Not I

"The psychological symptoms of this mental illness include: paran-..." Her fingers paused on the keys... The lab around her felt muffled as an odd sensation crept up Kate's neck and across her face. Blinking and flexing her fingers she looked down at her long, slender hands. Something was off... She looked around, blinking and squinting hard. It was just her eyes feeling fatigued after too much screen time. Looking at her hands again, the feeling was still there. They seemed wrong somehow. Like she couldn't remember how they were supposed to look. Or, they just didn't look like they should? Obviously attached to her body, they were her hands. She knew that much logically, but it didn't feel like her body agreed. Mumbling something to herself about how much she hated Mr. Nessing and this stupid assignment, she rubbed her eyes and looked again at her fingers, trembling slightly with the hereditary tremor she'd had since birth. They were her's again, and her time inside over the last several months had not done her tan any favors. "God I need some sun..." She chuckled to herself.

Shivering slightly from the draft of the AC vent right above her poorly chosen work station and from the momentary weirdness, Kate closed her laptop after saving her work and packed up her things. Glancing at the clock, she sighed as she realized the painfully few hours before she had to be back in class. She was getting sick of it. The constant research and hours of staring at a screen and typing paragraph after paragraph of the thesis she was beginning to despise. She had chosen her major because she loved the human brain. Everything she learned about the way it worked, its unmatched complexity, and the many aspects that have left scientists baffled for centuries filled her with awe and a deep respect for life and its design. She just hadn't anticipated the workload, and total lack of a social life that it would bring. She'd heard from others how bad it was, but it was really starting to get to her. Even with a full medical background knowledge of sleep deprivation's effects on the body, she slept minimally, drank coffee by the gallon, and ate whatever wandered into the fridge or pantry when her or her roommate Xavier happened to remember to grab something from the local grocery down the street. Tonight, she guessed it would be the same poorly heated lasagna she had eaten every night that week. Unless she was really lucky and could have some of Xav's leftover takeout from the night before. Her stomach growled... Had she eaten today?

Locking the lab door from the inside, she stepped out into the quiet campus halls. She liked this time of night. Though a little creepy at times, the quiet gave her space to think. She had never really been afraid of being alone in the dark. There was something that felt special about the velvety depth of the sky above the silence of the sleeping city around her. It was peaceful, but reflective and mysterious. Checking the parking lot before she walked from the building, she noticed that her car was the last in the student lot, and almost the last left on campus. Mr. Nessing was probably staying late to curate their demise during lab tomorrow. She grimaced.

This semester hadn't been that bad overall. She liked most of her professors, and the work load hadn't been unbearable...With the exception of Nessing's class. He seemed bent on failing every student that walked across the threshold. On top of assigning gritty, tedious papers every week alongside the regular paper work and lab reports, he had an intolerably unpleasant personality. Sighing, Amber shrugged off the clouds gathering over the rest of her free evening and marched out across the lot. Approaching the car and reaching for her fob, she started to get a strange feeling. Almost like she was being watched... She glanced quickly around the empty asphalt as she opened the car door and slid hurriedly in. It was the same quiet emptiness that had been so peaceful a moment ago. She let out a sigh of relief and fumbled to turn the key in the ignition. But as she squinted to see in the half-light, the same strange feeling from the lab came back. As she looked at her hand, it looked so...wrong. She didn't know it. It was a stranger's hand, and she was having a hard time remembering if she had put on the shirt she was wearing that morning, or if she even had a shirt like the one she now noticed she wore. Amber looked out the window and panic started to rise in her chest. Everything was wrong! The overhead lights in the parking lot cast a sickly, yellow glow on everything, and the University's outline felt ominous somehow. Like there was something hiding in the shadows.... Using one of the hands, she turned the key and the tiny Impala groaned to life protesting with a loud screech that she hadn't had the budget to diagnose at the mechanic's yet. That felt right... And just like that her body felt normal, and the University looked like its old self again. Mr. Nessing, who apparently had finished his villainy for the night was shuffling swiftly across the parking lot in his trench coat, tie flapping wildly behind him. Still shaking slightly, Kate put the car into reverse, backed out of her parking spot, and drove home.