Cleaner

[MorphKitty]

Cleaner
by Emma Finn

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 realise 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 little bob, swept back from her face, the base of her neck shaved close to the skin, 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 lank 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.
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 recognised me) and I became her servant and traveling 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, short and cut straight in a bob just below my ears.
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 recognised. 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…
* * *
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 blue 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 curly blond, then turned and walked into the depths of the house looking for my “boss.”
* * *
Topaz was climbing out of the pool as I approached, reaching for a towel. 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. Her curly blond hair was tied up into a bun at her crown. She sat, then casually 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.
* * *
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 gold high-heeled sandals. The skin was delicate and white. Each nail was perfectly varnished in pale rose pink.
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 ORIGINAL MELISSA
I laughed until my throat got sore. I had to make myself stop. To see my stupid ignorant arrogant boss reduced to the state she was now – standing there in my old fat body, watching me leave.
I hated my body and life as Melissa. She was welcome to it.
All the years I had worked for Topaz, scurrying round while she lounged by the pool reading magazines, I’d felt the envy turn to bitterness and then to hate.
I hated her arrogance, the air of superiority she always carried. I hated the fact her life had reached a point mine never could. I hated the irritation and impatience she had around her trainer when she put on the slightest amount of weight.
Now she’d put on a bit of extra weight. She was every bit as huge as I had ever been.
How surprised that after all that hate and jealousy, she had come to me with a request to swap places? How eagerly had I accepted, pretending to be scared and surprised?
To be honest I had been surprised. Surprised at how foolish and shortsighted she could be and how happily she could give away everything she possessed to me.
I played along. I insisted she pay me for the trouble I was going to, all along not believing that she’d push all the way. Despite my desire for a thinner body, my depression had always drained my resolve to slim. With her pushing me and the hope that she would give it all up spurring me on, I trained harder than I could have believed possible.
And all the time, she loved pretending to be me – loved putting on weight and looking worse and worse each day.
When she asked me if I would have plastic surgery and temporarily assume her life completely, I had to bite my lip to stop myself laughing in her face.
You stupid stupid woman, I thought. Don’t you realise that I’ll never let you take it back from me?
And now I had it. I was the model. I was Topaz. It was my long legs and slender body that languished by the pool. It was her chubby form that bent down on hands and knees to clean.
Every day was a pleasure that outdistanced the last. I gloried in the punishment I gave her, each belittling remark and put-down a thank you for the years I’d suffered under her reign.
And now I was on my way to meet her fans and her friends while she was about to find out just how bad my old home life was. Except her fans and friends were mine now. If she were there she’d be a laughing stock.
I was going to be a queen.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
As a model I had quite a large staff.
Anything I wanted or needed I got instantly. I owned a car and hired a jet if I needed to go anywhere.
I wasn’t used to public transport.
Or the two-mile walk to the tube station.
I had notes in my big black short-handled handbag detailing exactly where my new home was, the layout of the interior and details of its other inhabitants. I ran my eyes over these, trying to ignore the overpowering odour from the dirty man pressed up against my right and the perfume stink from the woman on my left. Two small children sat opposite pulling faces at me. They kept whispering to one another then looking at me and giggling. Their mother leaned over to them and said “Shhh. She can’t help being so fat.” He voice was low. She hadn’t meant for me to hear. But I had.
I sighed, feeling for the first time a bubble of depression at my new state. I saw myself in my minds eye how they saw me. The concealed sneers of disgust. Thank God I’m not that fat. The private smiles. At least my glasses aren’t that thick.
I drew my handbag closer and buried my face in my notes.
It was stupid to take any notice. This was who I wanted to be for now. I’d spent months of effort getting to this state. I shouldn’t feel ashamed of myself. And I could return to my former beauty whenever I wanted. This fat nobody they were seeing wasn’t the real me. Beneath the bulges I was still as gorgeous as ever.
All it would take to return to my former persona would be a word with my double. She was probably feeling way out of her depth.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
How many people told me I was looking better than I ever had?
I smiled at them all, swallowing what seemed like never ending praise from all around me.
It was unnerving at first but looking so different made it infinitely easier. I was disconnected from all my old neuroses and fears because they had gone with the old body. Now, looking like this goddess, I was completely free! I couldn’t stop talking and mixing, greeting celebrities as though they were old friends. I’d never been as charming or erudite. I’d never had the confidence. But inside me there must have been a socialite all along, waiting for this opportunity to emerge.
The eyes of the men were all over me. Not since we had been abroad for the switch had I felt this and the intensity was a hundredfold. This was fame. This was life like I had never experienced.
I would never go back.
I would kill her first.
I would never let that bitch anywhere near this life again.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
I opened the door to my new home, my skin tingling.
I’d never seen even the exterior before but I knew it intimately from the descriptions Topaz had drilled into me. I hung up my coat on the line of brass pegs to my right, fearfully keeping my eyes on the dark corridor leading to the rest of the house.
As Topaz, I had been married twice – silly six-month publicity stunts doomed to failure. It had been champagne and hotels degenerating into public arguments. This was going to be nothing like that. Melissa had been married for fifteen years. Her marriage was something old and lived in, comfortable and secure. It was loving and tender with her husband Robert.
I could see why she had had such difficulty leaving it behind.
The house was more cluttered and dirty than I had expected but that could be put down to the length of time it had been since “I” was away. It needed a woman’s touch. That was all.
I started down the hallway, nervous as a schoolgirl about meeting Robert. It felt as though all my relationships had been gaudy and shallow. It was going to be so good to feel the care and quiet attention of a loving husband, even if it was time-worn love.
I didn’t expect fireworks or passion but that was all right. I’d had enough of that for a while. I just longed for the quiet smiling glances and the guiding hands, the peaceful companionable evenings and the long warm nights lying together. Robert was a doctor and the gentleness that that profession took with it was going to be such a welcome change.
Robert wasn’t in the kitchen. The yellow light etched the dirty pots in the sink and on the draining board. Newspaper rather than a cloth covered the table. It was stained and damp with spilled food from the discarded plates. It had to have been some kind of party because of the volume of empty beer cans toppling out of the waste bin.
I smiled fondly and shook my head, frowning. How little men could accomplish without a woman at home. It didn’t matter. I’d take it in hand. It would be fun to make our little home pretty again.
From the lounge I could hear a television. I made my way through, the butterflies getting rowdier in my stomach. None of the lights in the house were on aside from in the kitchen and lounge. I tripped over several dark piles or objects in the corridor. As I reached the door I heard a man’s voice cry out in elation. “Yes!”
I pushed it open and making sure I emulated Melissa’s voice perfectly said. “Robert?”
He was standing up in front of a low threadbare armchair, his fist in the air, the television deep into the throes of a soccer match. Dressed in dirty jeans and a soiled white vest, he wasn’t what I expected. He was tall and very thickly built with very hairy arms and badly receding hair. For a moment I was horrified before I realised the mistake I’d almost made.
It would have been a huge blunder. This wasn’t Robert at all. It must have been a friend of his. I pushed the image of how difficult it would have been if I’d embraced and kissed him by mistake, then felt a shimmer of gratitude that I wasn’t going to have to touch him.
He turned to face me and the elation disappeared. He had a thick moustache and it twisted up as he frowned.
“Fuck time you call this?” he said.
I gaped at him. “Excuse me?”
“You were supposed to be back an hour or more ago. Where do you think you’ve been?”
I stepped back, momentarily afraid but steeling myself. This was “my” house. I wasn’t going to be spoken to like this by a visitor. “My boss asked me to stay on to do some extra cleaning,” I replied indignantly.
“That stuck up bitch, Topaz?”
“She’s not stuck up!”
His expression turned blank. “I thought you hated her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s Robert?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What you say?”
My stomach turned over. I could read it in his expression. I’d made that blunder after all. I stammered. “I mean, where’s the Robert who said he’d miss me when I left to go abroad?”
He eyed me up and down suspiciously. “Fuck you going on about?”
I stepped back into the doorway, arms down by my sides. This wasn’t what I expected. Not at all.
The crowd on the television roared as another goal was scored and Robert turned back to roar too. He was enormous. The weight and height and the animal scent coming from him were overpowering. Surely this couldn’t be the kind gentle doctor Melissa had described to me.
The surge of support died down on the screen. Distracted and irritable, Robert glanced back at me. “Look at this place,” he said, “it’s got like a pigsty. Why don’t you go fix me some dinner then get started on cleaning it up.” He was trying to be nice but it came over as a veiled threat.
“Alright,” I said, just anxious to get out of there. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like him. I closed the door after me and stood against the wall in the darkened hall, my hand on my chest. My system was saturated with adrenaline. I was shaking. “Uurgh.” I didn’t like him one bit. I thanked God he wasn’t my real husband. I wouldn’t like to have been tied to him forever. How did the real Melissa stomach him?
That brought my mind back to what she’d said. Had I been so desperate to swap lives that I’d filled in my own details of what I wanted her home life to be like, rather than listening to what she actually said? I could have sworn she described him very differently than he was.
It made me want to cut this short now. I felt very vulnerable here in unfamiliar surroundings, with only HIM.
No. No, I wasn’t going to do that. I reminded myself to enjoy this. I’d paid a lot of money for it. It was a holiday from myself that I wanted. The more different it was from my life as Topaz the better. I wasn’t going to get scared and ruin all my hard work now. And after all, I had wanted to be a cleaner. That’s what I was going to be doing.
I smiled.
Then I lumbered through to the kitchen and started to familiarise myself with it. I didn’t want to keep Robert waiting. I was starting to get a nasty suspicion about the beer cans in the bin and I didn’t think he was a man that liked to be kept waiting when he was hungry.
* * *
“Your dinner’s ready, Robert,” I said, standing next to his chair in the lounge, hands together down in front of me.
The football game was still on the TV and he ignored me, continuing to watch.
“Robert?”
“What?” His voice was abrupt and I flinched at the sound of it.
“Your dinner’s ready.”
“Well bring it though then, you dozy tart.” He pressed the volume plus button on the remote. The clatter of the crowd rose, filling the room.
My cheeks coloured and my eyes became pinpoints. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble clearing up in the kitchen and fixing you a meal. I’ve been away for months. The least you can do is turn this crap off and talk to me for twenty minutes.”
I realised as soon as I said it that I’d made a big mistake.
Robert lifted his hand to the remote and hit the mute button. The room became instantly silent. I started stammering something, trying to retract my hostility. He touched the standby button and the screen winked into blackness, taking all the light in the room with it.
“I’m sorry, Robert. You’re right to want to watch television. You’re probably very tired from work. Being a doctor can be very stressful.”
The armchair creaked as he stood up but I couldn’t see anything.
“You spend all day helping people, it can be hard to come home and continue to be nice,” I said.
He moved close enough that his belly brushed the backs of my hands. His deep sweaty reek settled over me along with the heat of his body. “Are you trying to be funny?” he said, voice low and husky.
“Sorry?”
“You trying to take the mickey of my job?”
“No,” I said, “why would I? There’s nothing wrong with being a doctor.”
His face came close to mine. When he spoke I felt tiny flecks of hot spittle on my cheek and nose. “I’m not a doctor. I’m a labourer. What the hell are you talking about?” He pushed me in my shoulder. I grunted, staggering back, coming up against the wall, the light switch digging into my shoulders.
“I’m sorry Robert. I was―I was just fooling around. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve ruined the game now,” he said, voice still low.
“No I haven’t. You can still enjoy it.”
“No,” he said with a surge of anger. “There’s no point now. You’ve ruined it. Did you finish tidying the kitchen?”
“Almost.”
“Almost. Right. Well almost isn’t done is it?” The spite built in his voice with every word, chipping each word out like shards of glass. “You swanny off on holiday for months, leaving me to take care of myself then you come back and suddenly want me to drop everything. Is that right?”
“No. No. I’m sorry.”
He put his hands on either side of my face and leaned close. “You will be sorry if you cross me again you fat bitch. Now get out there and fetch my food or I might have to get nasty.”
* * *
I was too terrified to cry when I took Robert his meal but as soon as I got back to the kitchen, I sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs and sobbed.
I’d never been spoken to or treated that way, made to feel so pathetic and insignificant. I hated it. I couldn’t stand it, regardless of any submissive fantasies I had. This had to end tomorrow. There was no way I was coming back here again. I looked at the wall clock in the gloom of the yellow kitchen light. Eleven o’clock. It was too late tonight but first thing in the morning I was going back there. “Topaz” was going to be sad to leave my life behind, I was sure, but I didn’t give a damn. It was one thing pretending to be her while at home, cleaning round. It was something else to become her away from there, so excluded from my source of power.
Robert was a brute. He was just shy of being a psychopath. I didn’t want to share a bed with him. I didn’t want to see him again. After I swapped back with “Topaz” I was going to do what I could to help her break free of him. She’d put herself out a lot for me and she deserved something in return. I did have some resentment toward her though. I was convinced she had told me Robert was a pleasant and sedate doctor – not a brutish thug labourer. Had she lied about that or was I mistaken? It made me angry right now thinking about it. I was going to give her a piece of my mind when I saw her next.
I had thought I had cleaned up most of the kitchen but looking around me now I saw a lot of clutter and dirt that it seemed Robert might just get touchy about. There were trails of grease down the walls, bundles of soiled newspapers and porno mags and plates flaked with dried on food. I didn’t want to risk his fury so I got to my feet, cursing my extra bulk, and got to work.
One more night like this, I told myself, and then I can get back to my old life of luxury.
* * *
I’d been planning to get a taxi back to my mansion but I didn’t have any cash on me.
Robert took what I had to go down to the betting shop. He was still in bed when I left. It turned out to be worse than I’d thought. He was an unemployed labourer, squandering what little money Melissa brought home from cleaning. I hated to think of him getting his hands on the bonus I had given her to make the trade but from the sound of it he’d spent almost all of it already.
I used Melissa’s railcard to get back to the village then walked the rest of the way. By the time I reached the gates of the house my feet were aching in my heels. I was wearing the usual blue short sleeved dress, stopping at my knees, my bulging arms and legs poking clear.
The front door was locked. It burned me having to use the servant’s entrance, but I did. I made my way in through the kitchen. The cook sneered at me as I passed. It had been a big job, keeping the switch between us secret from the servants, but it added an extra element of realism.
Back here, away from that ogre, in familiar surroundings, even though I was still trapped playing the part of Melissa, I felt a lot better. I was still angry at Topaz, but the dreamy, playful quality to all this was returning. As I entered the hallway I sighed. I was so determined to throw all this away after Robert’s nastiness but I felt a serious pang of regret at that thought now. Pausing in front of the hall mirror I looked at myself again.
This strange face looking back at me through pebble glasses. This odd, bulky body. All my life I’d been mesmerised, as all women are, to desire a slim gorgeous body and shun the possibility of being so fat. Why, when I’d had that beauty in my grasp was all I wanted to be like this? Maybe I wasn’t the only woman who felt this way. Maybe there was a secret vein in all women to go so completely against social convention and not care what they looked like – not keep struggling against it. Maybe all women wanted to just quit exercising, enjoy their food and wallow in fat.
Or maybe I was crazy.
Either way a shimmer of anger rose in my mind to think about Topaz’s lies. I turned away from my reflection and stormed across the huge hallway toward the poolroom, determined to bring her to task.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
I emerged from the water and saw her lumber in.
I dipped back under the surface and smiled to myself as I swam to the side. It was so tempting to finish this now – to tell her she wasn’t going to have her old life back – but I wanted to draw it out as long as I could, enjoying every aspect of it. It made it more delicious that she wanted to be Melissa. I thought it was really bloody hilarious.
Reaching the edge of the pool, I climbed the steps without looking at her. I didn’t make any kind of eye contact as she approached but I smiled to myself.
“I want to talk to you,” she said, stopping just behind me. I didn’t respond but I reached down for my towel and started to sponge the water off my shoulders and chest. “Are you listening to me? I want to talk to you.” Her voice was mewling and plaintive. Remarkably, even now, when she obviously wanted a confrontation about our true identities, she continued to use my voice. It was so ingrained in her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her start to reach forward to grab my arm and turn me round. I cut it off by snapping, “Don’t touch me!”
“You lied to me,” she said, “You said your husband was a doctor. You said he was gentle and kind. That man I met last night was the nastiest piece of work I had ever seen!”
I turned to look at her, lowering my eyes to her bulging feet then slowly lifting them up to her face. I felt nothing but contempt for her huge thighs, round layered stomach and huge boobs. Her round face, skin straining to hold in the fat, evoked only a vague sense of pity and loathing. “I don’t have a husband,” I said quietly.
“Don’t give me that! I’m not in the mood for that game now! I want to know why you lied to me, Melissa!”
“Be careful,” I said, “I told you never to mention our trade. I gave you very warning. Now that’s your second life gone.”
* * *

