Golden Gloom - POOR - Part Two

A New Face

4

Barbara

I scrambled for my handbag, looking for a hand mirror but it wasn’t there; it was gone! I’d left it on the chair beside mine but it was nowhere to be seen. I just wanted to see what I looked like now but the loss of my bag was another concern.

I checked the floor and other chairs but it wasn’t there. Bending down, I got distracted by the flexibility of my body now. I no longer had the pear-shaped mid-section. My exposed midriff wasn’t skinny by any means but it was far slimmer than it had been. I lifted my torso upright again delightfully easily, with stronger back muscles and less weight, and tightly curled long blond hair swung into my field of view. I took it in my hands, holding it up to see, disbelieving it. But this wasn’t a dream. I was wide awake. I felt tipsy but not drunk. Not drugged. This was real hair. It was my real hair!

My fingernails were varnished a bright fuchsia, chipped in places but artfully done. They drew my eyes and I turned my hands and arms back and forth, staring. They weren’t the arms of a woman in her forties. They looked twenty years younger. Maybe more! I just couldn’t believe it! I lowered them and that’s when I saw the little fuchsia handbag on the table next to my drink.

There was no one else around whose bag it could be. I scanned left and right, then reached for it, breaking the seal. Inside was some make-up of a cheaper brand than I normally used, a compact, a hotel key, some bubble gum and a small pink sequined purse. I snatched out the compact and flicked it open, gazing in awe at the image I saw staring back at me in its tiny mirror.

I was young! I was a young woman, barely more than a girl! The features were completely different from my own: thinner lips, a more turned up nose, heavier lids on eyes that were deeper set. The first thing the reflection made me think of was the girls I’d been watching. I didn’t look like any of them; not exactly; but it was close. I looked like I could have been part of their group; like I was the same age as them.

I was breathing heavily, almost panting, heart rate elevated. I lowered the mirror, staring into space, trying to come to terms with this, then lifted it again, turning my head and adjusting the glass to get a better look.

All trace of my double chin was gone. I had visible cheekbones for the first time in almost ten years! The face wasn’t... beautiful but it was pretty enough. When I’d been young I’d had quite cute features. This new face wasn’t like that. It was...

There was a certain type of face that you saw on street corners, hanging around outside off-licences, or sitting on the front steps of council houses. It was a horrid generalisation, and one I hated to make, but there were some people you could tell were blue collar before they opened their mouths. There was nothing wrong with this face but there were traits of that in it, a slight hardness to the features. It was weird to be looking back at it, into eyes that were a different colour: green instead of brown.

I bared my teeth, feeling them with my tongue and fingertips then smiled at myself. Then frowned. Then grimaced. Then I giggled. “Hello,” I said, glancing to see if anyone was watching me talk to myself. Nobody was. Most of the restaurant garden was empty now. “Hello. What are you looking at?”

I giggled again, covering my mouth with curled fingers, watching the crinkle round my eyes, the skin pulling taught over smiling cheeks. The voice was totally different from mine, slightly more pointed and there was a trace of an accent of all things, but one I didn’t recognise. I didn’t know how that was possible.

“Hello. I’m twenty years old.”

It was really odd.

I looked back in the little shoulder bag and tipped out the contents; unfolded the wallet. There was a bit of local currency, a five pound note, no credit cards and some photo ID. The photo ID looked blank, almost black, but as I looked at it, the shadows resolved themselves into a square photograph and some words. I looked at the lanterns again. It hadn’t been real shadow. This thing had actually been formed as I looked at it. Almost as if...

As if it was being created right now.

A gave a little shudder, a shiver running through me and looked again at this strange new body, feeling slightly more insecure than I had a moment earlier.

The picture was of this face. I touched my cheek as though the photo were a mirror, feeling the same taut skin there as in the picture, the small mouth. Then I looked at the name.

Lorraine Parker.

My lips mouthed the words as I read the date of birth; as I calculated the age of this girl. Nineteen. I was nineteen years old.

“Fucking hell,” I whispered. “This is really fucked up.”

Was I stuck this way? Had I swapped bodies with the real Lorraine Parker? Or was there no real Lorraine? I thought about the ID emerging from the gloom, the same off-kilter shadows that had surrounded me when I changed.

I looked in every direction, trying to see if anyone was watching me. Had someone done this to me? Cast a spell on me? Why had it happened? Why me?

I felt my smooth bare legs and grinned, amazed, loving being young again, but then I thought about Charles. I couldn’t just turn into a nineteen year old girl. What would Charles say? What could I do? I wouldn’t be able to get home to England; even get back into the hotel! Charles wouldn’t even know me!

My breathing became laboured again as I started to get more and more anxious. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to turn into this girl. I wanted to be myself again.

And as I thought this there was a slight prickling on my shoulders and down the backs of my arms and the lanterns dimmed. I looked up at them, watching the illumination immediately increase again as soon as I broke my train of thought, returning to normal.

I frowned, thinking about what I’d been doing before the change came. I’d been... I’d been imagining how nice it would be to be young again...

“Yeah...”

I’d been imagining what it would be like to be as carefree as one of those girls and then... then I’d changed into one of them. And the light... the light had lowered. It had been the shadows that had – I looked at the lanterns again – the shadows that had changed me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. That had to be it.

