CLEANER II: Chapter Five - Part Four

DAHLIA

I followed Melissa outside to the rear of the hotel. Again she didn’t look back at me or engage me in conversation and because we had transitioned from inside to outside I felt certain that she didn’t want me to go with her anymore. She had never taken me outside before.

I slowed down and eventually stopped and she didn’t react either way. It was like I didn’t matter. But I was also anxious that she might turn round and snap at me to catch up. Playing her part well, she could be mercurial and hostile. I didn’t want to get in trouble with her. But still, I was certain now she didn’t want me.

It was disappointing. I had… enjoyed our interaction… sort of; though it incited, as always, a range of conflicting emotions. I wanted to go with her.

Obviously I didn’t feel as though I could join her by the pool or anything – I felt deeply uncomfortable now in such surroundings. After that first day at my own hotel I had been cast solely as an employee in this kind of environment; certainly not a guest. But part of me felt wistful over the aspect of the fantasy in which I had waited on her every whim, scurrying around to fetch her things. Melissa didn’t seem interested in that aspect. She didn’t want me near her in public. She wanted me far away doing my cleaning job at my own run-down hotel.

But I was curious and I found myself following after her, hanging right back.

I wanted to watch what she got up to; to see how well she was playing the part when I wasn’t there. I some ways I felt threatened by the idea that she might be doing it well: pretending to be me. Part of me wanted to find out that she couldn’t be me as well as I could. But I’d already seen her in the hotel and up in her room. I’d seen her beauty, confidence and grace only increase. This was an exercise in likely humiliation. I wanted her to be doing badly but I believed she would be doing well. The seedy, self-destructive part of me wanted her to be performing magnificently; wanted her to be a better Dahlia than I ever was.

Melissa sauntered along the edge of the pool, her long legs glimmering in the reflected sunlight off the water’s surface, her golden curls wavering in the light breeze that came from the sea. She looked like a goddess. It was remarkable how much she had changed: how great an effect her training and studies had had on her. She moved like a dancer with careful poise and femininity. And as I’d noticed in the lift, I recognised that her body looked better now than mine had done; because of the extra shape and musculature she had.

I moved in behind a large potted plant so she wouldn’t see me, spying on her as she walked gracefully, nodding and smiling at various guests it seemed she had made a connection with.

Once upon a time I had been extremely gregarious. It was how I had been able to expand my career so quickly. But since my withdrawal from modelling and my… my parents’ deaths years earlier, I had… not felt the same level of self-confidence. I had chosen to withdraw. I had lost interest in forging those connections. That was why I had moved to Nockton Vale really; away from the big city. I had become reclusive.

That wasn’t the person I was watching here. Melissa was possessed of a generous confidence and warm affability. This place had stripped her of the inward-looking downtrodden persona she had had when I hired her as my cleaner and allowed her to replace it with something wonderful.

She was friendlier and more sociable than I had been in a long time and the people she interacted with were clearly taken with her; magnetised by her charisma. I was captivated myself, just watching her.

She was so similar to me in looks now – only those slight differences in the face. Her hair, her body, her manner: all these were as good as or better than my original state.

It made me see myself there: a homely, obese woman, huddled behind a plant, gazing enviously at her employer. Resenting her superiority? Perhaps. Wishing I could be as beautiful again; as confident and outgoing as that? Maybe.

Maybe. In a small way.

But a far more prominent part of me was afraid that I could never be that beautiful again; that I never had been in the first place. I was afraid I’d already allowed this transformation to go too far. I had already passed some point of no return.

The me I was now was anonymous. It was safe. There was no expectation on me to be glamorous. The only expectation was for me to work hard and follow orders. I clung to that.

And if I could press a button and long that way again; take on my old life and beauty? Would I do it?

Did I want to go back? Was I ready?

No. Not yet.

Not ever?

Not yet.

Melissa circled the pool and headed for the outside bar. Nervous she was going to see me, I shifted my position, moving to my right. I was afraid of being caught; of her exposing my seedy infiltration to everyone here; but I wanted to see more. I was desperate to.

And might it even be delightful if she did expose me? How might it feel if everyone around the pool was laughing at me as I scurried away in this massive, bloated form, my glasses misting up from the heat and exertion?

She got to the bar and sat down and I drew in as close as I dared as she started chatting to an attractive man seated beside her.

I was a voyeur on my own former life and I felt ashamed of that. I felt pathetic.

But that made it better. It made me want to do it more. It made me want to wallow in it.