#0191010-a

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ARCHIVIST

Statement of Patience Norris, regarding her reflection. Original statement given October 10th, 2019. Audio recording by Perry Greer, Head Archivist of the Penn Institute, Boston.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I don’t recognize my reflection anymore.

That’s a silly thing to say, isn’t it? It looks normal. My reflection, that is. It’s my face. My eyes, brown and narrow, my nose, with a gentle curve that crooks it to the right ever so slightly. My dimples, my freckled cheeks. My hair, curled and red and falling past my shoulders, partway down my back.

That is what you see, at least. You said so, anyways. You saw red curls and brown eyes and all I saw was that thing, staring back out at me. The way you looked at my reflection was almost pitying. Did you not believe me when I said it was all wrong?

I suppose believing these sorts of things is your job. What did you see in that lost little girl in the mirror? What made you look at her like that? What made you look at me like that?

Did you see me?

My mother Emily has jet-black hair and blue eyes. My father Harrison has brown hair and blue eyes. They’re both fairly tall individuals, both have glasses, both have narrow frames and are incredibly bony.

The woman that looks back at me from the mirror has small brown eyes, bright red curls, is short and curvy. She looks nothing like her parents, and they have never seemed to notice. I looked like the two of them, once, I think. I was thin and tall and had glasses, because bad vision runs in the family, and I had long jet-black hair and bright blue eyes.

I was the spitting image of my parents in different ways, and then one day, something changed. And then another day, another thing changed. And so on and so forth.

It started when I moved back in with my parents once college hadn’t exactly worked out. I looked in the mirror one morning, and my blue eyes were brown. My mother had just laughed and said I’d always had brown eyes, and at the time I decided to believe it.

It kept happening. The next thing to change was my hair. It became shorter, shoulder-length, curly and red, and my mother had just said something about my great grandmother having red hair, and hadn’t we had this talk before, Natasha?

My name is not Natasha.

I have been clinging to that for as long as I can, but I do not know how much longer I’ll be able to. I have forgotten my original middle name. I can feel the fake name prodding at the back of my mind, aching to replace my real one, digging its claws in and dragging itself into my memories. This thing wants me, wants everything that makes me myself, wants to devour the entirety of my identity, and I don’t know what to do.

Next was my face. It became round, freckled, with a scar above the right eyebrow. It is from an accident, I fell off of the treehouse at age eight. We did not have a treehouse. We did not have a yard with a tree at all. I was adopted. I was not adopted.

My height changed the very next day. That was a week ago. Nothing has changed since, but I’ve been having constant headaches and trouble with my memory. Something bad is going to happen, I can just feel it, and I do not know what to do about it. You can help. Your institute is supposed to know about these things, isn’t it?

And yet I hate you and your work, for some reason. Something inside of me despises you, and maybe it is the monster stealing my skin and making it its own, but you and your people disgust me.

You yearn to understand, and that is everything I seem to stand against, now. I had a crush on my best friend Olivia in sophomore year of high school. I did not have a best friend named Olivia in high school, and I did not like girls until yesterday.

On its own that would be an unconcerning development, but in light of all of the things that are happening to me… I am sure you understand the cause for concern.

I can still feel it, in the back of my mind. Even here. It is trying to take me as I write this. Trying to hollow me out from the inside and use me as its own body. I can hardly think straight enough to write this down. My skin itches on the inside. My head feels as if it is going to split apart.

Natasha. What a plain name. Lovely, normal, perfectly ordinary in every way.

Perhaps it suits me.

ARCHIVIST

… Statement ends.

… Right.

I wanted to, um, go over this statement again properly. Record it, post it again, if only to refresh myself on the details of the Skinsnatcher’s process and the perspective of its victims. I, uh, I don’t know… what this told me, really.

There’s been no new information on this case since we last looked into it.

I don’t know what to do. Caesar said he’s seen the Skinsnatcher a few times outside of work. I think I’ve begun to see it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being watched when I’m in here.

I’m… I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll show up here or not. I’m hoping it won’t.

Hazel says that destroying the entire physical form tends to work with these things. I’m not sure how we’ll do that, but… I guess it’s the plan. It’s better than nothing.

I’m just… scared, I’ll… I’ll admit it.

We’ve never had an encounter like this before, in all my time at the Institute.

I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.

... End recording.

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