Cleaner - Part Four

I stopped in mid-scrub, bent over, knees cold on the hard marble in the hallway, face less than a foot from the floor.

There was a pair of pale feet in front of me suddenly in expensive pink heels. The skin was delicate and white.
I lifted my head, slowly tracing up the smooth line of her legs. She was close – very close to me. I could smell the scent of the Diabolique, dabbed into the backs of her knees and the scent of her skin itself.

Topaz stood right over me, dressed now in a short flouncy skirt and a sheer, multi-layered, patterned vest top. Her hair was down and divinely “done,” wisps jetting out to the sides. Her face was a picture. 
 

My old face.

My eyes moistened to see her dressed up like that, ready to return to the world.

For the last two years I had withdrawn to the sanctum of my home. I had grown weary of the parties and the glitter and although I had been tempted many times to return to it all, I never had.

To see her now, going in my place, cut me in some small way but made me very proud too. I had created this woman. Now, with absolute confidence, she was ready to assume my former glory.

“The floor’s much better now Melissa,” she said, “You’ve done a good job. Well done.”

I smiled feeling real pride at the compliment. “Thank you Topaz.”

“I was a little hard on you earlier and I should really apologise.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I blurted, still craning up at her.

“No, it does matter,” she said, “You work very hard and I appreciate it.”

I felt a surge of contentment then checked myself. It seemed ludicrous that I should take pride in cleaning well while my cleaner pranced about in my clothes. But I did. I felt proud of myself.

“Now get out the way will you,” said Topaz, her voice cooling again instantly, “You’re blocking the door and Roger’s waiting to drive me to my party.”

I got to my feet, my back creaking and shuffled out of the way, remembered the bucket and scurried back to clear that too. Topaz waited impatiently, arms folded, foot tapping. “I’ll just be a moment miss,” I said.

Then I dropped the scrubber and it splattered drops of water up Topaz’s legs.

She lurched back from shock, arms up. Then the expression of surprise on her face was consumed by her fury. “Look what you did you stupid fat bitch! Look at me! Can’t you do anything right?”

I mumbled several apologies, adrenaline pumping into my bloodstream leaving me wired.

“I’m sorry miss. Let me help dry you off.”

“Don’t – touch me!” She held out her palm to face me. I stepped back. “Fetch a clean towel!”

“Yes miss.”

“Now!”

I scurried to the airing cupboard and returned as fast as I could, wheezing from the exertion.

“Quickly,” snapped Topaz.

I handed her the towel.

She swiped her legs with it briefly then threw it over the top of my bucket. “Be more careful in future idiot!”

“I’m sorry.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, you will be if it happens again.”

She stalked past me. I watched her open the door, leaving it carelessly open, and go out to the waiting car.

All the glory and fame that had been mine was waiting for her. The car would take her to the photographers and celebrities and bright lights and inane conversations. I only wished I were going in her place for a moment. Then I remembered why I left that world in the first place.

Topaz threw me a glance as the door was shut for her. For a second a shiver of what could have been disgust passed over her face before it was replaced by a sneering smile which broke out into a grin.

As the car pulled away she was laughing loud enough for me to hear her through the glass, her head back, slender neck exposed. 

The Price of Friendship

Here's a picture story that's so old I forgot I made it!

It's quite a nice little one though.

Cleaner - Part Three

Topaz was climbing out of the pool as I approached. She scowled at me as she threw the towel over her shoulder. “Melissa, I thought I told you to scrub the hall floor by hand. I just had Roger check up on you.” (He was the butler) “He said you were using the mop.”

I was taken aback by her tone. It was imperious and patronising. She’d never used it before.

“If you expect to clean for me then you’d better get used to doing it right. I expect that marble to gleam, do you understand me?”

I mumbled “Yes.”

“Do you understand me Melissa?”

I lowered my head. “Yes miss.”

I hadn’t prompted this. Her hostility was purely of her own making. It made me feel subordinate – inferior.

I loved it!

Topaz slipped her feet delicately into her heels and walked gracefully round to the near side of her sun lounger. She looked gorgeous, smooth long legs and slender arms. Her stomach had only a slight roundness to it that accentuated her femininity. She tied her damp hair was into a bun at her crown, then casually and slinked one leg over the other.

I nervously twiddled my fingers, waiting for her to dismiss me.

“As you’re aware Melissa,” she said, “today the two of us will be truly swapping roles. I will be attending a party where I will announce my intention to make a comeback. You will return home to your squalid little house.”

“Yes,” I said, kept off balance by the way she was suddenly taking control of our interactions.

“Obviously it’s important that you don’t break from character at any point.”

“Yes.”

“Is that clear Melissa?”

“Yes miss.”

“Your ‘husband’ hasn’t seen you for several months – that will help matters – but if I hear that you have bungled things up then there’s going to be hell to pay.”

I made a flicker of eye contact but looked away. She was glaring right at my face and I didn’t like to meet her gaze.

“What that means,” said Topaz, the temperature of her voice dropping, “is that if you make any mistakes you might end up living my old life forever.”

I gaped at her. She sounded serious.

It was genius. I loved it!

I hadn’t prompted any of this. She was embellishing the situation with her own ideas. I knew she wasn’t really serious obviously, but it added an enormous amount of spice.

“Is that clear?” she snapped.

“Yes miss.”

