Golden Gloom: WHORE - Part One

I was almost certain she was a whore and that tantalised me - that I was spying on her without her knowledge. It thrilled me almost as much as fingering the slip of paper in my pocket, knowing about the power the unnatural words on it contained. 

I asked myself, just for a moment, what it would be like to read out those words and summon the power of the Golden Gloom, to let it transform my life into hers.

She was in Asda, wearing a trashy sleeveless top with a deep v-neck. Her slightly rounded midriff was exposed above and below her navel. She wore leggings and a pair of block heeled open toed shoes. She had an unlit cigarette in her mouth. In the fingers of her right hand, as she pushed her trolley, she played with a cheap disposable lighter, turning the wheel over and over, not making enough spark to form a flame.

She was in her early thirties, her body fairly slim but untoned. She didn’t go to the gym. She didn’t go jogging. Her chin was starting to take on a thirties sag.

I walked along behind her, keeping close, already captivated, as she moved through the aisles. She didn’t walk like a model, one foot directly in front of the other, but her movements were feminine. She ran her index finger along items on the shelf, tapping a dark red nail on the items she wanted when she found each one.

I watched as she dropped two microwave dinners into her trolley and then made her way down the toiletries aisle. I nodded to myself when she picked up two six-packs of condoms.

Nothing but a whore.

It gave me a thrill to be stalking her like this, for me to know what she was and for her to be unaware that I was watching. I felt so dirty. Illegal dirty – like I was a kidnapper or something worse.

She picked up a family bag of Doritos, then I followed her into the alcohol aisle. She stopped and picked up a ten pound bottle of vodka. Then she glanced at me.

I didn’t instantly look away. I was so surprised.

We held eye contact for almost five seconds.

Then she looked away.

She didn’t know me. All she saw was another anonymous shopper. There was nothing strange about me at all.

Before she looked away I caught a flicker of something in her face.

What was it?

Envy?

Probably.

To look at me she would plainly see that I had more than she would ever possess.

Her handbag was splitting at the seams. Her clothes needed washing. I could see her dismal future in every element of her body and motion.

I let her pull away and then gradually went after her, pulling into the checkout queue just behind her, quickly grabbing some chocolates and a magazine to put in my basket so nobody would notice I hadn’t picked anything up.

The whore was right in front of me.

I stepped close to her, my face only inches away from the shiny artificial fabric of her shoulder straps. I looked at her pale skin, at the loose blond hair gathered on her shoulders and breathed in slowly, smelling her scent. I didn’t recognise the perfume but it was cheap. Beneath it I could sense wisps of body odour, not completely masked.

The checkout lady put the microwave dinners through.

I imagined this whore, sitting alone at her kitchen table, eating them. I imagined being her, seeing her hands in front of me, lifting the food to my mouth.

The checkout beeped as the Doritos and vodka went through.

Later she might be sitting in front of the TV, vegetating, drinking alone and stuffing Doritos into her rude mouth, alternating puffs of her cigarette and swigs of vodka from the bottle. In my mind it was me sitting there, feet out in front of me, ankles crossed, chipped nail polish on my exposed toes, bottle in hand.

Finally, the checkout lady put the condoms through and I let my mind wander onto what the whore would do with them.

It aroused me, standing there, smelling her, picturing being her, having some huge man pin me down and—

She looked at me, her face sneering. Her voice sneered too. “Wot you lookin’ at? You gotta problem?”

I flushed. “Sorry, no. Just daydreaming.”

She turned away, dropping a handful of creased five-pound notes on the conveyor belt.

I watched her walk away then quickly paid for my own items.

In the ground floor car park under the store my teenage son was waiting where I’d left him, slumped in the passenger seat of our BMW, the Times weekend supplement so close to his face he heard me rather than saw me get in. “You took your time.”

“Shut up.”

I started the engine.

