CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Eight

DAHLIA

I helped serve the evening meal and then, when it was time, I helped myself to the overlarge portions I liked and went through to the staff room.

Maxine was in there with her gaggle of cronies but when I went over to sit with them she crowed, “Look who it is! It’s Big Piggy! The only woman I know who seems to want to get fatter!”

The women with her burst out laughing; all of them. They weren’t the only ones. Maxine’s outburst had been loud enough to attract the attention of the other hotel staff taking a break. There were smirks and chuckles from all round. My cheeks blossomed red and I faltered, unsure whether to proceed.

“She’s so obese now, I bet the bench will collapse if she sits down,” sneered Maxine. “Watch out. Dive for cover if she comes this way.”

They all laughed again and though I took another step closer, I didn’t join them.

There had been a time when her manner had suggested a certain amount of camaraderie and inclusion but that seemed absent now. Her derision was open and overtly hostile. It was juvenile but that didn’t stop it happening.

I continued to waver, unsure whether to go on and sit with them as I had been doing. It seemed clear that the gloves were off again now, as they had been when we first met, and no doubt I would continue to be targeted throughout my meal.

Still that didn’t deter me. It was part of my dark fantasy after all. This was what I wanted. I wanted to be ostracised; made to feel ugly and unclean. It was part of the dream I was living.

Except this didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like I was wide awake and that this was really happening to me. This wasn’t a fantasy. It wasn’t happening to somebody else. I wasn’t safe from it as I normally would be when I started to fantasise. She wasn’t making fun of a character I’d invented. She was making fun of me. Me; Melissa Chapman; and for good reason. I was enormously obese. I was an quite justly an object of ridicule. I considered sitting down and letting her continue to deride me; to live out the continuation of my fantasy; but the greater part of me wasn’t Dahlia Western anymore: a rich eccentric playing with masochistic fantasies of supplication. The greater part of me now really was just a bulging fat woman with thick specs with no real friends, low self-esteem and an addiction to overeating, cigarettes and alcohol. That part of me didn’t want to be made fun of because that part of me was real. She was the person they were really taking the piss out of and she didn’t like it because it made her feel just as pathetic as she knew deep down that she was.

So instead I turned and took a seat away from them near the wall.

“Ooo, she’s scared off us now,” laughed Maxine. “I’m not surprised. Look at her. She’s an abomination. If I was that fat I’d be too ashamed to leave my room.”

Again there were giggles all round and I slumped down into my chair, head hung, shovelling the food in. At least that made me feel better, but though I ears burned and my cheeks sizzled, I didn’t feel turned on by any of this. I just felt wretched and persecuted. I wished, for a change actually, that I had the confidence to stand up to her. But the very idea of that filled me with panic. I knew I would fumble my words and that she wouldn’t She would rip me apart, pointing out all my faults and in the end I would only be able to stand and take it; pr else I would flee in tears with them laughing at my enormous rear waddling away.

I did nothing of the sort. I sat there and took it. I went on eating. And eating. And eating. I went back for seconds and thirds, even though that gave Maxine fresh ammunition to use against me and a reminder, on seeing me re-enter the room, to have at me again.

By the end of the meal I felt awful; not just for being made to feel as fat and plain as I was; but because I realised now just how lonely it could feel to really be someone like this. And I really was this person. This was really happening. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. I could go and tell Melissa I wanted to swap back but there would be no instantaneous transformation. I really was a morbidly obese woman. I would maybe never get back to how I was. I deserved all the derision I got.

When I finished eating I got up. Maxine and the other cleaners were playing cards.

“You off for your fourth helping Big Piggy?” called Maxine as I reached the door. “Or are you just planning to go and drink yourself to death?”

I stopped in the doorway, feeling despondent, then went out without even having the strength to look at her.

Outside, the corridor was empty but I went to the door into the courtyard on the off chance that the cook, Vasilis, might be there.

He was, smoking one of his long, thin cigarettes, looking as wan and unwell as ever he did. When he saw me shamble into the doorway he groaned. “What do you want?”

I shrank a little further inside myself. “I just... I wondered if you were out here. I...”

I don’t know what I’d been planning to say. I knew how he felt about spending time with me outside of the bed.

“I was lonely,” I said, my voice sounding timid and mouselike in my ears.

He looked at me with a slight sneer on his face for the better part of a minute, pained if anything that he was having to put up with this shit.

I knew what the answer was. I felt bad that I was putting him in this uncomfortable position. A former model and I was guilty that this ugly, nasty little man was having to waste his time on a heifer like me when he’d already told me he was embarrassed being seen with me.

“Do you... uh... Do you want to maybe have... have sex later on I said. I could come up and...”

I trailed off. His expression had taken on an even greater cast of revulsion and disapproval. I cringed even more inside, my spirit curling up in the centre of my chest. Tears rimmed the lower edge of my eyes. I faint gurgle came unbidden from my throat. Vasilis flinched as though he’d sensed I might cry and hated the very idea of it. But I was desperate to please him; to have some kind of affection and validation in this awful situation.

“If you... If you want... I could do that thing that you like,” I said. “With my mouth. That thing that you really like.”

The sneer on his face became less subtle and more overt. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m busy.”

“Well maybe tomorrow,” I said quickly. Or later tonight. Whenever you want.”

He shook his head. “I’m not really interested. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to fuck you. Do you get that?”

I gaped at him, stepping back, the tears forming properly now in my eyes.

“You’re too fat and too ugly,” he snapped. “You disgust me! I’m embarrassed that I ever slept with you. Get lost.”

