His Shapeshifting Girlfriend

Jacob lead a normal life. A normal, pretty boring life by most people's standards. He'd always been a bit of a nerd, a quiet kid who looked at the world in a different way than his peers. Seeing the planet around him as something to be understood and explored he found an interest in science at an early age, toying around with building kits and chemistry sets that astounded him and bored his parents almost to tears. As the friends he'd made throughout his life grew interests in relationships and parties, he found himself enthralled by physics and how everything in this wonderous universe functioned so seamlessly. Everything from gravitational time dilation to energy equations drew a particular fascination for him as something to be dissected and understood. The path his life followed had led him to pursue a bachelor's degree in Physics. It was his first year and he'd found the course material stimulating, although he was truly excited for the quantum physics classes in the second and third years, but he would have to be patient for that.

He'd just finished class and had a few hours before the next one. He decided to head down to a little café near the university that he frequented every so often for their sandwich and soup combo -- he wasn't much of a chef and it was a delicious, nutritious meal at a student-friendly price. He pushed the doors open to a bright day with a sky spattered with puffy white clouds and hopped down the small flight of stairs into the front lawn of the campus. Around him students were enjoying the weather -- a few jock types were tossing around a ball, some girls were sitting under a tree giggling away and there were a few people laying on the grass simply enjoying the sun.

He made his way out of the front gate, giving a subtle nod to the guard on duty, and rounded the corner along the street. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to see it was an email from his professor. As he squinted through the sun glaring off his phone his legs carried him instinctually to his destination, straight into the path of somebody walking the other way. His phone dropped from his hand and slid across the asphalt right between their feet as they toppled to the ground.

"Ah -- I'm sorry!" He stammered as his eyes trailed up from his phone to find a tall woman standing before him. She was lithe and sinewy, bereft of curvature, with long black hair that shimmered along her back like starlight. Her narrow face tapered to a point, and two emerald eyes sat deeply in her face. Her skin seemed to glow like a cloudy moon and was without blemishes, a blank canvas of delicate ivory flesh. It was difficult to tell at a glance just how old she was -- she could have been anywhere between twenty to forty. Even her ethnicity was a little bit of a difficult thing to extrapolate but with straightness of her hair and the depths of its blacks, coupled with the slight slant to her eyes there must have been some Asian in her somewhere. He helped her to her feet as she grasped at his wrist to pull herself up.

She in turn looked down at him, this boy of around 20 with slightly curly, slightly wavy brown hair that dropped into loose locks across his forehead. His eyes matched his hair perfectly. He wasn't tall nor muscular, but neither was he skinny and short. Even his clothes were the perfect example of mediocrity, but she could see the deep spark of understanding and patience in his eyes. He didn't seem particularly exciting from the outside, but like a geode, she knew there was a brilliance within him.

"No worries." She said in return, still staring down at him with a placid grin on her face.

"Oh shit." Jacob exclaimed, pawing at his phone. A huge crack ran from one corner of the screen all the way along across the middle. The screen still functioned, but the protective case he kept around it hadn't been able to absorb the full impact. "My screen's cracked." She held out her hands to get a look at it. Unblinking, she took the phone and held it up to the light.

"Yeah, that's pretty busted." She tapped away at the screen a few times, her eyes focusing tightly on the screen. Jacob just stood there, unsure of exactly what she was going to do. Was she going through his photos? Opening his emails? An uneasy feeling swelled in him, and then deflated again once she handed him his phone back. She still had that same look on her face, and still she stared with those deep eyes. He looked it over, but it was back on the screen he'd left it on. Curious, he checked his recently opened apps to see what she was up to but she'd closed that too. Clever girl. He felt bad for asking since it probably didn't matter anyway.

"You know of anywhere good to get this fixed?" He asked, looking back up at her. Holding his eyes on hers was difficult; her gaze was piercing and deep as though she was searching through his most precious memories.

