CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Two

MELISSA

The text message chimed on my phone and my heart rate went from calm and relaxed to fight or flight in a second. It could only be her.

I found the phone quickly but hesitated before checking the message. It said, Please can we meet? Nothing more. She didn’t address me as Dahlia or Miss Western. She didn’t sign it Melissa.

I frowned, turning the phone over and over again, then I set it down and went to the balcony. I looked out at the sea then back at the phone.

I questioned my actions now. I questioned waiting; not pushing ahead with this when I’d first decided to do it; when I’d booked in the trip to Bangkok; but my instincts had guided me through this so far, mostly successfully. I had listened to them; allowed her some space and time to gently simmer.

But I hadn’t forgotten the conversation in Dahlia’s garden back in Nockton Vale when I had pushed ahead and she had resisted; when this whole precarious insanity had almost folded. I didn’t kid myself that I had total control, no matter how confident I had become, nor how... weak my former employer seemed to be now.

I had given her that time to stew and now she was ready to meet. It was fortunate. The dates I had booked were fast approaching. I would have had to push it to a climax soon if she hadn’t. But I still questioned myself. I couldn’t predict how she would turn. I couldn’t be sure how she had spent the last couple of weeks parted from my influence. I felt I knew her now but did I?

Please can we meet?

Ambiguous and brief but at least polite; suggestive of supplication.

Obviously the answer was yes. I took the phone back up and tapped out a response.

Yes. 4pm today, and sent it off.

Held my breath. Waited.

OK. See you then. Melissa.

I looked at that last word and smiled.

The possibilities before me were sensational. I couldn’t wait. But more, it had been almost three weeks. Surely if she was still playing the charade then she had continued her transformation. Three more weeks of gratuitous overeating. She had to be as fat as I had been now. She had to be.

I couldn’t wait to see her. I was so nervous. I checked my watch.

There was too long to wait up there in the room. I went down to the poolside and did two dozen laps easily and swiftly. I got out and took a drink then did three dozen more, slipping through the water like I was born to it. And all the while I tried to imagine what she would look like now; if she really had reached that final point.

I hoped she had; I really did.

I ate my lunch impatiently. There wasn’t much to it. Eating lightly was second nature to me now. I couldn’t have conceived anymore of consuming the volume I used to or that she still did.

I grew more and more excited at the coming prospect.

I went back to my room and checked everything was in place. I called down to reception and asked them to let me know when she arrived so that I wouldn’t be surprised.

I opened the wardrobe and took out a large item that I had waited a long time to reveal. I opened it and set it ready on the bed for when she appeared.

I sat down and crossed my legs. I stood up and paced to the balcony and back again. I checked my watch.

All this time I had rehearsed a hundred different ways of trying to persuade her of my plan; justifications for why she would want to do it. Now I was so close I could hardly remember them. My mind was a mess of drive, expectation and fear.

The phone started to ring.

I was slow to pick it up. The voice was the woman on reception I had spoken to earlier.

“Yes?” I said.

“Your guest is on her way up,” she replied.

I put the phone down without a thank you and looked toward my door.

Was she walking toward the lift now? Was she getting in? Was she looking at her own bloated reflection in the mirrored walls?

What were her intentions?

Was the transformation complete?

I couldn’t breathe.

I suddenly knew that I couldn’t do this; that I would fail to persuade her of anything.

I needed more time to prepare. I needed to delay her. It was too late.

She was going to demand her life back and laugh at any attempt I made to obviate that. Of course she was. She wasn’t totally insane. I was insane to have believed that she might.

Through the closed door I heard the lift ding.

There was a long pause.

I pictured her waiting hesitantly outside, preparing to knock.

My heart rose in my throat.

Then the knock came and I realised that this was it, finally. This was what it had all led to.

There was no turning back – I had to proceed – and everything would hinge on this exchange.

Everything would be decided finally and I would find out if my destiny was bright and diabolically hopeful or as dismal as it had ever been.