[MorphKitty]

THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
I gaped at her – at this jumped up cleaner who thought she was better than me, just because we had swapped roles and I was struck speechless.
How could she stand there, arms crossed, looking at me in such a condescending way? Just because she was gorgeous now – because she was wearing my slender limbs and perfect face – because she looked like the queen of this house – she thought that put her on a different level from me. She was going to find out how wrong she was!
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you ignorant little bitch,” I said. “The only reason you’re swimming in my pool and wearing my clothes is because I say so! I can take it all away like that!” I clicked my fingers in her face. “I’ve enjoyed playing this game – don’t get me wrong - it’s great! But there is a limit and you would do well to remember that. You can tell me I’m running out of lives till you’re blue in the face but one word from me and you’re out on the street, not even cleaning for a living anymore and you’ll be running back to your husband quick enough. How long do you think it’ll be before you’re putting on the pounds again without me to encourage you? Before six months is up you’ll be as fat as―“
“You?” She glared at me, her arms still folded, a hint of smile at the side of her mouth.
I saw red but I kept my calm. “Pretending to be me is good. Ordering me about and telling me off – I can put up with those. They do add to it. I like it in a kinky sort of way. But you lied. To me. I want to know why.”
She didn’t reply immediately. Then she stepped into my personal space and said, “Be very careful, Melissa. I don’t have unlimited patience. I am warning you now that if you go on then you will lose your last life. If you lose that then I will never swap back with you. Do you understand that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I said, do you understand that?” She jabbed me in the chest with her finger. I stepped back. She jabbed me again. “No one would believe that you are Topaz. We switched far too thoroughly for that. We look too identical. We know too much of the other’s life.” She jabbed me again. “Why don’t you get with the program, huh? This swap is on my terms now. I’m Topaz. I’m going to swap back with you if you don’t blow it but if you keep insisting on trying to take control then I will keep this body and life, I swear!”
I stumbled back to the edge of the pool and teetered there. I couldn’t believe she was saying these things to me but there was nothing I could say to contradict it. She was right. She did have all the power. On her say-so she could cut me off from my past life.
I ran the scenarios through my mind. Would anyone believe me that I was who I said I was? Short of fingerprints or dental records they might not!
“You know I’m right, don’t you, Melissa?” she said, cocky and nasty.
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes Topaz.”
“You don’t want to lose your last life, do you?”
“No Topaz.
She raised her finger in front of my face. “Then shut up and go and do your cleaning then tonight go home and keep your husband happy, any way you know how. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. “But when are we going to switch back? I’m starting to not like this.”
“When I say so, you fat bitch,” she said, jabbing her finger into my face, “and not before.”
I staggered back one more step, swung my arms in arcs to try to regain my balance, then plunged backwards into the pool.
* * *
I wanted to run to my old bedroom and slam the door but I was so terrified that she would catch me that I couldn’t. I just ran to the cleaning cupboard, a dark room beneath the stairs with a chair and shelves on the walls. There was nowhere else that I felt safe. I fell into the chair, pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, and burst into tears.
I was soaking wet. My dress was saturated. It clung to my legs. Rivulets ran down my flesh. I’d barely kept hold of my glasses during the plunge into the swimming pool and they had misted up.
I had never ever felt this bad- this lost. All throughout my youth I had had my parents looking after me - providing all the comfort and reassurance I needed. As I got older I had friends and staff to do the same. Now though, I had nobody. There was no one I could turn to for a kind smile or help. Even of those who knew me as Melissa - my “husband,” the other staff – there wasn’t a single one I could trust to be nice to me now that I needed it. Melissa had never been popular with the other workers in the household and now I had inherited her life, I had inherited that stigma.
I cried and cried and cried.
“Topaz” was right. I was trapped in her body and life until she decided to let us switch back – stuck in this job and corpulence – stuck with that bastard as a husband. No one would believe me or help me. If I started rocking the boat then she might live up to her threat of not letting us switch back.
Up until now I had been convinced that her talk of lives lost was part of the act – an aid to help me stay in character. I had wanted this switch. I had pushed for it to go beyond a simple arrangement. Even if I had wanted to look and act like Melissa, there was no reason for her to switch with me. I needn’t have given her this position of power and knowledge over me. I needn’t have pushed to swap home lives as well. Even though she was crossing a line of rudeness, I had still believed that she was trying to help me live out my fantasies in the way she thought I wanted. There had been an element of cattiness and revenge – I had considered that – but I hadn’t considered that she was seriously planning to do me down.
Now, as the tears started to dry on my round cheeks, I started to wonder if she might even try to steal my life completely.
It jarred with what I knew of her personality. In the months we had spent working on the switch we had become very close. Until yesterday there had been no sign of anything resembling that kind of aggression. Still, it was a possibility now.
I put it out of my head.
I had to think about what I knew for certain. I had to proceed for now as though what she was saying was on the level.
I pushed the bolt into place on the door to make sure I wasn’t disturbed then I pulled my wet dress off over my head. It was a strain as much as it ever was now my body was so bulbous but the dampness made the fabric cling to every bulge. There was a little radiator in there and I hung it over that. It was going to smell of chlorine for the rest of the day but I had no other clothes with me to change into and there was no one around fat enough to lend me some.
I used tee towels to dry my hair off then sat back down in my bra, panties and heels. I couldn’t bring myself to strip completely naked and I knew my body heat would dry them in time. I tried to cross my legs but my thighs were so thick now it was difficult. I remembered a time when my slinky legs would knit together perfectly. I used to tuck one foot back round the ankle of the other leg. Now that was impossible.
I thought about what she said. One life left.
I had to believe that she still meant to give me my persona back without any trouble if I abided by her rules as long as I remained in her role. But that meant I had to put up with the downsides of her lifestyle without even mentioning my problems to her. I had to fully immerse myself in her existence, becoming her in every way until she was ready to change back. I was terrified that she would never want to give up my life the more time she had to get used to it. At the same time though, if I pushed it, trying to negotiate with her for an early swap back, then I would violate her rules.
If she was seriously planning to swap back unless I mentioned our role reversal again then I could in no way afford to blow it.
It might take weeks or months – it might take years – but I had to go on being Melissa until she came to me to say different.
I lifted my hands off my chubby thighs and turned the palms to face me, considering what that meant. I reached for my glasses, pulling them off and instantly the room became blurred. I put them back on and looked down at my bare cleavage, bra straps cutting into the soft flesh, at my stomach folds and bare legs, at the chubby feet and high heels.
I tried to conceive of what that might mean – to be stuck like this. Up to now it had all been a game. I think at a semi-conscious level I had always believed that a physical change back could be effected instantaneously – however ridiculous I knew that was. Fat. Bloated. Poor. Uneducated. It was a sentence most any woman in the world would be terrified of.
All my life I had been a survivor though – a winner. This was a difficult situation but I refused to let it overcome me. If this was the only way to proceed then I was going to look for the bright side and rise above it, at least mentally.
I had wanted this – to become Melissa – at first in body and role about my house, then, as the alterations became addictive, in everything. Although the power base had shifted, I had got what I wanted. If anything, losing control of the situation threw me even more firmly into that position and made my dream come true. If I was to live in the role of my cleaner then I couldn’t very well still boss her about. I had to become subordinate.
Yes, that was the way to look at it. I wanted to be fat for now. I wanted to have a menial job and to worry about everyday things. My boredom of the wealth and simplicity was what sent me in this direction in the first place. I had got my wish. Did it really matter if it had an indefinite period? “Topaz” would grow weary of the life as I did. She’d want to change back soon enough.
It was the perfect holiday. I made myself smile. Yes. That was it. The perfect holiday.
Only the thought of my new husband laid a damp cloth over the optimism. He was a beast who made me feel defenceless and weak – who made me cook and clean on demand.
But even that fit the initial goal of this endeavour, come to think of it. All I had to do was realise what the rules were and abide by them. The real Melissa before me had obviously done that and all I had to do was find a similar vein.
I washed my face and hands in the little basin. That made me feel better.
I sat down, put my elbows on my bare knees, made my hands into fists and propped my fat face on them.
I was going to beat this now.
I may be trapped in an obese body, I may have no means of getting back to my old wealth and lifestyle beyond Topaz’s whim, but I was going to relax and enjoy it.
I was going to enjoy being Melissa!
If that meant scrubbing and cleaning without complaint then going home to wait on my brutish husband then so be it!
* * *
Topaz was on a sun lounger out on the patio by the time I got changed and found her.
Of course there had been spare clothes for me to change into. Absurd really that it had slipped my mind, although after my tumble into the pool, I wasn’t thinking straight. We had bought a lot of new clothes when we went abroad and although most of them had been shipped over to “my” house, there were still some here.
The outfit I had on was a pale blue sleeveless dress. My chubby upper arms bulged down the sides. The fold of fat that hung from my face rested on the semicircle of chest revealed at the top. My legs were bare and I was still wearing the same low heels. A little frilly apron dropped in a half moon from my waist. My hair was dry and brushed straight. My glasses were polished clean. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
Topaz wore elliptical sunglasses with horn-rimmed points in the upper corners. Her slender body reclined, perfectly fitting the contour of her expensive chair. One smooth leg was stretched out, the other was kinked into a triangle. Her eyes were closed but there was a gentle smile on her face.
Henry, the pool man and gardener, was smoothing suntan oil into her skin. He worked carefully, smoothing it into her thighs, adding shine to her pale skin. His shirt was off and for a moment, as I stared at his tanned muscular back, I remembered how those strong hands felt on my legs…
But for now, that wasn’t to be. I reminded myself of that then looked away, clearing my throat.
Topaz opened one eye, her face squinting into ugly lines with irritation. “Ready to lose your last life?”
A ripple of fear passed under the surface of my skin. “No.”