“Good.” She uncrossed and recrossed her legs the other way. “Now get out there and scrub that floor. Once it’s done you can go.”

I turned to leave, relieved that I didn’t have to face her anymore.

“And Melissa?”

I looked back.

She picked up a magazine and started scanning it. “Do a good job this time. Your work has been really slack lately.”

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. “This is great!” I said, “You’re really playing the part. You’ll get a healthy bonus at the end of this Melissa.”

She turned her eyes up to me and glared. The muscles in her cheeks hardened. “Don’t presume to speak to me like that cleaner,” she snapped, “I think if you look in the mirror you’ll see who Melissa is and who is Topaz.”

“But I—“

She threw down the magazine and came up to me, grabbing a chunk of hair at the back of my neck. There was a free-standing mirror to my right and she swung me round, my face wincing from the needles of pain in my scalp. “Look!” she said, “Look there in the mirror!”

The reflection showed both of us, my chubby body cowering, face contorted with pain and fear, her athletic form standing over me, her features hard-edged with anger.

“Who’s fat?” she demanded.

“Me,” I whined.

“Who’s ugly?”

“Me.”

“Who’s nothing but a worthless cleaner?”

“Me!”

She threw me forward and I fell to the floor at the foot of the mirror. She came up behind me, dominating the glass, hands on hips. “And who’s beautiful – hmmm? Who’s a rich and famous model? Who owns all this?”

Under my breath I mumbled “You.”

“I can’t hear you Melissa!”

“You do.”

“That’s right.” She folded her arms. “Now I told you not to slip up and give the game away. You just called me Melissa. That’s your first life gone. If it happens a third time then you can say goodbye to ever getting your old life back.”

My knees were stinging from where she threw me down. I wiped my eye with the heel of my hand. “Yes miss. I’m sorry miss.”

“Now get up and get back to work. What do you think I’m paying you for.”

I struggled up, still not used to the extra bulk. I was carrying almost my own body weight again in fat. Any kind of challenging movement like that was difficult.

Topaz took her seat again on the sun lounger, laying back this time, legs crossed, magazine resting on her thighs. She ignored me.

I started to speak but decided not to. It was tempting to blow my last two “lives” here and now and see what she said and did. My face was tingling. But I didn’t. To be honest, I was afraid of her. I didn’t want to make her mad again. So I just backed slowly away and went out to scrub the hall floor on my hands and knees. 

Cleaner - Part Two

I put the mop and bucket away and walked back across to where I’d left my shoes.

They formed an inverted reflection in the marble floor at the foot of the wall mirror that stood next to the cloakroom and I caught a glimpse of myself lumbering towards them as I got close.

It wasn’t long since the bandages from the plastic surgery had been removed and it startled me seeing this other woman – this fat woman. I moved closer, touching my face and watching the mirror woman doing the same. Melissa’s face, the fold of soft skin hanging from her chin making her face round, her thick glasses, doubling the size of her eyes beyond them – these were mine now. It was my face. Even my hand and my arm were such a complete contrast to my old form, bulging and round. In the kink of my elbow the doughy flesh pressed outward, seeming even chubbier than it was.

My dress was a new one I picked up abroad. It was grey and straight, stopping high enough to reveal my chunky calves and knees, leaving my arms bare and displaying some of my monstrous cleavage. Through the fabric I gripped the bulge of my stomach and squeezed it in. It was months since I started this little experiment, to assume the guise and daily working persona of my cleaner, but every SINGLE time I had cause to look down at myself or see myself in a mirror or window, it startled the hell out of me.

I was Topaz. As a model there was a time when I was on the cover of at least one glossy magazine every month. I had been voted Vogue top model of the year twice running. I was the “face” of a perfume called Diabolique. I was the perfect embodiment of beauty and the poster girl of anorexics everywhere. But looking into the mirror, I could see that I wasn’t Topaz anymore. If there was a slim supermodel behind this face she was covered in rivers of fat. Not even the face was hers anymore with its slightly hooked nose and close-set eyes.

Fingerprints and dental records were the only thing that said who I really was beneath it all now. Even my past wasn’t purely mine anymore. I had given it to my cleaner. While we’d been away I had drilled stories into Melissa’s head, filling her mind with anecdotes that only I could have known and getting her to fill my mind up too. I wanted our disguises to be perfect. I wanted that because the next stage was for both of us to step out into the light of day for all to see. There couldn’t be any slip-ups.

So in almost every way I wasn’t Topaz anymore. She was.

I was Melissa. The cleaner. The fat one.

It scared me actually – to look at that face gaping back at me. I knew Melissa would never cheat me – the fortune I had offered her to switch temporarily would hold her in check – but it made me a little edgy to think that if something happened to her, people might not believe who I really was.

It was a delicious feeling. I grinned. I’d never had a high like this or felt so alive.

I looked down at my chubby bare feet, pulling my dress clear. I’d painted the toenails pink to match my fingernails. Another shiver of shock to look at them and think they were mine but a shimmer of delight too. 

I tried to push them into my heels. It was a strain. I had to hook my fingers into the backs to act as a shoehorn and that was a further strain. I wheezed, trying to crease this fat body.

Finally they were in and I took another glance at myself.

Melissa.

Me.

I straightened my bob, trying not to be too surprised as I always was when I saw straight dark brown where it had once been wavey blond, then turned and walked into the depths of the house looking for my “boss.”

