by BigBird74
1.
My bedroom sits at the front of the penthouse atop one of the tallest
buildings in New York. Oh yes, I am fabulously rich, though unlike my
snap-happy sister I do not parade it about town. My sister is what my father
calls ‘the face of the family’. She is happy to cut ribbons, date reality stars
and post an endless stream of fatuous photographs onto the web. Yes, she is
very much the publicity hog of the family, while I prefer to play second fiddle
leading a much more private life.
Sure I make it into the gossip columns every now and again, but there is no
way I would ever be recognised walking down your average high street. I do not
have to worry about the steady accumulation of column inches that my sister
gets every time she changes the way she wears her hair. Still all is not what
it seems. She recently won an award for ‘Woman of the Year’ for organising a
cycling marathon that yours truly had spent an entire weekend working on, while
‘Madame Publicity’ as I called her sat by the pool.
Do I sound slightly bitter? Well, maybe I am a little. But I love my sister
despite her efforts to hog every spotlight she sees. It has always been like
that. I was the smart one. The dependable one. As the older sibling, my father
knew that one day his vast fortune would be mine to dispense with, so naturally
he tried to make sure I had the skills needed to protect his legacy. While I
spent my time with him discussing numbers and buildings, my sister got to ask
him which dress was prettiest. In some ways I was the son my father never had.
My mother, a doe-eyed beauty queen, had left him shortly after I was born and
he had never remarried. So that was it. No son, and only me to fill that hole.
Yes daddy’s empire was huge. He regularly make the list of the world’s
richest people, his name sitting proudly between various sheiks and tech
tycoons. As his eldest daughter, I should have been set for life. But, as I
will explain, this was not to be. For my life was about to take a turn for the
unexpected. Still, on this bright and sunny morning, nothing seemed out of the
ordinary as I slipped out my bed wearing only an expensive silk nightie.
I walked towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one of the sides
of my apartment, with a view down upon Central Park. Pressing my hand to the
window pane, I leaned forwards and gazed down towards the road below, which was
already bustling with tourists and workers. I smiled, thanking my luck that I
was not one of ‘them’, stuck with their routine lives. Since I was young I had
realised how fortunate I was, that my life was not going to sink into the dull
or meaningless routine many women have to face. At the same time, I knew this
was not how most people lived and was extremely grateful for being born with a
silver spoon in my mouth.
I stretched my lithe and toned body upwards into a yoga pose I learned from
my personal trainer. Although, unlike my sister, I did not want the limelight,
I did want to be desirable. While lacking my sister’s long blonde mane of
tousled hair, I did have straight auburn hair carefully styled into long
straight lines that sit neatly on my shoulders. My body was sculpted by years
of careful toning and exercising, the best than money could buy. My pert
posterior, small but firm breasts and long legs were almost model like. I say
almost, because the shadow from my sister’s fame put me very much in the shade
and she was the one was destined for that kind of life. I suppose my dress and
assertive manner did not help. I liked to play the part of a serious
businesswoman: knee-length, tight pencil skirts and blouses were my choice of
wardrobe, not the tight, body-hugging short little things favoured by my
sister.
I let my nightdress fall off my shoulders and slip to the floor in a heap
at my feet. Stepping forwards I pressed both of my palms against the window,
totally naked and enjoying the thrill it gave me. Pausing for a moment, I
caught my breath and turned towards the bathroom to get ready for the day ahead.
I slinked across the bedroom and felt good about myself, my life and my
prospects.
The day ahead was busy. My family owned and ran one of the world’s largest
chains of hotels employing tens of thousands of people. My penthouse was
situated atop our flagship property in the heart of Manhatten. I chose my home
carefully, making sure I was far enough from my father to maintain a degree of
independence I would not have if I lived in the same building as him and my
sister. I checked my clock and saw I only had 20 minutes before my chauffer
would be waiting for me downstairs. I hurried myself to get ready, I did not
want to be late.
2.
When I finally emerged from my apartment block, I was the very image of
elegant, business-like understatement, dressed in a figure hugging, knee length
black dress all covered up by a long cream coloured coat. My long auburn hair
was pulled back into a long ponytail. I strode confidently on my three-inch
pumps to my waiting car, twisting and turning my body as I manoeuvred myself into
the plush leather seats, my skirt riding up past the knee to the middle of my
shapely thighs. As the car left the sidewalk, I checked my face in my little
hand mirror and smiled at the beautiful young woman looking back, my lush red
lips painted to perfection, complementing my slightly shadowed eyes.
Today I was visiting one of our hotels on the main road running out of
Manhatten and into upstate New York. It was far away enough to be considered
semi-rural, just at the point the greater city of New York petered out into
rolling fields. It was going to take some time to get there, but should be
worth it. We were in the middle of expanding our hotel network aggressively,
aiming at cutting the ribbon on a new premises every few months. Many insiders
thought us insane. It could take months, if not years, for a new hotel to
operate efficiently and they said this could not be done according to the
timetable we had set ourselves. An important part of my job was to see that
this did not happen. I was in charge of setting common policies for all staff
across our family’s sprawling empire. This covered simple things from uniforms
and appearance to detailed policies on leave and pay.
The hotel I was visiting today was considered an outstanding success. We
had not seen any of the problems associated with other hotels at this
particular branch and I was travelling there today to see what we could learn.
I sat back in the deep leather seats and took a moment to gaze out of the
window, watching the ‘ordinary’ people hurry about their lives. I found myself
wondering about their lives. I tried to guess what kind of work they did; what
they wished for; how old they were; what drove them to do just what is was they
were doing. People watching is a double-edged sword. One moment you can feel
terribly superior, sure of what you are and why you are there, then the doubt
can set in. I would find myself questioning why I was so lucky, what had I done
to deserve this? You see I was not all I seemed to be. A big part of the reason
why I preferred the shade to my sister’s sun is that deep down, I could be
deeply insecure. This would typically manifest itself in what people would see
as occasional bouts of shyness, but that was only part of the story. Over the
past few weeks, I have gorging on a steady diet of online erotica that I recently
discovered on an unusual story site called Changing Mirror.
For whatever reason, I was increasingly finding myself drawn to stories
that dwelt on humiliation and loss of power, both themes provoking a fire
inside of me that I could only quench by looking for more material. Recently I
had come across websites full of pictures of girls in a variety of bondage
poses, all trussed up in an intricate web of ropes and knots. The imagery was
still fresh in my mind and I felt a knot in my stomach. I reached into my bag
and took out my laptop. Somewhat guiltily I glanced up to check that the driver
was not watching me, my actions starting to border on the furtive. The fact
that he spoke to me like a modern-day princess, while inside my head I had
images of me tied up like the girls from the website, only made me shiver. I
crossed and uncrossed my legs again, letting my skirt ride higher up my legs,
my silky thighs rubbing and sending a cascade of pleasurable emotions running
through me. I opened my laptop and went to my now favourite website and
devoured another story. The time passed rapidly as the town turned to
countryside and we arrived at the hotel.
“Miss Webb. We are here”, the chauffer’s voice informed me crisply.
“Thank you Charles. I am not sure how long this will take.” I paused
feeling that little pang of guilt at making him wait, not what one would expect
of a high-flying executive I thought to myself. I pushed the feeling to one
side, collected my things, and left the car, striding into the hotel.
3.
Upon entering the hotel, I was greeted by the manager, a stern faced man
who radiated an air of deadly seriousness. I smiled and shook his hand
politely. Once the formalities were over, I was quickly ushered into a meeting
room where I was surrounded by men bombarding me with meaningless compliments
about my work. I smiled inwardly. The fakeness of the whole situation, both my
own feelings and their empty gestures embarrassed me slightly. This was a
problem with working for a large company family - the obsequiousness that
surrounded me risked seriously clouding my judgement. It was something I needed
to watch for carefully. That said, the few times I had encountered genuine
resistance, I had found myself a little lost for words. Now that I look back at
it and imbued with my newfound sense of eroticism, I could see that maybe –
just maybe – this had provoked feelings of submissiveness in me.
After settling down for the presentation, my mind inevitably wandered. The
room we were in was separated from the body of the hotel by a thick glass
window that was frosted across its middle third, letting those sitting down
inside the room to gaze out into the main lobby. I nodded and half-listened to
the presentation, while looking out of the window and started my favourite game
of people watching again.
Outside of our room was who I assumed was a middle-aged Latino woman. Her
stature was short and stout, with thick limbs. The dress she wore was ill
fitting as most off-the-shelf work clothing usually is. Her hair was dark,
almost jet black with occasional flecks of grey running around her temples. The
style was truly awful, like some hangover from the 1980s: short bangs and a
long ratty looking mullet. She was mopping the floor and was slowly working her
way past the window. As she skirted past, I thought of her life and how it
would feel to be trapped in such a dead-end job. The image that came to mind of
her drab existence appalled me. I could picture her at home cooking food for
some slob of a man, wearing a stained vest, days of stubble coating his droopy
jaw. I breathed in smelling his sweat and odour and shuddered inwardly, the
whole scene playing out in my mind.
I looked back across the table towards the manager who was explaining how
his staff were recruited through a new agency. I smiled. This was code in our
industry for hiring illegals. I watched as the cleaner stepped out of sight and
went one step further in my imaginings. Surely she was an undocumented worker.
She was trapped in a world of low wages with few, if any, rights. I was
familiar with the complaints of the various NGOs I had dealings with, who would
describe the virtual modern day slavery some of these workers would find
themselves in, effectively indentured by an informal understanding between my company
and the authorities. Sure it was illegal, but without it everyone would have to
pay more and we would have less money to devote to campaign funds. That
circular logic meant we kept the right people happy and were largely left
alone.
Thankfully the meeting drew to an early close and we were escorted around
the building to see how things worked in practice. As I progressed around the
hotel, I took some mental notes of useful things the manager had done to keep
the place running well. Still, I sniffed, it basically seems to boil down to
cheap – very cheap – labour, which was something we could not emulate in our
flagship properties, though perhaps it would be possible at other locations
further out of town. It may even be an option to use this model at our newer
locations, where all the staff were new and would not know one another.
Towards the end of the visit, we were ushered into one of the penthouse
bedrooms, a suite that had been developed specifically for premium customers.
At first I felt rather underwhelmed, but then the room opened up into a
cavernous interior replete with the gaudy ornamentation favoured by the newly
rich. It was rich trash to the extreme! In the corner of the room, somewhere
behind us, came a crash. We all turned around to see the thick-set maid I had
watched earlier. She had knocked over a bucket and was on her hands and knees
mopping up the spilled water.
“Sorry… I clean now”, she said in her thick accent.
The manager was clearly upset and, as he approached her, the maid seemed to
quiver. It was then something weird happened, I also started quivering. It
would have been totally imperceptible to anyone watching, but to me it felt so…
so… nice. For that split second, I imagined having someone with such power over
me. The whole scene seemed to bring together many of the fantasies I had played
with on the story site. I breathed in deeply as we stepped from the room,
leaving the awkward situation behind us, though, as we walked down the hallway,
the scene and the feelings I experienced replayed again and again in my head.
On my journey back home, I sat frozen in my seat smiling a little at the
dirtiness of what had happened back at the hotel. I squirmed thinking of the
seediness of the whole affair and opened up my laptop to visit my favourite
website.
4.
It took some time to return to my penthouse. Normally I might have been
irritated or frustrated by the long lines of traffic snaking their way into the
city centre, but not this time. My mind was elsewhere, floating around what I
had seen earlier that day during my site visit. Surfing the web, I had found a
few sites dealing with something called ‘downgrades’. Initially I skipped past
them not understanding what the label really meant. That was until I found a
site called lady2maid.
I must have looked completely absorbed as the driver did not bother me the
whole time. I was so engrossed by the new reading material I had discovered
and, with nothing else to do, I devoured story after story about wealthy women
who were forced to live like maids. It stirred something deep inside of me, a
mixture of fear, taboo, excitement, anxiety, sexual desire and pure,
unadulterated eroticism.
For the first time the image of myself, Katherine Webb, heiress to a
multi-billion dollar fortune, scraping and serving as a maid hit me! My lips
parted and I took in a sharp breath of tense, anxious excitement. My fingers
traced a line around the uniform of one of the maids featured on the site, the
dark, crisp dress: a tight, almost corset like top that flared out into a
pretty puffed up skirt, held aloft by a thick taffeta petticoat. She looked so
pretty, so submissive. I flicked through the site gazing at the pictures, each
one confirming this newly discovered fantasy with a tremor of arousal that ran
through my body to between my legs.
By the time we arrived home, I had exposed myself to so many stories and
pictures that I could do nothing else but hurry upstairs, brushing past the
staff, and locked myself in my penthouse. Within seconds I was naked on my bed,
writhing with my fingers firmly planted into my dampness. It was then my mind
flicked back to the rush of feelings I had when the hotel manager has spoken
sharply to that cleaner. For a second, I imagined I was her. I was the cleaner.
The electricity that coursed through my arms and legs was like nothing I had
felt before. I ground my fingers in deeper and deeper, until I climaxed in huge
orgasmic wave.
I lay there for some minutes before, opening my eyes and staring at the
ceiling, an idea brewing in my head. I rolled over and reached again for my
laptop, searching for an email I had been sent just the day before and had
routinely ignored as something I would never have concerned myself. Fortunately
I had a personal assistant that handled many of the mundane aspects of my job
and I rarely had to concern myself with the minutiae of running my departments.
Not on any usual day. I smiled: this was not usual. Scrolling down, I found the
email was searching for: “New uniforms for cleaning staff”.
I read through the email and replied: “Please send me the latest samples. I
wish to see them for myself. All sizes please.” Just for a second I paused.
Would this look odd? I smiled. It was fine for me to take an interest in the
staff’s appearance, it was a central part of my job after all. My finger
hovered over the mouse button for some seconds and then *click* it was gone.
I slumped back onto my silk sheets and pressed my arms and legs up and down
the bed, taking in the smoothness and luxurious softness of the bedding. My
life was one of unimaginable luxury and I never failed to realise that but,
even so, it was something I almost took for granted. I could never imagine how
it would feel to be that cleaner, how it actually felt. The whole idea of
swapping bodies with someone was something that struck me as absurd, but what
if it were possible, just for a few hours. I again felt that tremor between my
legs and wetted my lips. To actually BE that cleaner for a while. The idea sent
thousands of little pins and needles up across my back. It was then another
idea crossed my mind, one that was to turn my life upside down.
5.
It took a little searching but I found a file that contained a list of new
hotels to be opened over the next few months. Given the ambition of our
expansion plan, there was a long list with new hotels scattered all over the
country. One or two were even in what we termed ‘unconventional’ markets,
shorthand for risky which, in less business-like language, were somewhat ‘out
of the way’. My back arched in a feline curve as I lay my stomach down on the
bed, stretching my back. I took a deep breath and saw what I considered to be a
perfect place for my idea: Abbottsville. Heck where was it exactly? Scouring
Google Earth for a minute, I located the site of the new hotel, about a
two-hour drive outside of Wisconsin on the road leading West towards the two
Dakotas.
I scanned the details. The hotel was due to open in about 2-3 months. They
would start recruiting for staff in the next few weeks. Given its whereabouts, any
recruits would have to come from the local area. That is, I thought, except
one. Our hotel chain ran a scheme for talented staff to transfer from one hotel
to another. Often the receiving hotel would benefit from that member of staff’s
experience and, in turn, they would receive a set of privileges to make it
worth their while. I mean, think about it, spending months away from home is
not easy. I smiled and thought again, spending months away from home….
I mulled the options over again and again in my head, trying to find fault
in the plan rapidly brewing in my head. I could assume an alter ego and travel
to the new hotel as one of these transfer staff. I could easily create a
fictitious identity that no-one would suspect. I could become a cleaner. I could
BE just like that cleaner I saw yesterday. My back seemed to tingle with
hundreds of pins and needles. I drew myself up in a fetal ball, my hands
cupping my legs and drawing them close to my body. The thought was powerful and
highly erotic. But was it practical? I could easily come up with a reason to be
away from the office for a week at a time, but any longer than that? Hmm that
could be tough.
For a moment, I felt deflated. Perhaps this whole thing was ridiculous. I
mean, what was I thinking? Why would I risk such exposure? What if it went
wrong and I was recognised? Feeling a little sick and as though I had lost
something, I shut the files, saving them all into a new folder to read later,
though I could not shut my mind down and it kept returning to the same thought.
Again and again I worked through the possibilities, each time solving one
problem, before discovering a further weakness.
Gradually a plan of sorts took shape. I had numerous doubts and concerns,
but I felt that this could work. Since I was a child, I had found that the best
way to overcome procrastination is to force yourself into something. So I told
the first of many little white lies. I entered the personnel system and created
a new employee: Marta Fernandez. The sizzling between my legs was delicious and
intense. I pressed my body down onto the quilt and continued.
Age: 24
Place of birth: Mexico City
Qualifications: Basic
school certificate
Each entry seemed to excite me further. Was it illegal? I had no idea, but
it sure felt good. Now you may be thinking how is Katherine going to fool
people into believing she is Mexican? Well you need to know two things.
Firstly, I chose Abbottsville hoping there would be no other Latina staff. A
stretch you may be thinking, but not when I controlled staffing policy for the
hotel. I had studied Spanish for eight years and I think it should be
sufficient to fool most people. As for appearance I naturally had auburn hair.
I could fix that with a temporary wash every night and make it jet black. And
as for my skin, well tanning liquid should do the trick there.
The only part of my plan that could cause problems was the prolonged
absence from work. But I even had a plan for that. I would announce a grand
tour of hotels that we owned abroad. Daddy would not mind if, for once, I
extended the trip into a well-deserved break with occasional work duties. I had
never asked this of him before and I am sure I was due a favour. Either way,
this is the 21st Century. All I need do was write a few emails and keep answering
questions and I should be able to balance things. The tanning product I planned
on using only lasted a week, so if needed I could make a return at a few days’
notice.
I saved the
profile on the system. Marta was now officially on the books. I shut my laptop
and rolled over giggling about what I had done.
6.
The following weeks featured many more ‘little’ lies.
I had to keep telling myself that that was it they were, little white lies, or
else I would send myself into a panic as to what I was doing. Since I was
young, I have found it easier to do difficult things if I think a little less
and just act. I suppose I am naturally impulsive and, while to date, I had not
suffered as a result, there were a few times I had skirted close to disaster.
Still each of my new lies were now reinforcing older ones. Marta was on the
books. A few days later, I had needed to make up a social security number.
Then, if that was not bad enough, I crossed my own personal Rubicon. Personnel
had requested a photograph.