“Well then this had better be good. I’m starting to get bored dealing with you all the time. I’ve wasted enough time already and I may have to think about letting you go.”
I got another judder of fear, this time at the base of my spine. She held all the power. I was in a real danger zone. But I made myself think about the decision I’d made. “I’ve come to apologise,” I said.
“Have you now?” Topaz closed her eyes again and smiled to herself smugly. “Henry, leave us for a moment.” He got up and walked back into the house. “Well go on then and then get out of my face.”
“I have been rude and I’m sorry. I have acted crazy, expecting you to entertain flights of fancy. It is ridiculous of me to think that I could ever have been you.”
“Why ridiculous?”
I lowered my head. “Because you are so very slim and beautiful. And I am fat. And plain. And I don’t talk well enough.”
“Go on.”
“I know I’m not you and I’m sorry that I went on about it. I’m not going to again.”
“Thank God for that. Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m still waiting for an apology about your sloppy work.”
I fiddled with my thumbs down by my waist. “My work has been sloppy. I’m sorry. I should work a lot harder than I have been. And I will work harder. A lot harder.”
Topaz was grinning. “And I’ll expect an extra hour out of you tonight to make up for the time you wasted splashing about in the pool and drying yourself off.”
“Yes miss.” I started to back away.
“And Melissa?”
“Yes miss?”
“I don’t want you to approach me again. I don’t think it’s appropriate. I’ll thank you to remember that I am on the ladder of society, I am near the top. You on the other hand, are close to the bottom. If you wish to communicate with me then go through the proper channels. Is that understood?” She meant through her butler, Roger.
“Yes miss.”
“Well waddle off and get back to work then you fat trout.”
* * *
I got down on my knees in front of the servant’s toilet, squirted in some cleaner and started scrubbing, rubber gloves on to protect my hands.
The reek of it was nauseating. Never before in my life had I been face to face with something this loathsome and degrading.
But I did it anyway, gritting my teeth.
That conversation with Topaz had set a new theme to our relationship. In the space of a few minutes I had given up any last grasping hold I had tried to keep on the reins. She was the boss. I was the servant. She had complete power over me and I had given it her willingly.
Before, when I was being forced into this situation, I felt a strangling constriction. Now, because I had handed everything with as glad a heart as I could, I felt better. At least in giving up control I had exerted what little control I could.
Now, officially, I was not going to pressurise her to swap back. I was going to immerse myself in her life completely.
Scrubbing under the rim of the toilet, I started to train my thoughts. I put out of my mind all thought of agreements with Topaz or relationships to her. She was the boss. That was all. There was no special relationship beyond that. I was cleaning a toilet, just like all the others I’d cleaned down the years. I’d been a cleaner all my life and this was just more of the same.
Yes. That was it. Wiping the crusted faeces stuck above the water line of the bowl was something I had done every day of my working life and would do every day for the rest of it.
* * *
I spent the rest of the day working harder than I had ever done.
It became easier and easier to put the switch out of my mind as the hours passed by, until by the end of my shift I think I had gone for two hours without thinking about it at all.
I was exhausted and I needed a shower desperately, but I was satisfied that I had done the best job I could. I wanted to go to her and describe all the filthy jobs I had done but she was right. It wasn’t right that she should have to deal directly with the likes of me. What I got up to cleaning out drains and vacuuming was of no interest to a refined lady like that.
When I did reflect on a comparison with who I was now and what I’d done to who I used to be, it was from the point of view that I had done a really good job assuming that role. I was determined to become Melissa even to the extent that I didn’t think a single Topaz thought, so I put each one out of my mind as soon as it emerged.
I packed away my cleaning things, washed my face and hands in my basin under the stairs and put on my coat. Then I walked down to the station to catch the train home to spend the evening with my husband, determined that this time, I would do everything right and make the best of it.
* * *
“My husband” Robert was watching the end music of something or other when I found him. Sitting in front of the TV seemed like the only place I ever saw him. Without a job to go to he was directionless.
He was wearing the same grubby vest I’d seen him in the day before, the same jeans. He’d slept in them, snoring so loudly that it had kept me awake. The vest stretched over his huge belly, riding up enough to reveal a fold of flesh hanging over his time-worn belt. I looked at his mammoth hairy arms and shoulders – at the greasy hair receding half way back from his face and felt my nose and stomach turn. I couldn’t believe I was stuck with this ape. How could my life have reached a point like this?
But I was determined to make the best of it. The real Melissa had loved this man. Now I was her, I had to find it in my heart to do the same.
“Hi Robert! I’m back!” I kissed him on the cheek through his bristles. This close a surge of body odour closed around my face but I suspended the breath in my throat and smiled.
I kept my face close to his. He turned his head to look at me. I looked at his dopey eyes and heavy brow, his crooked nose and the moustache curling over his lip and I tried very hard to see what it was that drew the original Melissa to him in the first place. Then I kissed him on the lips.
“What was that for?”
“I just wanted you to know that I still love you,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes Robert. I am.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Why?”
I put on my best smile. “I’ve been thinking on the way home that we should both put a bit of effort in to raise the romance – see if we can liven things up a bit. I was thinking we could go out to dinner and maybe go to the pictures afterwards. What do you think?”
“Do you think I’m made of money?”
“Sorry?”
“Why the hell would I want to throw away good money at a restaurant when I’ve got you to cook for me here?”
My mind went blank. “Er…”
“And what do you think we’ve got a TV for? I’m not working Melissa. You’ve got some pissy crap job that barely brings home anything. We can’t waste money going to the cinema.”
“I just thought it would be nice to spend some quality time together.”
He got to his feet. “Quality time? Is that what you want?”
“Yes. Some romantic time. I just want to make you happy.”
He unzipped his fly. “Romance eh? You wanna make me happy, then I’ll be glad to let you. Come ‘ere.”
I looked down at his crotch. He inserted his hand through the diamond-shaped gap and twisted it, grasping what was in there. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, sending a shiver through the upper layer of skin. “Er, Robert, I think you’re misunderstanding what I wanted to say.”
“My life is stressful enough without you coming in here and demanding I spend even more money I haven’t got. Now you’re going to have to pay. Get down on your knees.”
“No, look Robert. I was just trying to cheer you up.”
“This will cheer me up. On your knees.”
“No. I won’t do it.”
He whipped his hand out of his trousers and charged up to me, grabbing the hair at the base of my neck. “You’ll do whatever I say, you fat bitch! I’ve had enough of putting up with your shit. Now get down on your fucking knees!” I tried to stay upright but he forced me down. “Now you’re going to shut your face and do what I want you to do. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl.” He stepped away and pushed through the hole his zip had made.
I looked at the back of his hairy hand, realising the full impact what it was concealing was going to have. I had never done this. Ever. And now, to have to do it for this filthy ogre was more than my mind could bear. My neck locked up. I couldn’t blink at all. No thought broke through beyond empty senseless terror.
Robert pulled out his hand and his cock flopped into view, bulging outwards and stiffening, the circle of foreskin at it’s end retracting from my view as the lip of the purple end pushed outwards. It stunk of decaying urine. There were flecks of white on the wrinkled end that shifted as the wrinkles became smooth and shiny.
He stepped closer. “Come on, Melissa. Daddy wants you to suck him off.”
I gaped. I couldn’t move away or closer.
I couldn’t think.
My sanity was splintering, fault lines spreading across its surface.
Robert’s hands closed around the back of my head. “Come on you whore. Suck on me.”
He shuffled closer again.
He cock was huge, nestled into the nest of dirty hair.
It was only a couple of inches from my lips.
For a moment, revulsion was replaced by a quiver of lust. It surprised me. I couldn’t imagine finding any part of this experience arousing. Then it vanished.
But I looked up at him, at this huge man towering over me, this common ugly brute and I got another shiver of it.
He was so masculine – so archetypal – like a primal thing. His domination of me, his bare pheromone reek, his manly stature, his careless animal lust – all these things cut into me in a new way I couldn’t ever have conceived was possible.
I looked at his cock again and the lust in my own crotch melted into being.
I couldn’t believe it but I wanted it. I wanted to do this repellent thing for him. I wanted him to make me do it. It was a devastating surrender of everything I had ever felt about myself but Lord help me, I wanted it now more than anything. I needed him to use me like this – to make me feel like a woman completely dominated by her man.
He was ready but I wavered, feeling jets of fear – as much for what this was going to mean to the way I saw myself from now on as for the actual experience itself.
Then Robert put his hands into the hair at the back of my head and started to guide it forward. I resisted, trying to pull away but he gripped tighter, pulling my hair painfully and forcing me in.
I opened my mouth, extending my tongue.
And as I took it into me, something inside cracked.
Something inside me died.
* * *
In my bedroom was a dressing table with swing in side mirrors for looking at a person’s profile. I sat in front of it, resting my hands, fingers interlinked, on the varnished wood surface.
The taste of the act I had just completed had been swallowed down into my stomach with two cans of cider. My hair was brushed back into shape. I had changed and showered.
But looking at myself, I realised that I wasn’t the same person as I was before I came home.
I was Melissa for real now.
If I had been Topaz pretending to be Melissa before, I had truly become her now.
It was difficult to put into word-thoughts what this meant – what shift had occurred to change things. With each shiver that wracked my body, my thoughts disassembled even more.
When Topaz took Robert’s cock into her mouth and closed her eyes, she ceased to exist. She became Melissa. She became me.
I had given up my body and wealth, all my social standing. I had given up all power to the usurper. I had completely assumed the attitude and habits and filthy chores of the fat cleaner I now was. And now, with this final surrender, I had given up what little of myself I had left.
I couldn’t be Topaz because Topaz would never have done such a degrading thing. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became in my mind. Topaz was a gorgeous model, a rich and famous celebrity. She would never give all that up to become someone as pathetic as me. Why would she? It didn’t make sense. And even if she had she would never sink so low as to perform that grisly act on my husband.
Therefore, I had to be Melissa. I had to have always been. That was the only thing that added up.
I was never Topaz, even if I remembered things from her life. Those memories were crazy thoughts I had invented myself from the stories she told me. I didn’t remember them directly. And I knew so much about my own past as Melissa. How could I have known all that if I wasn’t really her?
It had to be it.
I was Melissa. Always had been. Always would be.
Yes.
Yes, that was it.
This fat, pitiful creature in the mirror, tears reddening her eyes and cheeks, was me.