CLEANER - Part One

WARNING: I will soon be releasing a new and improved version of this story that will be extended and polished. Read on by all means but you may want to wait and get the full experience.



Cleaner 


In which a retired model takes precarious and drastic steps to experience a more... ordinary life.

Once I had eaten the breakfast my cook had made for me, spent an hour or two picking out the clothes I wanted to wear for the day and lounged by the pool for a while, I caught myself looking at my reflection in the wall high mirror in my dressing room. And yawned. Not because I was tired.

I was very beautiful you see. Actually I was gorgeous. Many men had told me so. But this (though very flattering at first of course) was starting to become very boring. I was beginning to realize that the ivory box I had built up around myself kept me in as much as it kept other people out.

What I decided I needed was a return to something a bit more real. There were thousands of real lives out there in the world that I could have lived.

One morning I was scanning through the satellite channels looking for anything to amuse me and I found myself more absorbed in what my cleaner was doing. I started to watch her all the time.

Melissa wasn't that much older than me but she was my opposite in almost every other way. Whereas I had long slim beautiful legs, hers were fat and stocky as much as the rest of her body. My small but elegant breasts were dwarfed by the huge ones that hung from her chest. She wore thick glasses when I could see perfectly. As for her hair, it was a bob with a long fringe, while my luxurious blond hair was forever dropping seductively (and in a way I found utterly irritating) over one eye.

She'd be down on her knees, swabbing, or dusting around me, or Hoovering the floor. She felt uncomfortable doing these things with me watching but I liked to, and I was the boss. It made me feel funny to imagine someone doing something like that for a living. It was so simple.

I lay, imagining what it would be like having such a simple purpose in life - something to occupy my time so completely. It made me want the same thing, curiously. I wanted to live with such purity.

Of course I could have fired her and done my own cleaning, but there would have been no necessity. I didn't want to just do it. I wanted some kind of transformation to occur. I wanted to have to do it.

So one day I went up to her and I stood there, long legs smooth and slim in high heels filling her field of view as she scrubbed, and I asked if she wanted to trade places with me. For the day.

She thought I was joking. As I continued to insist she thought I was crazy. I could see the fear in her eyes that I was setting her up for some kind of practical joke. I reassured her and offered her money to go along with it.

In the end she agreed.

We went up to my dressing room, huge, plush, warm and furry. I knew it was probably bigger than her whole house. I told her to go into the wardrobe, the massive, corridor long wardrobe, and choose anything she could fit into to wear.

She chose a silk, slinky trouser outfit held up by elastic that left her arms bare. It barely fit but made her look almost good. I helped her with her hair and make-up, showing her how to do it.

Then I turned my attention to her clothes.

I disrobed and climbed into them: the shapeless dress that looked sack-like on my slim body, the clunky shoes. I brushed my hair out straight and then I slipped her pebble glasses on, going instantly blind.

It felt so good to undergo this transformation - to become her.

We stood there gawking at each other and then I demanded that she take my place and I hers - that she call me Melissa.

And for the rest of the day, I scurried round doing the cleaning while she watched television and swam in the pool.

She was greatly bemused by the whole thing but I paid her a whole lot of money to keep it to herself. We even hid our escapades from the other servants…

*  *  *

For the following weeks this is how it went.

Whenever she came we switched places, her languishing while I worked. Spending so long as Melissa was therapeutic. It was great to be someone else for a while.

It wasn't enough however.

I started to insist that she spend her days working out on the extensive exercise equipment I had in my mansion. She grumbled at first but seemed to like the idea, as if she'd always wanted to get trim but had never had the willpower before.

I, meanwhile, started grossing out on junk food. Cream, chips, burgers, bacon, chocolate, crisps. And the pounds started adding up. It only took a couple of weeks for my perfect figure to become just average and then start to lean towards plump.

I managed somehow, with constant obsessional effort, to be able to see through Melissa's glasses, my brain making the necessary adjustments. Then the headaches began in the evenings that only went away when Melissa came next morning and I stuck her heavy frames on my nose and got her to put on contacts.

I became Melissa's personal trainer, bawling her out if she didn't do enough exercise. I gave her money for contact lenses.

And all the while I made sure she kept it a secret at home, although they must have noticed her starting to slim. I meanwhile stopped seeing my boring old friends. I only wrote or spoke on the phone. But I kept promising a comeback.

After about six weeks of this I had Melissa tell her husband that I had asked her to accompany me on holiday for three months. Apparently he was put out but the money I offered persuaded him to let his sweetheart leave.

Melissa was getting into this. She loved pretending to be me.

As soon as we left town we switched places. She became me (nobody out there recognized me) and I became her servant and travelling companion. We went to Los Angeles and as she lay on the beach and went swimming in the pool I scurried about fetching her things.

All the while though, I porked out on fatty foods while making sure she exercised.

After the first month I found that I could hardly see now if I removed my glasses. I say "my" because twenty-four hours a day now, I was Melissa. And I was fat. My breasts were becoming enormous, my chin had dissolving into a large fold.

Then the final stage came.

We both had plastic surgery. Working from photographs of our original states, we had the surgeons reconstruct our faces until we looked identical to one another. My eyes were pushed closer together, my nose hooked downwards. My ears were enlarged. We had our hair done, hers now long, straight and blond, mine thick, dark and cut straight in a bob.

After we had recovered she looked beautiful.

She looked exactly like the retired model Topaz.

