Well at long last, allow me to present the next episode of Cleaner!
My convalescence is going well and I was able to find the strength and focus to get on with this today. I'm hoping to proceed with more episodes in the near future and start Lady Ann up again too.
It probably won't be quite as often as it was before my surgery - not for now - but I am going to do my best to keep releasing episodes semi-regularly.
I hope you enjoy them...
MELISSA
Over the past months, when I might otherwise have been
eating excessively, I had found something else to feed on: fantasies. Fantasies
about how I might really come to look like Dahlia; how I might even become
enough like her to fool people back in England. I had engorged myself on these
fantasies in spare moments, as I lay in bed or by the pool, as I did my
training; to light myself up as one of my many men pumped and grunted on top of
me, caring more for his own pleasure than mine.
Since the very beginning, standing on the side of the road
in that terrible storm, just before we left the UK, when I had come inches away
from ending my life, I had treasured the daydream that we could really change
places. Now I had accepted that there was some true possibility there, all the
ideas I’d had were flooding my mind. Surely I had worked out every little
detail by now. Surely I knew exactly how I was going to do it.
And I had been working toward this from the very beginning,
hadn’t I? Since we first arrived in Greece.
I had taken photographs of our faces at that starting point,
from every angle. As I did it I had known exactly why I was doing it, even as I
lied to poor, stupid Dahlia.
I took out those photos now and sat on the edge of my bed,
my lips cured up at the edges, flicking them one after another onto the cover
beside me so that they were all on display. It was so delightful seeing my old
face. It was so bloated! I could scarce believe that it used to be me – I was
so used to being slim now. I was disgustingly fat. But that wasn’t the best
thing. The best thing was that when I first took out the pictures and saw my
old face, my first reaction had been to think that it wasn’t even me – that it
was her as she was now! Oh, how I had laughed at that!
As for her old face... the beautiful face she used to
have... I looked at it then at myself in the mirror, over and over again, chin
rising and falling. I hadn’t been imagining what I saw in the dance studio. We
really did look alike now. It was uncanny. Not the same; not identical – of course
not – but close enough to be cousins; maybe even sisters.
And close enough for the reason I had taken these photos to
maybe work.
Surgery.
It wasn’t a magical transformation – I wished that it could
be – but I had been doing research for some time now; watching videos online
and reading loads of firsthand accounts. The advances they had made in just the
last couple of years were remarkable. They really could perform miracles.
I closed my hands, the last photo resting on my knee.
Although the greater part of me was crazily excited about the
prospect of that, another part of me was terrified.
But any pain, any risk, was worth it to steal this life.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew it wasn’t guaranteed that I would look
exactly as she had, but I had a plan to cover that and frankly, if it worked, it
worked. If it didn’t then I would still end up a beautiful slim woman. I would have
lost nothing.
And maybe gained everything.
I went to the computer and started setting it up. I made contact
with the surgery in Bangkok that seemed like the best place to do it, all things
considered. I looked up flights and checked prices for first class seats and scummy
seats. I found a couple of hotels near the clinic for our convalescence.
I set the wheels in motion.
I was thinking about an A-list Hollywood star I knew who had
had surgery to keep herself looking young and how afterwards she hadn’t looked quite
the same. I was always seeing celebrities on the front of magazines who I didn’t
recognise at all, who had changed their looks and updated their style.
And this was why I needed to talk to Dahlia’s agent, Tommy.
It would be him that would start the rumours of “my” facial surgery.
He would get the story out there in the gossip rags so that when I appeared in the
limelight, people would already be expecting a difference. All I needed to do was
get as close as I could to the original Dahlia’s face. The willing suspension of
disbelief would... hopefully... do the rest.
The idea of calling Tommy filled me with fear, but I could do
this. I could do anything.
And it was thanks to the other preparation I had undergone that
my confidence was at least reasonably high.
The recordings.
For the entire duration of our trade, Dahlia and I had spent
long sessions recounting the details of our original lives to one another, and even
longer listening back to them; learning the details of our new personas. I knew
her history and relationships as well as she did now; surely enough to pass if I
was careful.
I could do it.
And if it all went wrong then I could end the call. He would
remain none the wiser.
I shut the computer down and went to the mirror.
“You’re Dahlia Western,” I said to myself. “You’re invincible.
You’re beautiful. You are going to steal that stupid bitch’s life and there’s nothing
she can do to stop you.”
I grinned at myself and took a deep breath.
Then I reached for my phone and called up Tommy’s number.
