CLEANER II: Chapter Four - Part Thirteen

DAHLIA

The cook led me up the back stairs, higher into the staff part of the hotel than I had been before. There was a floor above mine where it seemed long term resident staff members stayed. It was dimmer and not as well kept. No decorating had been done for some time and the paint was cracked and flaking.

The cook’s room was at the end of the short corridor. It wasn’t locked. Inside it was dark and cluttered. He didn’t turn the main light on. Pushing his key card into the slot to activate the power turned on only a desk lamp that illuminated only the upper surfaces of the items littering the floor and bed.

He gave a deprecatory chuckle and snapped a sharp ripple through the bed sheet to cascade the items covering it onto the floor. The sheet was wrinkled. It hadn’t been changed for some time.

It was revolting. I was starting to change my mind. I didn’t want this after all. I didn’t find him attractive in the least.

But he had my wrist and he was climbing onto the bed, pulling me to the edge of it. And Melissa had told me to do this. I wanted to do what she said.

The cook unbuttoned his short sleeved shirt, shrugging it off his shoulders. His arms were bony, his ribs in contrast. That same smell he’d had round him when we kissed downstairs was deeper here. It was all over him. But he kissed me and I let him.

He squeezed my arm. Rubbed his other hand down my side, and I felt the difference in the fleshiness of my skin, unfamiliar from when a man last caressed me.

I was so nervous; so aware of my new self; the dynamic of this.

He pulled my dress off over my head and my fat rolls juddered back into place.

He looked at me, smirking, and I blushed, trying to cover myself with my arms. I was so fat now, the shape of my breasts and torso, the thickness of my arms, the swollen chin. How could anybody find me attractive like this?

He took my hands, using his strength to prise them away from my body, digging into the skin such that I couldn’t resist. I didn’t want to resist – I wanted to give in to him – but I was afraid to. So afraid.

I’m Melissa, I told myself. This is the best I can hope for now. I’m not attractive enough to get anybody better.

He took his trousers off; put a condom on from his cluttered bedside drawer.

He kissed my face; my chubby cheeks; my thick. He worked down to my increasingly doughy chest, caressing my flabby sides. He took off my glasses and the dingy room became blurred.

I’ve ruined my vision, I thought. I’ve ruined it.

He guided me onto the bed. I lay back on the wrinkled sheet, putting my head on his soiled pillow. The smell of him intensified.

He was naked now: lean, dark-skinned and hairy, glowering down at me.

I let my hands fall to the sides. My confidence was miniscule. I didn’t know what to do. It was like I really was Melissa now; like I’d always been this fat woman who knew her sex appeal was limited.

I thought of Robert and in the heat of the moment I felt guilty that I was betraying him like this; like he really was my husband.

Just a holiday romance with a co-worker, that’s all. That was what Melissa had called it.

He prised off my knickers.

My knees were raised. My legs looked so much flabbier than they used to. I spread them hesitantly.

The cook leant in, gripping both of my fleshy upper arms. His face came close to mine but he didn’t look at me. He looked past me, above my head.

His probing cock tapped near my opening but didn’t find it. It tapped again, over and over. I reached down to guide it in, finding the hard end of it and pushing it into the moist crevice between my swollen thighs.

I gasped as he pushed inside me and suddenly the seediness withdrew; the incompatibility. The animal in me just wanted to rut, tensing my fat buttocks, pushing forward and up with my pelvis as he started to thrust.

He still didn’t look me in the eye, just whacked it into me over and over and over again, machine-like in his affectionless rhythm.

This is the best I can hope for now, I thought. This is my life now. This is who I am.

I’m a chubby cleaner working in Greece and I’m letting this man I don’t even know or like shag me because he wants to and because Melissa told me to and because I want to know what it feels like to submit to being this ordinary, pathetic, ugly woman.

He sacked into me over and over and over again and my swollen body jerked, my fat jiggling.

Never before I had felt so hopeless; so irreparably shoved into this new identity. Never before I had felt more like the fatty I was.

Never before had I felt so much like I was really Melissa.