And I looked like her cleaner.

I stood in my hotel room, staring in the mirror at a face I recognized. It was Melissa's face. I had been transformed completely. I looked exactly like her from the fat legs crammed into high heeled shoes, past the bulging hips and stomach, the enormous breasts, all crammed into a shapeless short sleeved dress; her face with its gaping little eyes and saggy chin, the thick glasses.

I was no longer the woman I had been in any way.

Even our voices, through long and arduous practice had come to resemble the others’.

I was her.

*  *  *

It was then that we returned.

When we got back to the house my butler remarked on how Topaz was back to her real self. He had become a little worried that she had been putting on weight. He was relieved to see she was “back to normal.”

I loved the anonymity. The butler treated me exactly as though I were a lowly servant. I was scum beneath his shoes. He saw me as Melissa.

I was Melissa now.

We had sorted it out while away. Now we were back, she was to take my place completely. I had briefed her on every little detail she needed to know. Anything else she could improvise. I had even told her intricate details about my finances. I wanted her to have complete control.

I wanted to leave my old life behind completely. Not completely obviously. This process was strange - I’ll admit that it was obsessional - but I still had my head glued on. Before we proceeded with the final stages I had insisted that Melissa sign an agreement to keep my private details secret and that she didn’t actually retain rights to anything of mine. I decided that the swap would go on for six months. After that time we would reverse the process. I’d give Melissa a generous bonus to take away with her and I might even write a book about my experiences.

It was going to be a fantastic busman’s holiday, superior to any that had been taken before. I was a different person now. It was so relaxing!

I just didn’t realise that the new Topaz was getting far too used to her new life…

One Thing Different - Finale! - Gemma

I

Gemma sighed and tried to continue in a gentler tone. It wouldn’t help to get angry, even though she had every right to. “So you see if you recalculate the tax now you’ll see you may have worked it out slightly wrong.”

Her accountant blushed. “Er, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll redo this and give you a call later today with the up to date figures.”

“Thank you.”

Gemma left his office shaking her head. It was a natural mistake to make – that facet of tax law was a bit technical – but she shouldn’t have to teach her accountant about it. She’d done nothing more than skim-read through a book on it during her lunch break a couple of weeks before. She just had the kind of brain that picked things up quickly.

Which reminded her of the game they’d played at her party the other night.

The brain. It was part of the body completely invisible to the naked eye yet absolutely intrinsic to every thought; every decision made in her life. And she had a profoundly powerful one compared to most.

But had it made her happy?

She wandered down the high street and popped into G&T’s, looking for a bargain. It was a warehouse discount shop that sold everything from batteries to picture frames, toys and ornaments to towels and window blinds. Gemma loved a good bargain and she loved to browse in there whenever she came into Barton to see her accountant.

She picked up some shampoo and some tea light candles and queued up at the checkout, absently listening to the conversation of a couple of women who worked there who’d paused in their shelf stacking. They were both of them as rough as tree bark, laughing about the fantastic time they’d had on the razz the Saturday before, sleeping off their drinking binge all Sunday. They covered who’d snogged who, who’d thrown up on whose carpet and who’d gotten laid. Then they moved onto discussing in meticulous detail what they were going to wear for the upcoming weekend – Friday and Saturday nights of course!

Gemma smiled ruefully, reaching for her ringing phone. She noticed there was a voice-mail waiting for her that she must not have picked up the night before, then answered.

“Ye’llo!”

“Gemma?”

“Roger. Hi.”

“I was just wondering how you were getting on with the report on our latest figures.”

“Not too badly. I’ll have it done by close of play. I’m going to work from home and email it you later.”

“And the new designs?”

“They’ll be… They’ll be done by morning. At least in draft form.”

“Draft?”

Gemma sighed quietly. “Draft to me is a finished design to anyone else Roger, you know that. Don’t panic.”

“Right. Okay. And you’re going to cover last year’s figures in the report, right, as well as this year’s at the presentation in the morning?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Gemma lowered the phone, sighed again, this time more heavily, then raised it to her ear. “But that won’t be a problem.”

“Thanks Gemma. You’re a star.”

She cut the call. “Yeah, fuck you too Roger,” she muttered.

Gemma reached the front of the queue and smiled at the pair of ladies working. One read out the prices and the other keyed them in. Each wore identical over-aprons; tabards; with “G&T’s” stitched into the chest and both of them were the wrong side of thirty and starting to go a little to seed. But they were pleasant and friendly and Gemma left the shop feeling happier than when she went in. 

On the way home in her BMW she listened to the radio. When the news came on nothing much was happening. Someone’s Lamborghini had been found abandoned in the back end of Barton somewhere – probably after a joyride, but the driver still hadn’t been tracked down.

She got home and made herself a latte, then settled down in front of her laptop, cursing her boss's name as she rushed to get the report done that he’d demanded. It was easy work but there was just so much of it – and that wasn’t to mention the fifty odd emails in her inbox and the designs that still needed doing.

After a couple of hours she took a break and gathered up her washing to stick in the machine. She didn’t notice the still blinking light on her mobile reminding her of the voicemail she’d missed, even when she put the phone on charge before she went back to work.

She got the report emailed off by six then paused long enough to cook up some spag bol, forking it into her mouth as she clicked through her emails, marking them by priority. Then she settled down to work on the designs with Rachmaninoff playing in the background and all the lights in her house lowered apart from the down-lighter over the kitchen table where her papers were all laid out.