My whore was near the edge of the car park, one bag of shopping dangling from each hand. I pulled out and followed from a discrete distance. Still buried in the paper, my son didn’t even notice.

*  *  *

Life at home was dreadfully dull. There was no sex life to speak of, nothing to capture my spirit or imagination. I’d been fantasising about undergoing a transformation for months and now, finally I’d actually spotted a candidate. I couldn’t believe it. It was so odd to have a fantasy - to lie awake thinking about it amid the snores coming from the bed beside me. But to actually see a real whore? To have this opportunity? It was unreal.

I didn’t know what the Golden Gloom really was. Nobody did. What little information I had managed to glean on the internet about it suggested quirky mystical limitations on knowledge and questions better left unasked. Ridiculous obviously. Any kind of magic had to have science at its root if the deepest secrets were known. This was no different. There were no unfathomable powers here. The mystery was an illusion. On the other hand, that didn’t make it any more understandable to me.

The Golden Gloom seemed to be a random force, choosing subjects without logical reason. If there were patterns to be seen, none of the sources I could find revealed them. The only positive link was envy - more often than not the filthy masochistic attraction to something vulgar but enticing.

A man might become the stripper he gapes at night after night, wondering how it would feel to be so tawdry.

A duchess might become the immigrant maid who struggles on hands and knees to clean the filthy tiles under the toilet, whose life is so perfectly simple.

An abused child might become its violent alcoholic father, meting out brutal punishment just as he did as his instincts became its own.

And I might become a trashy illiterate prostitute, selling my cheap body to big hairy men whose social skills can’t get them gratification elsewhere.

The Golden Gloom chose it subjects, latched onto their secret envies and transformed all reality around them, thrusting them into this new life they had lusted after completely, blanketing their own thoughts and feelings with those of their target.

I longed to experience this immersion too. I longed to give up everything that made me who I was and immerse myself in that loose and flagrant life for a while.

I wanted to be that whore.

And I had the means to do it – to summon the power, rather than waiting for its random turning to choose me.

And I could do it now.

I had possessed the incantation necessary to summon the Golden Gloom for three weeks now. Day after day I had looked around for a person I might want to try becoming. None had grown to obsess me. In the last week though, I had started to fantasise all the time about leaving behind my respectable persona, just for a night, and becoming a whore. Just for a night, but how fantastic would that experience be? It would be more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced before – a profound departure from the dullness of my luxurious normal life.

It was the most absorbing thing I’d ever considered.

*  *  *

And now here she was, the woman I was going to become.

I watched her go into her house and then pulled up outside.

It was a tall decaying building on the edge of the Barton area of town, vegetation eating into the plasterwork façade, just one of hundreds like it all over the district, aching to give in to time and collapse. The whole suburb was settling into obscene degradation, both the building and the carnal, lower class inhabitants. In an otherwise beautiful town, famous for its lovely golden beaches, Barton was a bruise of alcoholism, drug abuse and unemployment. It was the home of the oily factory workforce and their slutty checkout-operator wives. I normally stayed well clear of it. It was oddly horrifying to consider becoming one of its inhabitants, even temporarily.

“Wait here,” I said, “I’ll be right back.”

My son grunted as I got out and walked up the steps to the front door. I don’t think he’d once looked me in the eye all day.

The whore had left the front door open. The hallway was obviously shared. Every door I saw had a number on it. It was as squalid and dirty on the inside as it had been on the exterior. The dust was like a thin black liquid, spreading like inverted roots into the grain of the white panelling and the banisters. I kept my arms close to my body.

She was nowhere to be seen but I heard footsteps on the stair and followed her up two flights. I rounded the corner onto the second floor in time to see a door close. That was it.

My head became light. My stomach gurgled, making me suddenly nauseous.

This was the moment.

I reached into the pocket of my jeans and took out the rectangular scrap of paper with the incantation on. Just five words, each one cut into difficult to pronounce fleshy sounds by multiple apostrophes. I hadn’t dared read more than a single word before now and even that had had queer effects on the pressure and heat of the room I was in.