"Mmm, I'm kinda new to the city." Each word she said was enunciated crisply, but slurred together as if the sentence was a word itself. She was unique, that much he knew. "There are a few places downtown but I can't vouch for how good they are." Her head tilted inquisitively to the side. "You're new here too?" The conversation took him by surprise. Normally he would have just grabbed his phone and been long gone by this point, but she seemed pleasant enough.

"I... just started recently at the university. This whole place is still pretty new to me."

"Oh, what are you studying?" She asked. She felt as though getting information out of him was like letting blood from a stone, but that made him all the more satisfying to crack.

"Uh, Physics." He responded curtly. She didn't seem to be saying anything in reply, but continued staring. She wanted more out of him. "Just Physics. I'm in my first year. I really want to be learning about quantum physics and time dilation, but I have to learn the other stuff first."

"That sounds pretty interesting. Give me a physics fact, go." She put him on the spot and he stumbled over his words for a second, but picked something quickly out of the back of his mind.

"Oh, ok, uh... because light travels at... well, the speed of light, it doesn't experience time at all." That was one she hadn't thought about.

"Hey, that's pretty good." Her smile grew from a placidity to a satisfied smirk. As nice as this was, he knew he'd have to get food inside him and get back to class. He used a moment of silence between them to cue his exit.

"Well, sorry again. I've got to get going though." She didn't want to leave it just like that, she could tell there was something different about this kid. Every interaction she'd had with people lately had been so shallow and blasé, but he had a depth to him that made her want to dive in and explore.

"I didn't get your name." She purred.

"Jacob. Nice to meet you." He held out a hand and after a second's pause, she took it. He noticed just how delicate her fingers were in his, how supple and smooth her skin was. It felt almost too perfect, too smooth, as though she was made of mochi. It had a loose, rubbery texture beneath that smoothness that sprang back with a firm resistance.

"And I'm Aiyana. Perhaps I'll see you around." She said with a subtle wink. Jacob gave her a little nod coupled with a warm smile and went on his way. He didn't forget about that so easily -- as he slowly munched away at his pastrami sandwich he stared vacantly at the table, unable to get her out of his mind. He kept repeating her name in his head, lingering on the feeling of her skin and the sound of her voice.

As the next few days passed, she still lingered in his mind. A new student had shown up at class, short girl with mousy brown hair that seemed untameable as it stuck out at odd angles. He'd caught her staring at him a few times to the dismay of all the other guys in class; it wasn't often girls signed up for the physics program. Nevertheless, he only had Aiyana on his mind. The new girl seemed to follow him around, perhaps unsure of her new surroundings, but never came up to talk to him. He reasoned that she must have been quite shy.

As the days went on the new girl kept turning up everywhere, the lab, the library, even outside his favourite café. He started to get the feeling that he was being watched, scrutinised, stalked, by this mystery girl. Jacob came to the conclusion that if she wasn't going to talk to him, that he'd have to be the one to talk to her. He tried to confront her in the hallway of the University but she turned a corner. He'd picked up his pace to try and follow her but by the time he made it around she'd gone, vanished as if she was never even there.

After that, she didn't even show up for class anymore. The rest of the students wondered what had happened to her, even the lecturer was confused. She hadn't turned up on any documents and as they looked into it, she hadn't even been registered to the school. The following week security was stepped up on the campus as a precaution.

That evening he sat in his dorm room alone, typing up a piece for coursework about mechanics and energy distribution. It wasn't a hugely massive piece, but he wanted to get it right. As he sipped away at a bottle of pepsi a small bird appeared at the window, peering inside as it hopped and chirped on his windowsill. Jacob eyed it and slid his phone from his desk, opening it to the camera to get a picture. With slow, deliberate movements as not to scare the little creature away, he raised it up and took a few snaps. It didn't flutter off, in fact it seemed to be posing for him. It dropped little head tilts and hopped about, turning and flapping its wings. Curious, Jacob rolled open the window steadily. The bird didn't even flinch -- but remained in place, chirping directly at him.

