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.”