It was impossible to tell if the twisting constriction in my belly was fear or excitement. I knew how powerful the forces I was about to invoke were. If one word of the spell could have such a potent effect, what would be the result of all five?

Just read it out and then put myself in a position where my lust for becoming this one could guide the enchantment – that was all I had to do now. Just read it out.

In my shaking outstretched hand, the already jumbled letters blurred. I had to concentrate to keep it still.

To become that whore for a night. To experience everything that she did. To possess that slutty body as though it were my own. To do the things that she did as though I were really her.

That was why I was doing this. That was why I had to focus.

I steadied the paper with my other hand then started to read.

As the first word came out of my mouth I grimaced, terrified of some terrible blow, but it didn’t come. I paused.

Then I felt the flush of heat build up on my face like a summer breeze and the build up of pressure in my ears and at the top of my throat. I swallowed, trying to clear the close sensation then swallowed again.

I read the second and third words quickly, flecks of spittle jumping from my lips as I struggled to get my tongue round the odd syllables.

A shudder passed through the house. It was visible – a physical wave travelling through the walls and bare floorboards. The wood creaked, straining. What dust there was that wasn’t moist rose into the air.

The forth word was brief. It came easily to my lips. I waited for some kind of effect on my surroundings but there was none.

I looked at the last word on the paper in front of me. Only that one more and then I wouldn’t be able to go back on myself. I couldn’t even be sure if the effect of the Golden Gloom, once manifested, would focus itself on this location or on me. The words on the paper that I had already read were starting to glow a bright yellow. Narrow tendrils of smoke rose from the paper close to my fingers.

If I stopped now, what would happen?

I was scared.

I wanted to go on but… This was too much.

I read the final word – the fifth word.

The letters of it flashed yellow and then white. Then the paper caught on fire.

I cried out, letting go but the burning paper didn’t drop. It rose up in front of me to eye level, turning.

Turning.

Burning.

Then it was gone.

The house became silent and still.

It was done.

There was no reversing it now.

The Golden Gloom was coming.

It was already here.

*  *  *

I stared at the back of my fist, poised close to the flaking white wood of the door.

Each thing I did took me closer to becoming her – to being sucked into that body and life. Each step was a step I couldn’t take back.

My brain was shaking, telling me over and over to walk back out to my car but my body ignored it, consumed by the arousal that was building between my legs and spreading down my thighs.

I knocked.

A woman’s voice swore on the other side of the door and then grumbled. Footsteps came closer.

It crossed my mind suddenly that she might think I was a customer. I didn’t have that much money on me but that made me chuckle. She looked cheap. In all likelihood I had more than enough.

When the door opened, the whore gaped, her round painted mouth hanging open, her hair and top forming a frame around the oval of pale flesh her face, neck and bosom made. She recognised me straight away.

“Wot the fuck is this?”

“Er, excuse me,” I said, blurting, wishing I’d planned what I was going to say. “I’m sorry to bother you. Can I come in?”

“Who are you? Wot do you want? You followin’ me? I saw you in Asda.”

“I’m really sorry about this. It must look terrible. Here,” I took out a couple of twenties, “I just want to talk.” She eyed the money. I handed it to her. “Just talk.”

She looked me up and down, took the money and shrugged. “What the fuck.” She walked back inside and I followed her in.

It was an attic room with no carpet and no shade on the overhead lamp. What amounted to a kitchen was arranged in a cavity at one end of the room: off-white fridge and cooker with rusty hinges. There was a bare wooden table and a mattress on the floor under the window. What would it be like to live here?

I couldn’t wait to find out.

“It’s very nice.”

“Don’t be sarky. What the fuck d’ya want?” She looked at me suspiciously, arms folded, ankles crossed, bum on the edge of the table.