LADY ANN'S DISGRACE: Chapter One - Part Two

The woman who had been Lady Ann Neville just a few days before opened her eyes and looked up at the dirty bare roof of the hat barn. It was the chill that had woken her, playing across her bare legs and arms that splayed from under the single blanket she and Burt shared.

She didn’t shift. Burt was lying on his side against her, his huge muscular limbs wrapped round her. He was still deeply asleep and snoring gently. Ann turned at the neck to regard his innocent slumbering face and thought about the tangle their lives had become; how confusing it all was now and how unexpected all of this had been.

Only a month or so earlier she had been Burt, dim-witted and simple, just going about her duties as a stablehand, making love with Mavis, the slutty barmaid from the village; admiring the beautiful Lady Ann from afar. In those days her desires had been simple because her intellect was. She had know little doubt or worry, just shovelling the dung, cleaning the stables, grooming the horses. And the nights with Mavis were enough pleasure to mark out the endless drudge, to keep her content. Or content enough. She had known she could never really be with Lady Ann but she still enjoyed her life to a point.

Things had started to go wrong when Lady Ann took her, as Burt, and made them change places.

Suddenly she’d been Lady Ann herself, hurled into a new world of London socialising and trips to the theatre. And no matter how quickly she became used to the whirl and the beauty, the gentility expected of her, she was never truly secure on her feet. Even when she found love and betrayed the new Burt, planning to trap him in his new life as a servant, she had seen cracks in her contentment almost immediately. Richard Hurley, her fiancé as Ann, was not the kind and loving man he had implied he would be.

She had fought for her life as Ann and kept it but it hadn’t made her happy enough and now she’d ruined everything.

Changing places a second time, this time with Mavis herself, had left Ann trapped more fully than ever before. She had been stuck as a commoner as Burt but without anything to compare it to it had just been her life. Becoming Ann had, after a period of acclimatisation, been mostly joyous. Now that she was Mavis she had all the comparisons she needed to comprehend her folly and how low she had sunk.

She had been a lady of the manor! Why couldn’t she have just accepted that and lived that way? She could have broken off the engagement with Lord Hurley – she realised that now. She needn’t have married him. She could have been happy.

And now look at her: curled up on the floor of a hay barn with an dirty, uncouth, country simpleton; nothing but a serving girl at the local watering house with little to no prospect of ever getting her real body back.

And what was her real body now even? Who was she? She still felt, on the whole, like Ann trapped as Mavis, but she knew it wouldn’t be long now before her sense of identity started to shift more fully toward being Mavis for real. Already her voice was mostly that of a Yorkshire clodhopper. She knew the education she had inherited as Ann had been stripped away.

“Is this me now?” she whispered.

Beside her Burt stirred, making a low buzzing in the back of his throat and smacking his lips together. He shifted his arm, gently rubbing her naked stomach under the blanket and giving her a graze of a thrill.

There was nothing left whatsoever in him of the original Lady Ann. That he had been a gentile lady was completely eradicated from him body and soul. He was only the simple man that she had once been now, and more perhaps. She sensed that his own changes had turned him into a simpler creature than even she had been once. All she knew for certain was that this Burt; the only Burt now; loved her and wanted to look after her. He was passionate and kind and doggedly loyal. And he was a titan under the blanket. He was everything she had fantasised about as Ann and everything she fantasised about now.

She let out a brief and shallow sigh.

There was no getting out of this new life of hers. That seemed certain.

Mavis. Barmaid. Lover of Burt. Lower class wench.

And maybe the only way forward was to reconcile with that; explore it; test out each facet of her new role and accept it for what it was.

She had wanted to be loved by a kind and passionate man. She had wanted to be with Burt. She had achieved that, even though she was now trapped in the fantasy.

She snuggled up against him and he mumbled something unintelligible but affectionate. Ann smiled. But a frown passed over her face because she realised there was something sad about all this, if she really was trapped.

Because surely she could never tell Burt about her true identity. He would never understand. He might even be hurt and angry.

