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.