Pathetic.
Fat.
Worthless.
Me.
And it always had been.
I swiped at my tears roughly. I tried to stop crying.
This wasn’t anything I hadn’t done a hundred times before. I liked to give pleasure to my husband that way.
Yes, that was it.
I loved to give him pleasure.
I would do anything for him. That was the only thing that made sense. Why else would I slave for this beast if I didn’t love him?
I did love him.
Yes.
I loved him with all my heart.
Me. Melissa.
And I had to make sure he got fed right now. I couldn’t waste time up here, sobbing like a baby.
I had to make his dinner.
I wiped my eyes again and smiled at my reflection. My round cheeks bulged and a shadow flashed across my demeanour as the image looking back at me grated.
Then I forgot why it would. This was my face after all – the one I’d always had. Nothing unusual about it.
No. No, there wasn’t.
I was Melissa.
Yes.
Melissa.
And I had to go downstairs to make my husband’s dinner.
He was hungry and I had to do my duty as his wife.
* * *
The weeks shot by but the days dragged.
Each weekday I slaved at my job. Of late, with her comeback in full swing, Topaz had taken to having regular extravagant parties and a lot of sleepover guests. This made my workload a lot heavier and I had to skip lunch on a regular basis to fit everything in. I couldn’t risk arriving home late because of how ratty Robert got if his dinner wasn’t cooked on time.
Robert liked to have a large meal in the evening and it took me a long while to get it just right. The house was always in a mess because of Robert’s carelessness during the day and that consumed a lot of my time too. If I was lucky, at the end of the day, when everything was sorted, I got to vegetate in front of the television and catch up on a few of my soaps.
Then it was in bed early ready for another turn of the wheel.
Every day was the same apart from at weekends when I gave the house an extra thorough clean.
I was determined to be the best wife I could be to Robert and the best cleaner I could be at work. I knew that my life was a short straw of sorts but I put a great deal of effort into making things better, even though all I seemed to do when I was awake was work.
Then over the course of a few weeks, a strange thing started to happen.
It was almost unnoticeable at first.
Then as time went on I started to become sure.
I was beginning to change. To look different.
I was starting to lose weight.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
I slapped him hard across the face and everyone at the party instantly shut up. I hadn’t meant to make such a public gesture but when he said it I saw red.
He had had a really smarmy look on his face and I smiled to see that look wiped off and replaced by the stinging shock of pain.
“You can take remarks like that and shove them up your arse,” I said, “I’m Topaz if you didn’t know and nobody talks to me like that!”
The stung creases smoothed slowly off his face and a deeper crease of anger formed in his brow. “You just made a mistake, Topaz,” he snapped, “A big mistake.”
I felt a flutter of panic but it vanished immediately. There was nothing he could do to me. Nevertheless, the faces of the onlookers suggested a tension that made me feel uneasy.
“When you made your comeback, a lot of us thought it was a joke but for old times sake we gave you another shot. Even when it seemed like you’d lost all the old charm you used to have and become waspish and bitchy, we put up with it. But you’ve burnt your boats now.”
I sneered. “What are you talking about?”
“As your boss, if I want to tell you you’re putting on weight and to be careful, then I bloody well will. And you’ll listen to me and do what I say. But now you’ve gone and done it, haven’t you? You had to take this new bitch act of yours too far.”
“Nobody gets away with calling me―“
“Shut up.”
I gaped at him. How dare he speak to me like that! I wasn’t some pathetic cleaner anymore. I was Topaz. I was one of the most beautiful women in the country. I had a name and a reputation.
The other guests avoided my gaze when I glanced at them.
“You’re fired,” he said, relishing it.
“Who cares?” I replied, shrugging my shoulders, “I’ll go somewhere else.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it you won’t. You’re finished.”
Nobody would look at me. They were all turning their backs.
“You can’t do this to me. All I did was slap you.”
“All you did?” he said, “Topaz, let me tell you something. This has been a long time coming, believe me. You have no future as a model and even less as an actress. You might have done once but your bitchy arrogance and the fact that all this expensive living has made you a little… chubby – well… If I were you I’d consolidate my money and keep a low profile. Drop out of sight and try and think back to the glory years when you used to be somebody.”
I stared at him.
I didn’t know what to say.
Then I turned my back on him, head held high and marched straight out.
* * *
It was only when I reached the foyer of the hotel that I realised I no longer had a ride home.
My date was still up in the party and there was no way I was going back up there. Besides, he had been one of the many people avoiding eye contact. I had the horrible feeling that he would no longer be interested in me.
This was terrible. It was a nightmare. How could this have happened when I planned everything so carefully?
It wasn’t a major problem. I was sure of that. When my boss cooled off I’d be able to sweet-talk him. As for my career being over, it was ridiculous. Even if he had that much influence, which I was sure he didn’t, the reputation I had inherited when I took over Topaz’s life would definitely keep me in business. Especially if I lost a couple of pounds.
I frowned and looked down at my stomach.
Despite my bluster, I could sort of see what he meant. I wasn’t fat, by any means. If anything my figure was more normal than it had been before, but there was a roundness of my belly that a model of my calibre shouldn’t have had.
I went into the ladies room and looked at myself in the floor-length mirror. I was wearing a sleeveless top made of silk and a short leather skirt and heels. My hair was tied up with ringlets dropping down by my ears.
Yes. I could see what he meant.
As a model my figure was supposed to be perfectly slender. When the original Topaz had finished my training it had been. But without her coaching me I’d slipped back into my old habits and now there was a slight roundness to my cheeks. My boobs and hips were fuller. It wasn’t anything I had to worry about. I wasn’t on the verge by a long way of assuming my former bulk. But it was something that bore watching.
Old habits die hard. If I wasn’t careful I was going to get right back where I started.
If I wasn’t careful.
I folded my arms but unfolded them again, frowning at the way that action made my forearms look fatter than they were.
It just needed a stricter diet and more exercise. It wasn’t a problem.
What was a problem was my getting home. I didn’t have any money on me and I didn’t want to call my butler to come get me. He might have asked why I was coming home early alone and I couldn’t bare that.
I wandered back out to the foyer and spotted a man I recognised.
He was from the party: a middle aged portly man wearing an expensive black suit. I waved at him. “Hi.”
He looked uncomfortable but then took in my bare legs and cleavage and seemed to go through some kind of internal struggle. “Hello.”
“Are you on your way home?” I asked brightly.
He gave me a guarded “Yes.”
“Because I was wondering if you could use some company. I need a lift home and we can chat on the way.” If figured I’d pay him something when I got back home if need be. “We can work something out when you drop me off for me to pay you back.”
Another appraisal of my body, this time lingering on my smooth shoulders.
“All right,” he said, “Come with me.”
* * *
His car turned out to be a chauffeur-driven limousine. I sat opposite him in its expansive interior, legs and arms crossed as he droned on about nothing. I tuned him out and just enjoyed the luxury. I nodded every once in a while to keep him interested.
Fate had given me a set of duff cards when I was born. Even though there was the odd hiccup like this evening, I had turned everything around. Now my life was fantastic. And it kept on getting better and better. What did it matter if one party went sour? There would be another party tomorrow night. And the night after that.
I was like a queen now, mistress of all I surveyed.
The car pulled to a stop and I decided I’d better tune my host back in. He was leering at me in response to the last thing he’d said but I’d missed it so I said, “Excuse me?”
“I was saying that perhaps we can work out that payment you mentioned now.”
I stared blankly at him. “Excuse me?”
“For the ride. You talked about working something out.” He unzipped his trousers.
“You have got to be joking,” I said. “I meant I’d pay you for the petrol.”
“That won’t be necessary. A quick blow job’ll do fine.” He grinned, showing his teeth.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not doing that! You’re crazy.” I reached for the door handle.
He grabbed my wrist.
“You’ll do it or word might get around that you did it anyway. Think about that.”
“What did you say to me?”
“After tonight, you’ll be lucky to get work again but if I were to go round telling people you whored for me in my car then that would become a guarantee. You might even be arrested.”
I looked at his driver. The young man was facing away.
“Oh he’ll back up whatever I say,” said the man. “He’ll back me up all the way to court if it comes to that.” He stroked my cheek. “But it won’t come to that. Will it darling?”
This couldn’t be happening to me. I tried to pull away again but he tightened his grip. Even if I refused there was a good chance he might force me. The only thing I could do was go along with it willingly.
“Okay. It’s a deal. As long as you keep quiet.”
“Of course I will.” He winked. “I’d go through with it if you called my bluff but I don’t want to damage my reputation if I can help it.”
He unbuttoned his trousers and pulled his penis out. It was already bulging. A wave of nausea came but didn’t overwhelm me.
“Here,” he said, laying some cash on the seat. “An extra incentive.”
I could do this. I’d done it before… for Robert. And although I’d vowed never to do it again, I could break that vow if I had to.
My leather skirt slid up my legs as I got down on my knees in front of him, revealing more of my thighs. He leered, touching my skin there with one hand..
The floor of the car was damp because of the rain outside. The mat was rough.
I looked at his thing. It didn’t smell of anything.
He put his hand on the back of my head. “Come on you whore. Suck on me.”
I shuddered.
I couldn’t do this.
I tried to get up. “No.”
He forced me back down and thrust it into my mouth, biting into my scalp with his fingers.
I heard him gasp out in pleasure.
I could do it. I could do it.
There wasn’t any choice.
I squinted my eyes shut, using my tongue as expertly as I could to give him pleasure. He moaned, tightening his grip, hurting the roof of my mouth. I almost gagged.
But I withdrew a little, playing with the knob at the end, wanting to make him cum as soon as I could so that I could get out of there.
“I want to hear you,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.
I started to make moaning noises as though I was enjoying it.
He got more and more excited.
It was horrible. I could hardly stand it. I felt so humiliated.
But I had to go on. He was starting to build.
I cupped my fingers round his balls and he groaned louder.
I felt exactly like I looked – like a trashy whore, sucking off a businessman so he would pay her.
He wasn’t paying in money but that didn’t make it any cleaner.
It didn’t make me feel any less filthy.
It was the most humiliating thing I had ever experienced.
Then suddenly there were lights all round me.
I tried to look round but his hands were holding me in place.
People were shouting.
Asking questions.
Lights were popping over and over again.
I finally pulled his cock out of my mouth and turned round.
And looked at an open doorway packed with reporters, flashing pictures of me kneeling there in front of this man as he struggled to cover his face, my hands round his thing, money exposed on the seat next to us.
They were shouting.
Asking questions.
And the word they kept repeating was PROSTITUTION.
In a stiletto sharp moment of clarity I realised that my humiliation had only just begun.
* * *