When I first read that request my heart had jumped several somersaults and
my stomach sunk to my feet. In all my planning and scheming, I had not thought
that particular problem through. I searched my aching head for an alternative –
any alternative – to actually sending a picture. I thought of using a fake
picture off the internet, but that would merely be adding to my troubles. Oh
god! I had really gotten myself into a tangle here.
It was then I considered actually taking a photograph and actually sending
them a picture of Marta, well, me. My eyes ran over to the box that had been
delivered some days earlier, containing the various uniforms under
consideration as the new standard for all cleaning staff. I had not touched it
for a day now. I giggled, mocking my own reluctance to risk opening the box,
fearing a repeat of my initial, overexcited reaction. Almost as soon as
the door had slammed behind the delivery boy, I had stripped naked and tried
all the uniforms on. I had squirmed as I felt the cheapness of the material up
against my body and revelled in the tawdriness of it all, recalling how that
cleaner had looked on her hands and knees.
Instinctively, I had sunk down to my hands and knees too and started to
imagine I was cleaning the floor. I spoke in my poor Spanish: I am Marta. I
am from Mexico City. I like cleaning. I said it over and over again, trying
to perfect the lisp and lilt that language carries with it. The arousal I felt
was so intense, my breathing had almost stopped and I felt dizzy. I got up and
skipped back to the box to try another uniform on.
That had gone on for a day or two. I could never leave that box alone for
long and found myself returning for my ‘fix’ a few times, trying on another
uniform and forming another lust-filled fantasy in my increasingly warped
imagination. And, right now, as I looked at the box again, my pulse was
quickening. I felt a rush of impulsiveness grip me: in a haze, I wrapped myself
up in a coat, hat and sunglasses and grabbed my purse.
After a few minutes casing the joint, which happened to be the cosmetics
aisle of the local supermarket, I had managed to grab a bottle of hair dye and
tanning lotion. Whatever else happened I could not afford to be recognised.
Unlikely I know, but you just never know who you might bump into when you least
expect it. As I walked to the cash till, my heart raced. A few times I caught
myself thinking: “this is stupid. Turn around, put the bottle down and go back
to your normal life.” Each time, I swallowed down the panic and then, it was
done! I had bought the dye and was walking out of the store.
As I walked home, my insides were on fire. I was going to become Marta for
the first time. Not only that, I was going to take a picture of myself as her.
I really was going to do this. I could barely stop myself from running back to
my penthouse, but I needed to maintain my disguise for a few more minutes,
skulking to the back entrance and up the service elevator. Once I crossed my
door, I slammed it shut, embracing the privacy that was letting me indulge in
this fantasy.
I ripped the bag from the bottles and read the instructions, noting that
the effects of the wash would last two days, while that of the tanning lotion
would be longer. Again I felt a mild panic. This was not planned, I had nothing
prepared that could explain my absence for this period. I also had a big
meeting in two days’ time. I felt a wellspring of anger and frustration rise
inside of me, upset at how this unexpected hurdle had blocked my path. The
first possible date for my ‘tour’ was still a few weeks away. How could I miss
this meeting?
It was then I took my first reckless step. Unplanned and as ill-conceived
as it was, I thought I would simply skip the meeting. I would pull a sickie!
After all I had never done that before and surely I was due one. Before I could
think things through, I was measuring out the cups of hair dye and tanning
lotion and, with one deep breath, coating my hair and body with the creams and
dyes.
7.
I have no idea how I managed to wait half-an-hour without looking in the
mirror or peeking under the towel wrapped tightly around my head. It seemed an
eternity and my nerves, already shredded by the constant flow of adrenalin
coursing through my veins, were not helped every time I heard a message arrive
on my phone.
Each second seemed to last a minute, and the minutes dragged by. I could
not concentrate on anything except………
It was then I noticed the tanning lotion was starting to work. I almost let
out an excited shriek as I saw a few streaks of dark on my normally fair skin.
I knew the first attempt would look dirty, but this was not what I had planned.
The lotion had done a reasonable job but left a mottled effect on much of my
body and arms. I sighed and thought I would need to do a correction job on this
later. I walked back into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
What I saw disappointed me greatly. Sure I was a little darker, but the tan
was more an orange hue, as opposed to the browner shade I had hoped for. Still,
as I waited and peered into the mirror, the effect was becoming more
pronounced, even if it did leave me looking more like a c-list celebrity with a
bad tan, than a Mexican maid.
Finally the minute hand clicked onto the half hour mark and I unfurled my
turban to see what had happened. Unlike the tan, I was a little taken aback by
what I had done to my previously light tresses. Almost jet black strands of
hair fell down over my face, shocking me a little with just how dark they had
become. I looked back at myself. I was a mess. My hair was bordering on black,
frizzy and looked a bit of an unkempt mess. Perhaps my hair had reacted a
little with the dye? As I searched for answers on the bottle, this time paying
closer attention to the instructions, my phone rang and, seeing it was my
father, I decided to answer it promptly.
“Hi Daddy!” I said excitedly. I always liked Daddy to know how special he
was and, well, to keep him sweet. He could be a bit difficult on occasions and
I knew what I had planned would require extra helpings of the good girl act.
Still what he had to tell me was a mixed blessing. He seemed more than
happy for me to go on my extended trip come holiday. At several points in the
conversation, I was sure he was distracted by something else preying on his
mind, as though he had wanted to tell me more, but was stopping himself.
However, just when I thought of asking him, the clanger dropped. He reminded me
to be on my guard at the meeting in two days’ time. In other words, there
seemed no way out of this meeting in a couple of days. After hanging up, I sat
glumly on the bed wondering how to get myself out of this mess, which was fast
becoming overwhelming. I must have been crazy. This warped fantasy of mine was
already leading me to the brink of disaster and I had not even started in
earnest. It was possible to back out still surely? I mean, there would be a lot
of questions asked. Maybe I could talk my way out of it? I felt sick and walked
back to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and what I saw made me
stop dead in my tracks.
The tanning liquid obviously had needed a little longer to work and, this
time, staring back at me, open mouthed, was someone I did not fully recognise.
Someone you would not characterise at ‘white’, perhaps of mixed race. Even the
mottling had faded away. Of course, if someone who knew me had walked in then,
they would have recognised me easily. But to someone who did not know me, I
could pass for someone different. I was buzzing. I am Marta. I am from
Mexico City. I like cleaning.
My body was pulsing with heated excitement. Each time I looked at myself it
felt unreal, as though this were some out of body experience from which I would
awake at any moment. I turned and walked into the main room and stood over the
box. I bent down and lifted out the uniform folded neatly on top. This. This
uniform was the one I had chosen for all cleaning staff to wear. It was a knee
length, blue cotton dress. It was ever so slightly fitted to flatter the bust
and waist a little. But otherwise it was devoid of class and quality. It was
cheap and as I slipped it over my body, my brown body, I felt thousands of
small electric sparks flicker across my skin.
It took me a few minutes to prepare. I did not need much in the way of
make-up, but I had to style my hair so that it was tied back in a tight
ponytail. I found some old training shoes. White and a little battered and they
did the trick perfectly when teamed with some dark stockings. A little red
lipstick, and that was it. Or was it? I gazed back at myself in the mirror and
realised that I needed to go further. I would still be recognisable to a lot of
people. Heck anyone that had met me might do a double take. I stepped back
towards the box and retrieved three more items I had bought to concoct some kind
of disguise: a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, a scarf, which I proceeded to tie
around my hair and scalp, and lastly a pair of prosthetic teeth that gave me
protruding buck teeth at the front of my face.
I had tried all these items separately, but to see them on myself together,
all at once, was a bit of shock. I really did look different! By this stage I
could feel the moistness on myself. My upper thighs a little cool from the
dampness. This was all I had hoped it would be. I felt like I walking away from
my old self into someone new. It was then my impulsiveness pushed me to take
the photo quickly. I chose a plain white wall and looking into the computer
camera snapped a photo of myself. It really did not look like me. At least it
would take a lot for someone to realise it was. My hands shaking, my finger
hovered over the send button. My other hand slid along my thighs, lifting the
hem of my cheap dress. It felt wonderful: the cheapness, the depravity. My
fingers found their target and I started to caress myself. When the file was
sent after a few moments, I was climaxing intensely, barely able to think any
more about the consequences of what I had done.
8.
I woke up a few hours later slightly disoriented and unsure of what had
just happened. I was in that netherworld of half-dream half-awake enjoying the
sensuousness of laying in my bed smothered in cool silk sheets. I felt
terrific, though had not yet remembered why I felt so good. When I did recall
what had happened, I sat bolt upright with a startled jump and stared long and
hard at my arms and legs. I was still brown. A very dark brown too. Obviously
the lotion had continued working while I slept, pushing me further from my
usual identity and skin tone.
A great sense of lethargy descended on me. I was tired from all the
excitement and anxiety that had been gripping me for the past few hours and,
now, in the aftermath of taking and sending those photographs I felt at ease.
Perhaps it was not lethargy, but calmness I was feeling. This whole weird and
warped adventure was really about to happen and, for once, it was out of my
hands. In some odd fashion, the die had been cast and the big decisions already
taken. The whole thing was happening way too quickly. I felt a twinge of
anxiety again, but my eyes were drawn to my dark skin and I felt becalmed once
more. Perhaps this adventure had already started.
The thought stayed with me as I lifted myself from the bed and I walked to
the bathroom to see the final result. Things were already in motion and I had
relinquished a certain level of control. None of this had been planned and now
look at me! My reflection in the mirror showed largely what it had a few hours
ago, only somewhat darker. If I did not know better, I might think the girl in the
mirror had come from the somewhere farther south of Mexico. My lips tingled,
shifting my thinking elsewhere.
I do not understand why my body reacts quite the way it does. It always
seems to start with that tingling in my pussy lips that radiates up to my
stomach. I find it hard to breathe as my muscles there tighten and give me that
delicious feeling, akin to hundreds of butterflies taking flight. Indeed it is
so delicious that I get a nagging sense to do more to prolong it. I guess in
the way a junkie fails to find the third or fourth fix to be as nice as the
first with the same dosage, I was going to have to take more.
What was wrong with me? That pulsing in between my legs was intense and
full. I reached down for some panties and a bra, then the maid’s dress, pulling
it back over my shoulders. The fluttering grew yet more pronounced. Then an
idea struck me. I looked at the apartment door and the fluttering became a
torrent. I reached down for the fake teeth and looked once more at the
reflection. I am Marta. I am from Guatemala. I like cleaning. I did not
look Mexican……
I ran to the bedroom and snatched violently at the top drawer on my bedside
cabinet. I was not thinking. For me to do this, I had to stop thinking. God, if
I dwelt even for one second on what I was about to do, I would stop myself. No!
I must not worry. Just do. I wrapped a headscarf around my dyed hair, pulling
it tight to hide almost all of it underneath. I hid my uniform beneath a long
dark coat and, grabbing my purse and keys, stepped to the door. Within seconds,
I was in the corridor and the torrent of butterfly wings in my stomach was
forming a storm. I am Marta. I am from Guatemala. I like cleaning.
It was not until I had sneaked down the corridor to the service elevator
that I had my first panic attack. “What the f**** am I doing?” I screamed at
myself. It was mid-week! The apartment bloc could be teeming with cleaning
staff at any moment. My heart was about to burst from my chest as the lift
reached the basement. I held my breath as the doors parted to reveal……….
No-one…. Nothing.
I was not completely insane. I knew by this stage of the day, the cleaners
would have finished on the public parts of the building and would be working on
the sunning decks or workout center or anywhere but… here….
I stepped out and walked across the parking forecourt. I was in dangerous
territory, but just a few yards and I was safely ensconced in my car. I had
access to a few cars. Daddy had bought me a sports convertible some years back,
which I shied away from using for fear of drawing attention to myself. I also
had a car that I used for low-key moments. I giggled to myself. Low-key
moments? Did I have this moment in mind when I bought it? Hands shaking, I
managed to fumble the key into the lock and open the door. Slumping in the
chair, any thoughts I may have had of returning to the sanctuary of my
apartment evaporated as the garage suddenly filled with voices and I risked
being discovered or spotted in Ms Webb’s car. I caught myself: what a curious thought!
I started the car up, only narrowly avoiding stalling
it and drove to the exit and outside into the city.
9.
It is hard to convey just how scared I felt as I drove through what are
normally so familiar streets. I must travel these roads every day, but not like
this. I am very far from my typically confident demeanour. Instead I am driving
like the proverbial old lady out for a Sunday drive. The fear gripping me is
intense and deep. It seeps into every pore and crevice of my body and leaves me
in a cold sweat feeling slightly nauseous. One thought above all others circles
my mind over and over: I must do anything not to be found like this.
Any plans I may have had seem to be dissolving as I tried to recall them. I
know I am panicking and, seeing a gap in the cars parked along the side of the
street, I stop abruptly to calm and collect myself. My anxiety feeds a stream
of potentially dire consequences to cross my mind: what if I get caught? What
is someone sees me?
I know the answer to both these questions is to drive somewhere less
familiar, somewhere I would not risk being discovered. I sat back and took a
deep breath, feeling a little better and kidding myself that I was getting a
grip on things once more. It then struck me: The MajorMart! A huge suburban
shopping mall! It would take just 20 minutes to get there, straight down the
main road. I would not get lost and, best of all, it would provide me with the
anonymity I needed right now. I started up the engine and resumed my little old
lady act, crawling down the road towards the freeway.
The buzzing in my head, most probably from the adrenalin surging through
me, just would not go away. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but it did not
relent and would not let me forget for one minute just what it was I was doing.
I hugged the slow lane religiously and, after 25 mins of being beeped and
harassed by the quicker drivers, finally made it to the mall.
Slipping down underground into the bowels of the mall, I decided to drive
as far from the entrance as possible, to find a parking spot in the darkest
corner of the parking lot. It felt seedy as I peered out from the darkness of
my car into the lighter portions of the basement. I had started this journey in
one basement and had entered another. It felt like I was living in the shadows.
My normally sunny disposition was clouded beneath a dark layer of anxiety.
But most of all was that indescribable need driving me on again. The need that
made me open that box. The need that made me put on the dress and leave the
luxury of my suite. The need that made me go down to my car. That need was
burning inside of me again, pushing my erotic imagination to look further. This
was a safe place to be seen. It would all be ok. I would wait here until late
and then return home under darkness, when the building was silent.
I checked my purse for my keys, phone and ID – if I somehow needed it god
forbid! I reached for the handle of the car door and stepped out with shaking
legs.
As before, I felt like I was experiencing something of an out-of-body experience.
Nothing felt real as I headed for the entrance to the mall. As I pushed the
doors open, a young mother pushing a buggy walked in behind me, startling me a
little. She snatched a quick, cursory look at me. It was not what I was used
to. I moved in circles where people virtually worshipped me. More often than
not, their jobs depended on me, but, here, now, I was nobody. She did not look
again. What did she see I wondered? As the doors to the elevator opened, I
caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The headscarf was still tightly bound
around my head, I had to remove it at some point. I would just attract
attention walking around with that on. I thought this was an opportune moment
to do it. I would gauge the reaction of this girl and then, if bad, I could
turn around and go straight back to the car.
Fortunately the lift was slow moving and I had enough time to remove my
scarf. I looked at her and smiled. She just gazed at me nonchalantly, not
paying attention, before checking the dial to see where the lift was. It was
all okay. Her reaction was nothing unusual! I clutched at the buttons of my
coat, wondering whether to remove it and show her that I was Marta. A maid. A
cleaner. What would she think then? My heart thumped and then….
BING
The lift arrived at the ground floor and the doors opened up.
10.
A cold sweat gripped me as I took a few pensive steps from the elevator
into the main body of the shopping mall. I cannot recall the last time I felt
such complete and utter dread. My mind just seemed to cease functioning,
gripped by sheer panic and trepidation at what was going to happen. But what
was going to happen? Once out of the elevator, I walked briskly to the side
and, for the first time, lifted my gaze to see what was happening around me.
That was the moment, I got my first inkling that this whole crazy scheme
might really work. I am not a sceptic, but if not for my impulsiveness, I might
never have even tried on a uniform. Psychologists may point out some degree of
bipolarity in my personality. Usually I was this calculating, sensible
businesswoman. Rich and fawned over by supplicants for my favour. But this
other side of me, submissive, lustful, impulsive had recently been the one on
top and had thrust me into this situation, here and now.
But as I lifted my gaze, I saw people rushing by, oblivious of what was
going on in front of their eyes. The inner rush of adrenalin and excitement,
none of it was visible to them: the dampness on my cotton knickers. The buzzing
between my thighs. None of it was obvious. Fuck! To them, I was Marta! Or at
least some Hispanic cleaner probably on lunch. I placed one foot in front of
the other, gradually building up my pace till I was shuffling along the
corridor, away from the exit and my car, away from my comfort zone.
I could barely focus on the shops lining the shiny tiled floor. Nothing
seemed real, I was walking through a haze of emotions and then, crunch, someone
bumped into me. Totally by accident, the other lady’s shopping bags upended
themselves onto the floor. Suddenly eyes were all over me. I could feel them
burrowing inside of me, trying to evaluate who I was, where I was going, what I
was doing. The swirling of emotions I felt at that moment centred at one point:
a huge upswelling of submissiveness. Instinctively I spoke in bad English to
hide my educated tones: “Sorree Miss. I pick up for you”. I bent down and
started picking at the spilled items. She stood over me berating me. Of course,
the whole thing had been an accident, but my position at this moment, my
submissive role erased that part of the collective memory. No I was to blame. I
was the immigrant cleaner. I was squat down picking up her things and packing
them up for her.
I never looked up at her. I never saw her face. But I could smell her
perfume was expensive and she was dressed well. All I saw were her legs, as I
bowed my head and did the very best I could to deal with this quickly and avoid
drawing any more attention to myself. Fortunately, after some more grumbling,
she softened and just strode away. I looked up only to see her walking off into
the crowd, her expensively coiffured blonde hair swaying behind her.
A few passers-by had stopped to see what the commotion was about. I
collected myself and quickly walked away, anywhere where people would stop
looking at me. This was a curious aspect of this whole thing. I spent a lot of
my life in a semi-spotlight. My sister, more attractive and vivacious, garnered
much more attention than I. But still I always had preferred the shade and now
I was looking to leave the shade and enter the shadows.
I really did not know what to do with myself. It had been an hour already
and I had trudged my way around the mall once already. I was scared to buy
anything as I only had my credit cards with me and those had my name upon them.
I looked at the clock and saw I would still have to make do for a few hours
yet.
At that moment, I heard another elevator chime and turned to see a woman in
a uniform just like mine standing in front of a service elevator. I took a
second glance, trying to stop myself from gawping or staring too obviously. She
left her trolley, which was stuffed full of mops, buckets and brushes, and
stepped into the lift disappearing behind the closed doors.