It was a shame. She wanted to be open with him. But she was sure she couldn’t.

No. Burt must never find that out; that his Ann was now only a common servant girl. He must never come to understand the disgrace that she now felt to be brought so low and kept there.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part One

DAHLIA

That last week or so turned out to be three weeks and as the days swept from one to the next almost entirely filled with my various labours, a curious inversion started to occur.

There was a countdown inside me now; two countdowns; one toward returning to seeing Melissa and taking the first step to swap back; the other to race as fast as I could toward a total and final immersion in her body and life.

I knew these were the last few weeks and while that part of me was eager to begin the return to my old body and life, the other me wanted nothing more than to grasp onto this bizarre and dismal life while I still could; to relish the changes I was undergoing and push them even further.

And I did push them. I spent every cent I earned on snack food or fatty drinks. I spent it on cigarettes that I was starting to realise I could no longer live without. During the mealtimes in the hotel I had as many as five or six plates of food now for each meal, troughing on it like a pig; drawing it out long enough to fit more in; sometimes even having a break for an hour before going back to shovel in more. I secreted even further leftovers into a bag and snuck it up to my room, having feasts in the late evening and further snacks throughout the night.

I lay on my back in bed, breathing gutturally, picturing the fat cells growing and binding with my body; imagining the food I was eating being absorbed by my increasingly bloated flesh. I visualised it to encourage it. I willed the fat to enlarge me more and more, to expand my thighs and the rolls of my stomach, the seep into and swell my arms and my chest; to make my face rounder and less like my own; to make my head and neck become one round sagging melon of fat.

I lay there doing this, rubbing myself between my thighs, my vision blurry without the thick glasses on; my dowdy hair splayed on the pillow. I could feel my enormous weight pressing into the mattress; the mass of it like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I wasn’t myself at all anymore. Was I has fat as she had been? Was I almost there? Surely I had to be. Was I, heaven forbid, even fatter than she had been – than the original Melissa?

Maybe.

Maybe.

I didn’t know.

But I felt like I was a huge obese cow of a woman. I was huge. Every sensation and sound I made was affected by it. I was gargantuan.

And as always it filled me with such a tearing confliction of emotions because surely I knew how bad this all was. I knew the damage I was potentially doing – possibly permanently. I knew how crazy I was and how pathetic. But I wanted it still. I thrived on it. I was desperate to wallow deeper and deeper in this terrible life.

The cook continued to mistreat me. He only ever used me for sex now and I could see his increasing disgust and disinterest. It made me feel lonely and depressed but it also thrilled me, because his gradual loathing mirrored my own. It mirrored the way I felt about myself. The way I wanted to feel.

I wanted to be an object of pity and scorn. I wanted to be repulsive to others and myself. And by God I was achieving that goal. I was becoming the woman I had set out to be and no mistake.

During the day I worked diligently at my cleaning duties and in the dining room doing the serving. I knew exactly what I was doing now and had done for some time. It made the work easier, not having to question things or ask for assistance, and it allowed me to keep my head down and be the best worker I could be.

That was all my life was now: working and eating; working and eating. With the occasional dirty fuck thrown in when the cook could be bothered; when he wanted cleaning out.

I felt that any day now he would reject me finally and that that would be okay because it would mean I had finally sunk as low as I wanted. I was finally as pathetic and insignificant as I had set out to be.

The days went by though and that day didn’t come. I continued to eat and push further but I knew that time was running out. The final turning point had to come soon. Surely.

I hadn’t seen Melissa since before that night when Vasillis had made it clear that carnal pleasure was the only facet of our stunted relationship he was interested in. She hadn’t made contact and I had avoided her.

Part of me felt that should we meet again then that final stage would come. I would have to tell her it was time to swap back. Surely she would feel devastated by that. It must have been so nice for her to live my life; to get slim and enjoy my wealth; even just for the summer. I felt awful about taking that away from her. But also I didn’t want to take it all back. I was afraid to. I was terrified to take that step. I didn’t even know if I really wanted to.