"Hi, little buddy." He whispered to it, hoping it wouldn't fly off just yet. He took this chance to snap a few more pictures before slinking into the kitchen and coming back with a ramekin of water and a handful of sunflower seeds. By the time he returned, the bird was gone. He closed the window and lay the water and seeds down on the windowsill just in case it came back, although he wasn't hopeful. He dropped the pictures onto a group chat with his parents and got back to work.

After a while he'd had enough. He'd made decent progress, so with a big stretch he stood up and made his way to the bathroom to take a shower. He undressed and pulled back the curtain, running the water to make sure it was hot. There was a new sponge inside that he didn't remember buying. He was tired and it had been an interesting week, so he shrugged it off. A lot of weird things had been happening to him ever since he bumped into that strange woman.

He grabbed the sponge as he got into the tub. It was unusually soft and supple and felt almost like a magic eraser with more spring to it. He lathered it up nonetheless and got to work cleansing himself. He scrubbed away at every inch of his skin, leaving no crevice untouched, and ran the sponge under the water when he was done. He gave it a squeeze to dry it out -- a dry sponge is a happy sponge -- and placed it with care on a shelf built into the plastic shell of the bath. He felt cleansed and refreshed, ready to sleep and face another day.

As he snored away with his face drooling down into the pillow, Aiyana emerged from the bathroom. She wore that same gentle smile as she glided through his dorm silently over to his bed, watching over him with a peaceful serenity. She took a seat as she watched, wondering more and more about him. She was desperate to talk to him more, to unfold his life and learn about what drove him, to learn the things he knew. As she leaned back on his computer chair to cross her legs and get comfortable it let out an audible creak and he snapped awake at the sound.

Jacob peered into the inky darkness, fearful at the sound of somebody creeping around his dorm. With eyes half-open he listened to the noises around him, the fan by his desk still whispered as it blew, the freezer whirred and car tyres hissed on the road outside - nothing out of the ordinary. He glanced around and saw nothing. Aiyana meanwhile lay at the bottom of his bed, contorted into a lone black sock. Ambiguous enough to go unsuspected -- everybody owns black socks, after all. She waited until she heard his snores once more before expanding her body up slowly, raising herself above the edge of the bed and peering at his sleeping face with a body nothing more than an ambiguous, amorphous blob of flesh that swapped from black to the same pale ivory that she'd been before.

She wondered why she was doing this -- going this far, to watch this guy. She'd had this body for twenty years now and had learned how to go un-noticed. Even if somebody did catch her changing, nobody would believe them. She had impunity to do whatever she wished, but she started to wonder why she was doing this. There was no denying the saw something special in him in his gentle mannerisms, his bright intelligence, but she felt something more special about him. She didn't leave his side until the sun began to rise. She looked down out the window and saw a few early morning joggers and people walking their dogs along the street. She gave him one last glance before liquidating her body and oozing herself through the tiny gaps in the window, pulling herself through bit by bit until the clump of flesh had dripped across entirely.

Jacob had been on edge for a while now, feeling more and more watched with each passing day. Aiyana had begun to notice the shift in his outlook and realised it was her fault. She tried to make him smile and forget about it so she could continue to examine him. First, she shifted into a hundred dollar bill and fluttered herself across the breeze into his path. He spent her on repairs for his phone, oozing her way out of the register when nobody was watching. She took on the form of a friendly dog, wagging her tail and panting softly as she sidled up to him for pets. She even tried turning herself into a pair of his boxers one morning, but he wound up picking another pair.

She was determined to get closer to him, to make him feel good about himself and be happy. There was only so much she could do without him knowing of her existence, and she knew she'd have to reveal herself to him eventually. That was a difficult step to take though, and required a lot of trust on her part. People had tried to sell her out to scientists and paranormal investigators before but she always managed an escape; that was the easy part. Finding somebody worthy of her trust was a lot more difficult, but this quiet boy called to her in a way she hadn't felt before.