It was one thirty by the time she finished and she wrapped the designs up in her carry-tube then stretched, pouring herself a large brandy. Enough was enough.

Except it wasn’t. She still had the washing to get out of the tumble dryer. Her sleeveless fawn blouse was in there and she wanted to wear that at the presentation in the morning. If she left it in there all night it would look like a pensioner’s arse by first light.

So she sighed again and cracked the dryer open, pulling out all the clothes.

Then she paused, startled, because in the top of the pile of newly dried clothes was something she could have sworn she hadn’t put in there. It had been a light wash made up of creams and light greens. This item was red.

Gemma raised it, turning it over and almost gasped when she saw the embroidered G&T lettering on the front. It was one of those tabard things that the ladies who worked there wore!

She had no clue how it had found its way into her house – or into the wash she’d done. For a start she’d emptied the washer into the dryer and it hadn’t been there then.

Feeling curious, she walked with it over to the mirror and held it up in place against her chest. She giggled. Then she slipped it on.

There was a hole for her head and a slit up one side with a clasp at the bottom to hold it in place. With it on she looked like she worked there. It looked really funny. She played with it, doing the voice. “Oh yeah Nora. It was fab at the weekend getting pissed and goin out clubbin. But we gotta plan what we’re gonna wear on Friday night! I’m gonna wear that top I got that shows me tits off. How about you?”  

She laughed, eyes sparkling out of the mirror at herself, then she sobered, thinking about her long day tomorrow.

The statuette she’d bought and showed off at her party was right there on the dresser. She stroked the top of it, thinking darkly about the inscription on it, then she gave a long yawn and turned away.

II  

Gemma woke with a start, her heart pounding and her head feeling thick and muggy, almost hung-over. She wasn’t in her bed. She was on the sofa in the lounge.

And she’d missed her alarm!

She leapt up and checked the clock on the mantle. She was pushing it but she wasn’t late. Yet. But she would be if she didn’t hurry.

She went up to her room, only then realizing that she was still wearing the tabard from G&T’s as she caught a glimpse of herself in the floor length mirror. She looked really odd in it and it made her feel funny. She shook her head, pulling it off and dumped it on her bed, then she quickly dressed.

The first top she tried on was a little tight for some reason. And the second. The third was a little baggier but it was still snug. She didn’t have time to fuss about that now though. She slipped on a pair of heels and went to the door but her ankle twisted and the right heel snapped, throwing Gemma against the wall.

“Ow! Damn it!”

She pulled off the heels and threw them at the wardrobe then, grumbling to herself, went to find another pair. She only had flats to match her outfit now and she didn’t have time to change. Cursing, Gemma put them on and went downstairs. She hated to wear flats. She wasn’t a dwarf or anything but she was fairly short and without heels she was by far the shortest person in any room. Especially at work she didn’t like the way that seemed to diminish her power. But needs must and she had to get there.

She gathered up her work stuff and piled it into the BMW, haring it across town to the office, her mobile tucked deep down in her handbag, well out of sight.

She got to the building in a flap, clumsily trying to carry everything inside, and to make matters worse she couldn’t for the life of her remember the entry code. She had to call security and wait while they verified her identity. More delay!

By the time Gemma got up to her floor she felt out of breath, hot and very very flustered. Roger was outside his office door looking through some papers as she approached, still struggling with everything she was carrying. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Have you put on weight?”

“I’m wearing flats. It makes me look dumpier. Where’s the presentation?”

He pointed and started walking.

Gemma went into the room, nodding politely at Roger’s boss and the clients and took a seat, opening her bag to get her things out ready to begin demonstrating the designs.

In the top of her bag, tucked in neatly and folded so as not to crease, was the red tabard from G&T’s.

Gemma frowned. She was sure she hadn’t put that in there… though she supposed it didn’t matter. She could drop it off at the shop in her lunch break. She pushed it to one side and got the rest of her things ready.

When everyone was settled she started the presentation but it started to go wrong immediately. She couldn’t get her notes organized and kept fussing and fiddling with them, becoming increasingly confused and flustered. She had difficulty projecting her voice and kept clearing her throat, sounding less and less confident by the minute. She put the wrong PowerPoint slides up and then shut the software down by mistake and couldn’t get it back up again. When she got help she couldn’t find the correct file.

Inside of five minutes, Gemma had gone from her normal confident and in-control self to an embarrassed clumsy buffoon who looked like a fool in front of the upper management lineage and these important external clients.

Roger called a break and Gemma leant against the wall outside the conference room, breathing heavily and trying to fight back tears.

“What the hell was that all about?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to me.”

“Are you ill? Is that it? Has someone died?”

“What? No. I don’t know. I just…”

“Just what? I mean you come in here looking like shit and then that performance in there! I mean how long have you been putting on weight? You’ve been working from home a lot but still…”

“Huh?”

“And I have no idea what possessed you to do that to your hair! We work in the fashion industry for God’s sake. Image is everything!”

“What hair? What are you talking about?” Gemma was becoming increasingly confused and increasingly embarrassed. Her face was burning from shame. And she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Just get out of here,” said Roger. “Go and clean yourself up. Or go home. Get out of here, I don’t care. I’m going to try and sort this mess out.” He turned away from her then span back and pressed his face in close. “And for God’s sake Gemma. Sort yourself out or you’re out of this business!”