“But I just wanted to say—”

“Get lost!”

He turned his back on me but I went on standing there, staring.

I thought about the laughter in the dining room and then I thought about Melissa’s offer, not to escape from this life as I had planned, but to embrace it indefinitely; actually ruin what was left of my face and become this fat loser derided by all on an ongoing basis.; maybe even forever.

It was so clear to me in this moment what I had to do. So clear. There was only one option that I could possibly choose. That was blindingly obvious to me.

I backed out of the courtyard and the swinging door shut in my face.

I stood there for a long time, unable to combat the inertia holding me in place.

Eventually the door opened and Vasilis stepped into the doorway. He saw me there and curled his lip. I stepped back in shame and surprise.

“What are you hanging around for?” he said. “I told you it’s over. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I definitely don’t want to fuck you. Get out of here you fat cow.”

He pushed past me and marched irritably off down the corridor. I didn’t watch him go. I felt nothing but shame and self-hate.

After a while I walked silently up to my room and shut myself in. I went to the drawer top where I had left my whisky bottle and I half filled the class I’d left there, unwashed, that morning.

I took a sip, then I took another. Then I gulped down the rest and winced as it hit my stomach. 

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Seven

MELISSA

I needed to fuck somebody and I needed to do it now.

The deep darkness between my legs was rippling with arousal and I needed to act on it immediately. And not just because I was horny as hell. I had a compulsion to do it that was beyond any desire just to scratch an itch or resolve the pent-up tension that had built before and during Dahlia’s visit. I wasn’t sure what it was but I needed to get out there.

I kept on the translucent silk robe and bathing suit and slipped on some cream wedges then took the lift down to the lobby and made my way round outside. I strode along determinedly and I could see the looks I got of admiration and wonder. I was an attractive athletic woman and my long stride was both feminine and wholly confident. There wasn’t anything about me now that insinuated my old self. I wasn’t wholly Dahlia – I knew that – but this me was only a hair’s breadth away from that image. If anything I was more like the original Dahlia than she had been prior to the swap.

When she first approached me to exchange she wasn’t the vivacious, self-assured celebrity she had once been. She was a shy recluse suffering from increasing depression; maybe even anxiety; and possibly even a smidgeon of agoraphobia. She had been making a show of going back into the limelight but it was clear to me now that this whole endeavour was an attempt to escape from that life she felt she ought to recapture. She didn’t want to be famous again. Quite the opposite. She wanted to disappear into the cracks where nobody knew her and there was no longer any pressure to excel. There were other factors; her brother’s death being a big one that nudged her over the edge; but when it came down to it, becoming me for her was about getting away from being her. I just happened to be there and I happened to be a willing participant.

Maybe there was a little more to it than that – perhaps there had to be – but as far as I cared about, that was the element that applied to me.

I went out into the sunshine and went over to the pool bar; ordered an extravagant cocktail. It wasn’t for Dutch courage – I didn’t need that anymore – it was because I wanted the sweet taste, and because it was part of the image. I leaned back, crossed my legs seductively, and waited to reel a man in. There were half a dozen possible around the pool, of which two were preferable. Right now it was about getting laid. I didn’t really care who it was. Their character was entirely irrelevant. I wanted someone rich like I was right now and someone chiselled: someone I could never have netted in my old life.

That made me smirk. I couldn’t have netted any man in my old life. I was a disgusting fat heifer with less sex appeal than a desiccated corpse.

It came to me suddenly why I was doing this and my smirk became a self-deprecatory smile.

This was about proving I could do this. To myself. That I had the power to do this. 

I had made my gambit with Dahlia and she had tried to put up a wall of resistance. Hell, she had told me what she wanted first: to go back to her old life!

Hearing her do that had filled me with something close to terror. She was threatening my entire future with her whimsy and that made me angry, hateful and bitter. Why should she get to choose? She had thrown away her life of wealth and beauty. It was mine now. What right did she have to claim back the life I had been given? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve it. Not like I did.

I had made something of this life; more than she had. I had done far better than she ever could. She had started off slim and beautiful. She had been born into the riches and brought up to manage them. I had had to fight for all of that. I had had to change my body from obese to athletic under only the force f my own will.

It was maybe a little fucked up, but that was why I was here by the pool; to prove to myself and anyone watching that I could do anything I wanted; anything that she could have. I could have a gorgeous man anytime I chose.

And it didn’t make me a slut that it was only about sex and power. It didn’t matter that I’d been with dozens of different men in the past couple of months – no strings attached. The only reason Dahlia had shirked the company of males was because she was messed up. She hadn’t possessed the confidence I did for years.

I stewed for a little while, feeling antsy. For some reason I was angry at myself but I didn’t know why.

It was angst. It had to be. I’d made my play to snatch and keep hold of this life and Dahlia had surprised me by having enough gumption left to fight for it. She was crazy enough to want to keep my shitty old life but she hadn’t been as crushed as I thought. She really had planned to go back. I hadn’t really anticipated or planned for this kind of resistance. I honestly didn’t know which way she’d go and that scared me. After all these months of being the one in control it felt like I’d used up my chance to persuade or dominate her. Now all the decision-making power fell to her. I didn’t like that. It made me want to chase after her to her hotel and apply more pressure than I had.

|But that didn’t feel right. Not now. Not yet. She needed to have some time to stew in her juices. Because surely at the end of the day her own fear had to be reasserting itself; her own resistance to going back. I didn’t need to persuade her. She would persuade herself.

I hoped.

I downed the rest of my cocktail; not like a cultured lady but like a wino, desperate for the hit; then I ordered a second one the same.

