very dark green. It looked fairly uniform, no breakages or holes, no damage from its crash landing. It felt warmer now, though it may have just been that she wasn’t holding it with gloves like before. She could also more clearly see the veins pulsing. Totally normal. No cause for concern.

Now the next question: what to do with it. She couldn’t keep it out on her shelf like a cool rock or an interesting looking branch; her mother would have an aneurysm. She needed someplace to hide it. Someplace safe. Somewhere a parent was unlikely to look.

A small voice in the back of her mind whispered “…in the closet”.

Of course. It seemed obvious enough. Still holding the egg carefully with both hands, she stood up and walked over to the closet door in the far side corner of her room, and removing one hand from the egg she turned the knob and opened the door.

As far as closets go, hers was fairly spacious, if you hid something right it would stay hidden unless you were specifically looking for it, perfect for alien artifacts. There were stacks of boxes all over, some with labels scrawled in Sharpe, others plain and unmarked. The back was veiled behind a curtain of cheap thrift store clothing.

She pushed the clothing curtain to the right, opening a way to the deepest, darkest part of her closet. She couldn’t think of anything worse than if her mom found the egg. Rachel needed to keep it. She needed for it to stay nearby. It was precious to her now.

“Why am I keeping this”, she wondered…”shouldn’t I maybe get rid of it, report it or something?”

She placed the egg down carefully, then moved some odds and ends in front to block the view. With her treasure tucked away and secure, she backed out of the closet into the light of her room, but stopped before she made it all the way. Near where she stowed the egg was a cardboard box she couldn’t account for. With her thoughts no longer on the egg, she shifted herself over and pulled open the lid flaps and moved out of the way to let some light in.

The box was filled with an assortment of grotesque and horrifying latex faces. “That’s right” she thought “my Halloween mask collection, I forgot I even still had these”. She’d always loved Halloween, and the thing she loved most about it were the masks. The scarier the better. Instead of your standard princess outfits she would beg and beg her mom to get her a new mask every year, a new face to scare the neighborhood kids with.

She grabbed one at random on and pulled it out, bringing herself into the light of her room to get a better look at it. The mask was slightly crumpled, but once she loosened her grip a bit it slowly unfurled into it’s original shape. In her hand was the head of a monstrous creature with tannish-yellow skin, a bald head, and a gruesome face with bared fangs and a forehead curled down in perpetual anger. It’s features continued down the neck and tapered off along the shoulder blades where the material looked like it was torn from the rest of the creature’s body.

“Wicked” she muttered with a toothy grin.

She looked the mask over once more and then put it on the small table next to the mirror. She needed to get changed, her mother would expect her to be in bed soon, and she had to get up for school early tomorrow. She pulled off her shirt and wiggled her way out of her pants, leaving her just in her underwear.

She paused.

There it was again, that feeling in her abdomen. She glanced over at the mask, still staring up with its vacant eyes, eyes that were yearning to be filled. She walks over to the table and picks it up, feeling the texture of it in her hand as she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger.

She looked down at her feet, and then her eyes moved upwards along her body. Skinny as a rail. Thoughts came unbidden to her head, the same one’s that came every time: “Your breasts are too small” she thought “your hips are too narrow, your hair is unruly, your arms and legs are too scrawny…” this would go on and on until her ego had been beaten down thoroughly enough to allow her to resign herself to the simple and obvious truth. This was her, and this would always be her.

Her mom told her she’d fill out eventually, but at eighteen years old her body still showed no signs of that wonderful process. Why did she have to be her? Why couldn’t she just be somebody else? She knew these weren’t healthy thoughts to have, she’d seen more than one friend get pretty fucked up over this kind of thinking, but she couldn’t help it. The primal desire remained. The desire to change. To be someone new. Even when she wasn’t conscious of it it was there, tucked away in the dark recesses of her mind.

She glanced down at the mask.

Continuing to rub the material between her fingers, she lifted the mask in front of her, with the front of the mask facing her. Looking into its empty sockets, it seemed as though the thing was looking back at her, begging her to fill it with herself. And the crazy thing? She was all to eager to oblige. What was deep was rising, crawling it’s way to the surface. Slowly and methodically, she turned the mask around so that the slit on the back faced her.

Her arm muscles tensed. She closed her eyes and held her breath, then drew the mask closer and closer to her head. The slit didn’t go up the head all the way, and her head was bigger than when she was 14, so after getting it partially on she had to give it a slightly harder tug to get it to go over her head all the way. Once that was done, she began adjusting the mask so that the eyeholes lined up with her eyes.

Once finished, she continued to stand there, eyes closed, just feeling the latex mask that was slightly too small for her head cling to her face. She exhaled and took in another breath, feeling the condensation reverberate back onto her lips. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

The person that stood there had her body, but from the shoulders up sat a sickly yellow head, fangs bared, eyes in and eyebrows in a perpetual state of furious anger, just like the mask. But it wasn’t just a mask. It was her face now. Who was this thing?

