CLEANER II: Chapter Five - Part Twelve

DAHLIA

I should have told the cook to go and fuck himself. But I didn’t.

I sat in my shabby little cluttered and despoiled hotel room and slowly drank myself into a stupor, waiting for his knock to come. The main light had stopped working a long time previous. Only one light was lit, a lamp that lay on its side on the floor beside the bed. It projected my gargantuan shadow up the wall and ceiling so that it blocked most of the room in blackness.

The feelings folding over and over on top of themselves inside of me were familiar but I couldn’t have named them. It seemed like tears were close by, trying to seep up to my eye ducts, aching to weep down my face as I gaped in horror at what I had done to myself.

I looked in the mirror, my right hand splayed across my face, only one eye visible between my first and second fingers through the pebble lens. With my features covered there wasn’t a jot of my true form visible; not the slightest clue as to who I really was under all this fat.

Who I was...

But who was I now? Surely not Dahlia at all anymore. I didn’t know if I’d truly become Melissa but I surely wasn’t that beauty.

The way the cook had spoken to me. The way I had let him speak.

“Do you want to fuck later?”

I put my hands on my round knees and stared into and through my face, trying to witness the woman inside; understand how she had changed; whether she was as insane as she seemed to be.

“I’m insane,” I murmured. “I have to be to be doing this.”

But doing that scared me; it truly did. Because it was her voice I spoke in... naturally. Maybe it was the greater resonance this mass provided or the pressure on my windpipe from the weight of the fat – I didn’t know – but I sounded exactly like Melissa without even trying. It was my voice now; just as she sounded like me.

“Oh God,” I muttered, setting my forehead against my palms.

I sat up straight and looked at myself again then stood up.

I felt the folds of fat around my middle. I raised one hand up to the opposite shoulder then felt the ripple of flab down the back of it. I pressed both upper arms forward so that it boosted the hanging breasts there out. I gripped my hips, uncomprehending of how far that had bloated. It was like this was a suit of clothes that I could quite literally had slipped my svelte former body inside of. It felt like I could still take it off and go back to being her right now.

Was I as fat as Melissa started at already? Was I the same size as that lumbering heifer of a woman? Surely I was a hair’s breadth from there. Maybe even bigger.

A thump clattered against the door to my room and I yelped.

I knew who it was but I didn’t call out or go to answer it. Not right away.

Then I did. I shambled over and opened up.

The corridor was clear. No not clear. Another thump came from the far end and I saw the door rock closed that led to the upper floor, where the cook’s room was.

He couldn’t even be bothered to wait. I meant so little to him.

I looked back into my dismal room.

The summer season was almost over. This had never been meant to go on as long as it had. Surely it had to end at some point; in some way. I couldn’t go on like this forever and even “Dahlia’s” bank account couldn’t sustain her hotel bill indefinitely.

I slid my hands up under my glasses and rubbed my eyes.

I knew I had to end this. I knew I had to. I should ring Melissa now. I should go there; demand she begin the process of changing back.

My fat body was thick and warm around me. It felt heavy but it also felt... safe.

I craved a relief from it but I also couldn’t bear the idea of that. I didn’t want this to end until... well... until it had to. Until I had truly become her. When I finally achieved the exact same shape that she had had. When I was as fat as her.

The cook would be waiting. The longer he waited, the more irritated her would be; the worse he would treat me. I should scurry up there immediately; try and placate him. He was going to be stinking drunk and he could get very nasty when he was like that.

But I also knew I shouldn’t go up there. I shouldn’t debase myself like this. I was worth more than any of the people in this rattrap fleapit.

I had to go to Melissa now and demand we swap back.

But. Instead. I picked up my key and closed the door of my room with me outside. I started walking toward the foot of the cook’s stairs; not quickly – I liked it when he got angry – I liked the way it made me feel when he pinched my wrists and pinned me against the wall; when he hissed at me and told me how worthless I was. I didn’t want to hurry. I wanted him to treat me like that.

There was time to swap back. There was plenty of time. And I did want this to go on. Just to the end of the summer; another week or so. When I had finally become an identical twin to Melissa then finally we would call it a day.

Then, and only then, would we begin the long process of regaining our true shapes.

I reached the foot of the stairs and hesitated, smiling to myself. In my nether regions I was getting wet and hot. I was thinking about what the cook said to me before he went out, about how much fatter and uglier I was now, even than the bloated sow I used to be when we got together – about how much my cleaning work made me stink.

I hesitated a while long, letting that feeling build, then I made my way up and knocked on his door.