I sighed, lowering my head, turning my knees and shoulders inward, feeling low.

Then I thought, no. No way.

I wasn’t going to get depressed. That was the kind of thing that she did. I wasn’t going to sink to her level. I was the better woman by far. I was going to win this by force of character.

I straightened in my seat, raising my chin. I took a demure sip of my fresh cocktail and made myself smile. I crossed my legs again to set my bait then I glanced to my left.

A gorgeous, hunk of a man was watching me slyly: one of the two I most wanted to have my way with. I didn’t avert my eyes shyly. I maintained eye contact and then very deliberately gave him a smile. Then I tipped my glass. Then I turned back to the bar and ignored him.

I was going to win this. I was going to beat her. I was a better Dahlia than she had ever been. There was no way she would stand up to me now. This life was going to be mine if I had to fight to my dying breath.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man get to his feet and start to saunter my way.

I smiled to myself and took another sip, uncrossing and recrossing my long legs.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Six

DAHLIA

I felt drugged-up all the way back to my hotel on the cranky old bus, tipping sideways over the potholes; jolting my tender stomach and making my flab shudder.

All I could think about was Melissa’s absurd offer and its insanely tempting nature.

Because of course, in some ways, that was exactly what I wanted. It was what I had wanted all along. Of course it was. I had wondered what life would be like if I truly became Melissa. I had wished for a magical transformation to occur. I had aped her life and longed to live it fully. This Greek charade was very close to that preposterous ideal but it was also a million miles away from it.

But it was preposterous. And there was a world of difference between playing this game that we had been playing and going all the way as it were.

I had put on a costume here in Greece. I was pretending to be someone else. I had even put on a vast amount of weight and trained my eyes to grow dim and watery. But nothing I had done was as drastic or potentially irrevocable as what Melissa was now suggesting.

Was it even possible, through surgery, to make us really look like one another? And though talked about reversing it whenever I wished, surely it wasn’t so simple. We were talking a serious piece of surgery. The change really could be one way. Let’s say it was even possible... How much trauma could the human face stand and still bounce back from it? The change into her might be possible but trying to change back could make a hash of any beauty I had or wanted to get back to.

Though I had my doubts even that was possible. I was so grossly obese now. My eyesight was ruined. The habits of overeating as well as the booze and the cigarettes was so deep-rooted now. I wondered if I would ever be able to give them up. I wondered if we even swapped back now whether I would have a chance of recovering my former looks. Surely they were lost to me now. Surely I was going to remain corpulent and homely for the rest of my life, even if I was Dahlia Western again. Surely the old me was lost forever. I didn’t know where Melissa had found the motivation to lose all that weight and gain so much in fitness. I envied her that. I didn’t feel I could ever do it.

And if I was going to be fat and four-eyed for the rest of my life, maybe I should stay as Melissa. She made a better Dahlia than I did nowadays. That was abundantly clear. It felt wrong for me to steal that away from her. I was undeserving surely now. I'd let everybody down; most of all myself. I couldn’t bear to think about Tommy or Katherine, or... or my brother. I couldn’t bear it. And I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to England looking like I did and trying to pretend I was really myself again. Tommy and Katherine would look at me and know I had gone mad.

And what of the press? If they got wind of how low I’d fallen, how clearly ill I had to be mentally to allow such a thing, they would ridicule me into obscurity. After all the years of admiration and esteem for my beauty, that I couldn’t cope with.

Maybe Melissa was right. Maybe this was the best option. Maybe it was my only option. And surely if I could really pull it off; really become her and assume her life; I could be happy... with her husband. If he loved me anywhere near as much as he loved her then I would be content forever.

The bus rattled to a shaky stop and I got out, wheezing as I climbed down the narrow steps awkwardly, worried I might lose my footing and topple out headfirst like a gargantuan, misshapen peach. I thanked the diver in pigeon Greek and walked back to the hotel, resenting the heat and the way it made me sweat beneath my breasts and in the folds of my fat.

As I walked I imagined the reality of taking on Melissa’s face and completely subsuming her identity. The arousal growled away in my lower regions but so did a scratching anxiety at the back of my brain that made my eyes feel parched and too big for their sockets. Maybe Melissa was right and it was just a continuation of the game. It wasn’t real. I could back out at any time. I could go back to my real life.

Or maybe deep down she hated me. Maybe all this was about her stealing my life and never giving it back.

I shuddered to think such a thing of my friend. I made the conscious choice to place that thought to the side and away.

Maxine and one of the other cleaners were chatting in the foyer of the hotel. They had cleaning implements out but, as usual, weren’t using them. In fact I’d seldom seen Maxine ever doing work herself. She mainly chatted while her flunkies flitted round her doing it themselves.

“Hey, look who it is!” she cried, grinning. “It’s Big Piggy!”

I frowned at the new version of my nickname, noticing that this time she didn’t even bother to mention he shift. I looked down at my bulging body and shrugged inwardly. It was nothing if not descriptive. And what did I care? I’d brought this on myself. Still, it did hurt me; it really did; but only as much as it gave me a certain thrill of masochistic pleasure. It made me feel both good and bad that she ridiculed me so openly. It meant I was accepted. It meant I was part of her social group. That was as much a turn-on as anything else.

I gave a self-deprecatory smile and shambled over to them. “Hi.”

“Careful,” said Maxine, smirking, “you might crack the floor tiles you’re so fat now.” She chuckled. “You should win an award or something, the amount of weight you’ve put on. If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d done it on purpose, but no woman I know would ever willingly get as fat as you. You’re a real porker now. You’re massive!”