It seemed as though everything around me had grown quiet as I edged my way
towards the trolley. I saw that the lift had descended to the basement levels
and was not coming back up. Perhaps if I just stood there, next to the trolley,
took my coat off? I would really be a cleaner for that moment, at least in the
eyes of all those around me. That one act of standing next to it would change
me. Sure they all saw the darkened skin and hair, but this would complete the
identification process, this would finish the job.
I looked up again and saw the lift was not going anywhere. Glancing around
and seeing no-one paying any attention, I pulled at the buttons on my coat and
took it off. The feeling of removing this protective layer was thrilling. I may
as well have been putting a huge sign over my head saying; “I am a cleaner!” My
hands shook as I folded the coat and put it on top of the trolley. Glancing up
at the lift, I saw the dial stuck in the basement. I put my hands on the
handrail and pushed the cart forwards a few yards, pausing to look up, to see
if anyone was looking. No-one was. I felt anonymous, ignored. The thrill was
tremendous, but not enough. “When would I get this chance again?” I worried.
I needed to be seen and noticed as a cleaner. I needed to feel that
judgement. I wanted to feel that disdain for me.
11.
My eyes would not leave the elevator doors as two terrifying thoughts
gripped my mind: what if the real cleaner came back suddenly; what if I somehow
get caught! Both feelings paralysed me for the moment. I stood there, knuckles
white as my hands gripped the rail of the cleaner’s trolley. Perhaps for once
my impulsiveness was not going to get the better of me. I released my fingers
from the rail and took a deep breath. This was not the time and place for this:
I had a whole, careful plan laid out that would let me explore this in relative
safety. What I was doing here was bordering on the crazy. I reached for my coat,
when out of nowhere a mall guard approached me.
“Shit!” I thought, what is he doing here? “Go away!” I shouted at him
mentally, somehow imploring him to walk the other way.
“Some kid has spilled his juice on the floor by the fountain, go clean it
up immediately”.
The tenor of his voice was assertive. He obviously spoke to the cleaning
staff all the time and was used to giving them simple orders. And, at that
moment, I WAS that cleaner. For whatever reason, I did not panic. Instead I was
highly focused: on the fact that at any moment the real cleaner may re-appear
and that I needed to just deal with this situation like she would and not draw
any attention to myself.
I kept my head low and spoke in as slow and accented English as I could
muster. “Yes. Sir. I go clean up. Now. I go”. I wanted to avoid eye contact
and, besides, the guard was busy fiddling with his phone, clearly uninterested
in me. “Pleez sir. I new. Where is fowntane?”
He grunted something inaudible and I followed after him. My father had
spent a fortune on my education, sending me to the most prestigious private
academies money could buy and, thereafter, securing a place for me in a top Ivy
League university. Now, I was reduced to following orders that were being
barely grunted at me.
All I could think was how this was going to end badly. As I glanced back
the service elevator, I saw that the dial still indicated that the lift was
stuck in the basement. I consoled myself a little that soon I would be out of
eyeshot and, should the cleaner return, I would have some time to make some
kind of escape if needed.
The mall guard, rather fat and obviously not suited to chasing down
thieves, was taking his time. He plodded along slowly, deeply engrossed in his
phone. Still, as the two of us snaked our way along the shiny, tiled floor, I
had achieved my aim: people were looking at me. People were wondering if that
Latina maid was in trouble? I was a Latina maid. I was also about to be a
cleaner. I really was!
Finally after a few more minutes of dawdling, I could see the fountain and
the orange-coloured mess on the floor. I pushed my way past the guard and
walked to the puddle of juice. I looked up and saw dozens of eyes on me. I
reached for MY trolley and found MY cloth. I could have used MY mop, but did
not want that. I wanted to do this in a way that showed them all what I was. I
got onto my knees and then leant forwards onto my hands.
I crawled the extra yard so that I was positioned over the mess. I, Katherine
Webb, heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune, reached into the mess and
started to clean it up. Images of the cleaner from the hotel flooded my mind. I
began to equate myself with her. I remembered how she had acted and how she had
wiped the floor and tried to mimic it. All the time, my body was experiencing
incredible waves of ecstatic energy, crashing into me and making my stomach
tighten into a ball of delicious nerves. I felt like, if I touched myself, I
would climax there and then.
I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the place of that cleaner with the
horrible manager standing over me. Further thoughts criss-crossed my
imagination. What if I looked like her? What if I had that awful hairstyle? Her
bulk? I parted my legs and felt the dampness.
The last of the spillage was cleaned up and I slowly returned to my feet,
feeling somewhat woozy and dizzy. I looked for the guard, but he had just
wandered off. I was invisible again. I was also a mass of excited, sexual
energy. I felt it buzzing throughout my body. I pushed the trolley back towards
the lift. The anxiety was so intense as I rounded the last column and saw
emptiness. In another defining moment, I had an idea that really disturbed me,
a feeling that terrified me. For a second, I actually I wanted the other
cleaner to come back and catch me. I shuddered and pushed the idea away,
immediately sobering up to the reality of all that was at stake and remembering
my plan. My sexual energy was dangerously high and feeding all kinds of
craziness into me. I rapidly pushed the trolley back to the doors of the lift
and, grabbing my coat, stepped away.
I did not hang around to see the other cleaner return. The other
cleaner. I giggled at the thought, the anxiety finally ebbing a little, as
I made my way back to the sanctuary of my car.
12.
The days that followed passed in a hurried blur of
anticipation and anxiety. It took almost two days for the dye to wash out of my
hair and even then it looked slightly dull and matted, robbed of its typical
gloss. ‘I really should have gone to a salon’, I sighed as I fingered the mass
of split ends and combed it into something resembling the mane I usually wore
proudly on my head. Still no matter how much I washed, nothing seemed capable
of completely removing the tanning lotion. I looked like I had been on holiday
or visited a cheap tanning salon.
The last meeting before I started my reckless
adventure therefore passed off under the confused gaze of a few participants
who knew me reasonably well. Fortunately hardly anyone else did and, for once,
my lower profile in the company had worked to my advantage.
I could barely concentrate on the meeting. I was now
almost exclusively focused upon my ‘trip’. I still had to deal with a number of
outstanding issues concerning Marta. Her pay (minimum wage of course + a
bonus); her accommodation (the hotel of course, but a private room); her
supervisor (hotel manager). As intelligent as I considered myself, I was giving
myself headaches trying to think of everything that could possibly go wrong.
And there was a lot. If not for my impulsive nature and the obsessive need to
fulfil my fantasy, I doubt I would have carried on. So many things could go
wrong, but I was no longer listening to my inner thinking.
When the first day of my ‘trip’ finally came, I could
hardly contain my excitement. Clumsily I finished my packing: maid’s uniform,
several bottles of tanning lotion and hair dye, the various elements of my
disguise, undies and some other clothes for when I was not working. I also hid
my actual ID and purse in a special pocket of the bag. Just in case. That
thought made me pause for a moment, surveying the opulence of the room I was
vacating. I felt a shiver of expectation, fear, but most of all adrenalin. I
was like a tightly wound coil ready to spring into action.
After saying my goodbyes to the staff, I took a cab to
the station and within several hours I was in Abbottsville. Donning some
sunglasses, I headed for a local diner to pause for a moment and compose
myself. Taking the window seat, I surveyed the town and the people, happily
discovering that I had been correct in assuming that there would be very few,
if any, Latino people here. I sipped my coffee and felt the anxiety ebb as I
saw the various elements of my plan falling neatly into place. My phone has
been quiet since I left the city and, gazing at my emails, I could see nothing
had happened to concern me. I switched it off and slid it into the hidden part
of the bag.
Tonight I had booked myself into a small motel just on
the outskirts of town. I would spend one last night as Katherine. Well I say
Katherine, but the room was booked and prepaid by a ‘Justine Green’ and a certain
Marta Fernandez would be leaving very early in the morning. Arrangements had
been made to leave the keys in a safe box. I smiled, kidding myself that I was
completely covered for any eventuality. Naturally I knew that was a foolhardy
assumption, just I had to place my faith in something for me to gain sufficient
courage to see this all through.
Upon arriving at the motel, I spoke quietly in a
casual manner to the manager, avoiding eye contact and appearing relaxed and
disinterested. The motel was not as advertised. It was rundown and in what
seemed to be a rather squalid part of town. Even the taxi driver had checked
the address twice to make sure I knew I was going to the right place.
I thought back to the cab ride noting the almost
symbolic nature of that journey. I was being carried over, somewhat
figuratively if not literally, to the wrong side of the tracks. Leaving the
reception, I felt anxious as I carried my bag to the room, sealing myself
safely inside. Parting the curtains discreetly, I peered outside to make sure
no-one had followed me or was watching. And of course, no-one was. No-one knew
where I was right now. That realisation sparked hundreds of little scenarios in
my head. I could run away! I could disappear! I might be killed! The whole
sensation was scary and, of course, highly liberating.
I looked around the room. For the first time, I saw
the seediness with which I was surrounding myself, the poverty and decay of my
surroundings. With its fresh lick of paint, the reception had masked the
reality I now found myself within: the damp on the wall, the peeling wallpaper,
the stale smelling sheets. I took off my clothes, piece by piece, silently,
hearing my heart in my head. All I could think was how these clothes were too
good for Marta. She could never afford them. Each item I removed, I threw into
the bin. I slid my expensive, silky panties down my thighs and tossed them in
as well. I was naked in perhaps the worst motel room I had ever stayed. Inside
my bag were Marta’s clothes, her cosmetics, her ‘things’. The whole situation
made me shiver intensely. I took the bag and went to prepare myself.
13.
I sat in the darkness of my seedy motel room peeking
out of my window at a group of men standing around in the parking lot drinking
and shouting. The evening, which had heralded the start of my erotic
experience, was now turning a little sour and scary. Obeying my better
instincts, I had turned out the lights as soon as they had arrived to avoid
attracting any attention and it seemed to have worked. That was almost 25
minutes ago and had interrupted my transformation into Marta, a process I had
imagined would have been much smoother.
I was still feeling sick and nervous at what I had
seen upon taking the towel off my head. I had followed the instructions to the
letter, but with this application of dye following so soon after the previous
one, my hair had reacted badly. So badly that it had started to frizz at the
tips. In a panic I had tried to rinse the liquid off my hair, which had seemed
to stem the frizzing halfway up my hair.
It was when I was figuring out what to do next that I
had heard the commotion outside. After what seemed another half an hour, the
gang finally dispersed and headed off in separate directions. I waited, still
afraid and unwilling to switch my lights back on till I knew they had gone.
Backing up into the room, I stumbled over the bed, tumbling in a heap. It took
me a moment to find the switch and lift myself so I was face to face with the
mirror.
My heart sank as I looked at the frizzy mess on top of
my head. I tried to comb it but that just made matters worse. As my frustration
grew and lumps of hair were falling from my scalp, I realised that I would have
to lose almost half of my hair. Fortunately or not, I had brought a pair of
scissors and, as I reached for them, I paused, feeling a curious sensation of
excitement build inside of me. Is this how Marta is meant to look? I pulled
some of my hair up and away from my face, giving me an impression of how it
would look shorter. I shivered. My hair had not been that short since I was a
child. It was one aspect of my looks I was particularly vain about and I had
always made regular visits to the salon, much more often than was necessary.
However, standing there in that rundown motel, it made
perfect sense. Katherine was rich and fortunate. Marta was not. Marta would
never have had the money to have the kind of hair Katherine did. Marta
inhabited a world of home cuts and cheap care products. *Snip*. She could only
have a cheap looking style. *Snip*. I stared at my naked body as I cut away a
big part of my identity. I had worried that I might be recognised, now that
seemed highly unlikely. I hated how the jagged ends of my hair now looked.
Shorter hair hardens the features and all my imperfections were now fully
displayed. My eyes fell to my crotch. For a week now I had not tended myself
down there. Most boyfriends seemed to like the smoothness they found there. But
not Marta. She did not have that inclination. Hours of looking at porn pictures
of Latinos had taught me that they were hairier. I therefore, as Marta, had to
be hairier.
It took some time. After some trial and error, I
finally got my hair into a short bob. While I had thought I could lose just
half the length, I found that all my mistakes had added up and I actually lost
two-thirds of it. My hair had gone from shoulder length to just below the
cheekbone in less than an hour. I gasped as I looked at the plain looking girl
in the mirror. I felt a little repulsed, but totally entranced. Driving on past
the doubts gripping me, I smeared the tanning lotion onto myself, constantly
staring at myself in the mirror. I think if someone had burst into my room at
that point, I would not have even noticed. I knew that, for a light tan, I
needed to leave the lotion in place for just 30 minutes. But the thrill of the
moment was getting to me and I felt myself burn at the thought of leaving it on
for an hour, perhaps longer? How dark should Marta be? I fell forwards a
little, reaching out for the dresser to hold myself up. My hand now pressed
between my legs, feeling the fuzzy new hair growing there.
Marta should be dark, there should be no mistaking her
as ‘white’. I trembled so hard that my legs appeared to buckle. Though this
change was temporary, I knew with regular application of dye and lotion it
might take on air of permanence. For the next hour I reacquainted myself with
the state of utter depravation I had enjoyed several times over the past few
weeks, though never before so deeply, nor so closely. As I squirmed on the
filthy old bed, my body darkening, changing, I peered up towards the cracked
ceiling and let out a filthy moan. The fantasy was becoming real. Katherine was
gone and only Marta remained, laying in her true surroundings.
It was about 5am when I left the motel, the tattered
remains of Katherine’s clothes left in shreds in the bin. The long, fuzzy
strands of hair thrown in for good measure. Walking out into the daylight
provoked an array of mixed emotions, most of them feeding my growing appetite
for embarrassment. I shut the door and posted the key back through the
letterbox. I was now trapped outside, unable to hide. Nowhere to go except my
father’s hotel to work as a maid. No not a maid. A cleaner. Let us be clear.
For despite my recommendations, as Katherine, the letter had been quite clear,
I was just a cleaner. Perhaps an exceptional cleaner, but they would view me as
nothing more. Before the day was out I would be scrubbing floors and cleaning
toilets. The next fortnight would not be easy, but it was not meant to be. This
would be a template for many dirty fantasies of the future. I would lay in my
silky sheets and touch myself remembering this for years to come - my fortnight
as an immigrant cleaner.
14.
I sat gazing at the locker in front of me. I had just
a few minutes before my supervisor would return and I had some difficult
decisions to make. Though at first things had started out pretty much as
expected, today was not proceeding according to plan. After leaving the hotel I
had gone for some breakfast and then taken the cab ride to the hotel, which sat
on the edge of town. The changes in my social ‘status’ were quickly becoming
apparent. While not staring too much, it was clear that people had noticed the
brown girl walking down the street. In the restaurant I was sat towards the
back of the dining room, just a coincidence maybe, but I was hypersensitive to
anything that felt ‘different’, reflecting any potential shift in my. Was it
me? Or did the waitress seem almost bothered to be dealing with me? No smile.
None of the pleasant chit-chat to which I was accustomed. Perhaps she was
always like that?
Either way, my own sense of who I was and how I should
behave was in tremendous flux and my hands almost shook as I reached for my
knife and fork. It felt good to eat. I was hungry, but also food often acted as
a great source of comfort to me and, right now, I was in need of a little hug.
As I ate, I caught my reflection in a side mirror, making me to a brief
double-take. Taken in isolation, my short, cropped hair would have been enough
to startle me, but the cheap clothes and of course dark skin marked me out for
all to see.
I looked at the other patrons in the restaurant and
wondered how they saw me? This set off a storm of delicious feelings in my
stomach and groin. Whatever they saw, it was not Katherine Webb, heiress to a
multi-billion dollar fortune. I was an immigrant maid in cheap cotton leggings,
a loose fitting baggy top, sneakers, no makeup and glasses. The fake teeth
protruding a little from beneath my top lip, helping detract from any remaining
beauty I may have had till that point. Was this what I had sought? To be
shifted from my life of comfortable anonymity to social outsider?
When I gave a tip, the waitress cracked a smile and,
for a moment, I saw some empathy. After all we both had cruddy jobs with
miserable hours. I smiled back at her and left to take my cab to the hotel.
I am not sure what I really expected on my arrival at
the hotel. Certainly it would be nothing like the welcome Katherine was used
to, with various sycophants running around taking care of her every need. That
said, the correspondence had clearly stated that Marta should have a private
room and that she was a respected employee. As such I had expected some space
in which to manage my experience. A place to hide in, if I needed it. But life
has an unexpected quality to it. The manager I had been writing too, a pleasant
enough man in his late 50s was not there. To my shock he had resigned at the
end of last week and been replaced by the young blonde woman standing in front
of me.
Upon discovering this news, my first instinct was one
of near outrage: why had I not been informed? Katherine had to know these
things immediately. As I reached inside my bag for my phone, the second
unexpected turn of events took place.
“Staff are not allowed to use their personal phones
during work hours. Please put that away and follow me to the changing rooms.”
I was lost. I had to check my phone, but was trapped
for the moment. I had little choice but to follow her. Though no-one around me
could have guessed what was going on inside my head, they all saw me being led
through the hotel and turned to look. Was I in trouble? Who was I? I could feel
my cheeks burn, a warmth that turned into an inferno as I stepped past what
appeared to be a meeting room. Inside, one of the girls perked he head up and
looked at me. My god! It was an almost perfect role reversal from myself a few
weeks earlier, when I had seen that dumpy maid that started this all off!
My pussy lips moistened within an instant and any
semblance of the outrage I had felt subsided away to depraved sense of
humiliation. All I could do was picture the scene as they saw it: I was clearly
in trouble, or new here. Either way, I was far beneath them. I was beneath
everyone here.
By the time I was led to the locker room, more of my
plan had unravelled. There were no private rooms left and I would have to share
with other staff; the uniforms had arrived, but not all of them, so I would
have to use an old, used one until they did arrive; and over half of my meagre
pay would be in the form of food tokens, in accordance with some local law I
had not accounted for.
By the time the manageress had left me alone to
change, I was in a daze. The morning had most certainly not panned out as
expected and I had to decide what to do.
15.
I had only just pulled the drab, plain uniform over my
head and the manageress was back in my face. She directed me to place all my
belongings in locker and, with it, any connection to my past life. All that was
now locked away, out of reach. My head spun. Was this allowed? Had I approved
such a draconian rule? I felt foolish and out of my depth, but literally had
nowhere to run and with all Katherine’s belongings out of reach, I had no
choice but accept the role I had given myself – that of Marta.
