Golden Gloom - POOR - Part Three

6

 

Barbara

 

 

I left the restaurant, walking out onto the pavement, feeling exposed and vulnerable – like I was wearing a gaudy revealing outfit that would be horribly embarrassing if I was seen in it.

 

But it wasn’t an outfit; it was someone else’s body! I had actually become an entirely different person! As far as all the passersby could tell, I was this young nineteen year old: Lorraine Parker.

 

No one was looking at me strangely. No one saw this as a magical transformation. If there had been one – and there had – then it was over now. This was really me.

 

A man in his thirties walked by, eyes dropping to my chest and legs, my midriff, briefly on my face, then he was gone. Now that was weird. I hadn’t been ‘checked out’ so blatantly since... ever really. That was why I’d fantasised about being a girl like this: because I’d missed out on that entire segment of life. It felt... nice.

 

While I was standing there thinking about it, I got leers from two other men, one of them quite dark skinned and tasty. It was actually kind of nice.

 

I started walking through the milling crowds, just feeling what it was like to be young again but in this new and exciting way: to be checked out by man after man, feeling more confident and sexy by the minute. I wondered what it would be like to be with one of them, to kiss them and feel them take me in their arms, enjoying the fantasy.

 

What if I went in a bar and got some guy to buy me some drinks? What if I went clubbing and found some tasty young gigolo to...

 

To fuck me?

 

“God.”

 

I slipped off the main thoroughfare and cupped my face in my hands. I stayed like that for a minute, just trying to digest all this then swept them back up and through my hair, linking my fingers finally behind my neck.

 

I was this girl, Lorraine. I had really become her. It was exciting but it was also entirely terrifying. The tension in my upper back was creeping tighter around my shoulders and arms. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

 

In the alley was the entrance to a seedy-looking hotel called Brits Abroad. An Asian man and woman emerged and I had to step out of the way. As I did so I saw the name of the establishment and got another jolt in my stomach of tension cramps. I fumbled for the key from the little pink handbag, holding it up; matching the tag to the words there.

 

It was a key for a room in that hotel: this squalid dump with peeling paint and overflowing dustbins.

 

It was too real. It wasn’t just a fantasy or a game. It was entirely real and it was wrong and I hated it. I just wanted to be back in my own body – safe with Charles – back in my own room at my own hotel. I didn’t want to be young again. I just wanted to be me!

 

And as the panic overcame me, as tears came down my cheeks, the darkness intensified in the alley, dyeing everything a dimming hazy gold. I span, looking desperately about me, all the more horrified, gripping the sides of my face as the gloom swelled further, closing in on me; swallowing me.

 

I cried for help from the passersby on the street but no one reacted, the noise from my throat muted by the gloom. I strained, screaming, reaching out for them, trying to stagger that way, but I fell forward onto my knees as the darkness snapped over me, blacking out my vision, muffling every physical sensation apart from the concrete under my hands and knees which quivered as though the very earth were quaking.

 

Then in a burst of restored illumination it was gone.

 

I was on my hands and knees in the alley outside the Brits Abroad, trying to catch my breath. And I was myself again. My arms were chubby again, my breasts pendulous, my stomach round and soft. I touched the glasses on my face, the straight dark hair, my fringe. It was all back and I tilted upright, sitting back on my heels, smiling out of relief, the tears still running down my cheeks.

 

“Thank God,” I said. “Oh thank God.”

 

I climbed up with difficulty and shambled to the mouth of the alley, squinting into the bright shop lights, seeing all the oblivious people. Back in the alley the gloom had departed completely.

 

But I could still feel it. It was near. I could feel it like a warm chill on the backs of my arms and behind my knees. Something unnatural.

 

I touched myself all over, so relieved that it was over, but disappointed too that I wasn’t slim and young again. There were so many carefree girls on the street. I watched them walking and laughing, holding hands with their men... and I wondered...

 

I wondered if I hadn’t just made a terrible mistake. If I hadn’t just wasted a unique opportunity.

 

A faint tingling played across my back, running down to my waist. Whatever had done it was still around, still coaxing me, telling me it wasn’t too late, but I shook my head to clear it.

 

I didn’t want that. It wasn’t worth it.

 

I didn’t want to be young again if it meant I’d have to be poor.

 

 

7

 

Barbara

 

 

The Brits Abroad Hotel was a dive but I had absolutely no doubt that it was cheap.

 

There had been a time, years ago, when travelling abroad was the exclusive right of the wealthy, but with the days of cheap flats and LastMinute.com anyone now had the potential to explore the world. As long as the world they explored was filled with alcohol, swimming pools, party drugs and gaudy souvenirs. This was the kind of establishment that catered for that lower end of the market, a place to flop after a hard night’s drinking and dancing; no frills.

 

I fingered the ends of my hair, wondering if I should go inside. The reception desk was unmanned. Behind it on the wall was pinned a faded Union Jack. On the side wall was a big poster of two grinning football hooligans, their faces painted red and white with the English flag, thumbs up. The bright red lettering said “LET’S GET PISSED!!!!”

 

That said it all really.

 

But I had to know, so I pushed back the door and went in.