Was I happy being so fat? Getting fatter by the day? What was this self-destructive and obsessive motive force that pushed me on?

It seemed like happiness, but it couldn’t have been.

It couldn’t have been.

Each day I blinked at myself through the pebble glasses, staring at my bloated limbs; my round face and flabby belly; the distorted silhouette I had now. Each day I dressed in my shabby, dowdy clothes and hurried downstairs to get on with the cleaning. Each day I asked myself if this was the day now; if the time had finally come when the reflection was complete; that I’d come to the end.

And then one day it did.

I looked at myself.

I was grossly obese. My face was like a distended moon with this great roll of sagging fat distorting my neck. My upper arms was huge and doughy and my forearms were a close match. My breasts were huge and pendulous, resting on the great round mass of my folds of stomach. My rear and thighs stretched out widely, coming down to rounded calves and my still relatively dainty feet.

Surely I was every bit as fat as Melissa had been when this started.

Surely I had reached my goal; had become her in almost every conceivable way.

But that brought on a fresh wave of horror that told me another goal had been reached; that this had to end now, surely. There was no other way.

I had to put a stop to it because where else could this go? What else could happen next now the obsession had brought me here? The answer to that, if I didn’t go back, staggered me with quivers of real fear. If the physical transformation was complete then what truly would come next if I didn’t flee back to my old life... or at least begin to?

I was conflicted. Of course I was conflicted. But something was certain to me suddenly that couldn’t be denied.

I had to go and see Melissa now. I couldn’t wait anymore.

I had to go to see her and see my reflection in her eyes.

I had to hear her reaction to the way I looked now; to hear her judgment on whether I had succeeded or not.

And surely I would tell her it was time to swap back. And reluctantly she would have to agree. We would have to start that process; even though ,for the life of me, I couldn’t conceive of finding a way back to my slenderness and beauty now. This new fat me felt too real. It felt inescapable.

And maybe it was. Maybe I never would find my way back; and that both thrilled and terrified me.

But rather way, I had to see her now. Of course I did. It was long past the time.

I had to go and see  Melissa and bring this entire thing to the conclusion it had surely been edging toward from the beginning. There was a predictable intendity to it that was still riddled with questions. I was afraid to raise the swap back; afraid to see the disappointment and sad acceptance in her eyes.

But also I just didn’t know if I was ready. And I didn’t know if it was what I really wanted.

For the life of me I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Maybe I never had.

OUT NOW! 666: The Number of the Beast

Well you may have noticed I'm still not posting new episodes.

Don't worry, I will. But in the meantime, I've released another play to keep you busy if you fancy it. This is another work I completed some time ago and have been sitting on until such time as I needed to keep things ticking over.

I hope you like it.

What Does it Say on the Back of the Book? 

“FAST & UNRELENTING”

Matt and Suzy have just met and the first bloom of romance seems promising, but both are keeping secrets. Neither one of them is being straight with the other and when Suzy is brutally murdered it seems that one of these secrets is dark enough to threaten not only Matt’s life but his soul as well.

He receives a macabre visitor who knows all those secrets, a sinister woman who presents him with an ultimatum; a moral dilemma whose stakes are higher than life and death. Another murder must be committed before the clock runs out and Matt must be the one to commit it, but the target is a woman he has never met named Helen, and every indication shows that she is the last person on Earth who deserves to die.

Matt must make a choice and quickly, but he doesn’t like being manipulated or coerced and he is determined to solve the riddle of this diabolical scheme before he is forced to do anything; to expose the identity of his visitor and learn her deadly agenda.

Helen knows nothing of the danger closing in on her, nor the battle of wills between Matt and his adversary, but she has problems of her own. Her sister, Tricia, is in trouble on both sides of the law; trouble likely to put both of their lives at risk. As Helen takes every step she can to help her sister escape from the trap she has found herself in, it seems that catastrophe may arrive before Matt even gets his chance to deliver the killing blow.