I was beginning to get the feeling that the manageress
did not like me. She spoke to me in a condescending manner, like I was some
kind of simpleton, totally oblivious to highly expensive education I had
received. The flat, sneaker-like, shoes I had to wear made me much shorter than
her in her stylish 3-inch pumps. In fact she looked immaculate. Almost
emblematic of our new positions, I padded silently behind her, while her heels
clacked loudly and imperiously down the corridor, announcing her approach to
all staff.
All the while, my body was in utter turmoil, riven by
pulsing waves of humiliation, while being equally terrified that, somehow, I
may have trapped myself too tightly. My wandering attention was suddenly
captured again as she glowered at me: “Did you hear me? I said you will take
lunch in the kitchen. You are not to enter the restaurant”. I had to pay
attention to what I was doing, to make sure I got through the day unscathed and
then figure out how to fix this mess. “Yes.. Miss.. I hear”.
Even so, the fact that I still did not even know the
name of the manageress worried me. She had not seen it necessary to even tell
me that. She seemed to think she was above me to the extent that even basic
pleasantries were not necessary. The brief flicker of anger I felt was soon
extinguished by one look at her. The more I looked at her, the more I noticed
just how well she was dressed. Her skirt, a knee-length pencil skirt, fitted
her perfectly. Her silk blouse enhanced her feminine lines and curves
perfectly. And the hair: long, luxurious and lightly toned. It was strikingly
similar to the way my hair was styled. Indeed, I would have been happy to style
myself this very way. My eyes were cast down towards her heels as we reached
our final destination.
The maids’ room was a large windowless space where all
the carts and various bits of equipment of my new trade were kept. The room was
buzzing with activity, but as I stepped in with the manageress, everything fell
silent and a sense of unease gripped the room. Another weakness of my plan was
soon made abundantly clear to me: jealousy. It only struck me now. But the
‘privileged’ status I had given Marta and the requirements made for her –
totally unfulfilled of course – had unwittingly placed her on a pinnacle. I was
to discover that this was rather a lonely and difficult place.
“Okay ladies, this is Marta Fernandez…. The
award-winning cleaner commended to us by head office.”
My senses immediately detected a note of sarcasm. What
was she trying to do? There was a faint ripple of laughter. I felt so uneasy
and all eyes were on me. I had never in my life been faced by such a situation.
Usually I was secured behind the facade of respect my family’s status had given
me. This was something wholly alien to me and I had no idea what to do. In
response I simply smiled and blushed in front of the whole room. At that moment
they all saw I was easy game. They all saw a shy, timid, immigrant, one they
could pass on their dirtiest jobs onto. Someone to be teased and bullied, and
certainly not a star employee to be looked up to.
Though later I would masturbate frequently to this
memory, at the time I was frozen in terror as my plan seemed to be careering
out of control. It was a make or break moment. I had to get a grip and somehow
take control of events, but shorn of my privilege I had nothing to offer. My
dreams of a quiet, sordid seclusion were dashed, instead it felt now like I
would be lucky to get through this experience unscathed.
The silence continued a moment too long to be anything
but uncomfortable. Fortunately, the manageress broke the tension and directed
me to the head maid, a large woman, bordering on obese, with bleach blonde hair
tied tightly in a bun atop her head. Her thick-rimmed glasses made her
otherwise small, piggy eyes seem larger. Her round features, not ugly, but
hidden under a layer of fat and some very slight facial hair. Without saying a
word, she nodded sullenly at the manageress and led me from the room to my
first job.
16.
I enjoy putting
staff in their place. Though I was new to this job and still had a great many
things to learn, I felt that my naturally authoritative manner made me ideal
for handling a large gaggle of women, none of whom seemed to have the slightest
ambition or capacity for creative thinking. I know, I am being mean. But
dealing with that group made me feel that they simply could not cope without me.
How often had I been called upon to settle their petty squabbles and rivalries?
Even among the lowest of my employees, I watched how cleavages would form
between various groups. The job of a good manager, or so I thought, was to
exploit these for the good of the company, or at least myself.
I smiled as I
remembered putting that new maid firmly in her place. A day of cleaning the
toilets and stairs would soon send the signal that I thought very little of
her, even though she had received a commendation. The guy I had replaced was in
thrall to head office and had jumped at the chance to be noticed. I was no such
fool. Initiatives like the one involving that maid usually failed, though one
could not be seen to actually oppose them. No, I had plans and ambitions of
course, however one did not have to actively help either.
I strode
purposefully to my office, smiling at the staff as they watched me, still
unsure as to who their new manageress was. The clacking of my heels announced
my approach to all and heads turned to look and, then, that moment when they
could not hold that gaze and their eyes dropped. That moment when I knew I was
in charge. That was when I got my rush: the look of deferral in their eyes.
That new maid for
example, the Latina. She seemed a mousy creature, only too aware of her low
position. Lord knows how she got any kind of commendation, but she would never
have made it onto any team of mine. Still, I was suspicious as to why she was
here. Of all the hotels in the Webb chain, why a hotel in the middle of
nowhere? I could not imagine anyone actually chose to come here? I hated it
thoroughly, but it was a necessary step on the ladder. No, I should be in New
York at the headquarters. After all, I had not worked so hard for nothing. I
resented the moneyed types that ran so many businesses in America. The Webbs
were no exception. A geriatric father with two daughters: one always in the
gossip pages and the other one. What was her name?
I quickly forgot
my train of thought as I reached the door of my office. So much to do and so
little time. I had already wasted 20 minutes on that silly Latina. In one
corner of my room was a pile of boxes. I sighed when I saw them and thought of all
the money wasted on those stupid new uniforms. Katherine! That was her name,
yes! She was the imbecile that had called for a new look for the maids to
reflect new times. Well I begged to differ. I think a maid should look like a
maid. Okay, these new uniforms were cheap and coarse, probably very scratchy.
That was all fine and dandy. But they were also too short and sexualised. The
way they rose well above the knee on the taller girls and were fitted tightly
around the waist and bust. Who had ordered these? Some pervert?
I decided to check
my emails before my first meeting of the day. Opening up my laptop, I checked
the various cameras installed in the public areas of the hotel. Knowledge is
power as they say and I was determined to keep a close eye on the staff. I
flicked through the various screens: the maids’ room, the locker room and the
corridors. I smiled as I finally found what I was looking for: the Latina. I
saw her and Linda, the head maid, deep in conversation. I say conversation, but
it just looked like Linda delivering a stern lecture, the Latina had her head
bowed, listening. Oh yes, she had come here to teach us some things, but it
would be her going back with added humility.
I closed the lid
of my computer and prepared for a long day. I sighed as I saw those stupid
boxes again and called for my assistant. You had to know when to push and when
not. “Get these boxes out of here and to the maids’ room. Tell them to find
their size and wear them tomorrow”. I smiled ruefully as I thought of the all
the complaints to follow.
17.
I was beginning to
wonder whether the instructions accompanying Marta’s introduction had been lost
or whether this was now a case of wilful disobedience on behalf of the manager.
Katherine’s instructions for the seconded maid were clear: she was to accorded
a degree of respect on account of her achievements. As I knelt down beside a
urinal, trying to remove day old urine, I was seriously wondering.
Linda, the head
maid, was watching me work. I could not entirely dispel the notion that her, or
the manageress, had been saving this task especially for me. You think the
public-access toilets would have been kept spotless. As Katherine, I would have
probably thrown the book at the lot of them for letting such a public place get
into such a mess.
“Quit
daydreaming!” she barked at me menacingly. She clearly did not like me, or at
least the thought of me. I mean she did not know me after all. However, on
reflection, I could see that my presence represented a big threat to her
position. Here I was, some kind of exemplar, brought in to show how things
should be done. It was a move designed almost perfectly to rub people the wrong
way.
I scrubbed at the
sticky residue and watched the way it slowly broke down with each sweep of the
brush. My hands bare and naked. No polish, no rings, no sign of any wealth and
status. The smell was awful, hitting my senses full on, making me gag slightly.
I do not remember ever having entered a men's’ bathroom before, but the stench
was awful. My bobbed and now dark hair fell across my face, framing the whole
situation in my mind. I was NOT Katherine anymore. I am Marta. I am from
Guatemala. I like cleaning. My Inglish is too bad. I no get a better job speek
like this.
My body was
pulsing pleasurably as I scrubbed. I seemed to get a wave of energy sweep
through me, prompting me to push harder with my brush. Linda seemed to notice.
“That’s right put ya back into it”. I looked up and smiled, weakly,
submissively. A lonely girl looking for a friend, any friend. For the briefest
of moments, Linda seemed to soften, but as soon as she seemed to relent in her
harshness, her body language shifted back to one of passive hostility. No
matter I thought. I am not her equal here. I am Marta. I am from Guatemala. I
like cleaning.
My knees ached as
I crawled to the next urinal. Time itself seemed to slow as I placed one hand
in front of the other. Who knows what mess was on this floor, had it been
mopped? I was barely able to breathe and felt dizzy. I felt my breasts hang
ungainly, the dress riding up my legs a little. The pose was degrading and
submissive. I could start to detect the first traces of my own sweat mix with
the stale odour from the previous cleaner.
In little more
than a day I had fallen so far and fast. Here I was in borrowed clothing,
nothing of any value within reach, all my wealth literally the possession of
another person: Katherine - who was locked away in a locker. Even then, the
power she possessed to help me was a phone call away. For at that moment, I
realised just how trapped I was and how would be unable to rely on Katherine
for the time being. The image of her faded gently. It was just panic of course,
but I struggled to remember elements on her life: pin numbers, addresses. What
had I done?
I was struck by
another wave of near euphoria, making be buckle a little and gasp. Linda’s feet
were just a matter of yards away. My perversions were taking hold and I wanted
to kiss her feet. I needed to show her she was my superior. She did not know
who I was, she had no idea of the woman now crawling before her. I gazed up and
saw she was busy looking at her phone oblivious to the turmoil taking place
just beneath her.
Though I was
almost incapacitated by my dark needs surging forth and the ensuing panic, my
brain was still just about functioning. If I was to get any space to myself I
needed time alone and that required friends. I needed Linda to like me, to give
me some slack.
“You is very
pretty, Miss Linda” I lied. I normally associated with the elite, the crème de
la crème of society. Linda was not that. She was fat. She had a round, pig like
face with a nose to match. Her eyes, also piggy in nature, were hidden behind
thick rimmed glasses. Her hair, cropped short, was some god awful platinum
blonde. The uniform barely hid the vast rolls of fat around her middle.
Even so, she was
my better. I had to get on her good side. She looked at me slightly askance,
not sure of how to take that ‘compliment’. The fact she said nothing spoke
volumes, obviously taking her by surprise and throwing her off balance. “I hope
you, me, be friends?” I spoke in my forced, pidgin English. “Just finish the
f*cking toilets so I can go!” she replied, a touch exasperated.
There it was! The
first sign that this was being done on purpose. She was being made to watch my
humiliation and it was not her idea! In that moment, I knew I had a much bigger
problem. The manageress was obviously the one out to get me.
18.
I had not counted on a potentially hostile manager.
One reason I chose this particular hotel, apart from being out of the way, was
its supposedly genial and pliant manager. Something had obviously gone wrong
and would have to be careful of this new woman, who obviously did not like head
office butting into her local business. I was already tired by the time I had
finished scrubbing the floor of the toilets and was expecting some kind of
break, when Linda told me that I was expected in the laundry room. It looked
like I was to get no relief from this onslaught of menial tasks. For the first
time, I truly felt what being trapped felt like and my powerlessness to do
anything about it. My life had been one of privilege, opportunity and choice.
The best education money could buy had underlined the status gained through
unearned privilege. But not in this scenario. Here I was in a trap of my own
making. That said, I comforted myself thinking that there was still an open
door. I could just walk out and never come back again.
For a moment, I let that thought circulate in my head.
Perhaps I am getting in too deep and I need to run while I can? Still the
downsides to running were many and deep: who would get blamed? Most probably
me! What if someone looked into the bogus scheme and saw all the lies I had
concocted? My god, were someone to actually lift the lid on this whole idea, I
could be ruined. My stomach ached. This time not from that delicious flutter of
uncertainty and humiliation, but from a sudden bout of anxiety. No, running
could prove very costly, I would have to try and see this out as Marta!
The woman running the laundry was just as imposing as
Linda. She watched me like a hawk and gave me an equally hard time, leaving me
to work on removing stains from the bedsheets collected that morning. I looked
at the spots of food, drink and god knows what as I applied the powder to
remove the markings. My hands stung as I scrubbed the stain with a coarse
brush, leaving my delicate skin red, raw and likely to get callouses if I were
to continue doing this. My nails, already cut short, were breaking and I soon
had to cut them down to the quick. The smell from the chemicals made me feel
light headed and dizzy. I actually started to wonder about whether this
experience might damage me physically, if not psychologically.
The warmth of the room, fed by the steam from the
machines, made me sweat profusely. I caught a glimpse of myself in the only
mirror, placed above the line of washing machines. I almost gasped. I looked
terrible. My hair, already damaged from the over colouring had frizzed up
badly. Fortunately, it only added to my disguise, but I looked on mortified at
just how damaged it was: a sea of split ends and frizz that probably required
almost 80% of it to be cut off. Instantly, I remembered the Latino cleaner in that
hotel I visited before I began this whole crazy adventure. Yes she was stout,
with a terrible mullet, flecked with grey. Different to myself, yet not
totally. I had stared at her wondering how anyone could let themselves get to
that state. I felt my legs buckle a little, a little overwhelmed by the extent
of the transformation I had unwittingly engineered.
I lifted a heavy basket towards a machine and crouched
down to load it. As I did, I could smell myself. The odour from the previous
maid to use the uniform was now largely gone. In its place was my own sweat,
something I had smelt before only when I was at gym or exercising, not like
this. I normally hated dirt and smell, finding it inexcusable when people
around me had body odour, though for now I had to swallow my convictions. I
knew I would have to walk around all day with this smell lingering on my body.
I also knew that everyone else would smell it too. I felt a tremor of shame, a
feeling I had grown somewhat more used to as the day progressed and which I
knew was provoking a great deal of sexual tension inside of me.
Dozens of times during the day I recalled that image
of myself in the mirror. I saw that girl looking back at me, but still did not
see it as me. For now my disguise was just that: a disguise, a mask, which
shielded me from the world. The door was still open and I could run away – at
least in theory. Whenever an upsurge of anxiety took hold, I reminded myself
that I was not trapped. I could get away. However, this assumption was built on
sand and, as I was soon to discover, this makes for very bad foundations.
19.
I have never considered myself a clock watcher, but
those final minutes leading to the lunchbreak were agonisingly slow. I felt
exhausted and dirty. Normally I tried to carry myself with a degree of poise
and grace, though today I was the direct opposite: my cheap uniform clung to my
sweaty body. Exposed to the heat and humidity of the room, the ends of my hair
had continued to frizz into tight curls, nothing like my normal sleek blonde
mane. My back hurt and for a while I found it difficult to straighten up fully.
The poor posture in turn made me look submissive and ever so slightly bowed
over. Somewhat irrationally, a part of me had expected the steam and dampness
to somehow wipe off the dark stains from the tanning lotion that covered my
body. I was still not used to seeing my dark skin: each time I reached out or
extended my arm, it disoriented me briefly.
I knew that when I finally found some time for myself,
I would rush to the locker room. I needed to get hold of my phone and see what
was going on. Who was this new manager? Where was the old one? Could I get a
room arranged for myself? I needed to take back some control.
Leaving the laundry room was a massive relief in
itself, the warm, humid air being replaced by a fresh, cool breeze. However that
led to another problem as the heat and sweat on my body condensed, making the
wetness under my arms and on chest more noticeable. The thin, light blue
uniforms did little to hide the patches of sweat and I became conscious of eyes
on me again as I walked back to the locker room.
Invisibility can be achieved in a number of ways. I
remember reading comments from women in their later years saying how nothing
was more invisible than a middle-aged woman. Everyone loves to look at pretty
girls, but an old maid? Was that what I was experiencing now? Did people see me
as ordinary, as looking plain? Was I no longer worth their attention? I was
used to being admired for my looks. Now I looked a mess. Perhaps they were
simply embarrassed to see me, like how people cross the street pass to avoid
the stares from a vagrant or beggar. Whatever the reason, it was humiliating
and I felt my confidence ebb to a new low. Picking up my pace, I darted across
the lobby before diving back into the bowels of the hotel where someone like me
belonged.
Katherine belonged upstairs, Marta downstairs. The
reduction in status I felt at that moment was electric. I had already achieved
a great deal of what I set out to do when the idea first struck me all those
weeks ago. After seeing the look in that maid’s eyes as her boss confronted her
over the spillage, I had wondered how it felt to be so utterly dominated. Right
now, I understood how this uniform, my skin colour and general demeanour had
started to impact me psychologically. The thing is, rather than reacting with
indifference or trying to shunt the feelings to one side. I wanted to feel more
of them. The submissiveness I had felt while on my hands and knees in front of
Linda had shocked me. I had wanted to kiss her feet. I had wanted to
demonstrate my position to her. As then, the revelation shocked me. I was
playing with fire and had to douse the flames lest they engulf me completely.
I knew I still retained ultimate control of the
situation. As I reached the locker room, I thought over what I needed to do,
who to call and email to correct the numerous flaws now emerging in my plan. I
was relieved to see the corridor outside the locker room was quiet. I needed
some space and time to compose myself and take hold of the situation. But a
serious dent was about to appear in my plan. I pushed on the locker room door
only to find it firmly locked. I tried the handle again and found it secured
firmly. It was only then I noticed the scanner for a keycard - a keycard I did
not have!
I cursed the whole situation. I had so little time and
now this! Flickers of anger rose in me, Katherine was growing impatient, while
Marta, one step ahead, felt sick at the prospect of having to ask her fellow
maids, or the manageress, how to get into the locker room. Katherine would not
have thought twice about demanding a keycard, she was an assertive woman
capable of great things, negotiating deals and formulating grand strategic
visions. Marta was not. To put it mildly, she was discovering that, stripped of
all her privilege and looks, she – Marta – was barely able to push her way out
a wet paper bag. Right now Katherine could only exist, at a distance, over the
phone or email.
She stood there trembling at what was happening. Was
she going a little crazy? All this two-headed thinking was strange and it is
easy to question your sanity when under extreme pressure. She knew what she had
to do. She had to get a keycard, but she felt sick at the thought of trying to
look and sound assertive in her current guise. Her poor English needed to
shield her real identity. How could she hope to have a complicated discussion
on the rules when she could not speak the language with any great fluency.