[MorphKitty]

THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
Robert was still fast asleep upstairs. I could hear his snoring through the floorboards, carpet and all. I smiled to myself. I loved the big ape, even if he was a bit of an animal. Hmmm. That made me smile all the more. Since I’d got into a good rhythm of keeping the place clean and keeping him well fed, he had mellowed out quite a bit. We were getting on a lot better.
Nevertheless, I frowned at the empty beer cans he’d left on the little table next to his chair in the lounge before I cleared them up. There was a damp newspaper underneath them. I scooped this up too but slowed as I turned back toward the door when I saw the photograph on the front page.
It showed my boss, Topaz, on her knees in what looked like the back of a limousine. She was looking right at the camera as though she’d been caught in the act of something. Her clothes looked dishevelled. Her skirt was riding right up revealing most of her bare legs. A chubby man in a business suit was on the seat in front of her covering his face. She was holding something in his lap but that part had been blanked out.
Until I saw the headline I couldn’t work out what it was.
Then I saw it and I gasped out loud.
FAILING MODEL TURNS TRICKS TO GET EXTRA CASH!
It was stunning. And unbelievable.
I’d worked for Topaz for years. I couldn’t believe she’d become involved in something like this.
Having said that, there it was in black and white. There wasn’t any other justification that I could think of.
I would have to ask her about it when I saw her.
On second thoughts, she probably wouldn’t want to talk about it judging by the look on her face in that picture.
For some reason, seeing this story made me feel bad. I couldn’t think why. My boss’s reputation was her business. What she got up to with her private time was up to her. Having said that I couldn’t help but feel put out by it, as though this were somehow a slight against me.
Madness really. Apart from the fact I’d been working as her cleaner for a long time now, there was really no connection between us beyond the occasional nod in a corridor.
But if that was so, why did I feel as though the humiliation she was obviously feeling was somehow affecting me too?
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
“Bring the food in then get out!”
My butler sheepishly lowered his eyes, placed the tray on the table next to my window seat, then withdrew. Lucky for him.
Since my picture was plastered all over the front page of half a dozen gutter papers the week before I wasn’t in the best of moods. I was depressed and nothing seemed to snap me out of it. Except a good fry up and chocolate obviously.
Events had conspired. That was all. I shouldn’t let it get to me. When word of my confrontation at the party got round, the paparazzi had sped over to my house to lie in wait. It wasn’t my fault. It was bad luck. The worst luck. That was all.
I pulled the mixed grill over onto my lap and started shovelling it into my mouth. Even with that, my mind wandered back onto my troubles.
In combination with the newspaper stories, the conflict at the party with my boss was causing a lot of trouble for me. I had had several modelling gigs set that had cancelled and now it was becoming difficult to set new ones up.
I sighed a huge sigh that came from deep in my belly and swung over my entire body, draining all will.
This was a nightmare. How could my life suddenly become so complicated?
When I had been a cleaner, even though I hadn’t had this luxury, at least the problems I had were small ones. Now that I was rich I had so much more to lose.
It made me want to switch back.
But that was never going to happen.
Things would have to get a lot worse before I’d give up all this to go back to the body and life I had before.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
I had a quick gargle and went back through to the bedroom.
Robert was sitting up against the headboard with his hands behind his head, grinning like the cat with the cream. “How about you wake me up like that every morning?”
I sat next to him. “How about if in return you do something for me.” I put my hand on his chest and curled a finger into the thick hair he had there.
“What?”
“I’ve been reading some books in my spare time that I think could help us find a new direction in life.”
“Go on.”
“I think that with your background in the building trade, you might be able to set up your own business and make a lot of money.”
The smile faltered on his face. “I don’t know about that.”
“Just listen for a minute, Robert. Life has been tough on you for a long time and I can understand how you’ve reached the point you have. But I know that you’re a good man and a hard worker who has just been handed a bad deal. If we work together, I think you could get right back on track.”
He frowned. “You think so?”
I laid my hand on his cheek and kissed him on the lips. “Yes. I do.”
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
There was a full-length mirror in my bedroom that looked like it cost more than I used to earn in a month as a cleaner.
First I looked at myself, then down at my stomach. Then up at my reflection again. I patted the roundness, making a satisfying slap.
Just another thing to worry about – another thing I couldn’t be bothered to deal with right now. Let my weight go hang for now. I’d work on slimming when this current crisis was over. Until then, what did it matter if I put a little bulk on? Nobody wanted me at their parties anymore. I wasn’t getting any work. I didn’t leave my room unless I had to.
The roundness of my face was becoming a slight double chin. I forced a smile. It made my face look rounder. I grabbed my bathrobe and threw it over the glass. That was more than enough of that thank you very much. I threw myself onto the bed.
I just wanted to go back to my old life!
Then I thought about all the cleaning work and poverty that would mean and I realised that that was the last thing I bloody needed.
But I did need an escape. I needed a way to get rid of my woes, even if it was only pretend. I tried to wrack my brain to remember what the original Topaz had done in my place to accomplish this.
When I remembered a cynical smile spread across my face.
She used to pretend to be me – to be Melissa – to be a cleaner.
I looked at my bedroom door, feeling light headed suddenly as though someone had offered to take my worries away. I went over to turn the key in the lock then felt foolish and left it as it was. Then I went over to the wardrobe, feeling like a little girl sneaking around after bedtime.
There were some Melissa belongings in there in a carrier bag – throwbacks from my predecessors time. I carried them over to the bed and started to go through them. There were shoes and a couple of dresses and a brown wig cut in Melissa’s bob style. And a pair of glasses, just like the pebbles I used to wear in my old life.
The hairs were standing up on my back as I drew them out. They felt odd in my hands. Heavy.
The dresses were too big for me by far. I discarded them. But the wig and the glasses…
I went through to my en-suite bathroom and laid them next to the sink. Then I popped out my contact lenses and put them away.
This was stupid – what I was doing. I’d condemned the original Topaz for doing what I was now considering. But at the same time, I could see why she’d done it now.
With the world a total blur around me, I reached for the glasses, pausing for a moment, then slipped them on.
It felt so bad. It felt so naughty. But the pressure of my worry had vanished and that was reason enough to go on.
In the mirror, just with the addition of these heavy frames, I didn’t look like Topaz anymore. I wasn’t sure who I looked like but not like her. I didn’t look like the woman who’d tried to make a comeback and ended up looking like a fool and a prostitute.
I looked like somebody else.
Then I picked up the wig. I’d never worn one before but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. I tipped it forward, touched it to my crown, then wrapped it back over my real hair.
In an instant my entire façade changed, driving away any last dark thoughts and leaving behind a pleasant aura of peace.
I really looked like someone else now.
I folded my arms, pushed my head back and tilted my head down, accentuating the little fold of flash under my chin. Then I smiled to further accentuate it.
I wished I was fatter to help create the illusion but I was still a long way off that. Nevertheless, all of these actions as well as my disguise made me look a little chubby - made me look more like HER.
“Hello,” I said, talking to my reflection. “I’m Melissa. Yes. I’m Melissa. I’m a cleaner. I clean house for that bitch Topaz. You know the one – that model who ended up blowing guys off in their cars.”
I froze. It was almost too convincing. It made it creepy.
I pulled the wig and glasses off and threw them on my bed.
This was pathetic and stupid. I wasn’t going to lower myself to it. I marched over to the window and looked out, trying to find something interesting to watch.
But there wasn’t anything and I found myself looking back over my shoulder at the Melissa disguise.
I was just so fed up with everything. I needed some escapism. That was all. It wasn’t pathetic because I could understand why somebody would want to do that.
I walked back across and picked them up. I put the glasses on and the wig. Then without a sound I slipped out of my clothes and lifted up one of Melissa’s dresses. It was much too big for me but that didn’t matter. I pulled it round my thighs and climbed in, zipping it up at the back. It had no sleeves and a round opening at the front. The hem hung above the knee. The shoes were going to fit me. They were medium heels. I ran my hand over the smooth leather of one of them and then put them down.
I looked at my reflection as I slipped first one foot in and then the other.
Then I stood there, staring at myself, feeling equal parts guilty, at peace and excited. Without taking my eyes off the mirror I reached for the pinny on the bed and tied it round my middle.
Now I really did look the part. I looked like HER.
Like Melissa.
“I’m a cleaner,” I said, “My name’s Melissa. I live in a scummy little house with my bastard good-for-nothing husband Robert. I don’t have a care in the world because I’m never going to amount to anything.” My voice even slipped back into the old mould.
I started cleaning around, vaguely at first but concentrating more as time went on. Since the paper came out and my decline became official I had left a great deal of clutter and mess all over the place.
And as I cleaned I kept stealing looks into the mirror and each time it startled me – first that Melissa was there in the glass cleaning the room when I hadn’t noticed her come in and second because I realised that for now, I was her.
“I’m Melissa,” I said, “a fat stupid cow who’s only good for two things: cleaning up and sucking her fat husband’s cock.”
Then I heard a knock at the door and I almost keeled over from the shock of it.
I froze, afraid I was going to have to explain myself – afraid that whoever it was had heard me talking.
I hadn’t turned the key in the lock. There was nothing to stop them coming in!
Adrenaline flooded every vein of my system before I found my voice.
“Who is it?”
I gaped. I’d said that in Melissa’s voice. I cleared my throat and made myself sound like Topaz again. “Who is it?”
“It’s me miss, Melissa” said a quiet voice from the other side of the door. “Sorry to bother you but I thought your room might need a good tidy. Can I come in?”
I looked down at my clothes. I felt the glasses on my face and the bobbed brown wig, the pinny round my waist.
What on earth was I going to do now?
* * *
The door handle quivered.
Melissa was outside, about to come in and here I was dressed in a parody of her outfit, looking like an imbecile – looking as foolish as she looked when she made her original attempt to ape my life.
My body was being flushed with nerve reactions I had never had before. I couldn’t let her see me like this. On top of everything else, the humiliation would crush me.
I let out a cry and ran through to the bathroom. I had to hide – had to stop her seeing me!
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
A muffled cry came from Topaz’s bedroom that made me frown.
All I was doing was popping up to see if she needed me to clean her room. Since that terrible story in the paper, she’d been in hiding; staying up here out of sight.
It was a little worrying. She hadn’t sounded herself when she first answered. Perhaps something had happened to her. Maybe she was hurt.
I turned the handle and opened the door.
Inside, the curtains were half closed. It was filthy – mess all over the place. Her bed was unmade, covers knotted and tangled at a peculiar angle.
No immediate sign of Topaz.
Then a door slammed, making me snap my head round to the left. It was the bathroom. She had to be in there.
I knew I should just leave her to it. She could be funny if pressed and she obviously didn’t want company, but on the other hand, for some reason, I felt a connection with her and I wanted to be sure she was okay.
