CLEANER II: Chapter One - Part Five

DAHLIA

I woke up an hour before the alarm call I’d booked with the hotel reception and quietly went about my morning routine, bathing, brushing my teeth, washing my hair.

I put in the contact lenses I’d bought myself to transform my eyesight, two notches up from no prescription at all. They still felt a little weird in my eyes but I could easily cope with them. As I blinked them into place I thought about the scientist I’d heard of who wore special glasses that made his vision upside-down who doggedly went on wearing them until his brain had compensated and showed him the world the right way up. I thought about the series of progressively stronger prescriptions I’d brought with me, right up to the strong lenses Melissa had to wear all the time.

I smiled at myself with a slightly muddled careworn expression.

There was no delusion anymore in me about the effect of my overeating. I’d seen it plain as day and I could see it now. I still wasn’t what anyone would call fat, but the ripeness of my face and stomach suggested a movement in that direction. I thought about how slim I had been until so very recently and how close I was to being that way again. A week or two of concentrated exercise and dieting would be all that was needed at the moment.

If I went ahead with this crazy plan then I would be going in the opposite direction to that. Every day – every meal that passed, I would be taking step after step toward a place where being slim would feel like an impossible dream; as Melissa surely felt now.

The idea of being as fat as her... of transforming my body from athletic and trim to round and obese; to labour up stairs with difficulty; to become unattractive to almost any man... There were some men who found fat women beautiful but they were few and far between. I’d spent all my years trying to maintain this flawlessness; to be a symbol of sexual excellence; but it hadn’t made me happy really. I hadn’t ever found a handsome prince to carry his beautiful princess of to his castle. On the contrary, every man had wanted me for my looks and my looks alone... or perhaps the money or the fame.

Just to imagine stepping away from that persona and into the life of another where those shallow qualities would be irrelevant. A logical part of me didn’t understand the attraction I had to doing that but another logical part understood it completely. Because there was some sense to it at the end of the day.

And I really did want it.

Melissa was going to be waiting for me soon. We would go to have our hair done; take that first gigantic step to assuming one another’s identity; then swap names and get on with this adventure.

This was the last time I would be alone and look into my face as it was; the last time I could whisper, “My name is Dahlia,” and know it to be so in the sense it always had been.

This wasn’t permanent. Eventually I would come back to myself. It was only a holiday from myself. But for now; for a very long time; I was saying goodbye to the woman I was.

It wasn’t too late to go back. I could call Katherine; ask her to book me a return flight; run back to England; maybe even get back in time for Steven’s funeral.

But the very thought of that made my face cringe back on itself; distorting my features; blanking off a part of my brain.

I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t. This was all there was for me now: this wonderful, watertight escape.

I just thanked God that I had Melissa – that I'd found someone willing to play through such an anomalous facade. It was such a big sacrifice for her; what with her husband waiting for her back home; but I had never been more grateful... and I could justify it to myself that she was going to be getting an all-expenses-paid extended holiday abroad. It wasn’t going to be pure hardship for her, even if I was going to do everything I could to work her hard to lose weight.

I wanted her to have her own transformation; partly as a thank you for what she was doing for me; partly because I sensed that she needed someone else to push her; but also to provide that exchange and comparison to my own changes. Her conversion to being Dahlia was every bit a part of my fantasy as me becoming Melissa.

I had my last look at this face: my long, curly, blond hair; my unblemished face and pretty eyes; my expensive tailored clothes. A couple of hours from now I would leave this behind me and become someone else.

I couldn’t wait. I literally couldn’t wait. I wanted it so much.