Instead of heading for the maids’ room. She opted for
a darker path. She chose to explore her desires further, to let her fantasies
spin out of control just for a brief moment. She pushed the door open to a
cubicle in the nearby toilet and, head spinning, pushed against the wall for
support. She was Marta, she dared not question her superiors, nor was she
confident enough to stand up for her rights. Stood over the toilet she had
cleaned just a few hours before, she spread her legs and pulled her dress up
over her thighs and tugged her panties down. The climax that followed shortly
thereafter was so strong that her legs buckled and her gently panting turned to
moans of pleasure. It was only as she calmed herself that she heard the door to
the cubicle next door slam. Someone else had been in the toilet next to her! Heart racing, she wondered
what to do next.
20.
After hesitating some time and making sure no-one was
waiting in the corridor outside, I crept out of the toilets and back to the
maids’ room, doing my very best to avoid making eye contact with anyone and
keeping my head down low. With every minute that passed, my anxiety dipped a
little and slowly I began to sense that I had gotten away with it. Never could
I have thought I would be so pleased to return to the maids’ room and my relief
was palpable.
The problem was that I had not gotten away with it. Although
no-one had been in the corridor, that did not mean I had not been seen.
Back in her office, the manageress was calmly watching
the CCTV and had seen Marta exit the toilets. This provoked a wry smile from
her. Initially she had wanted to confront whoever it was in the cubicle making
such a disgusting scene but then, as always, she spied an opportunity. Ever
since she was a little girl, she had known how to manipulate people and this
skill had served her particularly well in recent months as she had risen
rapidly through the managerial ranks of the company.
The way Marta had slunk back down the corridor had
told her all she needed to know. The cleaner was obviously afraid of something
and, naturally, that presented a number of options. What had made the
sex-hungry little slut so wanton? She rewound the footage to see if she could
glean any clues from beforehand. After some minutes of reviewing different
cameras, all she had learned was that Marta had tried to get into the locker
room and then had quickly made her way into the toilet. Naturally there were no
cameras inside such a sensitive room, but it was clear she was the one the
manageress has heard pleasuring herself. Picking up her key card and master
key, the manageress walked to the locker room to see what she could find out.
Although painfully aware that the manageress had
singled me, Marta, out for attention a few times, I had no reason to suspect
that her ‘fascination’ towards my maid persona extended any farther than basic
curiosity. The day ground on pretty much as before. Any task that could be
considered demeaning or difficult came my way and I was hoping that by simply
keeping my head down for a few more hours, I would be able to get to my things
and start to iron out the wrinkles appearing in my plan. By retreating inside
my head - inside of Marta – I found comfort in my situation. This was what I
had wanted after all, though perhaps a somewhat softer variant. It was not long
before the anxiety generated by the incident in the toilet subsided and I was
able to wallow once more in my depraved imagination as I scrubbed another floor
clean.
When the clock finally signalled the end of the day, I
returned to the locker room to find the door still closed. I felt my insides
turn deliciously as I was forced to stand outside waiting for one of the other
maids to let me in. That moment of pleasure was short-lived. Images of
Katherine ‘locked away’ and out of reach flooded my mind all of a sudden and,
by the time a co-worker opened the door, my nerves had built to a fever pitch.
I had to get my phone and take back some control of events, lest my ship run
aground on the numerous rocks now showing themselves.
I had almost run out of the hotel to find a quiet spot
outside. The relief that washed over me as I turned on my phone was
indescribably sweet. For a moment, I was reconnecting with my old life. It had
only been a single day, but it felt much longer. The almost constant drudgery
was not something I had expected. I was supposed to have received a relatively
light workload, with plenty of time to myself to keep abreast of events
affecting Katherine’s life, as well as indulge myself while pretending to be a
maid. Finally, out of my maid’s uniform, I felt a little dignity returned to
me, at least for the moment. However, the fact that I stood out like a sore
thumb remained obvious.
Passers-by looked at me twice, my dark features and,
short frizzy hair marking me out as almost exotic for this part of the world. I
did not mind though, my focus was almost exclusively upon my emails, as I
skipped from message to message to see what had happened. After almost ten
minutes of scanning the screen, I could find nothing. There was no notice of
the change of manager and no permission had been sought for the change of
conditions affecting Marta.
I winced. This would mean that I would effectively
have to ‘grass’ on the manageress for this to be sorted out, something that me
as Katherine – let alone Marta – felt increasingly unable to do. What if the
argument spiralled out of control and they started trying to urgently contact
Katherine? What if Marta’s fake identity somehow unravelled? The knot I seemed
almost permanently to be carrying in my stomach tightened. Two weeks. I would
just have to put up with this for two weeks. Then I could leave and escape this
self-inflicted torture. What else could I do?
21.
I was lost as I trudged my way back into the hotel and
towards the door marking out the staff quarters. Nothing felt completely real
as I worked my way through the narrow, stuffy corridors to my room. I say my
room only to denote where I was staying. There could be no sense of ownership.
Perhaps bunk room would have been a better way of describing it. Either way, I
was shocked and somewhat appalled when I finally pushed open the door. On
either side of the room were double bunk beds. The place felt almost like a
military barracks and there was virtually no privacy. The bathroom, a
collective of shower cubicles and sinks, was at the end of the corridor.
I placed my things on the only empty bed in the room.
I gazed around at the other girls I would be sharing the staff quarters with.
None of them paid me the slightest bit of attention, which I welcomed at this
point. They were all hurrying off somewhere else, eager to escape this
claustrophobic, cramped, stuffy little box. The smell of bodies, while not
particularly pungent, was intense and hit you like a wall as you entered the
room. Everyone seemed embarrassed to be there. Apart from two girls murmuring
in hushed tones, the room was quiet, everyone avoiding eye contact and rushing
to go anywhere else but here.
I felt sicker and sicker as the gravity of situation
became increasingly apparent. As my skin dyes faded and the hair wash slowly
rinsed away, my actual tones and colouring would appear, perhaps in as little
as a week. I slumped down onto the bed and stared ahead vacantly. I was not
excited at all. All my lurid ‘desires’ were now buried beneath a growing
realisation that, while this was not my life in the longer-term, it would be
for the next fortnight and there seemed little I could do to confront that
reality. I would have to summon up some kind of solution for my hair and skin.
I breathed in and out in deep extended motions, just like my – Katherine’s -
expensive yoga coach had taught me. I was feeling like a scared little mouse.
My submissive nature was one thing but, increasingly, I felt my ruin would be
my cowardice, another personality trait hidden by years of privilege and
cossetting.
I grew increasingly resentful of the girls sharing my
room. “Just get out!” I wanted to shout at them, as I ached for some privacy.
But Marta would never do that, she – I – was a little mouse. The best I could
have commanded at that moment was a squeak. It took almost an hour for the last
one to leave and, finally, I was left alone on my bunk. I had work to do. I
took my phone and started looking for answers to my various problems.
The manageress shut the door to her office, locking it
behind her. She was also lost in her thoughts. Normally this would have
concerned some pressing financial or managerial matter, but today she could not
get Marta out of her head. She had not found anything out of the ordinary in
the locker room, nor in Marta’s locker itself. The master key – actually a
bunch of keys – gave her access to any lock in the hotel. She was entitled to
use it under certain circumstances, though spying on staff was surely not one.
She shrugged off her touch of guilt, provoking a small smile. All she had found
was an expensive phone and hair dye. She had been too nervous to look further,
fearful that a maid may have come in and discovered her.
However, she remained convinced that Marta was hiding
something. Perhaps it was nothing more than a patch of grey hair? That too made
her smile: thinking of the girl deprived of her dyes and turning grey. Still,
her behaviour had been strange, to say the least, and her curiosity had been piqued.
In her arms she was carrying the maid’s file. She wanted to see if anything
from her past might be a cause for alarm. Was she a spy from head office?
Perhaps it would be better to simply confront her, one-on-one? The options
swirled around her head as she slid herself into her expensive car. If Katherine saw her now, she could have, quite
reasonably, ask how a new manageress could afford such a high-end vehicle. Or,
if she saw the woman's impressive bank statement or been to her home, she could
have asked how she had managed to squirrel away quite so much money or paid for
such a large apartment in the most expensive part of town. Of course, none of
these would have been a concern for a simple girl like Marta, even as many of
the answers to the above questions could prove highly discomforting.
22.
I truly felt terrible. It was not that I could not
handle getting up early. I had done so many times before to catch a plane or
travel to some faraway meeting. The problem was that I was used to a room of my
own and not sharing it with half-a-dozen other women. I seemed to have spent
the entire night tossing and turning on that uncomfortable mattress, which
seemed stuffed with nothing better than a cheap foam. I cursed my poor
judgement and found myself unable to relax, torturing myself with anxious
thoughts about the future and the mess I was currently in. I must have been
asleep just an hour, perhaps two, before one of the other girls stirred and
woke me.
I padded my way down the corridor to the shower,
carrying a cheap cotton towel with me. I had forgotten to bring any toiletries,
assuming that one would not need them in a hotel! However, as I was discovering
rapidly, what was normal for guests was not the case for the staff. I had to
queue to use the shower, running the tepid water over my aching body. The sheer
degree of physical work I had endured yesterday was like nothing I had
encountered before. A warm shower would undoubtedly have provided some modicum
of comfort, but this was not to be. All I got was a drizzle of lukewarm water
and nothing more.
Wrapping myself in my small towel, which just covered
my bust and thighs, I padded my way back to the room. As I stepped back into
the cramped room, I caught myself in a mirror and looked at the brown girl
staring back at me. I saw that at least my hair had not frizzed up any more and
that nothing of my actual self was showing through. I felt myself squirm and
walked into the body of the room, my eyes still fixated on the unfamiliar woman
in the reflection. For a moment, I forgot I was tired. My troubles seemed a
long way away. Just for a second I considered what I now was, or at least
represented. For all intents and purposes, despite my commendation from head
office, everyone around me saw me as an immigrant maid, barely conversant in
English. Someone at the very bottom of the pile, forced to share her room with
other girls, not worthy of any privacy. I was at rock bottom! My hands were
trembling as I checked my phone to see if any news had arrived.
I sat on the bed and drew my thighs together to
contain the warmth radiating from there, choosing to quickly dress and make my
way to the staff room for some breakfast. I felt my body radiate with heat as I
walked. As yesterday had worn on and I had grown increasingly tired, I had not
noticed people looking at me. However, I soon felt that outsider status return
as I walked into the staff area for breakfast. A few of the other cleaners had
already congregated in the canteen that ran alongside the maids’ main room. I
picked up a tray and walked along the bar, surveying what to eat. It was quiet
and I could hear faint murmurs and giggles behind me as I side-stepped along
the tables trying to find something remotely healthy to eat.
To my dismay, the only things on offer were cheap
cereals and pastries, as well as what I considered gluttonous offerings of
bacon, potatoes and beans. I hesitated. I was so tired and really could do with
a pick-me-up. I spooned the bacon onto my plate, followed by other equally
unhealthy options. Turning and keeping my gaze to the floor, I carefully navigated
my way through the chairs to a table alone in the far corner. I should have
tried to mingle, but was fearful of the reception I would generate. Instead I
found solace in my food. Back home, I was a very careful eater. I would never
have considered chowing down on such fare there. The most I may treat myself to
was an occasional croissant alongside some fruit and yoghurt. But my body was
in the mood for fat and grease. Unused to such hard labour, I was hungry,
famished even. I eagerly tucked into the plate-load of heavy food and had soon
finished the lot.
It actually felt really good and, as I sat there, I
scooped up the remaining grease with a bit of bread. Shocked at the speed at
which I had eaten the pile of food, I was equally shocked to find myself
wanting more. The tiredness shrouding my body, the aching joints, my general
discomfort, it all seemed somehow softer after I ate that greasy mass. Looking
over shyly at the table where the other cleaners were laughing and gossiping, I
arose and went back for a second helping.
Though by no means a huge amount in weight, I had
eaten almost three times what I would have done normally. Still any angst I may
have felt at that fact was softened knowing that I was working hard and that I
would burn it all off again. After all, I needed energy to make it through the
day. I had felt tired yesterday after just a few hours, I knew that I would
need to do better today, if I was not going to draw attention to myself.
23.
If there was a moment that I felt myself, at least my
current persona, start to peel away from Katherine it was that morning. On one
particular occasion, I found myself cursing one of the last decisions I had
made before starting this workman’s holiday: the distribution of new, cheaper
uniforms. What had seemed appropriate to myself when dressed up in my exclusive
penthouse, satisfying myself with my hungry fingers, was very different to what
seemed appropriate at 7am on a Tuesday morning.
The looks of disdain among all the maids as they
pulled the new uniforms from the box was clear. I cringed, at least inwardly,
for what had been my lust-fuelled stupidity. I greatly sympathised with the
maids who threw their uniforms back into the box, indignantly proclaiming they
would never wear such a ‘tart’s uniform’. Others stood there, like myself,
waiting to see what the others would do. Suddenly, I became aware that the
other maids were looking at me in a less than friendly manner.
“This kind of crap always comes from your lot at head
office. They have no frickin’ idea what we have to put up with here!” Linda
held her new uniform up towards me in a clenched fist.
I had to agree. With her figure and looks, she rightly
feared how it would look. I nodded weakly, unsure of what to say, the last
residues of my confidence draining away. It seemed even as Katherine, people
did not respect me in the way I had always taken for granted.
Linda remained in my face. “Well.. you put yours on, ‘Miss
HQ’. I mean you are so frickin’ perfect after all, huh?” Her mockery provoked a
ripple of laughter and I felt all eyes on me again. This time not because of my
skin colour or hair, but because I was emblematic of a division between
management and staff. I tried to pick myself up: “Linda. I think also dis is a
bad dress. We no need wear dis. I sure dis a mistake.”
I felt my insides lurch again. This was exactly what I
should be avoiding. I was drawing unnecessary attention to myself and risked
blowing my cover. What if my language did not fit my persona? The sudden rush
of doubt ran cold through my veins and I chose the most sensible expedient –
silence.
“No.. No.. you don’t get away wiv it that simple. Put
the fuckin’ dress on! Stupid idiot!”
I simply could not summon any vestiges of courage or
confidence, nor could I risk provoking a full-blown argument. No-one had ever
spoken to me before in such a rough and direct manner and I felt alone and
helpless, unable to draw around me that veil of protection my social status
normally guaranteed. I picked up the dress and held it up. It was so short and
relatively low cut. I looked up at Linda hoping she might have softened or
turned her attention elsewhere but, if anything, her attitude was hardening.
In front of them all, I undressed. Some of the girls
chuckled at my discomfort. In an effort to lessen my exposure and
embarrassment, I pulled my arms in front of me, vainly trying to shield my bra
and panties. I fumbled for the edges of the dress and dragged it over my lithe
frame. Fortunately, with my gym-honed figure, the dress, though cheap, fitted
me well and slipped on easily. I tugged at the hemline, feeling awkward at just
how high it sat on my thighs. I was sure if I bent over it would skirt the very
tops of my legs, giving an eyeful to anyone watching. Of course that was the
intention when I was living out my maid fantasies hidden away where no-one
would actually see me!
At that moment, standing helplessly in front of the
gaggling women, I felt utterly humiliated and debased. At the same time, a
certain degree of detachment remained. I was there of course. I experienced
that humbling and degrading moment. But still, I was Marta. They were laughing
at Marta and not at me. Deep inside of me, I knew – though an extreme variant –
this was what I had come here for. Perhaps my subconscious had been working
towards a moment like this? I felt a frisson of pure excitement run up my spine
and a shield descend between me and them. They were mocking a fiction, a character,
almost a parody. Inside my head I detected a sudden uncoupling of myself from
this unreality, like I was watching it on television. I was literally buzzing,
between my legs, into my loins. It felt so good. I wanted, no needed, to
scratch that destructive itch now burning in my moist lips. I shivered, the
erotic image of what was happening projected in front of me. It seemed to last
for far too long, like time itself had ceased to function properly and only
ended when the manageress stormed into the room demanding an explanation.
The sudden silence that descended on the room unnerved
me enormously. “What is the meaning of this noise?” She sounded angry and
instantly saw that I had been the cause of the ruckus. Her eyes seemed to
linger on my dress for a moment. I saw her drink in my image and her eyes flick
to my short hemline for a second more than one would suspect normal. I had no
idea that she had spent the evening tapping my personnel file and the internet
for more information about me. I was also unaware that she had been the one
that had overheard me pleasuring myself in the toilets. Neither of these
factors were present in my mind when I felt a different sensation creep up my
spine. For the way she looked at me totally smashed that shield I felt between
myself and this ‘reality’. Her eyes met mine and instantly I felt myself drawn
back into that room: Katherine and Marta’s destiny was again entwined tightly.
“Go to my office, Marta”. As I slunk down the corridor
to her room, I heard her remonstrating with the other cleaners. Part of me was
happy to hear that. Perhaps someone was standing up for me at last? I felt like
a naughty pupil as I stood outside her office. My imagination was running wild,
fed by the many questions raised by the way she had looked at me. Perhaps it
was just my imagination, but it seemed different, almost understanding? I
looked down the corridor for any sign of her, listening attentively for any
clacking of heels, but nothing.
24.
Waiting can be tortuous at any time, but at a moment
like this it was truly agonising. Okay, I had never liked waiting for anything.
My privileged status in life meant that I was usually able to buy my way past
queues. This, in turn, had bred a sense of exceptionalism into me: I did not wait
for anything. So to find myself here waiting like a naughty schoolgirl for the
headmistress felt so wrong. What was also wrong was the way that I grew more
and more aroused as people passed by and knew I was in trouble. I felt about an
inch tall as they passed by and smirked at the underdressed maid.
I was now regretting the order Katherine had put in for these wretched uniforms. They did very little to cover me and I felt exposed, my darkened skin so clearly visible underneath the cut of the dress. Tugging down on the hem provided no relief and only served to pull the dress further down my cleavage. This left just one option: to cower in the corridor like a shrinking violet, slightly bent over to help mitigate my exposure to those passing by. More time ticked by and then I remembered something that shook me to my very core. My phone! Oh god, I had left it in the changing room in amongst my other uniform! Abandoning my wait, I set off back towards the maid room, hurrying along the corridor.
“Where do you think you are going?” I turned to see the manageress glowering at me. “I said wait by my office, which is that way!” She pointed back along the passage to where I had just come from.
“Sorree. I remember I no have phone with me. I want to get it from my room”
The manageress looked impatient and smug in equal measure. She held up a plastic carrier bag.
“I think you will find what you are looking for in
here.” I took a few steps towards her and raised my arm to take it from her. In
those halting movements, our eyes again met. Mine searching for clues as to
what she knew, trying to divine her purpose in all this. Hers a classic lesson
in drawing a poker face. She held all the cards at that moment, whether or not
she appreciated this.
She released the bag into my hand and I took it. As I did, I saw my arm shake, a tremor of fear and angst rippling throughout my body. She remained totally silent as I peered into the bag and saw my old uniform, but no phone. I rifled through the bag. It had to be here. That phone was my portal back to my old world!