The question was, could they change me back?

I felt my lovely slim arms and legs.

And did I really want them to?

5

Charles

There was a table and chair in our suite and I had my laptop and a bottle of beer out in front of me. The air conditioning was on but it was still hot. I’d stripped down to my underpants and vest.

In former days I’d have brought piles of paper reports and figures to work with. Now, everything was computerised. I hated paper and pushed all my staff to go paperless whenever possible. My laptop was top of the range with a lovely big monitor. It enabled me to compare figures across multiple documents while keeping abreast of developments by email and through social media. The upper and middle management were financially encouraged to keep up work into the evenings and over the weekends so things were always moving forward. It meant that I too had to give up my free time to propagate things but it also kept our profits high.

I tapped out a quick email to request that one of our departments be shut down. It would mean forty three redundancies but that was simple maths: the weight of continued revenue drop against the short term payout of severance. The department was making a profit but it was a marginal one. It had to go. I gave the instructions, glanced back over what I’d typed and then pressed SEND before taking a swig of beer and moving on.

The light dimmed in the room slightly, then dimmed again. I looked up at the overhead bulb. It was still shining at the same intensity but... it was odd. The light wasn’t filling the room in the same way. The upper corners of the suite were in shadow, the shadows under the bed swelling across the floor.

I frowned, half turning back to my laptop. The screen was as bright as ever so there wasn’t an electrical problem, and the desk lamp was fine. But no. That too started to dim, the light from it altering slightly, becoming less pure white, taking on a beige tint. I tapped the conical shade round the bulb but it dimmed further. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen. The whole room was getting darker and darker, but both lights were still shining. They didn’t seem to have dimmed at all. I couldn’t explain it.

A creeping sensation ran up my back beneath my vest like sweat prickles and I looked at my arm as it slid down there. The fine hairs were standing up as though there was an electrical charge. Then my ears popped, the pressure building up in there like it would if I’d suddenly climbed hundreds of feet in altitude. I recognised the feeling because I’d felt it that morning on the plane ride over: exactly the same.

The gloom faltered, brightening then dipping sharply and a sensation started in my stomach, creeping up into my throat. My limbs felt heavy. My eyelids drooped.

I was having some kind of stroke, I had to be. This wasn’t normal. I needed to call for help. But the phone was over by the bed and I couldn’t force myself to stand. The gloom was closing in on me. I was struggling, trying to push up on the desk. The beer bottle fell on its side, the liquid inside frothing out onto the table. A pain was building up inside my temple.

Then from the back of my mind I felt a sudden surge of resentment about my life, a despondency; a need to get away from it; but these were alien thoughts that didn’t fit in my mind. I wasn’t the type to think that way and my instinct pushed them away. Immediately I felt a further push of depression, making me feel that I needed to escape. I looked at the screen in front of me, at the profit margin figures and wanted nothing more than to have a simpler life without all that pressure.

I gripped the sides of my head, closing my eyes. I didn’t know why I was feeling this way. It wasn’t me. This wasn’t what I was like.

I had to get up; call for the doctor; call Barbara to come back to the room. I willed myself to do it, driving my resolve into my sluggish limbs. The room was almost in total darkness. I could barely make out the laptop now.

Then with a cry of determination I pushed myself up, staggering away from the table, the chair falling behind me on its back.

And instantly the gloom vanished. The feeling of pressure and discomfort disappeared. I stumbled, spinning round to look about me. The room was entirely normal. There was nothing wrong with it at all.

I checked my body, feeling my portly stomach; the back of my head; my arms. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all. It was as though I’d just woken from a light dream-filled sleep.

I frowned, checking the room again, then shook my head, chuckling. That was all it had to have been. Surely. I looked at the laptop, the lamp, the overhead bulb. Everything was as it should have been.

Except for the beer bottle.

That was on its side, exactly as I’d seen. I quickly righted it and mopped up the spillage. There was no real damage. I held the bottle in my hand, replaying the incident through my memory.

It certainly felt like a dream now. What I saw and felt was completely unnatural. It couldn’t have actually happened.

But then there was the bottle...

I placed two fingers on the bald area at the top of my high forehead, gently stroking back and forth as I thought it through.

I felt tired now. Very tired. I sank down onto the bed, tempted to close my eyes for half an hour.

If it had been a stroke or something I would have still felt bad now but I didn’t. I felt perfectly normal; just weary. I picked up my mobile phone and dialled Barbara’s number but it went straight to voicemail.

“Hmmm.”

It didn’t matter. She’d be back soon enough. I just needed to rest. That was all.

I lay back, feeling the tension release throughout my back and shoulders. My vision was a little blurry. I rubbed my eyes, closing them.

When I reopened them a second later the room had dimmed again. I lifted my head immediately but it had just been a trick of my eyes. Everything was fine, the light normal. It was just the stress of the journey and finally getting away from work. That was all. I needed to sleep.

I closed my eyes again and this time I didn’t reopen them, letting myself drift into sleep.

And my dreams were filled with strange images of other lives, filtered through a golden gloom; other people’s faces staring back at me in horror from cracked and dirty mirrors amid squalor and filth.