He marched back toward his office and the tears finally came, streaming down Gemma’s cheeks. She didn’t know how it could have gone so wrong so quickly but she felt like she’d ruined everything. How could she possibly show her face in front of the upper boss again?

She grabbed her handbag and fled to the ladies room then lent on the edge of the line of basins and wept, head hanging before her. She didn’t know what had happened to her. She was always so sure of herself and now—! Now she was a mess. Her emotions were running all over the place and she felt nothing but self doubt and confusion. Her thoughts felt so clouded it was difficult to focus at all. She tried to analyse what had gone wrong in the presentation but it was just a jumble of different images. She couldn’t get them straight in her head into any kind of chronology.

Gemma wiped at her blurry eyes and looked up at herself in the mirror over the sink and instantly stopped crying. She just stared.

She didn’t look right at all. She didn’t look like herself.

 
Her face was rounder than it should have been – maybe a stone – stone and a half heavier than she was meant to be. And her hair was an entirely different style than it should have been. It was much shorter and bushy, forming a mass of weight high on her head with spikes sticking up and out. And it was coloured a deep vibrant red! – something that should would never have done!

It was impossible! And she didn’t have the faintest clue how it could have happened. She tried to think but her mind was full of cotton wool. She could barely keep to the train of thought before she got distracted. Her hair couldn’t have changed like this. And it looked awful! Well… it was fine for a certain kind of woman, but not for her – not for a fashion designer!

She put her hand to her cheek, feeling the roundness there. She felt her chest and her waistline. The extra layer of fat was everywhere! But her clothes still fit. They still fit her!

This was insane! She had to get out of there!

She went to grab up her bag and paused, looking into the top at the tabard from G&T’s, gazing at it for several moments, lost in a dream. Then she snatched the bag up and ran out of the ladies room.

“Excuse me!”

Gemma turned. Katherine, her personal assistant was approaching looking stern and unfriendly. Obviously she’d heard of the palaver in the conference room. Gemma shrank back feeling mortified. She knew that Katherine had always wanted her job and would delight in the slightest chink in her armour and looking like this made it all the worse. With her flat shoes she looked and felt round and dumpy.

“Can I help you?” asked Katherine.

“What?”

“Only staff are allowed to be here in the back office. Are you here to see someone?”

Gemma frowned. “What?”

“If you’re here for the interviews; for the cleaner job; they’re downstairs on the ground floor.”

She didn’t know her! Katherine didn’t show the slightest bit of recognition in her face. Which was not possible. Magic or not, Gemma hadn’t changed that much.

“Well?” said Katherine. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t have any business here.”

“I don’t understand,” said Gemma.

Katherine glanced down at her bag, seeing the exposed tabard. “Ah, G&T’s. I thought I knew you from somewhere. You work there?”

“No. I…” Gemma shook her head but she felt increasingly confused. She looked down at the tabard, felt her hair and then the side of her face. “I don’t…”

“Come on please,” said Katherine, herding her toward the door to the staircase. “If you’ll walk this way I can help you find you way out.”

“Wait,” said Gemma. “You don’t understand.”

But she was at the doors and Katherine had them open. And then she was out and the door was shut in her face, engaging the lock. Katherine didn’t waste another second on her. She turned away and walked back down the corridor. Gemma watched her pause outside the office that for the last year and a half had been hers, then go inside and close the door.

She looked down at the keypad, trying to remember the code to gain entry but she didn’t know it. She couldn’t remember it. She wasn’t even sure what that woman’s name was now.

She was so unsure of everything suddenly.

But maybe the woman was right.

Maybe Gemma did work at G&T’s…

III

Gemma went out to the car park to where she’d left her BMW, but it wasn’t there. In the same parking slot was an old banged up Fiat with a driver’s door that had obviously come from the scrap yard and had yet to be resprayed to match the rest of the paintwork.

Feeling increasingly exasperated, Gemma looked round for her car, questioning her memory as she never would have before. Ordinarily she had a photo-perfect memory of everything she said and did. Now she just had fuzzy half recollections. She wasn’t sure if she had parked it there in fact. It could have been anywhere!

She took out the key to activate the lock and lights but gaped stupidly at the set she found in her hand. They weren’t her normal keys. They had a Fiat emblem on the fob and a scruffy little teddy bear hanging from the ring by a chain. They weren’t her keys, but they’d been in her bag and she had an awful feeling that they matched that car.

Gemma went to the door and fit the key in, unlocking it with a heavy heart.

She got in fatalistically and put her head in her hands. What was happening to her? What on earth was happening?

She couldn’t work it out. She had no idea and her head was so full of cotton wool, she could hardly fit the facts together. Whenever she tried she kept forgetting things and having to start all over again. It was like her brain was out of fuel and was only puttering along, preparing to crap out on her.

She needed help. She needed to call someone. Gemma searched in her bag for her phone, only briefly fingering the reassuring silky fabric of the G&T’s tabard. When she flipped it open she saw the voicemail waiting message and rolled her eyes. She’d forgotten all about that. It took her a minute to work out how to retrieve the voicemail – her phone seemed a lot harder to comprehend than it had been. She pressed the retrieve button and listened to the crackly emotional woman’s voice on the message.

“Gemma! It’s Kim! The statuette! The magic! It’s real! It’s changing each of us in turn! You have to stop it – somehow – before it’s too late, or else you’ll—”

The phone beeped. The mechanical voice asked if she wanted to delete it or listen to it again.