I started walking toward the bathroom door.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
I frantically pulled at the Melissa clothes, ripping off the dress and shoes, tearing at the glasses to get them off. I threw them in the sink in a heap then looked round for something to cover myself up but there wasn’t anything. My clothes were in the bedroom!
From the other side of the door I heard Melissa say, “Miss? Are you all right?”
She was inside the room! I was trapped! She was going to realise something was going on!
A light knocking came. “Miss? Sorry to bother you in there. I was worried. Are you all right?”
“Go away!” I said, clearing my throat again because that had sounded like her when I spoke – like Melissa.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes! Everything’s fine! I’m okay!”
Silence. Then I heard her again. “Would you like me to give your room a quick clean?”
And before I could stop myself, in my exasperation, I pulled open the door and shouted “No! Just leave me alone!”
Melissa was standing just on the other side, wearing a sleeveless pullover and leggings, her hair tied back.
But we stood staring at one another. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I hadn’t seen her in a long time and she looked different. She didn’t look as fat. I didn’t understand.
Then it seeped into my mind that she was staring at me too and with horror I realised what she was looking at.
I was still wearing the brown bobbed-hair wig!
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
Topaz looked completely different than I remembered.
She’d died her hair brown and she’d had it cut into a similar style to mine.
And she’d put on weight. She was only wearing a bra and panties and her former, stick-thin figure was gone. She wasn’t what anybody would call fat but she was voluptuous and curvy. Perhaps even slightly plump. The model definition to her stomach and arms was gone. Her high cheek bones were no longer visible. Her cheeks had become a pleasant curve down to her chin.
She was still very beautiful but in a different kind of way and with her hair styled so drastically too, it was initially difficult to recognise her.
She’d looked angry as she emerged but the anger was washed away into shock. I could only think that she saw how much weight I’d lost and the surprise was hitting her.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said, “I’ll go.”
“I can explain,” she said.
“Explain what?”
Topaz looked up at her fringe.
“I like your new hairstyle. It suits you,” I said.
She squinted at me. “What?”
“The way you’ve had your hair done. It looks good.”
Her expression turned blank for a minute. Then it brightened as she realised what I was referring to. “Yes. My hair. I had it cut and dyed. I’m glad you like it.”
She was acting so strangely that it made me feel very unsure of myself. She was usually a lot more imperious. Odd.
“Well I’ll just leave you to it,” I said, “Sorry to disturb you.” I backed away. She didn’t say anymore. So I left.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
This was terrible. How could it have come to this?
I had talked myself into a corner and now I was stuck.
I’d told Melissa that my brown hairstyle was real. If I suddenly appeared again with longer blond hair then she was going to realise it was a wig. If she hadn’t guessed already she would guess what I had been doing.
After the humiliation I’d meted out to her, there was no chance I would allow her to get the upper hand. But I’d blundered into an impossible position now.
What was I going to do?
I walked over to the full-length mirror tentatively.
The image in the glass looked flushed and frightened. This woman didn’t look like the image I had grown to see as myself. Since I’d become Topaz I had felt indomitable confidence. In the last few weeks though that image had become fractured and I wasn’t so sure anymore.
I was going to have to keep this hairstyle in order to stop Melissa realising what I had been up to but I didn’t want to. With the recent weight gain, the banality of it dissolved the model façade. I didn’t look glamorous anymore.
I huffed. I couldn’t do this. But if I didn’t I ended up looking even worse. I would die before I let HER realise I’d sunk to her level.
I mean I hadn’t really. Not at all. It was just a game. Just a test. I hadn’t been obsessed with it like she was.
But still, I couldn’t allow her to know what I was doing.
So that was it then. I had to get it done.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
When I opened the front door as I got home, a pleasant smell greeted me. It took me a moment to identify it.
“Robert? Are you home?”
There was no answer so I shut the door and made my way through, following the scent.
He was in the kitchen, surrounded by clutter and mess as usual when I left him at home. There was a difference now though. This wasn’t the usual clutter of beer cans and junk food. There were dirty pans and open packets of ingredients – a bread board covered with potato peelings.
Robert looked caught out when he saw me and guilty, but he was wearing a shirt and he was clean-shaven. He grinned. “Oh no. I wanted to finish before you got back.”
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking dinner! Shepherd’s Pie!”
“What?”
“I’m cooking dinner!”
I touched his arm and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s wonderful Robert. I’m not complaining. But why the sudden change of heart?”
He broadened his grin. “I’ve got something to celebrate!”
“Celebrate? What is it? What’s happened?”
“I went to the bank today,” he said, “and I’ve sorted out a loan. For a new business. I’ve been thinking about what you said and I think you’re right. We can do this together. Start a business. Contracting building work.”
“My God Robert! That’s fantastic news!” I threw my arms round him. “Oh I love you so much!”
“I love you too sweetheart,” he said, hugging me back, “I love you too.”
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
When I got to the hairdressers I slipped off my headscarf and shook out my hair. I got a sight of myself in a mirror opposite, blond curls swinging into view and I almost turned back round to leave.
But a girl approached me before I got the chance and I didn’t want to look foolish. It was my regular hairdresser and she recognised me. “Hello! Do you want to take a seat?”
I sat where she motioned and she took a stance behind me, making eye contact through the mirror. “Yes. I’d like to have my hair coloured and cut.
“What kind of look are you going for?”
“I want to go brunette. And I want straight hair with a bob and a fringe.”
The girl frowned. “Are you sure?” She touched my hair. “All this body. It’s quite a big change.”
I stared at my face. At my beautiful hair. But I didn’t have any choice.
“Cut it off,” I said.
* * *
I looked at my reflection in the rear-view mirror of my car. It only allowed me to see part of my face at a time in a rectangular section but putting each of the sections together made up a dismal jigsaw.
My hair – my real hair – was milk chocolate brown now. A fringe ran level with my eyebrows and the rest of my hair made a tight helmet, stopping near the base of my neck.
I sighed. Then I sighed again. My stomach felt strangely empty as though the bottom had dropped off. I felt nervous. Edgy. I’d done something irrevocable here. It would take a long time to go back to my former style and until then I was stuck like this.
It made me angry and frustrated – that things could have gone so out of control. That wasn’t me anymore. It might have been – once, when I was still Melissa, but I was Topaz now. I was in charge. I was the rich beautiful one. Except I didn’t feel so beautiful anymore. Looking at my reflection, if anything, I felt plain. Ordinary.
What I needed was to go home. Relax. Put my feet up. Be waited on hand and―
But no.
What would the servants say when they saw me like this?
As a cleaner, still living my old life, I had been at the bottom of the pile of the staff. Everyone had lorded it over me. Now, as Topaz, I was finally on top. But they had to have seen the stories in the paper about me and laughed about it behind my back. And then with the weight gain and now, with my hair like this. I couldn’t face walking in there. Not tonight.
I’d get a hotel. That was simple enough.
But then again, that led to other problems. The paparazzi had been on my case since the stupid car thing. If they found out where I was then I was in trouble.
Unless I used an assumed name and disguised myself.
Yes. That would work. And with my new increased bulk and the change of hairstyle, that probably wouldn’t be too hard…
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
I chinked my glass to Robert’s and took a sip, smiling with my eyes over the top of the glass.
The glasses didn’t match and neither did the candles but it felt like we were in a million-pound restaurant. Robert had gone all out on the romance and it made me feel so brimming over with happiness.
“To our future together,” said Robert.
“And it’s going to be a happy future darling,” I replied, placing my hand on his. It was my second glass and I was already feeling tipsy. I’d never seen him looking so handsome. I wanted so much to move round the table and snuggle up against his chest but this was all so perfect as it was and I didn’t want to spoil it. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way,” I said, “So content. It’s amazing.”
“It’s all thanks to you. You were quite right. I’ve been wasting my life away for too long, being a slob and being rotten to you. And now it’s all going to be…”
“Going to be what?”
Robert was looking at me strangely. “Are you alright? You shuddered. You don’t look well.”
I touched my forehead. “I think so. Now you mention it, I did feel a shiver of something. For some reason I just started thinking about my boss Topaz. There’s something… It’s probably nothing. I just felt funny – like a feeling of déjà vu?”
Robert shrugged. “Do you want to lie down?”
I smiled. “In a minute darling. I want to finish eating your delicious dinner first. Then we can go and lie down together.”
* * *
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
My mind went blank when the girl on the admissions desk of the hotel asked me my name.
I had sunglasses on, which in the evening gloom was turning out to be a problem, but even through them I’d been able to see how pretty and slim she was – slimmer than I was now certainly. I’d been thinking cruel thoughts about a bus running her over when the question came and it confused me instantly.
I couldn’t use my own name. I couldn’t risk it and that hadn’t been the plan, but I hadn’t thought to plan an alternative. So I said the first thing that came to mind.
I gave her Melissa’s name.
As soon as it blurted out I wished I hadn’t used that name. Any name would have done better than that. But now it was out and that was that. It would have drawn attention to me to say anything else now. So I paid the money and went up to my room.
Since I’d become Topaz, most notably when we went abroad to effect the switch, I had stayed in several hotels. To be here now though, by myself, looking like I did, using THAT NAME – left me feeling otherworldly. Like a ghost. But I couldn’t tell if it was my surroundings or myself that was ethereal.
I dumped my coat over the back on a chair and surveyed the room, hands on my hips. Huge king-sized bed. Massive windows with closed floor-length curtains. I gravitated to the opal sheen oval full length mirror, afraid to approach close enough to see myself. My image edged into view opposite me.
I was tired already but seeing it sucked what little energy I had left from my limbs.
The sunglasses were still on and I looked like a stranger. I didn’t look like Melissa. Not like her. Thinking about that made me shiver. But I definitely did not look like Topaz anymore. I removed the sunglasses and threw them on the chair. That was better. My eyes and nose were Topaz’s. But the weight I’d put on made the clothes I was wearing fit badly. They looked tight and wrinkled; not glamorous at all.
And the hair made a huge difference. I was relieved I hadn’t gone home to fall under the scrutiny of the servants. I hated to think of their whispers and back-turned condemnations. After the years of feeling worse than them, I couldn’t bare to feel in anyway the same. It was why I hadn’t called my butler for a lift after that ill-fated party and although I could see it was as silly as that had been, I couldn’t help myself.
I placed my hands on top of my head and ran them down the sides of my hair. It did feel nice: smooth and shiny. Then I put them on my cheeks and felt the soft flesh there.
I crossed my arms on my chest and gripped the opposing fleshy upper arm.
What was I doing with my life?
I was losing track of what I had set out in this endeavour to do, losing the confidence and direction I’d gained.
What I needed was something to get me back on track – to make me feel better and as a by-product, boost my confidence.
What I needed was a proverbial shoeshine. So I found the room service menu and dialled the number.
Happiness was my biggest priority now and I could stand to put on a few more ounces before I really had to start worrying.
Couldn’t I…?
* * *
