The problem with inhabiting a body that previously belonged to someone else was you were left with their past, no matter how unfortunate it had been. 

James could not access the memories of a host body, besides the initial impression he got when he first possessed them, his consciousness burned through the brain's synapses rewriting them into something entirely new – James was left to discover the identity of the Skin on his own. 

James had only inhabited the Skin of James Wilkins for two months by the time he decided to board the Sea Seraph and head to the New World. It wasn’t a choice James made lightly, but two months was enough to learn the type of man Wilkins had been and the grief and hate he had left in his wake. 

The Captain’s face was twisted in rage, his eyes wild with it as he stared James down, James didn’t think this was over the simple matter of bumping into the man earlier that day. 

“I killed you,” the Captain spat. 

James grimaced. Such was his luck to board a ship whose captain was James Wilkins's killer. Wilkins had been beaten to death. Every bone in his body had been broken, his face turned to pulp, and his eyes gouged out. Then his body, vacant of any soul that once inhabited it, was thrown in the Thames. 

“I think you have the wrong man,” James tried, the captain swung at him. Jame dodged.

No matter how skilled the Captain was at sword fighting he couldn’t beat James. Even unarmed, James was deadly, he had thousands of years of experience, one fighting form and culture built upon another. Not only that, James’s body wasn’t fully human. He would heal from any injury nearly instantaneously. His cells reverted to their prime state no matter the age of the skin he was possessing. He was stronger and faster than any man. 

The Captain swung again, his sword hissing through the air as he slashed jaggedly at James, “You were dead!” 

James ducked and rolled, controlling where they moved, not trusting the captain to avoid hitting a passenger in his fury. 

But his movements were limited on the deck. Their skirmish had attracted a crowd, the lower inhabitants of the ship spilling out onto the quarter-deck. He recognized the faces of men and women he had played cards with, eaten with, and spoken with at length about their dreams and ambitions. 

Becca and Thomas stood at the edge of the crowd, closest to James. 

Becca had an arm looped around Thomas, clearly stopping him from doing something idiotic like stepping between him and the captain's blade. 

It was the upset on their faces that made up his mind. 

On a ship, the captain was judge, jury, and executioner. By right, he could kill James without provocation. If anyone acted against him in retaliation, their life was forfeit as well. 

“Wait,” James said, he leaped onto the bulwark, the railing that bracketed the deck. The captain swung at him regardless, his sword cracking down onto the railing and sticking deep in the wood.

James looked over his shoulder, not down at the waves crashing against the hull of the ship, but out at the vast expanse of ocean that spread out as far as the eye could see. Open water.

I don’t want to, he thought. His hands were shaking, fear gripping his body. The Captain tugged at the sword but it held firm. I could kill him now. James could kick out, a swift blow to the Captain’s throat would drop him. But then what? Killing a Captain of a ship was a death sentence. If people tried to protect him, they would be just as at fault in the eyes of the law. And if the crew tried to execute James, James would be forced to kill them. 

No matter what happened next, people would die. 

He looked at Becca and Thomas again. Thomas looked afraid and Becca angry. The crowd looked enraged by the Captain's action. And just as scared for James’s sake. 

These humans. 

James met Becca’s eyes. “Tartuffe by Molière,” he called, he saw the comprehension in her eyes, and then he dropped back as the captain yanked the sword free. 

The fall from the quarter deck to the ocean below was thirty feet at best; he had seen people survive further drops uninjured. If you fell the right way, you could use your fingertips to split the surface tension of the water. But James fell poorly. His back hit the water's surface straight on. The force broke his spine, shattered his ribs, and forced the air from his lungs, but he felt none of this. At the slap of water against his back, he fled from the Skin. He peeled his essence away from the body as it sank like an anchor, and he floated to the surface, bobbing up like a buoy. His form was no more solid than a jellyfish.

He had little control over this form. He could skate along the surface like a water strider, but he couldn’t dive beneath the waves and he couldn’t move fast.

It had been thousands of years since he was last adrift at sea, but holding onto the Skin would have been worse. His essence might float, but ironically, his inhabitance of flesh made the Skins denser than water. His Skin’s sunk. No matter how long or how short a time he occupied the body. They always sank to the sea floor, never to surface again, with him in them or not. He had tried to walk on the sea floor before, but the body would run out of air and drown and his essence would try to heal it by expelling the water from his lungs only to swallow more in a vicious cycle of agony. 

He wasn’t left with much hope but to drift aimlessly in the vast ocean. In all of his existence, he had never come close enough to a creature of the sea in this form to possess it, the sea seeming to push her creatures away from him, both the living and the dead. Even if he came across a dead human on a lifeboat, lost at sea, he would be just as stranded as it was. 

It was why he haunted the waters of the Thames River for so long. Bodies were always being dropped into it and the shore was always in sight. 

How much will the world change? he wondered as the Sea Seraph glided past him. How many years will pass? A hundred? A thousand?

But no time at all passed when the water churned beneath him, the Sea Seraph still on the horizon, and he was swallowed up by the ocean.