She and the other cleaner had a good laugh at my expense and I laughed along with them feeling uneasy and a little angry. I wanted to talk back to her but I just didn’t have the confidence anymore. She was right. I was gargantuan. I looked like a prize pig being fattened up for slaughter.

“Where are you off to Big Piggy?” asked Maxine.

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Up to my room.”

“They have loads of leftovers from lunch in the kitchen if you want to go on fattening yourself up. Get in there before they chuck it out.”

I stepped to do as she said and saw the smirk break out on her lips. That made me hesitate, blushing.

“Go on,” she said, coaxing me. “We won’t judge you. You’ve got a big appetite. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I shuffled on the spot for a minute, questioning myself. I didn’t have to go on shovelling food down my throat. I had reached my target weight. Soon I was going to start slimming down. And if I went and got it then they’d laugh behind my back. I knew they would.

But my tummy was rumbling and I really fancied something good and greasy. I was starving. And what did it matter? If I went along with Melissa’s plan then it might even help.

Melissa’s plan...

“Go on Lard-arse,” said Maxine. “You’ll have to waddle in there quick or you’ll miss your chance.”

I turned the corners of my mouth up and said, “Thanks for telling me.”

I hurried toward the kitchen door, my fat swinging pendulously with each step, and behind me Maxine and her friend’s sniggers turned into laughter. With burning cheeks I pushed open the kitchen door and fell on the piles of leftover food, scooping it onto a plate, my mouth salivating as I eagerly imagined how good it was going to taste.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Five

DAHLIA

Melissa’s changing expressions were like the rippling surface of a pond in the rain, not remaining still and untouched for more than a second. Something in her posture had changed that was so subtle that I only took it in subliminally, but I recognised it all the same. The shift produced an instant alteration in my own demeanour that highlighted it. The renewed confidence I had experienced moments earlier dipped. My vision dimmed and became strangely monochromatic as though a sepia filter had been laid over it.

I became hyperaware again of my shape and the persona I wore. A part of me told me it was like a fat suit; a costume I had climbed into; but the logical segment of my mind that had been reawakened by this conversation reminded me that wasn’t so. This was no suit. I really was obese; tremendously obese. My hair wasn’t blond and curly anymore. It was straight. My eyesight had been ruined. I couldn’t see to read anymore without these thick glasses.

My confidence took another dip.

It seemed that Melissa picked up on my shift in body language as I had picked up on hers for she shifted again, straightening, losing the element she had regained over the last minute or two of cleaner in disguise, to become again the powerful woman I had seen her blossom into over the previous months.

She smiled at me reassuringly, perhaps a little condescendingly, then she said, “We have, both of us, come so far from where we started. So far that it’s difficult to imagine that we really were those people. I look so much now like you originally did I amaze myself every time I look in the mirror. It’s like you said; as though we’ve been enchanted.” She chuckled. “Like in those urban legends you hear in Barton back home.”

I gave a weak smile. We’d talked about those before. The yellow ghost of Nockton Vale. It was a popular local fairy tale.

“And you...” she said. “You look more like me than I did. It truly is astounding how much you’ve accomplished. When you told me about your secret wish I couldn’t believe it could come true. You wanted to experience what it was like to be me and you set out to do so. You changed your body so that it became a copy; albeit an imperfect copy; of mine. You allowed yourself to take on employment as a cleaner in your hotel; to make friends of people at your new... status. You made a connection with that fellow, the cook.”

I flushed.

“But my suggestion...” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking a lot about what an amazing and determined woman you are and how much you’ve achieved and it makes me sorry to think about how I’ve ruined things for you.”

“Ruined things? How?”

“By keeping my actual life out of your reach. By keeping you here in this foreign realm of fantasies rather than letting you actually take my place back home.”

I stared at her. I couldn’t believe I was really hearing this. Her words were like stiletto blades sinking, without resistance, into my back in a line up my spine, one after another; but the blades didn’t hurt me. They were warm and almost, but not quite, pleasant. I could already see where she was going with this – of course I could; I’d fantasised about this very thing from the beginning – but to believe it was actually happening now was not possible.

Melissa paused for a long time, perhaps sensing I could detect her gist, then she smiled reassuringly again. “You’ve become so like me that you’re almost my double. You’ve taken on a job role, similar in some ways to my old one. And yes, we could end it now – sure we could. We could start the process of swapping back and become our true selves again. But really... if you think about it... there isn’t any hurry for that. We can go back to being ourselves any old time. What we can’t do... what will forever be out of our reach if we turn back now... is to play this out further; to take it to its limit; to experience these new lives even more fully than we already have... to go back to England in our new personas and slip into our new lives for real.”

I stared at her. The colour rose even brighter in my neck and cheeks – I could feel the heat of it – and with it, my arousal returned with a fierce intensity, much hotter than before, taking me onto an entirely different level of titillation. Sweat broke out above my hairline.

Was she serious? She couldn’t be! How could we ever pull it off?

I might be the same weight and shape as her – I might be wearing her clothes – but despite the similarities in our features, I could never really pass for her; not to someone she knew her well.

But just for a moment to imagine it as really happening! To live in her house. To live with her husband; sleep with him and pretend we’d been married for years. To do her work, cleaning the school and people’s houses. To be called Melissa by people who genuinely knew her. To be believed by all that I was really her.

To really become her.

Oh, but it could only be a fantasy.

I shook my head. “It isn’t possible. You know it isn’t. No one would believe it.”