At the end of the first week in the hotel I smashed the mirror. I couldn’t stand to look at myself anymore.
In my former life as Melissa, eating had always been a refuge from my horrible existence. It didn’t make me feel happy but it distracted me enough that I forgot for a while what was getting me down.
The longer I stayed in the hotel, the more fed up I became. And the more I ate.
But it was a thorn-stemmed rose. I knew I was putting on more and more weight. It wasn’t that I was simply losing my figure as a model. I was getting fat. I’d heard that once weight got put on, even if you lost it, it became easier to build it back up again; and I had a lifetime of conditioning as a fat woman.
And the fatter I got, the more depressed I got. And the more I ate.
I didn’t leave my room. I didn’t let the cleaner in. I just sat in front of the TV, flicking from channel to channel, stuffing a succession of junk food and snacks into my mouth.
With the mirror shattered, I couldn’t see how far-gone I was. I didn’t like to think about it. I put all thought of it out of my mind.
I didn’t want to go home. Each pound I put on made me more and more ashamed of myself, more reluctant to show my face to anyone. I didn’t think about the future. I just thought about what I wanted to eat and what was on TV next.
I ran out of contact lens cleaning fluid. I tried to continue wearing them but it started to hurt my eyes. If I took them off I couldn’t see the television.
But I couldn’t bear to leave the room either to buy some more.
In desperation, I rooted through my handbag, searching for a spare bottle or some spare lenses. And that was when my hand closed round a heavy pair of pebble glasses.
I had no idea how they got in there. I couldn’t think of a conscious reason that I would have had to take them with me. But there they were. And I couldn’t see to watch television. And I couldn’t leave my room.
I didn’t want to put them on. I was afraid to.
But there was no one to see.
This time I did check that the door to my room was locked. I couldn’t risk anybody seeing me.
Then I put them on.
They weighed a lot. It felt odd to do it. But the room came instantly into focus. The dancing colours on the TV screen became people and cars and trees.
I settled back on the bed, bringing my knees up under me. Something funny happened on screen and I laughed.
This was better. It was much better.
I settled into as comfortable position as I could while still seeing the screen.
Yes. This was much better. I was happy now.
But if I was happy… why did I feel so bad?
* * *
Exactly a month after I checked into the hotel I hit the bottom.
The television was on but I was totally out of phase with any sound it was making. I stared up at the ceiling, arms and legs spread, no strength left to move. The curtains were so thick I couldn’t tell if it was dark or light outside. I couldn’t focus a thought or a motion.
But I knew in my mind that I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to get out or I was going to go crazy. The room was filthy. My bedclothes were littered with crumbs and sweat marks. The only clothes I had were the ones I’d arrived in and they were dirty, worn and riddled with creases.
I had to get up now and I had to get out, or I was never going to be able to. I had to clean myself up!
I wheezed, making myself stand and reached down for my clothes. Creasing my body made it hard to breathe.
I lifted up my clothes and frowned. They were so disgusting. I couldn’t bear to put them on. But there wasn’t anything else. So I laid the top down on the bed and held the jeans up. I tried to get them up to my waist but it was very hard. I lay back on the bed, pulling and wheezing. It took me almost ten minutes to get them up round my bum and there was no chance that I was going to be able to do up the zip. My stomach bulged out the front. I tried to take hold of it and cram it back in but I couldn’t. In the end I had to give up.
The top was a bit better. I managed to squeeze it on but some of the stitching gave way under one of the arms. It covered the top of my jeans and the fact my belly was exposed.
Even without the mirror, I could tell I looked a real mess.
This couldn’t be more than a stopgap and I was more petrified than ever of being recognised. I reached for my sunglasses but pulled short. Without my contact lenses they weren’t going to be any good. I needed to be able to drive. I was going to have to stick with the pebble glasses. I told myself that was better anyway. It would make it harder for people to recognise me as Topaz. So I kept them on, slipped with some difficulty into my shoes and made my way over to the door.
The corridor was empty. I closed the door after me and made my way as quickly as I could to the elevator. It took a long time to come. I kept looking over my shoulder up the corridor, ashamed that someone might see me like this. Even without the clothes as they were, I knew I looked terrible. I had put on so much weight and I had Melissa’s plain hairstyle and her horrible glasses.
The lift dinged and the doors opened. A middle-aged woman in a fur coat was already inside. She sneered at me as I got in, first merely to look at me and then at the stink I knew she could sense from my accumulated body odour. I had to get out of these clothes!
* * *
When I got to my car I drove into the poor side of town: Barton. I wanted to keep as much distance between myself and my life as Topaz as I could for now. When I was dressed in clothes that weren’t dirty – clothes that fit – I could face it but not until.
Barton was seedy. This was an even worse district than the one I’d lived in as Melissa. At night it was a dangerous place. By day the streets were filled with factory workers and seedy tattoo-riddled women. At night it was drug dealers and prostitutes. But it was good for shopping at a certain level. In my past life as Melissa I had come here often.
People stared as I hurried through the open-air shopping precinct. My cheeks were burning. Now I was here, I couldn’t think where to go. Every minute I spent out in the street was another minute of embarrassment. I had to choose somewhere. Then I spotted an Evans Outsize shop. There was absolutely no denying my weight gain. It was just something I had to live with.
When I got inside the shop I caught a glimpse of myself and my mouth dropped open. I would never have left the hotel if I’d realised how bad I looked.
I was really fat. There was a fold of fat around my face. My arms bulged. My boobs and stomach bulged. My clothes exaggerated every curve and crease. My bobbed hair and glasses added into this made me look more like Melissa than ever. If it hadn’t been for the plastic surgery making my nose straighter, I would have been her spitting image.
I quickly moved down the racks, looking for something that would fit me. Anything – I didn’t care what.
I found a sleeveless dress and took it to the dressing room to try on.
When I’d squeezed into it I stood, looking at myself. It made me want to cry. I didn’t look anything like Topaz anymore. If not for the ID in my handbag I couldn’t have convinced anybody of it.
What was I going to do?
I had to get away somewhere – abroad. I still had access to all of my Topaz money. I needed to consolidate it and go somewhere nobody knew me. I didn’t know where and it didn’t matter, but it had to be a long way and it had to be soon.
* * *
I made my way back through town in my new dress and a coat I’d bought. Now that I had changed I felt better.
However I still didn’t feel good.
No one was looking at me now, but that was almost as bad in a way. To them I was just another fat woman walking along with her head down. Nobody special. Not a beautiful model certainly.
How could it have come to this?
As I entered the multi-storey car park, my thoughts turned further and further inward toward self-pity. The sooner I got out of the country, the better.
Not watching where I was going I bumped into someone.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you there,” I said.
“Don’t worry darlin’. That’s just fine.” I looked up at him. He positively reeked of alcohol. Red bristles spiked out of his bloodshot skin. The vessels in his eyes were inflamed too. He grinned. “Can you spare a bit of change?” His voice had an Irish lilt to it.
“No. Sorry,” I said, trying to pull round him.
“What about in that bag?” he said, grabbing my handbag.
“No. Please!” I pulled back at it, trying to get free.
Then the drunkard’s eyes turned black.
His head shot forward, bashing into my face.
I screamed and fell backwards.
The handbag got torn out of my hands.
I landed on the concrete floor.
I screamed again.
The vagrant was running away.
Blood was coming out of my nose.
He had my bag.
My car keys.
All my money.
My bank cards.
My ID.
I was hurting all over my body from the fall but the most stinging direct pain I had ever felt was driving itself into the centre of my face.
I was dizzy.
I couldn’t gather my thoughts or catch my breath.
Couldn’t get up.
And then I passed out.
Lying on the floor under the bumper of one of the parked cars, I passed out.
* * *
When I woke up I was lying on my front, face down on the wet concrete. My face lay sideways, dampness against my cheek. My nose was aching dully. The concrete was pressing it sideways.
I didn’t know what had woken me up. Then there was a long blare of a car horn and I realised. I lifted my head off the floor and turned to look. I was blocking a car from driving through the multi-storey car park. The driver looked angry. He hit the horn again. “Get out the way, you fat bitch!”
I struggled up, feeling nauseous and disoriented, using a parked car for leverage. My extra bulk made it harder to stand straight but even despite that, I was weak all over.
The car drove past, its engine revving, horn blasting over and over again. The driver was still shouting. “Stupid cow!”
What had happened to all the men fawning over me, checking to see if I was perfectly happy?
They were gone. That was where. I wasn’t slim anymore. I was just a fat bitch. A stupid cow. Just like he said.
There was blood from my nose on my face. My clothes were wet. I needed to find somewhere to clean up and then I had to go home. I couldn’t bear to be out in this horrible world anymore. I just wanted to be back in my own room.
Barely staying upright, I staggered along the row of cars, looking for mine. It was a little red Ferrari and it was parked near the end. I fell against the bonnet, full of relief and made my way round to the door.
And then I remembered.
I didn’t have my keys! They were in my handbag and the vagrant had taken them!
All I wanted to do was get inside and I couldn’t. I could see the little button that would release the lock through the glass but I couldn’t get to it!
It crossed my mind to break the window but that wouldn’t do any good. I needed the keys to start it. And the alarm would go off too. Without the keys to stop it, someone might come and my ID was in the bag too. I looked so different to how I was meant to. What if I was arrested? I shuddered to think about the horror of finding myself at the police station with a questionable identity. My fingerprints were still Melissa’s. If they checked them I would be trapped back in that identity.
For several minutes I remained leaning against the car before I realised I had to struggle on. There were some public toilets at the entrance to the car park. I made my way down to them.
* * *
The toilets were filthy. The tiled floor was covered in wet black footprints. The lighting was a dingy violet.
In the mirror was a monstrous reflection.
I looked terrible, blood on my face from my nose. I touched it and winced. Then I got some tissue paper and dabbed at it, cleaning my skin. I got closer to the mirror as I did it, peering through my glasses at the chubby woman reflected there and as I did so I realised that something was wrong with my face. Even bearing in mind my new chubbiness, the plain bobbed hairstyle and the thick glasses, something else didn’t look right.
Then I realised what it was.
My nose – where the vagrant had head-butted me. It was broken.
Since the plastic surgery that turned me into Topaz, that nose had been straight and beautiful. Now it bulged slightly in the middle and hooked down at the end.
Just like it had when I was Melissa.
The face in the mirror turned white.
The worst thing had happened. The worst possible thing.
I was so fat now and with everything else, I looked like her again. I looked like Melissa!
I was Melissa again!
I’d lost my ID and my money. I’d let my looks slip. I’d put on an enormous amount of weight. I couldn’t even get back into my car!
All the put-downs I subjected the original Topaz to came back to me with horrifying clarity. Because everything I had said – every insult – could be levied back at me now.
I was a fat cow with no prospects. No longer slim. No longer beautiful.
I’d lost everything. In my stupidity and arrogance, I’d thrown it all away!
I put my hands on my chubby cheeks and started to shake my head hysterically.
“No! It’s not possible! It can’t be!”
But it was true.
It had happened.
I was Melissa again!
The cleaner.
* * *