Her breathing became staggered. She closed her eyes again, feeling the sweat of her inner face as it made the mask stick to her more and more. With her left hand she reached back and held the opening of the mask closed as tight as she could, trying to make the mask as tight as possible.

Her right hand, which until then had been at her side, was creeping slowly along her thigh. Her exposed womanhood was already beginning to moisten and drip. Trancelike, her eyes half closed, she allowed her fingers to tickle her outer lips. Her middle and index finger, eager to continue, pushed their way past that and slipped their way just inside of her.

So warm...so lovely...so...

Just as that first pleasurable shiver ran through her body, her eyes bolted open. In a panic she yanked her hand from inside of herself. Her hands fumbled at the mask, trying to peel it off as quickly as possible. Her sweat had made the material stick to her face, but after a moments struggle the latex prison slipped off and onto the floor.

Not even looking at it she kneels down, snatches it back up, and hurls it into the box with force, causing the box to tip for a moment before settling back down flat on the floor. The mask didn’t make it all the way inside, instead it hanging on the rim, its hollow eyes still exposed over the lip of the cardboard.

Walking over to her desk, she grabbed a handful of tissues from the tissue box and tried to sop up as much of the liquid from her swollen privates as she could, taking extra care not to rub them or penetrate herself again. Her hands shook, and when she looked at the small mirror propped up on her desk she saw that her face was flushed beet red. It wasn’t just out of embarrassment either.

She was a prude or anything…she just didn’t do that sort of thing, that’s all. Her mother never really talked with her about...sex stuff, but from the way she reacted when people did it on TV she guessed she probably wouldn’t approve. She tried to recall the feeling she had when she’d put on the mask, trying to recreate the mindset so she could figure it out, but the spell was already broken. She was just tired, that’s all. Or maybe her little adventure had worked her up. All she knew was that she needed to get some sleep and fast.

Mess cleaned, she moved to her dresser and pulled out some new underwear and a pair of pajamas and hastily got dressed. Still tense, she stumbled a bit trying to get her pajama pants leg on, creating a loud thump that reverberated through the floor.

“Honey” her mom’s voice called from downstairs “you alright”

“I’m fine Mom!” She called back a bit harder and quicker than she intended.

Once fully clothed, she stood tall and took a deep, solid breath, trying her hardest to relax. She couldn’t believe what she almost did...what the mask almost made her do. She shifted her weight back and forth, left, then right, then left again. She sat down on the end of her bed, letting her weight sink into the springs. Nervously she blushed and fiddled with her hair, trying to get her mind on something – ANYTHING else.

She glanced over at her closet, noticing that it was still open. Even in the less-then-ideal light she could still mask still hanging over the side of the box watching her. In two long strides she crossed the room and closed the door with a decisive shove (being sure not to slam it so as not to arouse suspicion from her mother) then launched herself onto her bed, contorting around until she managed to pull up the covers out from under herself.

Tomorrow was going to be long day. She needed all the rest she could get. She remembered the math test and had a fleeting moment of panic, but tried to push it to the back of her mind. She’d pushed a lot of stuff back there and it was starting to get crowded. In lieu of actually studying, she figured maybe a goods night sleep would give her a better edge (a long-standing delusion she was never willing to shake).

More determined than ever to get to sleep she settled her head firmly into her pillow and closed her eyes, hoping against all reason to fall asleep quickly. With every passing second it became clearer that that wouldn’t be the case. The residual tingles of her arousal still stirred inside of her, wriggling in her abdomin. Her mind flashed with images and scenes of her doing unspeakable things while wearing that mask. Grimacing, she pulled her comforter over her head and gave a long, exasperated sigh.

She didn’t get it. She hadn’t felt this...well...horny since she was, like...15. Something had brought it back, but what was it? She couldn’t think of anything specific. Was it rediscovering the box of masks? Was it the comic books? Something must have happened in the past couple hours or so…but what had she done that evening? She was on a walk, she came home, her mom bitched at her…was there something else? Something she forgot.

Whatever, she thought, not much point dwelling on it. For now she couldn’t really be bothered. Sleep was her focus, and sleep was what she was going to get.

“To bad I won’t get to see the meteor shower” She said pulling the covers even tighter over her body “maybe in another hundred years.”

Half an hour later her eyelids became heavy, and remaining memories of the night melted from her mind like a bad dream. Soon she closed her eyes completely and drifted into a deep and satisfying sleep.

*    *    *    *    *

In the darkness of the far corner of her closet, the egg began to stir. At first all it did was pulse a bit quicker, but then, with a sudden sickening lurch, a patch of membrane ballooned, bulging outwards, tipping the whole thing over on one side.

The mask Rachel had worn still hung over the side of the box, watching the proceedings blankly with empty, soulless eyes.

Beneath the surface of its shell, distinctive features started to form: first hands, then feet, and then a head.

Slowly but surely, the egg was growing…