All I had to do was keep this going until the power had the chance to take effect. I felt terrified for a moment. My fantasies had got me in trouble before but I was fired up. This was very rash and stupid of me - I knew, but my life was so boring - I needed a release of some kind.

“I want to sit and look at you. Nothing more.”

“Wot?”

“Just look at you. Is the money I gave you enough or do you want more?”

Her eyes flicked to the side then back at me, deliberating. “Just look at me.” She shrugged. “Wot you gave me’ll do for now.”

I took a chair and sat opposite her. She looked uncomfortable, not used to this kind of procedure but didn’t object enough to lose the money I’d given her.

There was no trace of the darkening room my research had told me had accompanied the effects of this strange force yet, but I knew I had to dwell on what I found attractive about being here. That would somehow invoke it.

I looked at her, at her large, slightly saggy breasts, at the sallow sides of her face. She wore too much eye make-up. She didn’t care that her clothes were gaudy and far too revealing. How good would it feel to be able to strut around like that without caring?

The only light in the room came from the curtainless window. It grew a shade dimmer as though a cloud had passed over the sun.

She frowned glancing toward it.

As her neck twisted I looked at the smooth contour of her face, following the moulding of her skin over what lay beneath. I looked at her sleeveless top, at the exposed upper bulge of her breasts, her round shiny shoulders. Her entire attitude drooped listlessly. Carelessly. Her hands rested palm up, fingers curled on her thighs. I could see her scarlet nail varnish, the nails irregular.

So different from me. So different from who I was.

The room darkened again.

“Looks like rain,” she said.

The room was so squalid. My home was perfectly neat, perfectly clean. To not care about that. To leave dirty pots in the sink. To ignore the black spots of damp spreading up the walls.

The room took on a dim golden sunset glow. The air became heavy, thick, difficult to see through beyond the blur. Strange black shadows crept around the edges of the whore’s face and arms.

A jet of panic and arousal fed into my system. It was really happening! It was really true!

I lifted my own hands in front of me. My sleeves were rippling like sand in an earthquake. The blackness was spreading in both directions from my elbows.

As it passed it left my arms bare and pale. It crept into my hands and fingers, narrowing them. My nails shifted into facsimiles of hers.

It was happening! But I was terrified! It was too much!

I didn’t want to be this whore. I wanted to be myself. I didn’t want to live in this garret room amid the filth and the cockroaches.

The black rippling subsided. The room brightened. I pushed up from my chair, trying to clear my mind of any image of being her.

I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t want to get sucked in.

The light in the room returned to normal, leaving me on my feet, hand on my chest, panting.

Panting.

It was my hand I was looking at. Not hers. Mine.

Thank God.

“Wot the fuck’s goin’ on with you?” sneered the whore. “Why don’t ya relax?”

I felt totally detached. My body had instantly formed a sweat. I could feel the droplets on my forehead.

This was too much. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be her. I didn’t want to be a prostitute. Why would I? I wouldn’t.

I pressed my hands to my forehead.

Was it possible that I was being influenced somehow? Maybe I’d misinterpreted the power of the Golden Gloom all along. Maybe all the sources I had read had.

What if it didn’t respond to unnatural desires to assume new lives? What if it inspired those sinister feelings in the first place?

I sat down.

The whore was looking at me, perplexed. She took a chair and set it down right in front of me and sat so that her legs overlapped mine, one knee to the outside of my left leg, the other knee between my thighs, close to my groin. She put her hand on my knee. “Relax. It’s alright. You need t’relax. Here, let me help ya.”

She moved her hand further up my leg then stroked down again.

I felt better immediately. It was calming, no matter how strange and absurd it might have seemed if I’d been given time to think. My pulse slowed but the sweat didn’t dry. I was on edge but that disassociation opened a window to the arousal that started to spread out again from my crotch. I shuddered and sighed.

It did feel good. It felt really good.