It took me three hours to hitchhike home to the mansion but by the time I got there I knew in my mind what I was going to do.
I wasn’t going to give up the life I’d developed as Topaz!
No way!
I’d made some bad choices – put myself in a very difficult position – but I was on the way back now. This wasn’t going to stop me. I was going to overcome it. If it took me months or years I was going to scramble back into position as Topaz again.
Nobody knew I had sunk this low. The original Topaz was still ignorantly living my old life. All I had to do was get back into my room, lock the door and retake my throne.
A new hairstyle, new contact lenses, some more surgery and some serious training, and I’d be back on top. I could even win back my modelling career! It didn’t matter that my old boss had tried to ruin my career. When I was finished with him he’d wish he’d never met me.
All I had to do was get to my room without being seen.
I sneaked round to the back door and went into the kitchen. It was late afternoon now and I knew the cook was likely to be in the kitchen so I had to move very carefully. Making my way up to the lip of the door I peeped round. She was working at the table, chopping vegetables for what was probably the servants’ evening meal. I waited until she broke off to go into the pantry then quickly tiptoed through.
The house was empty. I made my way as quickly as I could to the back staircase and up to the first floor. Still no one around.
The corridor was very long that led to my bedroom. I moved quickly, hurrying to get into cover. I couldn’t risk―
“Excuse me!”
I froze. It was Roger – the butler’s voice. He was behind me, maybe twenty feet back down the corridor.
My bedroom door was only a couple of steps ahead. I could see the handle. All I had to do was reach out…
“Where do you think you’ve been?” he said, walking toward me. I still didn’t turn round. “Melissa? Answer me!”
My heart stopped. He thought I was HER.
All I had to do was go through the door in front of me, but it was too late now. That might ruin everything. I had to play along.
“Melissa, that is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” I whimpered.
“I thought it must be. It’s hard to miss that backside. It’s like the broad side of a barn.”
I turned to face him, afraid that he would recognise me as Topaz but part of me wishing he would.
He didn’t and my heart sank. “Where have you been? And where were you yesterday? You can’t just not turn up for work without contacting us.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Not turn up for work? What did that mean? Where was the new Melissa? Why hadn’t she come?
“Well you can get to work now,” said Roger sharply, “Topaz may be back any day and we need to keep things spotless.”
I frowned. He couldn’t do this to me but what other choice did I have? If I told him I was Topaz it might cause all sorts of problems. He would never believe me for a start. I couldn’t risk it.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked meekly.
“Get down to the hall and clean the floor.”
“Are you serious?”
“Don’t talk back to me you fat bitch! Now get down there and get cleaning. And don’t forget that Topaz ordered that you do all the cleaning on your hands and knees with a scrubbing brush. That means no mops. Is that clear?”
I nodded forlornly.
“I said is that clear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well get to work then!” he snapped.
* * *
There was a wall mirror in the hall. I looked at myself as I knelt down, scrubbing.
I looked like her. Melissa.
With my chubby arms and legs, my chubby face, my giant hanging boobs and double chin, I more than looked like her. I was her. I was Melissa again. Nothing but a cleaner, scrubbing and sweating as I did my job.
It was pitifully ironic – how I was in her place again, on my knees now because of the humiliation I had performed on her. Now I was the one being humiliated and I felt it. I felt like a fool. But more than that. It focused my mind.
I wasn’t going to let this get to me. I said that over and over to myself. I wasn’t going to become a loser again.
But another glance in the mirror told me that I was a loser. I was pathetic. I was the cleaner again.
* * *
None of which explained what had happened to the new Melissa – the former Topaz.
Roger had said she hadn’t turned up for work now for two days with no word. Was she ill? Or worse, had something drastic happened to her? Was she dead?
I shuddered to think about it.
Then my feelings shifted and I grinned.
I realised that I wanted that to happen. I wanted her to die, trapped in that body and life. I wanted her to be buried under a headstone with the name Melissa on it – trapped in that identity for all time.
And if she wasn’t dead I wanted her to plunge down to the bottom. I wanted her life to be ruined. It made me smile more and more to think about it.
I got to my feet and wandered over to the shelf just inside the front door. There were letters there addressed to Topaz. I flicked through them on a hunch.
Then I spotted one written in Melissa’s handwriting. It was from her.
I opened it up eagerly, glancing around to check I wasn’t being watched. But as I read my forehead creased in a frown.
She was quitting.
She didn’t want her job as a cleaner anymore. She had given it up and was never coming back!
This wasn’t fair! This wasn’t what I had imagined! She was supposed to be on her deathbed – not giving up her job for better things! She didn’t say what those better things were but it galled me that she felt she was rising up from her lowly position.
How could she think she was better than me?
But then I looked in the mirror again and realised that unless I did something drastic – unless I lived up to the vows I had made to get back on top – she was going to have won! Because she was better than me. For now I was still on the bottom and she was above me. I was the cleaner and she wasn’t anymore. I was nothing but a servant - a fat woman with drab clothes and drab hair and thick glasses.
Roger, the butler, stuck his head round the corner of the hall doorway.
“Stop swanning around, you fat cow!” he snapped, “That’s how you got so fat in the first place. Get down on you knees and get scrubbing!”
I looked down at the floor sorrowfully then did what he said.
Because I didn’t have any choice. Until I could sneak upstairs, it was me that was trapped in this body and life. I was trapped as Melissa!
* * *
I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t believe that I was trapped as Melissa again.
Fat body, folds of flesh wrapping round my stomach. Plain clothes, plain hair. Thick pebble glasses.
But I couldn’t get my life as Topaz back. It didn’t seem possible. Roger, the butler, knew I was in the house as Melissa and he knew that “Topaz” was missing. I couldn’t just walk up to my room and lock myself in. He would want to know where “Melissa” had gone and he would see that Topaz’s car had not returned. When he banged on my door I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to reply in Topaz’s voice. When I was thin and beautiful it was easy to make myself sound authentic. Now, looking fat and plain like I did, my nerves and lack of self-esteem made my voice quiver when I tried.
I had spent hours on my knees cleaning the house now – hours living the pathetic existence I had tried so hard to escape. Was I trapped like this? Was I ever going to be able to escape?
The end of the day came too quickly.
I had scrubbed and cleaned without pause. My knees were sore. My hands were raw. Every muscle was aching. And worst of all I was starting to realise that I was finished.
However much I tried to tell myself I wasn’t defeated, I knew that I was. How could I ever reclaim Topaz’s life?
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t speak like her. I didn’t look like her. Nobody would ever believe me. I had Melissa’s face, body hair and fingerprints.
And I deserved it, I knew that now. I recognised that for what it was.
I had had a chance at being a beautiful model. I could have used my position to do good and bring happiness. But I hadn’t. I had done everything I could to ruin the lives of the people around me. Now I was paying the price. Because I was living the life of humiliation I had set up for her.
As the end of “my” shift came I went to see Roger and begged him to pay me for the day in cash rather than by check. I couldn’t stay there and without my purse or car I had nowhere else to go – no other means of making money. He sneered at me but capitulated.
There wasn’t much but it would have to do. If I was lucky I’d be able to find a cheap room to rent in Barton.
I trudged down to the tube station, each lumbering step becoming slower and more desperate.
This was my life again. It was my life. There was no way out. And however bad it had been before I had ever become Topaz, it was far worse now because I had no house and no husband. It crossed my mind to go back there and demand the impostor leave, but I couldn’t bare to think about it. I couldn’t face that humiliation.
No. I would come back to work the next day, and the day after that. And I would clean that house. I would scrub the toilets and swab the floor on my hands and knees.
After all, that was all I was now again.
A cleaner.
And the only thing I had to look forward to – my only pleasure, was that while I was living from hand to mouth for the rest of my days in whatever squalid little flat I could find, at least that bitch Topaz was stuck in my old life and stuck with that monster of a husband.
At least she was unhappy too.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL TOPAZ
“Have you seen this?”
Robert smiled as he dropped the newspaper down on the desk in front of me. He leaned over and pecked me on the cheek. I caught his neck before he straightened up and pulled him into a longer kiss. It was beautiful.
“I love you,” I said.
He grinned like an ape. “You’re just saying that because we’re doing so well.”
“That’s not true.” I smiled wryly. “I love you because of your huge cock.”
He gave a bellow laugh and dropped into one of the comfortable visitor chairs at the front of the office.
I turned the newspaper he’d brought in over and looked at the picture. It startled me. It was a picture of my old boss Topaz – that old picture of her caught in the act in the back of that car.
The headline said DISGRACED MODEL DISAPPEARS.
It made me feel odd to see it.
I scanned down the article.
“Looks like you got out just in time,” said Robert. “Apparently, Topaz’s brother is planning to close the house down and sack all the staff. You’d have been out on the street too if you’d still been there.”
He was right. The article said all that. Mostly though it was speculation about her shame after her failed comeback attempt and fall into prostitution.
I felt sorry for her. “Wherever she is now, I hope she’s happy.”
Robert snorted. “She was a bitch. I hope she ends up living in some doss hole giving five quid blow jobs. That’s what she deserves.
I shrugged. He was probably right.
We were doing so well now – not just as husband and wife but as business partners. I was so glad I’d left that place when I did. Our building contractor business was growing fast. He oversaw the work with an ever-increasing team of builders, plumbers and decorators, and I looked after the accounts and office work, getting new customers and promoting the business in general.
Our offices were bright and spacious. It was a pleasure to come in to work every day and I finally felt as though I was doing something important with my life.
My memory was patchy but I remembered enough to know I’d been a cleaner most of my adult life. Now I had a job that was important. Robert and I were helping couples build their dream homes. Without our affordable prices, that wouldn’t have been possible. I no longer felt worthless. I was somebody.
Melissa.
For a while that name had felt like a millstone. It didn’t anymore. Now it was a badge of honour.
I was a winner.
I wasn’t a cleaner anymore.
I laughed to myself, sitting back in my comfortable leather chair and winking at my husband.
I hired my own cleaner now.
It was so nice to be the boss for a change instead of the underling.
“You’re gorgeous, Melissa,” said Robert, “Do you know that?”
I smiled at him. I was positively slim now and felt great because of it.
“You should consider becoming a model.”
He laughed and I laughed too.
“Maybe I will,” I said, “Maybe I will.”

[MorphKitty]

Posting this took some editing so let me know if you see any problems.

This is the last of the Emma Finn stories I have, except for some captured image stories that I'm also trying to get posted here.

[Heather]

It's rarely that someone can say this and it be true but...the remake of this is better than the original. And this one is AMAZING. I love you Emma!!!

[EmmaFinn]

Thanks Heather!

[Vended]

Would be great if you could tag your works.

[Jessloma]

I'm so sad...Emma Finn died 19 August 2016!!!
Rest in peace.

[kylekatarn77]

Wait what?! Where did you hear this, don't fucking joke shit like that if it's not true!

[Burke_Rakers]

Wait what?! Where did you hear this, don't fucking joke shit like that if it's not true!

It's sad, but also true. She will be missed.

http://transformation-stories.blogspot. ... r-and.html