Pale and quivering from fear, Gemma pressed the repeat command.

“Gemma! It’s Kim! The statuette! The magic! It’s real! It’s changing each of us in turn! You have to stop it – somehow – before it’s too late, or else you’ll—”

She closed the phone. “Oh my God…. Oh my God, the statuette… One thing different.”

That had been her friend Kim. She had to have been affected by this magic too. Gemma shuddered to think what horrible things it had done to her. Her life already wasn’t great: she was so obese and she worked such terrible hours at the garage.

Or was that…?

Gemma pressed her chubby hands against her eyes until stars appeared in the darkness. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t think. She knew that the statuette had transformed her and all her friends but she didn’t know what she could do. Its magic had already drained her intellect to the extent that she couldn’t think of a solution.

The statuette…

Gemma’s eyes widened in realization then narrowed in determination.

She had to destroy it! She had to get that horrible thing and smash it to pieces!

She started the engine and pulled out of the car park, pulling out into the road so fast that she caused two oncoming cars to veer out the way and smash into one another.

She didn’t look back; she just kept driving as fast as she could toward her house, trying to ignore the chubby arms gripping the wheel in front of her and the age and decrepitness of the car; trying to ignore the dullness of her brain and the stupidity that was slowly overcoming her and desperate to get there before these changes took over her life!

IV

Gemma screeched to a halt at a T-junction, narrowly avoiding overrunning into the carriageway ahead, she was finding it so hard to concentrate.

It was a left turn to her house but she wondered whether she ought really to go right, toward Barton. After all, her shift at G&T’s was going to start soon. She didn’t want to be late. She knew she was never going to get a promotion there – she was far too dizzy for that – but she didn’t like getting scolded for tardiness. Jimmy, the boss could be really intimidating – even if he was almost ten years younger than her and straight out of university.

She was sure there was something she really had to do but… she couldn’t quite remember what it was. She was sure it was important but so was getting to work on time.

There were no cars coming so she looked into her bag and slipped out her tabard, slipping it on over her head and doing up the clasp. That was better. She wouldn’t have to waste time putting it on when she got to work now. She smiled, her skin stretching round her chubby cheeks.

She started to turn right toward Barton then slammed on the brake.

No! This was wrong! She had to get the statuette! That was their only hope! She had to save all her friends!

Gemma turned back toward Farley and hit the accelerator, taking the car up as fast as it would go.

She pulled up outside her house and got out, running up the front path, fumbling with her keys. She tried them in the lock but they wouldn’t work! They didn’t turn! And even with her new dimwitted brain she realized what that meant!

This wasn’t her house anymore! Reality had shifted that much! She wasn’t going to be able to get inside to fetch the statuette back! She was really going to be stuck like this – a dimwitted shop girl.

Gemma went to the window and peered in. She could see the statuette on its shelf as clear as day but it was completely out of her reach. Apart from the statuette, all the furnishings and décor was different than it had been. The house belonged to somebody else. It was like she had never lived there.

Which was kind of obvious. She lived in her little studio flat above the pet shop on Barton high street. It was cramped, with her bed, kitchen and lounge all in the same little room, but it was cozy when she lit a few candles and settled down to watch her soaps with a family bag of Doritos, a jar of salsa dip and a bottle of cheap wine.

She could never afford a house like this, not on her wages at G&T’s.

In the window she caught sight of her chubby reflection: the bushy mop of cheaply-coloured hair, her round arms and cheeks, her thickened torso and rounder breasts; the smooth red tabard with the G&T’s monogram. In the glass her mouth was very straight, eyes just quietly watching, then her mouth turned up at the edges. She liked the way she looked. She liked wearing her work uniform. It made her feel like she was part of something important; part of a really good team.

Gemma looked forward to work. It was great to chatter to the other ladies about what had happened in Eastenders, Corro or Big Brother the night before. She loved reality TV shows and she and the girls delighted in speculating what was going to happen next on them.

And she’d really enhanced her social life working there. They went out on the razz every Friday and Saturday night. Gemma really looked forward to get really pissed and chucking up on the way home, then getting a kebab and maybe, if she was lucky, getting shagged by some bloke. They spent half the week planning what they were going to wear and where they’d go and the other half trying to remember what had happened the weekend before through their drunkenly hazy memories.

It was great.

Yes, Gemma smiled at herself, not sure why she’d bothered to drive all this way now. Something about a voicemail. Something about… No. She couldn’t remember now. And she was going to be late for work!

She did just pause though to take out her mobile and check. There was no use missing something crucial and regretting it later and she was such a dunce she’d never remember otherwise. People were always telling her she’d lose her head if it wasn’t screwed on tightly!

She dialed the number for voicemail and saw that the most recent one was from her friend Kim. That was right; yes. She pressed the button to listen again, hearing Kim’s bubbly voice.

“Hi Gemma, it’s Kim. How do you fancy hooking up later in the week and getting pissed? We’ll get all the girls together. Well everyone we can. Annie’s so fucked up nowadays that she probably won’t be up for it but we should be able to get Meko and Sam along. It’ll be lovely. Give me a call. It has to be this week though because I’m doing night shifts at the petrol station all next week. Seeya!”