She smiled at me with genuine pleasure and the insight I had to her thinking suddenly became acute. She hadn’t believed I would even entertain it for a second but here I was debating whether it would work as though she’d already persuaded me of the sense of it. Suddenly she’d found herself much further along on her path of persuasion than she’d expected and the surprise was a delight for her.

It made me question her motives in a way I hadn’t done so before; that eagerness; but then it was a terrific sacrifice for her; to give up her kind husband for an even longer period; to allow another woman to take her place at his side.

But I was coming to close to believing it again; to really entertaining the possibility of it; but that was stupid. It could never happen.

“It could happen. We could actually do it,” said Melissa. “We could become one another more than we ever thought possible.”

“How?”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “Plastic surgery,” she said.

“What? No way! That would be permanent!” Surely she wasn’t serious!

“Not permanent, no. Long term. I’ve looked into it. The procedure could be done and it could be done well. You could be made to look exactly like I used to. Exactly like it. I could be made to look the same as you.”

“... Exactly the same?”

She nodded. “Really. You could be Melissa for real. You could fool anybody. In England. You could live in my old house with Robert and be married. You could work as a cleaner for real – do all my old jobs.” She grinned, caught up in the verve of her excitement. “Just think about it. And then, when you were sick of that we could have another procedure; put our faces back how they are meant to be. It could last for as long or as short as you wanted. You would have total control.”

“Change back?” I said. “Whenever I wanted?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Unless...”

“What?”

She chuckled. “Unless you decided you prefer my life to yours of course.” She laughed and I chuckled uneasily. Then the laughter died away.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Deadly serious,” she replied. “”I’ve already looked into it fully. It can be done as soon as next week.”

“Next week!?”

She nodded again. “But only if you want to.”

I stepped away from her. I went to the balcony and looked down on the pool. My thoughts were flapping inefficiently like a wounded bird. This whole conversation was preposterous. But then so was my whole life now. So it had been for a long, long time.

“We can start changing back now if you want,” said Melissa. “We coiuld be back in England in a couple of days. I could go back to my life, newly slim, to impress the hell out of my husband. You can go back to your life in Summertop.”

Back to my empty house: an obese, four-eyed, ugly woman with no friends and no family.

No family.

“I’ve already booked us into a hotel in Thailand,” she said. “I’ve got the procedure set up ready if you want to go through with it.”

I turned to face her sharply.

The look of hope and expectation on her face faltered. She could see that she’d gone too far just as surely as I felt it.

It was too much. It was crazy. To really become another person – not pretending; to really turn into them! To have surgery to achieve that! It was truly preposterous. And it was dangerous.

I started to shake my head.

Melissa rose from the bed. “Look, just think about it, okay? Think about it.”

“What is there to think about?” I asked. “You know as well as I do that it can never happen. How stupid do you think I am?”

She looked utterly crestfallen but she nodded with resignation. “Okay. I understand.”

“I think we should finish this now,” I said, “not go on for two more weeks. I think it’s gone too far. We’ve both got confused about why we were doing this. We’ve both let our... fantasies run away with us.”

Melissa looked down at the floor without speaking.

I went to the door. I stood contemplating for a moment, wondering if it was somehow possible after all, then I said, “I’m going to go back to my hotel. I need to think.”

“Okay,” said Melissa. “I understand.”

I went through to the main room and opened the exit door. When I got there I felt a sudden imperative to stay; to entertain this ridiculous notion a while longer, even just as a fantasy. I felt so guilty for shutting her down like that. Melissa had been nothing but kind to me. I knew the sacrifices she was willing to make to make this dream come true for me more then even I had imagined possible. Maybe I questioned her motives a little too – she would be the one living in a mansion if we actually went through with it – but I still felt bad.

She appeared in the doorway behind me. I looked back at her and we made eye contact. She looked terribly, terribly sad.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Just think how amazing it could be,” she said.

I shook my head.

“Really becoming someone else.”

I lowered my chin, facing down. I stood that way for the bulk of a minute or more. Melissa said nothing. Then I raised my face again to look at her.

“I’ll think about it. That’s all I can say,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Four

MELISSA

She looked perfect in the dress.

Seeing her clump in; seeing the tilt and yaw of her prestigious mass on those tattered, ubiquitous low-heeled court shoes of hers: it was a magical and perfect moment that validated my own transfiguration as much as hers.

Dahlia was the nearly faultless twin of my former self just as I was the glimmering shadow of hers.

Now that she was wearing that dress; that original voluminous outfit that hadn’t even been washed since she and I had worn it, down on our knees, swabbing the floor of Summertop; it was staggering how far we had come. I could nary believe it.

I had been masturbating steadily about our exchange of fat cells for months now and as expected, here and now, the stimulation of my sex organs crackled into action. This was almost the culmination now of everything I'd strived for; all my gentle prods of manipulation. It was empowering as nothing else in my life had ever been. I had total control over this woman. Just look at what I had accomplished from the raw material of her strange fantasy. It had turned into a body-altering obsession for both of us. I couldn’t have planned it better. I couldn’t have wished for a more complete interchange of our shapes and roles.

Surely there was nothing left now of the spoiled rich woman who had been my boss once upon a time. In her trembling lips and contracting brow there was only capitulation and subservience. She knew she was no longer my equal in any way. She knew exactly who the fat cleaner was and who the wealthy model.

My smugness was like a heated blanket around me; the light-headedness of being nicely tipsy. I was comfortable and confident to look at her bulging form that it was all going to work. I knew it would now. The momentum was too great to divert its thrust now. Look at her, eyes closed in contemplation of her new reality. She no longer had the strength of will or sufficient self-image to stand up to me if she ever had. I was the dominant one, she the submissive. It couldn’t go wrong.