The manageress cleared her throat. “Is this what you
are so exercised about?” My phone dangled from her fingers. Her smile, narrow
and amused, told me she had already been into the mail program. “We need to
talk, please.. go inside”.
Instantly I detected a change in tone. Gone was the easy, firm dominance she exercised over me and the other maids. In its place, at least for this moment, seemed to be a less patronising tone. More measured.
I felt somewhat dizzy and rooted to the spot. Various scenarios were rattling through my mind: perhaps I could bribe her; just run and deny everything; beg her for help. I shuffled into the office, unable to compute the full gravity of my situation.
“Please, take a seat,” she paused, “Miss Webb”.
With that simple sentence all the air left my lungs and I almost fell into the chair. If the manageress had harboured any doubts about who I was, my pathetic reaction confirmed her opinion. Slumping into the chair, I struggled to find the strength even to lift my head. The weight I now felt on my shoulders seemed designed to slump my body down into a curve, emphasising the shame and helplessness I was now experiencing.
If there had been a ticking clock in the office, I am sure it would have slowed to a crawl at that moment. My senses were totally hyped to pick up any sudden noise or movement. I was sure I could hear my heart thumping between my ears, a pulsing headache now taking hold of me. We sat there in silence for too long. Each noise startled me: footsteps passing by the door, the air conditioning unit clattering into life, a message received on her phone.
She breathed in deeply. “I have written you an application to extend your stay with us…. Marta. It needs to be confirmed by Ms Webb. All she has to do is send an email confirming that it is ok.”
Her voice was self-assured, confident, very much in
the driving seat. She handed me the phone. “It would be in everyone’s interest
if that was done quickly. After all I would not want anyone else to get in the
way.”
Was that a threat? Or was this some kind of reassurance? I was too stunned by her comment to say anything. Mutely, I nodded.
“I have already written a response. All you need do is click send,” she said softly, seeing how I had crumbled so completely before her.
I nodded again, my thumb hovering over the send button.
“Good girl, Katherine.”
My insides quivered as I pressed send.
25.
The manageress seems to have a skill of keeping
everyone guessing. I had noticed this from the very first moment I had met her.
This was no surprise. Her very presence had been a rather unpleasant surprise, replacing
the jovial manager I had expected to wrap around my little finger.
As soon as I had sent the message confirming that I
would be staying – perhaps trapped is a more appropriate word – for some time
yet, she had snatched the phone back from me. Sometime later, I pondered why
she had even given me the phone at that moment. I suppose it was her way of
covering herself a little. To see how I would react and for me to seal my own
fate. At that point I was still unaware that virtually everywhere in the hotel
was being monitored. My act of acceptance was most likely recorded as well.
I watched, head still bowed low in contrition, whether for my actions or for merely being caught. Though not clear at that time, this would be one of the last times I saw my phone. The manageress again cleared her throat, drawing my attention toward her.
“Since you will be staying with us for longer, Marta, I have decided that you need to do this properly.”
I looked up, puzzled and fearful in equal measure.
“I assume you have left your other belongings in the locker room. Please hand me your key, you will have no need of anything left in there.”
I gazed coolly at the stupid girl. I could barely belief what I had found out barely ten minute ago, though it all made sense in a deeply disturbing and perverted way. Fortunately for Ms Webb, two things were preventing me from just dropping her like a stone. One, I found the whole affair highly arousing. This whole scene pushed my erotic buttons hard. My need for status and power, a related passion, was another reason. Both these desires could be met if this situation was carefully managed.
Ms Webb was like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car, trapped, not knowing whether to turn this way or that. I was the driver of that vehicle. I could simply run her over, destroy her and most likely myself with her. No, of much greater sense, is to accommodate this girl’s odd desires and to fluff my own pillows while doing so.
I was not sure how much I could milk from this, but I would do all I could to make it considerable. I held out my hand for her locker key. This was a key moment. When she sent the message from her phone, she merely accepted that she would be staying longer. This. This was an act of submission. Perhaps the first of many such steps. And who knows where they may lead for the both of us?
I could but only smile as she handed me the key. “Good girl,” I purred somewhat patronisingly, instantly letting her see that an invisible balance of power between us had shifted dramatically.
“Good girls deserve treats don’t they Marta?” Her
darker hue did nothing to hide the rampant blushing she was now experiencing.
Even so after a little more cajoling the little mouse started to nod.
“Does Marta want a treat?”
For the first time, since I took her into my office, she found a voice, though not the one I had been expecting to hear. Her clear cut accent, the highly educated tones of rich, young woman replied: “Yes… Yes please..”
I placed a lip to my finger to silence her. “That was not Marta speaking. If I want to hear Katherine, I will tell you.” She seemed to spasm on the spot. At that moment, I had my prey on a hook and I began to reel her in.
“Pleez Miss. Marta is good girl. Marta like treats. Pleez Marta have treat?”.
Her accent was thick, lilted in a way that a casual observer might mistake for
foreign. To my ears, alert to the deception at hand, it all sounded so fake.
How could I have been so stupid before?
“Go to room 501. Wait for me outside.” I said as though I were talking to any regular maid. She paused and looked up for a moment, as though unsure of just what she had been expecting to hear at that moment. “I said go….” my voice was flat and commanding, as though I were talking to an errant child.
I watched the poor, confused and horny wretch stumble her way out of my room, shorn of any safe way of returning to her life as a rich heiress. My insides quivered in delight as I locked her phone and the key to her locker in my safe. Was I really going to do this? I smiled deviously as I checked my appearance in the mirror.
26.
Trapped! That was the one word that kept revolving
around the inside of my head. Trapped! Despite the new dynamic rocking my
world, the manageress’ office had felt like something of a sanctuary, a curious
feeling given what had just happened. The last ten minutes had seemed like a
blur and, as I stepped gingerly along the corridor towards the staff lifts, I
tried to review the events in my head. I listed what I did know: she knew I was
Katherine Webb; she knew I had made up the identity I was now inhabiting. But,
then, what else could she know for sure? Oddly enough, despite what I had
considered my meticulous planning, I had not really thought long about being
caught, the consequences of which had just seemed too awful to bear.
As per usual, my overactive imagination seized on
several potentially dire outcomes. I could end up in jail, for fraud! I would
be ruined in the press! My family might disown me! I would lose my inheritance!
Would the manageress blackmail me? My mind flitted from one possibility to the
next, driving my anxieties to a level I had not previously experienced. I felt
like I might keel over.
Pausing in the corridor to steady myself against the
wall, I tried to clear the clutter from my mind. I was trapped yes, but only
because of one person. It must be possible to find a way to contain this. In
front of me was the staff elevator. I reached out and pressed the button
summoning the lift. Again my hands were shaking. I found myself waiting again.
That thought “it must be possible to contain this” had opened a dark room
inside my head. I peered inside: could I somehow kill her? Dispose of the
problem that way? I shuddered and closed my eyes. I knew that most killings are
caused through desperation and, for a moment, the thought lingered. Bing! The
lift arrived and felt sick as I stepped inside and sent the elevator up to the
fifth floor.
They say power is intoxicating. At this moment, I can
confirm this is VERY much the case. That stupid, spoiled brat was on her way to
the hotel’s best suite. Not that a hotel of this standard had anything like the
opulence she would be used to back home. Still, it would have to do. For her
plan to work, two things would need to happen: firstly, Katherine would have to
start to trust her, at least enough to stop her bolting for the exit. And
secondly, this adventure would need to last long enough to propel me high
enough to make it worth my while. There was no way I was going to kill this
particular golden goose.
Gazing at my screen, I watched the girl slowly make her way to the elevator and get inside. It would have been obvious to anyone passing by that this girl was troubled. Her features were sallow and drawn, her eyes dark pits in their sockets. She was on the verge of breaking completely. One more push from me would do it. But something else was stopping me. The eroticism of this moment was profound. No. I was enjoying this too much to completely squash her. This could be profitable and enjoyable.
Room 501 was not far from the elevator. This floor
seemed to be little used. Not a great surprise, given that it housed the
higher-priced accommodation in an isolated town. I stepped to the door and
waited. Thankfully everything was silent, helping to alleviate the worst of my
inner tension. Again time passed fitfully. I lost track of how long I was
standing there. Should I go back down? What was taking so long? I was lost in
my thoughts when the lift suddenly announced her arrival.
As she stepped from the elevator, her eyes immediately
met mine and I slinked lower, dipping my gaze to the floor. Instinct was taking
over and, in a sense, I was entering something akin to survival mode. The
manageress stepped close to me. Her body now just inches away. Silently, she
unlocked the door and stepped inside breezily.
“Come!” She barked authoritatively. “Close the door”.
She marched down the narrow passage to the main body
of the suite. I stepped in cautiously, unable to quell the anxieties now making
my body tremble.
“I understand, you know. At least I think I
understand.”
I lifted my head for the first time and again saw
those eyes boring into my head. Her confidence seemed to have reached even
higher peaks, while mine was falling yet further.
“This is some kind of holiday from your normal life. A
getaway from the pressures of being Katherine Webb.”
Her tone was a little mocking at that moment, but
otherwise she was maintaining a professionally neutral tone.
“I would almost understand all that, if it were
not for one thing.”
I looked up again.
“The toilet. I heard you.”
If privilege and status can ever be considered a
weakness, this was it. I was dumbfounded, unable to speak, unable to think of
anything to say. I was so used to doing the talking, telling other people how
things would be, that when the proverbial shoe was on the other foot, I found
myself unable to respond. Completely unprepared, instead my face flushed a deep
hue of crimson and my posture slumped once more. I felt exposed and humbled,
the distance to my old life suddenly opening up by potentially weeks, If not
months.
27.
“Yes I heard you. I heard you express your underlying
feelings”. Though I was not able to look her in the eye, I could almost picture
her perfectly. A wry little smile planted on her face. Her lips curled upwards,
forming a small U-shaped curve. All the while she was talking, I was standing
there, a motionless, speechless figure. A pathetic supplicant whose mask had
been stripped away, her deepest and most damaging secrets laid bare, ready to
be exploited by some merciless protagonist. I did not know what to say. All I
could manage was a weak and trembling “sorry”.
That single word, simple and so frequently used,
signalled a few things. It showed that I felt guilt for what I had done, a
sense of remorse – at least for getting caught – and, therefore, a reluctant
endorsement of what the manageress had just said. It also showed the degree to
which the openly confident Katherine had been subdued and replaced by the
cowering persona of Marta. I did not see it, but at that moment the manageress
had licked her lower lip, a sign of whetted appetite and desire. However, if I had
seen it, would that have eased my anxieties?
“Undress. Take off that slutty little uniform,” she
instructed me, her voice pitched flatly, calm and authoritative.
Again I looked up. Again I met those eyes. Again I
slinked down another notch, unwilling to confront her. I reached up and tugged
at the tight bodice of the dress and dragged it up over my shoulders, leaving
me in just my flat shoes, cheap panties and bra. Just like earlier in the maids
room when I had been compelled to undress, I had eyes on me judging me.
The difference though was stark. The maids ridiculed
me as a figure of fun. To them I was a source of amusement and teasing. For her
part, the manageress was a cat toying with a mouse. I squirmed a little. That
thought, of the power shift between us, of how I was losing my ability to
control things sparked that now familiar, but no less delightful, fire between
my thighs.
No maid would tolerate this, her boss directing her to
strip like this. No normal maid would have anyway. But I was not that. I was
lower than a maid. I was reduced beyond the level of a paid employee. I risked
becoming something worse than that.
I felt her hand on my torso, her fingers dancing
lightly upwards past my waist, tracing a line above my belly button to the cotton
cups holding my breasts in place. I was now trembling. Was she testing me?
Seeing how far I would fall? She had already seen that she controlled me, what
more did she want?
“You like playing with power, Katherine, I do too,”
her fingers now brushed the underneath of my bosom, making my upper body quiver
and tremble.
“You appear to enjoy giving power away. I crave it. I
want to accumulate it.” Her hands were now running through my hair, brittle and
worn away by the excesses of the colouring, I felt denuded of my beauty for the
first time, a curious desire and need to please this woman now gripping me and
making me regret how I looked a little.
“I was looking at photos of you from the last gala you
attended, just three weeks ago. You were so pretty, so pampered. If I did not
know better, I would have been jealous. But I do know better.” Her fingers were
now pressed to my taut stomach, sliding down to my panties. I started to gasp,
to pant. The clock had stopped again. Her fingers! Oh god her fingers are
inside my panties. No! she will feel…. She will know!
“Such wetness! Oh my!” The manageress giggles lightly,
not worried in the slightest with trying to contain her laughter.
“Marta is such a bad maid huh?” She gently runs her
fingertips along my slit, revealing just how excited I am growing. I feel utter
shame at being so rudely exposed, fuelling yet more desire and need on my half.
The toxic delight of having someone to share my secret, a taboo desire fed and
nurtured by an accomplice? Was this what was happening here? I let that
possibility circulate in my mind, driving my body to respond. I found myself
pushing back onto her fingers, attempting to crush my pulsing flesh on her
hand.
As suddenly as she had opened up that golden vision,
she closed it shut, pulling her fingers away from me and turning away from me.
“Marta, I will decide when you have learned enough to leave the hotel. Until
that time, you will reside here as a junior maid.” Her reversion to the stiff
manageress was sudden and timed to perfection. It left me disoriented and
confused.
“You will come to see me daily at 7pm for our training
meeting, when we will handle certain pressing matters. You may dress and return
to the maids room. I know Linda will be waiting for you.”
Unsure of what to do, but fully aware of the power the
manageress now held over me, I curtsied as gracefully as I could and dressed
once more. As I left the room, I saw the manageress tip her head to one side
and smile, not in a demeaning or patronising way, but perhaps as a friend? As
with so much in the past day, I could not be sure and felt I was losing my grip
on reality.
28.
Everything felt different. Being ‘found out’ and
confronted by the manageress was akin to crossing the Rubicon in my mind. She
knew who I was, the rich heiress, destined for fame and fortune – albeit shared
with my sister. Despite that she had not flinched one inch, not shown me any
real deference. I shivered. Other than my family, this was the first person to
so totally ignore my privileged status and family name, Webb, instead opting to
treat me like Marta Fernandez. It seemed that she was opening the door on my
sleazy game and entering the room. Would she take control of it, change the
rules? She had not yet hinted at revealing my secret, though that threat was
very real and dangerous. But. Yet. Her smile had given me confidence that this
may all yet work out so well.
That smile. It had set forth the usual wave of
butterflies in my stomach, only this time they were morphing into something
even stronger and more pleasurable, their pulsing wings sending shocks of raw
pleasure to my upper thighs and loins. Three times today I had found it
necessary to sneak off to what now seemed my only sanctuary, the toilet
cubicle. Mindful of how I had been caught out before, this time I remained
silent as I pressed my way to heavenly bliss.
Linda had been her usual mixture of vulnerable and
aggressive. Vulnerable to compliments, even those little more than bare-faced
lies masquerading as a compliment. And aggressive, to the one maid in this
hotel that she felt some undeserved sense of superiority towards. I dwelt upon
that sense of entitlement for a moment and saw parallels with the way I
expected my name and money to purchase a certain prestige and degree of
respect. I remembered the encounters I had had with people of different ethnic
backgrounds before, usually maids, cooks or staff. Naturally, each had treated
me well and it was what I expected. But was this because of their position
relative to mine, or did race have any part to play?
For someone like Linda, very much towards the bottom
of the social pile, a marker as strong as race would hold much greater
importance. I could sense this in the way she used expletives when talking to
me, a total lack of respect for my sensibilities that I had never before
encountered. After all was I not the same person, just in a different body? I
had wanted to see what being powerless was like. I had wanted to understand how
it felt to be that Latina maid in the hotel I had visited all those days ago.
For her part, Linda seemed an unwitting, but
completely willing accomplice in this strange adventure. She revelled in meting
out the most degrading jobs to me, seeming to enjoy watching me crawl on my
hands and knees, or crouch down to clean some foul, caked-on mess from the
floor. Once or twice her enjoyment seemed so great that I wondered “does she
know about me?” That chilling thought was enough to quash any anger I may have
experienced and made the little mouse I was fast becoming only scurry around faster
for her supervisor.
It seemed to me that my ‘race’ was playing a role in
her treatment of me and not just my ‘newness’. Bullies are insecure people and
they tend to zero in on people with a vulnerability they can exploit. I could
see how race pushed certain social buttons for the worse, especially for those
competing for the same jobs, same apartments. It is all too easy to see
someone’s skin and see a difference.
I did not dwell on these thoughts again until the
evening. After another 30 minutes or so of waiting, the manageress showed up
and led me into room 501. Reclining comfortably in an easy chair, she asked me
to explain why I had chosen to disguise myself as a Latina. She could
understand the maid, but why the different race? Growing increasingly
uncomfortable, I told her of the incident at the other hotel and how it had
triggered so many of my previously held fantasies. Of how I concluded it would
also act to best disguise me and, with some coaxing from her, I finally
admitted the great hidden secret, suddenly crystallised in my mind after hours
of thinking: “It… it adds to the…. humiliation. I feel a little like an
outcast, p..people look at me oddly, they treat me so differently. It is almost
a 180 degree reversal in my life.”
Whether it is the relief of finally sharing my deepest
secrets with someone, or a genuine masochistic tendency to want to give others
power over me, in that moment of earnestness, I saw the proverbial lightbulb
fire up inside of her head. Little did I know, but she had already read the
runes and had come prepared.
29.
My head was spinning after my admission. Was I racist?
Was I just demented? It was all so wrong.
“I have something that will help make you feel like
were actually Latina,” she pauses checking my reaction, which must have been
dumbfounded bordering on incredulous.
“Undress for me now, Marta.” I shivered. With the use
of that one word, Marta, she instantly tapped deep into my submissive
tendencies, bringing them to the fore and making me more malleable.
“Place your items neatly on the bed”. It was a relief
to get out of that cheap, slutty uniform, if only for a moment. When I turned
back to face her, standing in nothing but my cotton bra and panties, she was
holding two syringes and two vials of some clear liquid. Katherine is curious,
she wanted to know what was contained in those little glass bottles. Marta was
obedient and knew better, opting instead to let her ‘social better’ speak
first.
“Everything off Marta. Panties and bra too. I want to
see just how good a job you did with your tanning lotion.” I nodded meekly. I
could not even muster any real aversion to what she had just ordered me to do.
That buzzing between my legs was back with a vengeance, taking control and
pushing aside my inhibitions and fear. I pulled down my underwear and piled them
on top of the uniform. Totally naked, this time I turned to face the manageress
completely shorn of pride and any semblance of self-respect.