Gemma smiled as she listened. That sounded great, but she frowned a little, thinking in the back of her cotton wool mind that the message had been different when she’d listened to it before… But no. It couldn’t have been.

She’d call Kim later. Right now she had to get to work! She was on shelf stacking again today.

But as she turned to rush back to her little car Gemma paused again and glanced back at her reflection one last time. She had a brief flash that this was wrong; that everything was wrong, seeing herself as a slim and fashionable woman, totally unlike the dumpy image that looked back at her.

Then she saw the statuette again on its shelf inside and it all came back to her. She remembered Kim’s real message and she realized what she had to do.

She lifted a rock from the garden in her fleshy arms and hefted it up, hurling it through the window, giving a cry of anguish and determination.

She had to get that statuette and destroy it before it was too late!

V

Gemma pulled in too hard and too fast to a parking space opposite G&T’s and got out, the statuette enfolded in her chubby arms. A car honked its horn, narrowly avoiding her then she lumbered across the road as fast as she could.

She had to keep it in the front of her mind before she forgot again. She had to destroy the statuette! And ironically, the very effect it was having on her had given her the means to do so.

As she went into the shop, she saw Jimmy, her boss, at the checkouts. “Gemma! Where were you! You’re late!”

“I’m sorry Jimmy. I’ll be right out!”

She cursed herself that she was falling back into thinking this was real and made herself grip the statuette; focus on it. As long as she was holding it she wouldn’t forget, she could still destroy it!

She went through into the warehouse and out to the back of the building. Her mate, Chelsea was standing in the doorway having a fag. She smiled round the cigarette when she saw her approach. “Hiya Gemma. Jimmy was looking for you. You better watch out or he’ll have you doing a double shift to make up for it.”

“Er, thanks,” said Gemma, squeezing past. She wanted nothing more to tarry and chat about what was on TV tonight with Chelsea like she normally would have but there was something awfully important she had to do with this statuette and that had to be done first.

Outside the back of the store was a massive trash compactor with an open top for rubbish to be thrown in and a massive button activated crusher to squash it down. Gemma went to it and raised the statuette up above her head.

It had to be destroyed. She remembered it all now.

She remembered everything!

Her friend Meko hadn’t just come to England recently. She wasn’t a cleaner at the TV studio. She had changed her name to Christine years earlier and become a well spoken and highly polished presenter and game show host.

Kim wasn’t obese. She wasn’t meant to be working back-breaking shifts at a petrol station. She was meant to be a beautiful and successful model.

Annie… Anne wasn’t a junkie whore who had dropped out of college and was now living in the darkest depths of crime-riddled Barton. She was meant to be married to the richest man in the county. She lived in the very lap of luxury.

Samantha wasn’t meant to be the slutty receptionist at her car dealership, desperately trying to hook a man before her looks faded. She was meant to be the manager! 

And Gemma herself wasn’t meant to be an idiot chubby shop girl with nothing to fill her life but a simple job and television and nights out with the girls. She was a top fashion designer. She had a high pressure job presenting and promoting designs in London, Edinburgh and abroad…

… working long hours; constantly under pressure to excel; underappreciated by her boss; forced to overcompensate, doing other people’s work for them because she was so gifted when they weren’t.

A long life of pressure from when she’d been a little girl and it had become clear how intelligent she was: pressure to do well in school, to get outstanding grades; to get into Oxford university, to come out with a first; to get a great job, to get a great house; pressure to always maintain her athletic body and stylish clothes; pressure to be this perfect paragon of effort and virtue that everybody else expected her to be; that she expected herself to be.

Gemma faltered, lowering the statuette by just an inch.

Or she could live this new life that the statuette was offering her: a simple life with no expectations. She could come to work, do her hours and go home and forget about it. She could never have to take work home again, staying up after midnight most nights to get it done.

She could have good salt-of-the-earth friends who just loved to chatter and gossip and plan their latest drinking binges and what men they would shag. She could watch TV for hours on end without worrying that she was wasting her time – just enjoy it for what it was instead of always expecting more from herself – some imaginary productivity that didn’t exist.

She could just be… happy.

Gemma looked up at the statuette above her head and looked down into the trash compactor, then she slowly lowered it.

Then she turned away.

She felt bad for her friends, especially Annie, but they all had simpler lives now without any of the pressure of success, and they were, all of them, happy in their own way.

She paused for three full minutes until she was sure she was making the right choice, then Gemma carried the statuette back into the shop, chattering with Chelsea for a couple of minutes in the doorway about their plans for the drinking binge at the weekend.

She passed a mirror in the warehouse and noticed nothing odd about her round face and chubby arms; her thickened torso and the red G&T’s tabard covering her chest. She patted her hair, loving this new style she’d had done the week before.

Her boss, Jimmy, was rattling around the shop, telling her off for being late but Gemma didn’t mind that. It was nice to have someone to tell her what to do; nice to not have to think for herself. Nice to be an ordinary girl with no pressure because she had no prospects.

She paused near the front of the shop and lifted the statuette to look at it. It was a pretty item that somebody was bound to want.

She put it on an empty bit of shelf then lifted a price gun labeler off a nearby trolley and spat out a price tag for £5.99.

She put it on the head of the statuette then turned her back on it and went toward the back of the shop to start stacking shelves, dreaming happily about her night out at the weekend and catching up with what was going on with Eastenders when she got home; a take-out pizza on her lap and a bottle of cheap plonk at her side.