But when Dahlia opened her eyes and looked at me, shifting her corpulent mass to face me, that confidence faltered in me. Its volume drained a little.

There was a calmness in those eyes that I hadn’t seen since... ever; a determination that didn’t suit the glasses or bulging face; that didn’t look right under the thick fringe of dowdy hair.

I frowned, standing more upright, the clench of my folded arms loosening but not falling open.

Suddenly I knew what was coming and a desperation burst into the light to stop it, somehow. I wanted to beat her to it; to say some collection of words that would belay what I knew she was about to say. Once she had said it, everything would be weakened. The path ahead that seemed clear of obstructions would abruptly become cluttered instead. But I could think of nothing to say to block it. The fact of its imminence had destabilised all the self-assuredness I had gathered since this began. Under that steady gaze I was cast back into the role of servant. I couldn’t cling on to the esteemed sense of self I had managed to construct to replace it.

I was out of time.

“Melissa...” she said, and that single word was enough to shatter what resolve I had left – to make me feel as though it were hopeless. Identifying me as my former self seemed like an irreversible revelation of the frightened fat woman hiding deep inside this athletic and attractive body. My eyes went wide with dismay.

“It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished together,” she said. “Look how much I look like you used to. It’s like a real magical transformation happened.” She gave a sad smile. “But I think it’s gone its limit now. We’ve achieved what we set out to do and it needs to end before it goes too far.”

I said nothing. I just stared at her.

Seeing my reaction she gave a self-conscious chuckle. “If we don’t stop now then I’m afraid we never will. I’ll go on getting fatter and fatter and in the end I’ll forget I ever was Dahlia Western. I’ll lose myself completely in who I have become.”

She chuckled again as though expecting me to join her but I couldn’t muster the required civil response. The rug had been pulled from under my feet and I was tipping backwards, losing all equilibrium. The confident Dahlia persona I had constructed was gone as if it had never been. Its strength was no longer mine. In this slender form with its sculpted hair, toned muscles, and perfect skin; behind the contact lenses that gave the illusion of hawklike vision; I was just Melissa again; the cleaner. I had no power or influence. Any gain I had made was an illusion. The achievements so far hadn’t been mine; they had been Dahlia’s: only the result of her fixation; the force of her will. I had been a fool to believe otherwise.

Behind her bulbous glasses and round face she was Dahlia. She was the strong one who had made this happen.

“I can see you’re disappointed,” she said. “I know it’s going to be hard for you to give all this up and go back to your old life. But... you’ve had these months here in Greece. You’ve stayed in the best suite the hotel had. You’ve had the benefit of the food and the pool and the gym. You’ve lost so much weight you look wonderful. I can only hope that all that is sufficient to take the sting away of swapping back.”

My shoulders drooped. I was wilting.

“And it doesn’t have to end this instant,” said Dahlia. “I’ve only just reached my target weight. It’s only now that I’ve really become... become you.” She paused and something passed behind her gaze that might have been doubt. “I’d like to stay this way for a little while to really get the most of it; to enjoy actually being you now that I’ve got this far.”

She stopped speaking and I absorbed what she was saying. It seemed like some kind of thought process was going on for her too, as though she was making decisions as she went. I could see the temptation in her to stay this way that I’d seen before and suddenly that doubt of mine was the thing to falter. Abruptly it seemed as though hope still existed, even if it was frail.

“Maybe... maybe two more weeks would be good to really enjoy the end goal; live out a few more days in our new roles. Would that be better?”

I said nothing, my thoughts picking up the pace.

“But we would still need to swap back. There’s no doubt about that. After the fortnight we would become ourselves again. I’d become Dahlia. You’d become Melissa.”

She looked down at her bulging body in that dress and hesitated. She blushed, looking back up at me, and giggled. “I guess it will take me a while to regain my figure.”

At last I gave her a wry smile with the side of my mouth. I tried to keep the bitterness out of it but I didn’t succeed completely.

“Maybe... Perhaps I’ll stay on here for a while when you go back to England; try to get most of the way back to how I was before I go home too; stop wearing these glasses; get my hair back how it is meant to be.”

There was another trace of wistful doubt in her expression. I saw my opportunity but I didn’t snatch it. I stood looking at her, wondering if it was even possible to come back from this.

Any second now she was going to start talking again and each word would carry us further and further away from the alternative reality where I got to be a gorgeous, rich model for the rest of my life. I had to jump in. But I couldn’t.

Dahlia inhaled, her eyes clouding for a second as she gathered her thoughts.

“Or...” I said.

She exhaled and looked at me, startled.

I gazed back at her, no traction on where that sentence was intended to go. What little confidence I had was like a trembling branch but I had no choice. If I didn’t speak up now then it was all over.

“Or we could take a different route,” I said.

Dahlia cocked her head to the side in query. She waited a moment before saying, “What do you mean?”

“Just... Just that I have a counter-suggestion,” I replied.

Dahlia’s lips parted slightly.

I felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, the yawning gulfs of space below me.

“What kind of counter-suggestion?” she asked.

CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Three

DAHLIA

The door opened and Melissa was standing there in her hotel room. But surely she could in no way be referred to as Melissa anymore.

It had been long months since I had looked in a mirror as Dahlia and seen my reflection as it once was looking back at me: my slim form and beautiful face. The memory of it was a little hazy, though still there. This was like that. She gazed back at me looking every bit as though she really were my former self. She had the same slender legs and arms, the same slim but nicely-endowed figure. Her hair and make-up were immaculate.