She decided to change tactics and get even closer. While he was out at class one afternoon she oozed herself into the drainage system of his dorm and carried herself through the pipes. She could only navigate by her sense of direction and got the wrong exit a few times, popping out into a toilet, going through a washing machine, and stretching her way through the blades of a water pump before finally making her way into the tap of his sink. Like molasses she slowly dripped her way inside before slinking onto his floor.

She regained her human form and looked around to make sure it was the right place -- the posters of his favourite bands, the periodic table on the wall, and his red and white duvet told her she'd hit the jackpot. She looked around for something she could emulate, something close to him, and decided to fold up the duvet and throw it under his bed. She pushed it right under so that he wouldn't suspect anything, hoping dearly that he wouldn't randomly look under there. She hung around his dorm for a little while, watching TV and trying on the forms of the people she saw on screen. Men, women, animals, she even turned into a robot she'd seen on a technology program.

The time approached when he'd be getting home, and she took her position on his bed. It smelled more like him than anything else in the room. She took a deep sniff from his pillow and smiled with a childlike satisfaction at what she was doing. Aiyana let go of her body, allowing it to drip and droop into a flat pile before changing the colour and texture of her body to match his covers. She waited while he worked at his laptop for hours, showering and making himself fresh and finally jumping into bed. He seemed oblivious to the swap, completely unaware of the woman covering his naked body.

She couldn't have been happier -- he was sleeping better than he had the previous nights she'd been watching him and his breathing took a slow, comfortable rhythm. As he slept she relaxed herself and added a little weight, curling herself around him to tuck him in nice and tight. She no longer needed sleep herself, so she spent the night revelling in his shared warmth.

She'd taken the liberty of turning off his alarm, opting instead to wake him up gently. The phone alarm was so jarring and unsavoury, she'd seen how frustrated he got trying to slam his hand down to turn it off. So, she tenderly shuffled around to rouse him from his slumber. Sure enough, he rolled over and groaned, taking a minute before he finally threw her off him and swung about to sit on the bed. He hadn't clocked on that the alarm hadn't gone off in his sleepy state, instead heading off to the bathroom. She resumed her human form and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for him. She was anxious. She had to tell him, she had to let him know how she felt. She just feared that he'd freak out like some of the others she'd revealed herself to.

Aiyana smiled to herself and adjusted her position and form slightly as scrubbing from his toothbrush came from the other room. As he came out, still entirely nude, his eyes widened into panic.

"Wh-wh... shit!" The toothbrush dropped from his hand and he rushed back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. "What the FUCK?!" he stammered.

Aiyana rolled her eyes. It wasn't the worst reaction she'd garnered, but it wasn't exactly to plan. She stepped lightly over to the door and gave it a knock.

"Jacob... I don't mean to frighten you." She said calmly through the plywood.

"What are you doing here? How did you even get in here?!" He cried, looking around for something to defend himself with. He grabbed the toilet brush and held it aloft like a sword, keeping his eyes firmly on the door.

"I have something to tell you. Well, more something to show you." Her head sank into her shoulders, her shoulders into her chest and fell into a puddle on the floor. She seeped beneath the gap in the door, sliding onto the linoleum flooring in the bathroom. At first he didn't notice her, still staring at human hight but as he noticed he practically jumped out of his skin and threw the toilet brush at her. She created a hole in her body to avoid it and oozed around before rising up into her human form once again. He hopped into the bath and pulled the shower curtain around his nude form.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, whatthefuckohmygodwhatthefuck" he babbled, wide-eyed, as the woman approached him. She got a little too close for his liking and he tried to push her away. "Get bahhhhh-" his hand passed through her as if she were made of silly putty and lost his balance, falling face first into her abdomen. She tensed her body up to prevent him from falling to the floor completely, catching him without even trying.

He let out a blood-curdling scream and scrambled to push himself back up. He pushed himself back up against the bathroom wall, but still she approached.

"Are you a ghost?!" He didn't even believe in ghosts, but he needed something to rationalise this. She couldn't help but release a bemused giggle at his suggestion.

"No, not a ghost." She replied. She reached out a slender hand like the first time they met. "I'm Aiyana, remember?"