Events are racing toward a confrontation on all sides and nothing is as it appears. Lies and manipulation are everywhere and only one thing is certain.

The blood will flow. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

“VERY DARK & VERY GOOD”

How Much Does it Cost? 

The book is available for the reasonable sum of $2.99 or about £1.99 in e-format and just over four pounds in paperback.

Where Can You Get It? 

666: The Number of the Beast is available at the following places.

For the Kindle & Paperback Versions: 

Amazon.com 

Amazon.co.uk 

For pretty much any kind of electronic format: 

Smashwords 

OUT NOW: TWISTED!

Well I'm afraid I'm still not ready to produce new stories (for the moment) but in the meantime I do have the energy to dust off a few projects that were waiting for the green light. This is the first of them.

Allow me to present my new play, Twisted! It isn't a transformation story and it is a play rather than a novel, but if you give it a chance and read it you will hopefully find it to be a ripping yarn full of twists and turns with an explosive climax.

What Does it Say on the Back of the Book? 

“A TORNADO OF TWISTS AND TURNS”

Max is wealthy and striking. He is ruthless and manipulative; sometimes even cruel and mercurial; and he has found his perfect match in his wife.

Both live lives close to the very edge of propriety and fidelity, with soaring passions and devilish schemes. Max is a game player of epic proportions, but tonight it seems that all his games may finally come to an end.

Tonight Max brings a beautiful call girl back to their apparently empty apartment and tries to have his way with her, but the girl has her own agenda and it soon becomes obvious that Max’s wife does too. But when the girl makes her play for the jewellery in the safe and the seemingly absent wife sets her hidden schemes in motion, Max reveals that he has plots of his own.

Thus begins an evening of strikes and counter-strikes as Max and his spouse fight to get one up on the other one final time with the stakes getting higher and higher and more out of control. This is going to be the end of it all and neither one of them is going to go down peacefully.

“EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS EMMA FINN’S NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES”

How Much Does it Cost? 

The book is available for the princely sum of $2.99 or about £1.99 in e-format and just over four pounds in paperback.

Where Can You Get It? 

Twisted is available at the following places.

For the Kindle & Paperback Versions: 

Amazon.com 

Amazon.co.uk 

For pretty much any kind of electronic format: 

Smashwords 

WISHING WELL: Now Available in Paperback!

Well Wishing Well was the last book I published before I came down with my terrible affliction and I never got round to releasing the paperback version.

This lapse has now been rectified and you can toddle off to Amazon right now to get yourself a copy!

What Does it Say on the Back of the Book? 

Lionel's life is going nowhere. His job is a joke. His boss bullies him. He has little or no prospects. His girlfriend, Jenny is the only thing going for him and he's in danger of messing that up. Nothing he does ever seems to work out.

That is until the day that Lionel makes a wish at a well by the river during his lunch break that he could become a senior manager at work. He doesn't for a minute believe it will come true but it does, in a totally unexpected way. Lionel becomes a manager; a middle-aged, female manager.

Suddenly he’s getting all the respect and remuneration he could want – he’s even able to get revenge on his boss – but he’s not sure he wants to stay this way... not sure at all! Being a woman isn’t as bad as he thought it would be but it isn’t what he imagined his life would be like. Still, it seems like maybe he shouldn’t make too hasty a decision to go back to the awful life he had.

That is until he finds out that his girlfriend Jenny has been affected by the wish too: changing her into an entirely different person... and she’s not very happy about it!

What follows is a tornado of transformation as both Lionel and Jenny try to wish themselves to happiness, but as the effects of their wishes become ever more extreme, it starts to look like the one thing that will definitely be lost forever is their love for one another.

How Much Does it Cost? 

The book is available for the princely sum of $2.99 or about £1.99

Where Can You Get It? 

Wishing Well is available at the following places.

For the Kindle & Paperback Versions: 

Amazon.com 

Amazon.co.uk 

For pretty much any kind of electronic format: 

Smashwords