I let out a mouse-like gasp because for the briefest of moments an unthinking element of me thought I was somehow looking into a mirror – that the transformations had been reversed.

Of course there were differences. Though unpredictably close, her facial features weren’t the same as mine had been. But for that moment I had become myself again and the increasingly conflicted emotions I’d been feeling flip-flopped and I got dual sensations in my tummy that hit hard enough to nauseate me: relief that my beauty was recaptured; that the idiotic mistakes I’d made to pursue my fantasy had not happened after all – and paroxysms of regret; that I’d lost the comfortable bulk; that all my efforts to escape had been wasted.

But this irrationality only lasted for that split second and the true nature of what I was seeing lamped me in the bridge of my nose.

If this were a mirror I was looking into then it was a distorting carnival mirror; one that showed what might have been; that showed a different life than the one I had.

Seeing Melissa, the one true Dahlia now, looking back at me in a posture, by coincidence, identical to my own, the reality of my true shape was outlined all the more starkly. I saw the surprise in her face as she looked at me, the wonder that continued to hold as she traced the round contours of my face and girth, the bulging mass of my arms and legs, my breasts and stomach folds. I already knew how grossly over-mass I was but it was only now, seeing it parodied in her expression; seeing the upward curl of her lips; that it became truly real.

I looked down at myself; saw the gigantic mass of my new body. In my own mind-space, within the safety of my hotel and my fantasies, the continuing engorgement of my body had not been “real.”

Now it was.

Now the awful accumulation of my transformation couldn’t be obscured beneath the folds of my conscious mind. This had happened. This was a genuine conversion from beautiful washed-up model to bloated, morbidly obese sow.

“Come in Melissa,” she said, stepping back, her eyes glistening, that impish smile coming out to play on her lips. “You look very... well.”

Meaning fat surely.

I shambled in, aware of my bulk and the narrowness of the doorway; the shifting of the puffy masses around my middle; the quivering of the flab in my calves and thighs with each step, the swollen podginess around my face; the trembling jelly of my upper arms. Melissa’s movements in her heels were graceful and dainty. She moved like a dancer... or a model. She moved like I used to. In the side of my eye she was the spitting image of the real Dahlia Western.

I stood in the centre of the room, unsure how to bring up the idea of changing back while she closed the door after me and gave me another smile, this one more reassuring. I still felt acutely uncomfortable but it was a different kind of discomfort now – more an ordinary social one. This was her domain. I was... unsuitable for a place like this now. When I was in hotel rooms it was almost exclusively in the role of cleaner, theoretically subservient to the person dwelling inside. I found myself slipping into that role automatically. It was made all the more potent by the nature of our swap. Since coming to Greece, she had been the employer, I the employee. As agreed on arrival, she had never allowed me to feel in any way her equal. How true that felt now though; no play acting required. She was my superior in every way, and not just in terms of her beauty and slenderness compared to my weight and homeliness; my thick glasses. She carried herself with a verve and confidence that I could no longer touch. My sense of self was turned inward. I was too aware of my rotund silhouette and the dismal depths of my societal and occupational fall. If I had had any sense of personal beauty and worth they had been all but squeezed out of me by the scornful ministrations and rejections of the cook, himself so near the bottom of the barrel.

Was this how the original Melissa had felt around the original me? Surely if she had then it could only, in the long term have ended in envy and bitterness. It seemed impossible that she had been such a good and supportive friend. I feared that if our positions had been switched in the first place, I would have done anything to try to steal her life; to scratch it away from her and take it for my own, no matter how manipulative or conniving I had to be to do it.

But it hadn’t been that way. I had chosen the swap – I had chosen to become this lumbering, bovine skivvy. Melissa was my friend; perhaps the closest friend I had ever had in my skewed and oddly fantastical celebrity life. I trusted her fully.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” said Melissa. “You really have changed. You look... more like your real self than ever before. It’s incredible.”

A prideful grin found its way onto my face without me willing it into existence.

“When we first came to this country together you didn’t... look yourself... but now you do. You look almost exactly the same as... you used to. You really look like the Melissa I remember. Well done. You’ve done incredibly.”

I beamed at the compliment and the validation of what I’d been telling myself was foolish and dangerous. Suddenly it didn’t seem so. With Melissa’s approval it didn’t seem exposed as ludicrous and idiotic. It did feel normal. Recognising that removed a good deal of the painfully scratching self-doubt I’d been feeling. It took away some of that discomfort. My superior was patting me on the head and telling me I had done well. Surely there was nothing as self-affirming as that.

For the first time in a while I got a sizzle of arousal between my thighs that surprised me.

“I have something for you,” she said and walked toward the bedroom, apparently expecting me to follow. I did so, my puppy-dog tail wagging nervously.

On the bed was a suitcase, and one I recognised. It was the case that she had brought with her when she first came. She flipped open the top and lifted a dress up into view.

“Oh God,” I muttered, and that arousal increased, fizzling down my legs and up into my stomach with a satisfying warmth.

It was the dress she had worn all those months ago on that first day, back in Nockton Vale when I had first suggested this.

It was navy blue, cut to stop above the knee with a square neck and short sleeves.

The same dress she had worn that first day.

“I think it might fit you now,” she said, smiling.

I nodded haltingly, uncertain how to reply.

“Why don’t you try it on,” she said, holding it out to me.

I stepped closer and took it, that stimulation in my crotch blazing hotter.