 

There was a bell on the counter. I rang it and waited. Three laughing young men piled down the stairs, singing some kind of overloud anthem, voices full of mirth and inebriation. I tried not to look at their bare chests and muscular stomachs, painfully aware of how out of place I looked. A sweating overweight Greek came to the reception desk and murmured something unintelligible, flashing his eyes.

 

I cleared my throat tersely. “Good evening. I’m sorry to bother you. My... niece is going to be staying here and I was wondering if she’d checked in yet. Her name is Lorraine. Lorraine Parker.” I smiled, feeling transparently fraudulent.

 

Nevertheless, the man checked his book, shaking his head no.

 

“Lorraine Parker,” I repeated. “Are you sure?”

 

“No Lorraine Parker. No.” He shook his head again, even more violently.

 

I stepped back, turned, remembered my manners and looked back to say “Thank you,” then left the building, my mind casting about, trying to make sense of all this.

 

But there were no answers.

 

Only more questions.

 

 

8

 

Barbara

 

 

I wandered back toward mine and Charles’s hotel, my mind so detached from my surroundings that I barely avoided knocking into people. I must have looked a real sight: the matronly woman in the glasses walking in a daze.

 

The odd feeling was still with me. I could feel it crawling on my skin in the darker recesses, gathering there, waiting, stroking at my thoughts, nudging at me, keeping me drowsy. It was faintly disturbing, but also comforting; warming; slightly electric, almost erotic.

 

Whatever it was, it hadn’t finished with me. But that didn’t fill me with fear. For some reason it made me... content; secure.

 

It felt like it could make me happier, that a simpler life was in reach, that all I had to do was wish for it and that life could be mine.

 

My thoughts were sluggish, dropping from one concept to another only slowly, trying to understand this thing, contain it within a framework of rules. But it eluded that, contradicting any sense I’d ever known, making me feel as though there was no reasoning it or understanding it; that this thing that was happening now to me was unique. A unique relationship between me and... whatever it was.

 

I kept thinking about Lorraine Parker; about the ID resolving itself from the gloom; about the hotel key; about the dazed look on the hotel proprietor’s face when I said that name.

 

He hadn’t known her. She wasn’t a guest there. But she’d had the key. I’d had the key.

 

The only thing that came close to making sense to me was that when I had become Lorraine I had been a guest there. If I’d asked him then he would have known me. When I changed back she ceased to exist.

 

But none of this made sense, not in any real way. This kind of thing didn’t happen.

 

I stopped at the side of the road, only belatedly realising I was at the hotel already.

 

Did this mean that I could change into that body again whenever I wanted?

 

I felt a sudden longing to and the street darkened slightly but I gripped the sides of my face, forcing myself to put it out of my mind.

 

Yes. It meant I could still invoke it. Still change. Just by thinking it.

 

I had to get back inside. I had to discuss this with Charles. It was too big to keep to myself.

 

Checking for traffic I hurried across the street and in through the front doors to the lobby then I made my way to the lifts.

 

 

9  

 

Barbara

 

 

Charles was fast asleep when I got back to the penthouse... which was disappointing.

 

I sighed over-loudly, hoping he’d wake up then slipped into the en-suite bathroom when he didn’t. The sight of my usual reflection was slightly jarring after looking at myself as that girl. I didn’t like seeing my ordinary features and turned away... then looked again: at my round face, my thick specs, my double chin, me pear shaped body and thick thighs, my round arms.

 

The bathroom was beautiful, really high quality; the best that money could buy. But was it that great, really? Was it worth being old for? Or overweight? Was it worth having bad eyesight to keep hold of it? Were any of these trappings worth it? Was the mansion back home?

 

I could still remember how the taut skin on my arms and thighs had felt. I closed my eyes, remembering, the sides of my mouth turning up, and the room darkened, the gloom closing in on me, just nudging me a little further in those thoughts.

 

I remembered the hard mouth I’d had, the heavier brow. I imagined what it would be like to be a teenager again, to not worry about what people thought about me, to be free to act without doubt or guilt. To just do whatever I wanted. Be with whomever I wanted.

 

The chills started on the backs of my calves and pattered up my legs around my buttocks and into my back. I put my hands to my stomach but it was already slimming beneath my fingers and my turned-up mouth became an actual smile and then a grin.

 

I wanted to open my eyes to the darkness but I was afraid to break the spell, lose the fantasy, let that fantasy become real. All I could think about was being that girl again; being young again. It was everything I wanted. Every other care I had was subsumed by that, consumed in the darkness what was closing around me.

 

I stretched my arms out to the sides, my head dropping back as the preternatural wind caught my hair: letting it do its work; letting it change me, turning me into Lorraine again, wiping away all trace of the frumpy middle-aged woman I’d been.

 

The power twirled around me, reshaping my limbs, stripping the unwanted meat from my bones, recasting my face.

 

And then in a flicker and a flash of restored light it was over and I was gasping, reaching for the edge of the sink to keep me from falling, trying to catch my breath as I stared once more into the reflection of the nineteen year old hellion in the mirror.

 

Lorraine Parker.

 

The new me.