The manageress walked around in me in little circles.
Every so often she would prod at a patch of my skin, checking for spots that I
had missed or done a poor job of covering with the tanning lotion.
“Not the best of jobs,” she said. “It is even wearing
off in places where your uniform was tight! No.. this will not do, we will have
to try something else.” Something else? My ears pricked up.
She had returned to cabinet where she had placed the
vials and syringes. “This will help keep you darker without all those patches.”
What is this stuff? My head was nearly aching wanting
to ask, wanting to know more. This was not what I planned on at all. Sure being
a darker hue was part of my plan, but at a time and place of my choosing and,
most importantly, for a period of time I wished for.
“How… how long does this stuff last?” I regretted
asking almost as soon as I did.
“Do you not trust me, Marta?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly and she reached across for
my hands which were trembling. Clasping them in her grasp, she proceeded to
guide them towards my stomach, my mound and my now slick pussy lips. I gasped
as she curled her own fingers, in turn bending mine so that they parted my lips
and sank into my moist opening. My trembling only intensified as she began to
caress and massage me and then things moved to a new level.
“You do want to experience the life of a lowly
Hispanic maid, don’t you Katherine?” Her words were silky soft, seductive and
pressing at the same time. Her question had already been answered by my lustful
reaction to her advances, seemingly unable to do anything but crumble in front
of her. Each gently stroke of my clitoris was divine and seemed unreal, as
though I were entering an out of body experience. It was almost as if I were
looking down on the scene as third person.
I nodded my response to her question. She continued:
“You do not deserve to be a rich heiress do you? A rich heiress would be
confident and commanding, not the lowest of maids in a rundown, out of town
hotel.” Her finger continued to massage me expertly, crowding out the doubts
that were criss-crossing my mind. “Not Katherine Webb….. No… you are Marta
Fernandez…”
I felt a faint prick on my ass cheeks that made me
jump and cry out. I did not need to turn to know that she had injected me with
whatever had been in the vials. Her fingers, planted deeply inside of me,
felt my growing wetness a shameful confirmation that I was revelling in this
moment of entrapment.
“I am using something called melanotin*. It lasts
weeks, maybe months before you need a top-up. I guess you had originally planned
to be here, what a fortnight?” She pauses and injects me again, this time on my
upper thighs. I feel myself frozen in place once more, the full consequences of
what she is saying hitting me hard. Detecting the stiffening in my body, as I
grew increasingly tense, the manageress hurried to qualm my anxieties.
“Good girl. It feels nice yes? Changing, becoming
Marta for real, huh?” All the while, she never relaxed her fingers, working
incessantly at my hot and dripping sex, until that delicious moment when I felt
myself overwhelmed by everything and I collapsed into her arms delivering
myself mind and body to her.
30.
A few days passed before the manageress called to see me
again. Once or twice I had seen her in the distance, a blur of activity,
hurrying off to one or other meeting. Sometimes I mistook someone else for her.
Her usual attire, a tight skirt ending just above the knee paired with sharply
heeled stiletto pumps reminded me of a strict headmistress. Whether or not that
particular ensemble was chosen on purpose, the effect on me was instant and
telling: tightness in my stomach followed by a warm, pleasurable glow below.
If the fear of being found out was draining, the
terror of uncertainty was more so. A naturally submissive person, despite the
years of privilege, I felt increasingly vulnerable and unable to take the
initiative in any way. Of course, this must have been the effect desired by the
Manageress: keeping me off balance and unable – or more likely – too scared to
do anything to risk ruining herself. She had already started to act in the name
of Katherine. That decision to extend Martha’s tenure with the hotel was the
first instant. I fretted over her access to my email and all that could entail.
But that was only the half of it. She also had my cards, identity cards,
driving license. Barring one or two passwords and codes, she had almost
everything she needed to become a virtual me. I was painfully aware that the
codes to my bank account were the most important thing to keep secret now. Were
I to surrender those, the consequences could be damning.
By the third day of not seeing the manageress, I
decided I needed to act. The anxiety was becoming too great. Surely she was
checking my email now? What was she writing back? What was she planning? She
must see that this could not last much longer? After all her friends and – more
importantly – family back home must be wondering what is happening? I decided
to see if I could catch her early in the morning. In many ways, it was almost a
spur of the moment decision, after another sleepless night, tossing and turning
in bed, my mind trying to work out some kind of solution. It was also clumsy
timing.
As I ventured into the corridor containing her office,
I had already seen the manageress hurrying along ahead of me, oblivious to the
fact that I was following her. The way she had slammed her door closed should
have warned me not to approach her at that moment, but inside my head I had
built this moment up to such a crucial pitch that I was not to be dissuaded.
Standing outside the office, I knocked quietly, feeling afraid but determined
to find out what was going on.
I heard no answer. I knocked again, somewhat more
insistently. Still nothing. For the first time in a very long while, I felt a
moment of indignation: how could she ignore me! I know she is inside! I tried
the door handle and, finding it open, walked inside.
The manageress was sitting at her desk glowering at
me. She was on the telephone and I was clearly interrupting her. “One moment”,
she asked her interlocutor, and muted her phone.
“How dare you come in here like that!” Her voice was
sharp and laced with menace. “Who do you think you are?!” Her anger was genuine
and not contrived as it had been in previous encounters. The effects of the
psychological torment I had brought upon myself were starting to take their
toll. My mood swings were enormous. A moment go I had been angry, Katherine’s
sense of status recovered for the briefest of moments. Now, mere seconds later
I was crumpling into a ball. Marta’s character was in the ascendant and I was
helpless to see a way to regain control right now. In response, I merely looked
at my feet and felt sick and afraid.
The little mouse that stood in front of me showed that
ignoring the stupid girl for long enough was breaking down her confidence.
Granted she had breached the normal lines of protocol between a boss and her
supplicant, but the reaction of being shouted at was just about as good as I
might have hoped for. But I needed tread warily. I cannot risk that somehow her
situation becomes so desperate she might break cover. I threw her lifeline.
“Sorry John, I will call you back. Something….. came
up here”
I hung up and put the mobile down. Silently, I reached
for the other phone. Her phone. Katherine’s phone. I lifted it and read some of
the emails from the screen.
“Well what was that fuss about….. Marta?”
The poor creature looked like she may break down into
tears. She needed reassurance, needed to feel the touch of a safety net
catching her from falling too quickly. The situation had been swirling around
in her head for days, but her mind was not strong enough to overcome the
anxiety. Her moment to question me fading into embarrassing silence. This
conversation was not as she had imagined. Then she spoke.
“I.. need to know….. what is happening. Please. I.. I
cannot bear not knowing.. I appreciate you not telling anyone, but…. h..how long
can this go on, they will be asking questions…”
I broke her off.
“Marta. You do not seem to understand. Katherine Webb is
no concern of yours. You are taking far too much interest in her than would be
considered healthy……”
My train of thought was interrupted by noticing she
was breaking character too, neglecting to speak her pidgin English. She was
clearly at risk of having an emotional breakdown if I did not cushion the
descent into her new life. I decided to act and indulge the heiress’ dirty
little fantasy.
31.
“If you must know, Katherine is fine…. She is
extending her tour and travelling to Latin America for a few weeks…” Her words
jolted me. Though we had spoken of Ms. Webb – myself – in the third person a
few times now, this marked something of an escalation. It was almost as though
I had been separated from her, as though she were now an independent force,
something beyond my control. This mental image was so profoundly wrong, though
in a thrilling way. It was almost as if I were no longer Katherine at all and
it had a clearly visible effect on me.
“It… is all okay? No-one has… has said anything?” I
asked back, desperate to know that I could let go, at least for the time being,
of my anxiety. The manageress smiled a little, crossing and uncrossing her
legs, inviting my eyes to dance over her shapely legs. She had all the power at
that very moment to help me. She had all the cards to stop me from ruining myself.
The sexual heat building between us at that moment was so thick and pungent, I
lost track of what we were discussing.
“Yes Marta, Katherine is safe. You can let go.” She
spoke gently, soothingly, fully aware of the effect her words were having. I felt
the tightness in my stomach relent and, breathing normally for the first time
in a few days, I found the near panic that had gripped me start to dissolve,
giving way to that sordid delight I found in my position.
I nodded. “You .. please will keep me safe?”
This was it! Another level of surrender. It was
amazing how a few days ignoring the fool could result in such an easy
capitulation. Her confidence was at near zero, but she was almost completely
hooked on the feelings and excitement her journey prompted within her. Her body
gave away all the tell-tale signals: flushed cheeks and tops of her chest. A
slight tremble. Her posture.
“Yes Marta, I will keep your secret and keep you safe.
Now go. You have to mop the stairs today and ensure that the public toilets are
clean, as always. I will send for you if I need you.”
With that, the heiress to one of the country’s biggest
fortunes slinked from the room, leaving me to return to my business. Not once
had she complained about her lack of access to me. She understood the dynamics
of our relationship. She did as she was told and she would be safe. Blackmail
maybe? In part yes. But her own desires were too strong for her to question
what was becoming a beneficial arrangement.
I decided to take a break myself and turned my
attention to the news. Though I did not realise it at the time, the second
story on the website, about some investigations into improper financial
behaviour at a leading bank would eventually impact on everything we were
doing. It would force me to adapt quickly and in profound ways. I flicked past
the expose with barely a note of concern.
Of much greater interest was Katherine’s phone. It was
now full of requests for meetings and advice. I had not been totally honest
when I said everything was okay. To someone of lesser standards, Katherine’s
work of late might have been adequate, but it was not near her usual standards
and one or two comments from colleagues were warning of trouble ahead. I was
not totally sure how to deal with this, but deal with it I must.
The explosion of relief I felt after speaking to the Manageress
was predictably brief as my overactive imagination soon got to work on figuring
out what could still go wrong. Still, I did feel a whole lot better and
convinced – at least for a brief period – that the manageress was treading
warily. In some deranged way, I had managed to cast the majority of my doubts
to one side and chosen to believe that she was on my side. Foolish perhaps, a
voice nagged at the back of my mind, but I was in too far to think of a way
back on my own.
I went about my duties, mopping the stairs leading to
the public toilets. My mind, relaxing a little after these days of torment,
began once again to roam the darker recesses of my mind. The lurid and dirty edges
of my imagination as I pictured myself no better, if not lower, than the Latina
maid I had seen those weeks before. The one terrified of her boss. Much in the
way I was now captive to the whims of the Manageress.
32.
Two days elapsed before I next spoke to the
Manageress. In that time, my life achieved as much normality as could be hoped
for in the given circumstances. At times I even found myself getting used to
the menial tasks that were now my primary occupation, occasionally exhibiting
some pride in a clean floor or basin. It was sensible for me to obtain as many
of a cleaner’s trade ‘secrets’ as I could. I learned what a bit of soda and
vinegar could achieve when mixed with lemon, and the time it could save me.
What no-one told me was the effect it would have on my
hands if I were not wearing gloves. The constant scrubbing and exposure to
various bleaches, chemicals were ruining my hands. My nails were worn down past
my fingertips. Small, rough callouses that would take months to rid myself off
were appearing on my usually soft skin. The signs of decline were everywhere.
My skin had managed to turn a few shades darker after its treatment and after a
week had passed it showed few signs of wearing off or fading.
I certainly did not look myself. Gone was the fresh
faced, young woman. In her place was a woman who looked tired, disheveled and
robbed of much of her femininity. My legs and armpit were covered in stubble
and I found myself powerless to stop this remorseless march to mediocrity,
given that the Manageress now had all of Katherine’s belongings. While doubts continued
to nag at the back of my mind, I had found the best way to ignore them was to
set myself a limit. I thought I would not approach the Manageress for 3 days.
In that time, I would become the maid I came here to be, forget all about
Katherine and her life. After all? If things were to end badly, what could I do
about it now? Nothing! I put aside my fears and dived into my life as Marta.
It was hard work to keep up the pidgin English. Always
remembering to speak with a heavy accent and bad grammar. Still, I found by
applying a few ‘rules,’ I could achieve a great deal.
Mispronouncing certain letters and using the wrong
case all the time really broke my grammar. So that: ‘She ran around the ragged
rock’ became… ‘She run eeround ze rag ged rock’ or ‘Please may I have some
salt?’ became ‘Pleeeze salt may I?’
With some practice I even found myself ad-libbing to
some extent, confusing countable and uncountable nouns, using quantifiers badly
and mangling the language with some truly awful pronunciation. It gave me a
thrill when people did not understand me and asked me to repeat myself. Once I
even managed to make Linda give up on me completely, leaving me to stew in my
erotic imaginings. Now, fully aware of the cameras dotted around the hotel, I
even found myself looking up at the camera that surveyed the toilets. I hoped
against hope – just once – that the Manageress might see and follow me inside.
The overall effect of letting go was incredibly liberalising. I felt free –
Well, as free as one could in a cage of her own making. Free at least to
indulge my helplessness, protected by someone I thought was my ‘friend’.
It was during happy period that I decided to step away
from the confines of the hotel. The town was a short bus ride away and, even
though I had no payment cards, I had been given some tips that I had scraped
together into about 20 dollars. I suppose the Manageress thought I was trapped
with no money, unable to leave the hotel even had I wanted to, so I needed to
be careful. Still, that evening I waited patiently in the wings watching her
leave, my eyes drawn as usual to her tight skirt and slim legs all shaped
beautifully by her high heels. My heart and tummy felt that usual drag and
warmth, and for a moment I felt I should stay in place and obey her like a good
little maid. But, my furtive desires were building to a new pitch, fueled by
thoughts of taking my experience outside of the hotel. Once I had gotten the
bit between my teeth, it seemed little would stop me.
The Manageress’ car sped out of the parking lot and I
followed moments later. Without access to my other clothes, nor willing to ask
the other maids for help, I was still dressed in my work attire. Fortunately, I
still had the less sexual of the two uniforms and it was in this worn and used
dress that I re-entered the world outside the walls of the hotel. I had seen a
timetable at reception and knew a bus would be due soon and had to hurry if I
was to catch it. Shorn of my belongings, I longed for some basic beauty
products to stop my decline and had decided to make my way to the mall on the
outskirts of town. It was risky, I knew that. I was undocumented. Carrying
nothing. But somehow I felt more secure in my working clothes, as though they
conferred a degree of officialdom onto me. I paused at the bus stop and cleared
my head of thoughts, keeping myself to myself and avoiding any kind of eye
contact.
33.
When I finally got to the mall, I was feeling a little
flustered. The bus has been terribly full. No doubt many other people had had
the same idea as me and the crowded, smelly box of sardines I found myself
loaded upon was a particularly rude lesson in using public transport. I could
not help but reflect on how different this was to the chauffer-driven luxury I
had been used to. I felt sick as I recalled how it felt to sprawl out on the
large leather seats, dressed as I was, looking like a little princess. As
always, the sickness gave way to a delightful twinge in my nether regions and I
looked down, remembering that, for now at least, this was my place.
It was such a relief to leave the cramped confines of
the bus and make my way into the mall. Even though the place needed a touch of
modernisation and was lacking many of the best brands, I knew I could find what
I was looking for here. The melatonin would keep my skin this colour for some
time, I knew that. But my hair was another matter. It looked a frizzy mass on
top of my head, but my roots would soon show unless I had something to counter
it. Also, I wanted to get some razors to help maintain my feminine self at
least a little. If this whole adventure – nightmare? – was to last much longer
than originally thought, I had to do something in that department.
The cashier sniffed at me as I handed over the payment
in a collection of small notes and coins collected from various clients. Of
course, my uniform told everyone I met what I did for a living. It became the
first thing they noted. I was a servant. Then they saw the dark skin and
tightly curled hair and saw an immigrant. If they had spoken to me, they would
have thought I was recent. Each time someone looked at me that way, I knew what
was going through their mind. It served to diminish myself in their eyes and
reinforce my new identity.
This was unintentional of course, but it was an
unexpected thrill. This is what I had wanted: to feel how it felt to be this
person. I kept my deferential stoop in place and continued on my way. I passed
by several clothes shops, each one a discount store offering tacky merchandise
at bargain prices. Normally I would never consider even pausing at the window
of such a place, but I had so few choices now and I needed something to wear
other than a simple uniform. Perhaps if I kept my head down and got more tips,
I could buy some shoes or even come shopping more often? I felt warped and
twisted as my desires for humiliation and degradation pulled at me to go inside
and buy the cheapest, trashiest dress I could find. Resisting the pull, I
stepped down the mall, only to feel the tug again at the next shop. This time,
it was a tight lycra dress that caught my eye. It was just the kind of cheap,
tacky sexual clothing that I should be wearing I thought. I felt my insides
burn. The same drive that had made me order those over sexualised uniforms was
pushing me over the threshold of the store and towards the display for those
dresses.
At a little under 10 dollars, buying this would
exhaust my remaining money, leaving me with just enough to get back to the
hotel. I was trembling when I picked up the dress. It was a single size, so I
knew I did not need to try it on, but I wanted to. In a daze, carrying this
slutty little number, I walked to the dressing room and showed the attendant
what I was carrying.
The look she gave me was priceless: a mixture of
disdain and distrust. Did she think I might try and steal this cheap, tacky
dress? I felt a wave of outrage, quickly dampened by the recognition that I was
putting these thoughts in her head. She had said nothing. Just, if a picture is
worth a thousand words, her glowering was worth double that.
Alone in the cabin, I slipped out of one uniform and
into another. Not a uniform in a formal sense, but still, another layer of
identity to those already so apparent. I was shaking as I stepped out from
behind the curtain and inspected myself in the mirror. I….. I looked so
trashy.. it was…. perfect. The hem of the skirt was in constant danger of
riding up to my buttocks. The bust and waist were perfectly shaped. I felt my
skin flush, though the effect was hidden underneath my melatonin-induced
darkness. What would people think of me now? Would I actually be brave enough
to wear this anywhere but the confines of a room behind a safely locked door?
Suddenly, in my mind, the doors to a whole new world
were flung open to me. I could have a life away from the hotel! I had no real
notion of what this meant and the alarm bells ringing in the back of my head
were muffled beneath a massive dose of irrationality. But at that moment, I
felt …… alien. It was me in the mirror, but even my mind now seemed to acting
differently, driven purely by a desire for degradation and humiliation.
Katherine was drowning in a sea of erotic adventure. And it felt
wonderful.
34.
I woke with a pleasant feeling in my tummy. I’d been
resting in that netherworld of sleep and partial awareness, my mind recalling
the previous evening’s events and how the whole affair had made me feel. I was
a sensitive person. Far too sensitive for the role life had thrust upon me. The
gentle slights and stares I had received yesterday were nothing to what an
immigrant maid must experience on a regular basis. What was it that excited me
so much? The gentle conditioning I had received from the troves of pornography
and erotica to be found online was one reason without doubt. Another may have been
a thick slice of guilt I felt at my good fortune in life. To be born into such
privilege was akin to rolling a double six when needed in a game. Did I deserve
it? My recent reactions and feelings indicated that, deep down, I felt not.