That was when I realised what she was wearing. She was dressed in the same bathing suit and silk robe I had worn when I’d broached the subject, that day when we exchanged clothes for the first time. They fit her perfectly. She looked entirely natural in them, as though they always had been and always would be her clothes. They were certainly her clothes now.

She caught my glance and her smile broadened. “Do you like my outfit? It suits me doesn’t it?”

I nodded mutely.

“Get changed,” she said. “I really want to see you in this.”

I nodded again and took it, holding it up to my body. That first time it had seemed gigantic compared to the figure-hugging outfits I normally wore; tent-like and curiously out of scale; as though I were a little girl again, playing dress up in her mother’s clothes.

Not anymore.

Now it didn’t look out-sized in the least. It looked like it belonged to me; like it... fit me in more ways than the physical.

It wasn’t made of expensive material. It was a hard-wearing work dress for a career cleaner and surely if it really fit now then that transformation from model to domestic, from Dahlia to Melissa, would be complete.

I quickly took off the clothes I was wearing and took up the dress again. I bunched it up and slipped it over my head. It was snug; hard to pull into place; the girth of my distended arms and the folds of my belly snagging against the fabric as I struggled to pull it down into place. I pushed my arms out through the sleeves, the cloth clinging tightly around my doughy flesh and then tugged it down around my bosom and my swollen stomach.

When it finally fell into place I was red-faced and embarrassed. Melissa was watching, leaning against the window frame, her face intent and mirthful. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and then looked down at myself.

It fit me.

It fit me as though it were my own.

It was my own now.

I got a sense of Melissa’s original perfume and body scent from it and with it the acknowledgement that I had truly reached my goal now. I shivered with arousal.

I was every bit as fat as she had been when I first suggested the swap. I had her dark bobbed hair; her glasses, only one prescription away from being as thick as hers had been. I had been slaving in my role as a cleaner for months; subjecting myself to my new social class, acquainting myself with others like me, allowing the skinny cook to have his way as I settled into alcohol abuse and overeating as I became an increasingly heavy smoker.

I had become Melissa. She had become Dahlia.

This was it. The end had been reached.

I closed my eyes and tried to comprehend the enormity of it – that I had achieved every aspect of my sordid and self-destructive fantasy. I had switched places with my cleaner and become her in almost conceivable way.

The titillation I was feeling became a low but constant simmer.

I smiled. But I felt sad as well. Because surely this had reached its conclusion now; played out as far as it had any right to go. I could stay this way for a little while longer; enjoying the culmination of my plan and the reality of its achievement; enjoy being Melissa as she had once been. But surely too it was time to address its ending because it did have to end – I knew that now for sure. I couldn’t go on anymore. A week or two more maybe but nothing beyond that. It had to end. It had to reverse. I had never been clearer on it, as though I were waking up finally from a dream that had come true.

I opened my eyes and turned to Melissa. She was looking right at me but she must have sensed something of the contents of my mind because the smile waned on her mouth. Her eyes faltered, eyebrows coming together.

I turned my body to face her, the hem of the skirt swishing into its new position as my trunklike legs replanted themselves, as my rotund shape shifted and settled, trembling.

We looked at one another. I held the moment for as long as I could but the electric stimulation in my genitalia was dying now. The stimulation was passing.

After months of being subservient; of being Melissa; it was time to take control again. It was time to set this on the path to its conclusion and reversal.

It was time to give Melissa the bad news.

Two New Plays Available!

Well I'm not quite writing yet (but hope to soon). In the meantime I've released two new plays from my archive that were just waiting for a little formatting. Check them out if you like. Maybe one will pique your interest...


Redemption is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

What's it About 

“A CLINGING ATMOSPHERE OF CLAUSTROPHOBIC DREAD”

Jack Tyson’s past is a mystery, but some things are certain. He used to be very rich and very successful... and something terrible happened to take all that away.

Now, at risk of being arrested or worse, he lives in a small northern town under an assumed name with his wife, Harriet, and their paralysed son. But this life isn’t enough for Jack. The lies they have woven around themselves protect them from harm but trap Jack in an existence that is worse than he could have imagined. He wants more and is willing to risk anything to get it.

But something strange and sinister is going on in the town. Jack is being watched and followed and a menacing intruder in the middle of the night hints of imminent and encroaching danger.

The harder Jack tries to better himself, the harder his life becomes, until only one conclusion is possible. He isn’t being paranoid – someone is out to get him – and unless he takes action immediately, it may be far too late to escape.

“I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT”

Berlin Rose is also available on Amazon and Smashwords. 

What's it About 

“SIMPLY ENTHRALLING”

It is Berlin, 1923. Katrin is the wealthy and beautiful wife of a politician and thinks that her life is perfect. But her husband, Jacob, has been keeping secrets. He has been protecting her from the realities of life outside the walls of her fabulous townhouse.

When Jacob returns home with a bag stuffed full of money, Katrin begins to suspect that he is hiding something, but the clear signs of her husband’s stress and his refusal to discuss things with her only make her more suspicious. Clearly something terrible is about to happen but Katrin is at a loss to discover what it is.

When Jacob receives a visitor, the cruel and criminal Willem, Katrin learns the truth, but it may already be too late to stop her luxurious life from slipping away from her. With her stability crumbling about her, Katrin is forced to take steps to fight for the life she loves.

Calamity follows calamity but the more her out-of-control situation tries to crush her, the more Katrin fights against it, doing anything – compromising everything – to win her life back. There seems no limit to the depth of the crevasse she is falling into but there is also no limit to her resolve to fight back.

“A STRONG FEMALE LEAD AND A FASCINATING EXPLORATION OF REAL HISTORICAL EVENTS”