She licked her lips and her hand moved up to her breast. “Ya like t’watch me don’t ya? You was watchin’ me in Asda.”

I nodded.

“You wanna see me better don’t ya? You wanna see me play with meself.” She touched her breast through her top and moaned. “Oh yeah, that’s good.”

My arousal was building. Her hand stroked closer and closer to my groin. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pale skin on the back of her hand and of her fingers as she kneaded her tit.

I was getting more and more turned on, losing myself in this experience that I hadn’t planned on.

Then from the back of my mind, like settling damp, the thought closed round my mind. It seeped in and wrapped its tendrils around my conscious mind so subtly that I barely felt it.

I wondered how it would feel to be playing with her tits as though they were mine - moaning in melodramatic sordid pleasure.

I watched her fingers, kneading, at her tongue, moistening her open lips, at her half-closed eyes, make-up overdone and garish.

I tried to push this impulse to the side - tried to disown it. I knew that the Golden Gloom was influencing my thoughts. But I couldn’t stop it rising – taking over. I didn’t want this desire to go away. I wanted her so bad. I wanted to be her – to do these repulsive things that she was doing – to live the life that she was living. Just for one night.

I couldn’t help myself.

The room darkened but I didn’t care.

Her hand moved from my leg to her crotch. She rubbed at her clitoris through the fabric of her leggings then she plunged her hand under her waistband and let out another moan. Mirroring her movement I thrust my own hand down into the front of my jeans. My other hand went to my chest and in my mind’s eye I had her plump breasts in my fingers, I was feeling the same arousal that she was.

The room became darker still. The golden half-light rose, covering everything. I closed my eyes and moaned.

I didn’t care if it did it to me. I wanted it to. I wanted to be this slag – this whore. I wanted the Golden Gloom to take away everything that was mine and give me everything that was hers – her slutty body and clothes, her cramped and dirty flat and most of all, her occupation. I wanted to sell myself for money. I wanted to let go to every lustful impulse I had and expose myself to the control of every man with enough money to pay.

Through my closed lids I saw the blackness close over my face.

I was getting close to the edge. My orgasm was going to crest.

My moans were building, louder and louder and so were the whore’s. Louder and louder. Louder and louder.

Then in a quiet explosion, her cries vanished and mine took over. I screamed as I came, over and over and my scream was her scream. It was a whore’s scream.

I opened my eyes, the orgasm still coursing through me. I could hardly breathe.

I was her. I was the whore. Her tit was in my hand. It was my tit. My hand was down the front of her leggings. They were my leggings. My legs. My body.

I’d become her.

I was gasping.

The orgasm was shifting in waves.

I felt so totally completely alive.

And then as completely as it consumed me, the feelings passed.

And I realised I was alone.

The chair opposite me was empty.

The door to the flat snapped closed. I looked toward the noise, startled.

The room was empty.

I was completely alone.

I got up and started to run to the window and stumbled immediately, almost falling. I was suddenly wearing blocky open toed heels. My entire centre of balance was thrown off. I looked down at the chipped red nail polish, the bare toes, the bare ankles. I could barely see them beyond these huge breasts.

But I put those things out of my mind. I staggered to the window, lurching in the unorthodox shoes and grabbed the window sill to avoid falling.

Outside I saw my car – the car I’d followed the whore home in. Through the front windscreen I could see a blur of white – my son’s newspaper.

Then I heard the front door of the house slam and gaped down at the figure that emerged and walked out to my car.

The figure didn’t rush or stagger and it didn’t turn back or look up at where I watched, but I knew it was me.

The figure got into the car and I watched it pull away. I watched it until it was out of sight and it was only really then that it hit me – that I was left here in this squalid little room by myself. I was left here because I didn’t belong in that car with a teenage son and a nice big house on the seafront. I belonged here amid the grime and damp. I belonged in this cramped little prostitute’s den.

Because I was a prostitute now.

I had become the whore that lived here.