Unlike my sister or father, I did not feel comfortable with my good
fortune.
I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. I was
not overly spiritual, but dwelling like this on whether or not I deserved
something was not right. It was almost time to get up and work again. Soon I
would be pulling my cheap, short and figure hugging cleaning costume. I would
be grovelling on all fours cleaning the public toilets, the stairs and the lifts.
All the jobs considered beneath the others, my feet firmly on the lowest rung
of the social ladder. I lay there silently, my fingers sliding down my toned
torso to my damp pussy, where again I found my place in heaven. One last time I
thought before I would talk to the Manageress and see where all this was
leading. The three days I had promised myself had passed and I needed to see
her again. Hopefully after such a gap, she would be in a good mood. Maybe, she
would even touch me again. I gasped outwardly, suddenly clasping my hand to my
face, hoping no-one had heard. To my relief, everything remained silent.
From that point the day proceeded as normal. I had not
seen the Manageress again that morning and decided to walk along her corridor,
to see if she might be around, perhaps even to talk. To my dismay the office
was locked and no-one answered. I returned several times at various points in
the day, but it was always the same: no answer. This proved a subtle shock to
my system, feeding the low-level anxiety I had been struggling with before.
Each time I approached her door, I hoped she would be there, building my hopes
only to find that she was still gone.
As the day progressed I found various reasons to lurk
around her corridor, invariably being dragged away by Linda or some other maid
that wanted me for something. Each time, I scurried after them, afraid to upset
anyone or rock the boat. This was the pattern set for the day and, by evening
time, I felt my anxiety reach fever pitch. I hated not knowing what was going
on. Was she ill? Was she avoiding me? Had something awful happened?
Whatever it was I needed to know. None of the others
maids had an inkling of where she might be. They wanted as little to do with
the Manageress as possible and warned me not to poke my nose into trouble.
Still, I had to know. They did not understand what was at stake for me!
However, I was helpless: who could I ask without arousing suspicion, anger or
derision? I had to act now! I had to see the Manageress. I resolved to go to
her home and see that everything was alright. Just one huge sticking point
remained. I had no idea where she lived and no way of accessing my files to
find out. But, perhaps someone else could? Desperate times called for desperate
measures and I sneaked outside to find a pay phone to recapture my identity as
Katherine, just for the briefest of moments, and call a friend of mine that
worked in personnel.
The hotel of course no longer had a pay phone and I
had to venture out once again into the world beyond the doors of the hotel.
Outside the town was doused in a weakening twilight and I staggered down the
road to the bus stop where I knew there would be an old-fashioned phone box. I
had gathered together my tips from past day and carried them to the phone. I
had just enough to call New York for a few minutes. Slamming the door of the
phone box behind me, I dialled in the number for the company switchboard.
Speaking once again in my ‘old’ voice made me feel so alien. Though it had only
been a little more than two weeks, my time at Marta had been so intense, I
really had started to pick up one or unusual ticks and errors in my language. I
found myself having to concentrate hard to speak as myself.
It made little difference. My call was ‘important to
us and we will answer it shortly’. On hold and increasingly desperate, I found
myself shouting down the phone, the first explosion of frustration I had had
for some time. Shorn of my belongings and identity, I was as helpless as any
migrant maid would actually be. As my money ran out and the phone cut out, I
turned to leave the phone box, only to walk into the arms of a waiting police
officer. I looked up in horror, shocked into silence as my mind tried to
compute this awful moment.
35.
I sat uncomfortably in the police car, my arms cuffed
behind my back, forcing me sit unnaturally upright. I felt sick and numb,
barely able to understand what was going on. Was this my moment to be unmasked?
Would I be a figure of ridicule from now on? Oh god! How I now regretted
following up on this kinky adventure! Anyone with any sense would have seen
where this was going long ago. For my part, any slim chance I had to extricate
myself from this was ruined seconds after bumping into the police officer.
Why did I persist with my charade? Why, when he asked
my name and address, had I not told him the truth, insisting instead that I was
Marta Fernandez and that I worked at “ze ‘otel.” Did he see right through my accent?
As soon as I had replied, he had cuffed me and stuffed me into the back of the
car. I was aghast and utterly helpless. The hotel now felt like a refuge, even
with its cruel sides so brutally exposed to me. Now I was alone in the world
outside of its relative safety. My choice a simple one: convince them I was Marta
or ruin Katherine in a humiliating and life-destroying admittance of my fetish!
It seemed to take an age for us to get to the station.
The officer decided to stop off at a 7-Eleven on his way back, leaving me
restrained and perched on the back seat. People passed by, curious to see who
was in trouble. I saw that look again: suspicion towards an outsider. That
fuelled yet more panic as I realised how public this all risked becoming. I was
going to be ruined, unmasked as some sexual deviant or candidate for lunacy! At
least a dozen people stopped and stared, like I was an exhibit in a zoo. They
all saw me as a problem and little more.
It was little surprise that I felt such extraordinary
relief when the policeman came and took me away to the relative obscurity of
the station. Inside I was sat down on a long leather-clad bench, wearing my
maid’s uniform. Next to me was woman dressed so wantonly she could only have
been a hooker. On the bench opposite was what appeared to be a down-and-out,
dressed in tattered rags that used to be clothes. Every time someone was
unfortunate enough to venture close to him, he would spit obscenities in their
direction. It was only a matter of time before he laid eyes on me and the
tirade of racial slurs that came my way prompted me to cry.
I felt afraid and alone. Seeing the fracas, one of the
policemen took me down to the cells and out of the way of trouble. My crying
only seemed to worsen as they sealed me inside a tiny holding cell, no more
than a few square metres. On one side was a long bed, covered in the cheap
leather that seemed to coat almost all furniture here. On the other was a metal
toilet, absent its seat. I sat meekly on the bed.
“We just need to check your status. You work at the
hotel yes?” I nodded silently, still unable to bring myself to the truth. The
broad-shouldered cop walked away, slamming the door behind him and leaving me
to stew in my own juices for what seemed forever, my hopes raised only once
when a guard came by to offer me some food and water. I had no window or clock,
so rapidly lost sense of what time it was, but it must be late.
I prayed that the police would talk soon to the
Manageress! But what if they spoke to others there instead? What if they spoke
to head office? It seemed my whole life was dangling by an ever thinning thread
that could break any second and I felt sick and tired. After a few more hours,
I succumbed to tiredness and entered a fitful sleep, marked by dozens of
disturbing dreams that continued to haunt me when awake. I was now totally
unaware of how long I had been the cell.
The blurring of time, sleep and my fevered imagination
was ended by a sudden rapping on the door. In walked the Manageress and the policeman
that had apprehended me. She glowered at me, while speaking to the cop: “Yes. I
can assure you she is here legally, though only temporarily. She will be moving
to another hotel soon.”
“Ok. Well… I am sorry. We do not see her kind around
here often and I wanted to check.”
“Where was it you found her?”
“At a telephone booth. She looked agitated and I
wanted to see what was happening”.
I was led into the main body of the station and had to
wait in line with the hooker to have my finger prints taken. My god! I was now
registered as Marta Fernandez in the legal system! The manageress caught my eye
as I gave my hand to the policeman. He then took my picture and other biometric
details. Of course, Katherine had never had this done to her, so….. my body
data was now inextricably linked to Marta! This was becoming too much and I
felt my knees almost give out.
“We will expect her to report here again next week.”
“I will make sure she does,” the Manageress replied.
“But I think she will be here just one more week”.
The cop nodded. “You are free to go”.
We left, silently, but with so much already said
between us.
36.
Our drive back to the hotel started out in complete
silence. The manageress drove carelessly, obviously angry that I had been silly
enough to leave the hotel, something she clearly had not considered likely. Her
sharp, disjointed handling of the gear stick conveyed a sense of profound
irritation. Not once did she look at me or even attempt to start a
conversation. For my part, I was resolved to complete silence, unwilling to
test these shark-infested waters for fear of having my head bitten off.
Yet this day also showed me something else. She cared.
When I say cared, I do not mean in a loving or nurturing sense, at least I did
not suspect that. No, she cared in a way that an owner of a proverbial golden
goose might do to preserve their investment. That sense of protection helped to
soothe my strained nerves as I lay back in the passenger seat of the car.
As we passed through the downtown and out towards the
edges of town where the hotel was located, the passing images began to
correspond with my own mental map. It was then I realised we were not going to
the hotel and was instead going to the other side of town. The easy calm that
had descended on me suddenly evaporated and my anxiety levels rose at a steady
clip.
It took me several moments to build up the courage to
ask where we were heading. I was not sure how she would react, but I knew how
to soften the impact. I spoke with the thickest accent I could muster: “Miiiss.
Where we headed? ‘Otel be thataway.”
The manageress’ lips curled upwards ever so slightly
and she remained silent. My courage duly crumbled and the sullen silence
overwhelmed any drive I might have had to continue asking. If it needed any
more underlining, that moment illustrated how certain people are just
comfortable with a dominant persona and others are not. Were some of us simply
born to rule and others to serve? That thought, careless though profound sent a
delicious erotic spasm through me, leading me to conclude that yes: I, at least,
was born to serve and not to rule.
We pulled up in front of a large, gated complex about
20 minutes from the hotel. After keying in a code, the manageress drove into an
underground car park with a reserved spot. In silence we walked to a side
elevator and then travelled up a few storeys to what I presumed was her
apartment. I say presumed because this was not the apartment of a mid-level
manager of a second-tier hotel. This was approaching the status of a senior
manager: plush furnishings, all tiled floors.
Her heels clacked noisily on the gleaming marble
tiles. I followed after her, my eyes once more drawn to her legs and shoes,
adopting a naturally submissive stoop as I followed her. When the manageress
did finally deign to talk to me, it almost came out of the blue, catching me
off guard.
“You were stupid. You have forced me to change my
plans now. We cannot have you gallivanting about town as you wish.” She spoke
in short sentences, a staccato rat-a-tat kind of speech similar to a mother
telling off an errant child. Her next observation, brief and to the point,
caught me off guard.
“I am being promoted and will be moving to New York.
After this near debacle, I have decided you will come with me.” And, just like
that, my near future was decided for me in an instant. If I looked shocked, it
seemed to make very little difference. She walked away from me and into the
front room.
Her tone was authoritative and stern, “come.” All I
could do was follow, all traces of my will to resist left behind in that prison
cell downtown. I supposed she had read the situation perfectly and had seen my
confidence was in pieces. In that moment, my transformation from Katherine, one
of the richest heiresses in the land, to Marta, a penniless immigrant maid, was
almost completed. I felt such comfort in her protection. She had rescued me
from potential oblivion and unquestioned obedience now felt a natural extension
of this. Everything depended on her. I decided nothing any more.
Before the last two days, I had been itching to find
out more about ‘Katherine’ and how things had been evolving there. In the
darkness of the past 48 hours, I had lost track of everything. I had felt so
helpless. So powerless. Now as I reflected on that experience and felt safe for
the first time in days, I could also add to that list that I felt …. on fire.
As the manageress reclined on the edge of an expensive looking leather sofa,
totally unbidden I kneeled some ten yards from her.
“Good girl!” She purred. “You understand much better
now the hold I have over you. One phone call and you would be ruined. Your only
choice then would be to either keep up the charade and be deported or face
ridicule, humiliation and possibly jail.” She snapped her finger and thumb and
I crawled to her feet. I had witnessed this scene before, in a few of the
videos I used to watch online. Was it possible, she had too? My phone browsing
records probably made interesting reading for the manageress. Right now though,
as her fingers stroked my head and I kissed her feet, I was burning up like a
piece of kindling. My future completely in her hands and my will to try to
resist gone.
37.
The next few days could almost have been considered a
holiday for Marta, shorn as she was of her duties at the hotel. I was not
having her wandering off again and ruining my plans yet further. Once I had the
heiress busy worshipping my feet and legs, she was so erotically charged I
could have demanded almost anything from her. I had spent a few happy hours
wandering through the meandering lanes of her darkest desires. The time spent
perusing her browser history had proved eye opening. I had considered myself
reasonably experienced in the fetishes and play surrounding the BDSM world, but
even I was taken aback by some of the things I found buried in there.
It was little surprise that the girl was virtually in heaven
as I secured onto her a pair of leg cuffs, chained a dozen or so inches apart,
with wrist cuffs similarly connected, both of which restricted her movements to
a swaying waddle. A collar containing a GPS tracker completed the humiliating
ensemble and removed all thoughts she may have had of making a run for it. Not
that she had anywhere to run to. Still the effect of such props is typically
huge and it was no different for Marta. A slave in her own mind one moment and
then, with the application of a few items, a slave in actuality.
I saw how her body tremble and leak pure happiness as
she was bound up like a common slave.
Much had happened over the past few days. Things I
felt Marta should know about and things I resolved to keep from her at any cost,
at least until a moment of my choosing and profit. The news that we were going
to New York had started this latest wave of depravity in the rich heiress. It
had obviously shaken her and shown her again, if any emphasis were now needed,
that she had lost all ability to shape events herself. My reassurances that
everything would be okay calmed the poor thing’s nerves and she was soon
literally eating from hand. I explained how I had obtained a promotion from
Katherine Webb. The introduction of Katherine into the moment had pushed Marta
to begin stroking herself, her wet fingers now making a lewd slurping and
squelching noise as her excitement grew. She implored me to tell her more about
Katherine’s life now, finding the widening gap between what she understood as
Katherine’s life and what I was making it in reality to be clearly
intoxicating.
I threw her a few bones. The news that I was to be
Katherine’s assistant now almost sent the poor wench over the edge. But a sharp
tap on the nose pulled the little bitch back from the brink of an orgasm. I had
figured it would make it simpler to keep this charade going for a bit longer,
considering the other news I had not let onto. Whatever her current delusions
and lunacy, Marta was a smart girl with finely attuned senses and I knew I must
not let on that I was hiding anything from her. She was looking at me in a way
that I perceived to mean trouble, as though she could somehow tell I was not
telling her everything.
It was at that moment, I decided to indulge her fantasy
to the fullest and divert her attentions. “Of course. I will need somewhere to
stay while in New York. Katherine suggested I live in her apartment.” I smiled
knowing that this seemingly throwaway comment would send Marta into raptures of
pleasure. Her gasps of raw energy told me I had hit the mark and I did not let
go.
“Yes I will need a maid there. And. Well she agreed I
could use a hotel maid. I am not sure how long it will be for. Katherine is out
of the country right now and will not be back for a little while yet. We may
need to work on your disguise a little more…….” I paused. Marta was climaxing
on the floor in front of me. I slid a single foot to her lips and she duly
kissed and licked them.
Make no mistake: we were not lovers and would never
become so, though we were clearly hardening our relationship into that of a
Mistress and slave. Yet all plans unravel and I had already seen the warning
signals on the horizon. The move to New York was for two reasons: the stated
one of furthering my career and the unstated one of moving careers. Not
everything was happy in the Webb family corporation and I needed to protect
myself in the best possible manner. If I could pull this off while also
enjoying myself, what harm could there be in that?
38.
The New York Katherine Webb grew up in was a world
offered up on a platter. Daddy’s princess was to receive whatever she wanted:
first toys, then clothes, cars, apartments and finally cushy jobs. The New York
that awaited Marta Fernandez, a recent and – most likely – illegal immigrant,
was not nearly so welcoming. Not that Marta complained as she scrubbed clean
the floor of the building underneath Katherine’s apartment. In this day and age,
it can be somewhat odd to see this kind of ‘old-fashioned’ manual labour out in
the open, but Katherine’s assistant had said she wanted to see the Latino
girl’s level of commitment and had got her to work almost immediately after
hiring her.
Katherine’s assistant – formerly the manageress,
before her elevation up the ranks – had taken up residence a week ago, having
moved to New York after receiving the plum position from Katherine, who was
away in Latin America of all places. At least that was what everyone thought,
except for two persons: the assistant and Marta. Of course, they knew better.
For Katherine was not in Brasilia, she was in the lobby scrubbing the floor
clean, her mind totally fixated on the job. She did not want to think much
about the preceding week for events during it had complicated her chances of
restoring her life as Katherine, at least so it seemed to her. Whenever she
thought about it – how to get back – two things invariably happened: she felt
sick and dizzy at the enormity of her folly, and then a deep anxiety would
descend upon her.
After her arrest in Abbotsville, Marta had
disappeared. No-one at the hotel had seen her for days. The manageress duly
reported her as having absconded: vanished into the vast pool of undocumented workers.
The police were unsurprised and not terribly bothered. They had seen it all
before and just filed her ‘details’ with the immigration department.
Technically Marta was on the run, but no-one was looking hard. She would just
have to avoid being reported or caught up in a dragnet, a common worry for
undocumented workers everywhere. These persons formed an unfortunate
underclass, trapped, prey to the whims of those using (abusing?) them. So it
was for Marta too.
Marta was going to have to change. She had been born
of a feverish and erotic imagination. Katherine’s assistant wanted someone who
did not spend all day with their heads in the clouds. Marta was going to have
to pay more attention to her daily rituals if she was going to avoid getting
into more trouble. So, out of the window went Marta’s erotic uniform. Instead
she was dressed in a drab grey dress, a few sizes too big for her, so it hung
shapelessly about her. This served a dual purpose: to make the wearer invisible
and to allow for room for growth. This dress had no frills, just a white trim
across the hemline and cuffs, which sat midway down her arms. The bottom of the
dress sat just below the knee. This was not a dress for someone courting
attention. Coverage was good. Coverage was a layer of disguise.
Whether she liked it or not and in spite of her
incessant moaning, Marta needed to be a big eater. Weight after all is a good
form of disguise, padding away the sharp edges of a person’s face that form
their identity. Marta needed to get lost in this disguise and the appalling
diet she was now restricted to readily obliged in this purpose. Platefuls of
fried food and sweets would happily ensure the former heiress’ graceful lines
and poise would dissolve in a layer of fat.
So the baggy dress gave Marta a target of sorts. Her
purpose was to fill it, no matter how hard that seemed right now. After the
move to New York, her life was made simpler. She had shown herself capable of
all kinds of mischief in Abbotsville and Katherine’s assistant was not going to
take any more chances: Marta had to undergo a few cosmetic changes. With no-one
in New York aware of Marta’s appearance up to now, Katherine’s assistant had
carte blanche when it came to making alterations.
The assistant concluded that she could cut off the
thatch of ruined hair on top of Marta’s head. As it was now, her mop of curled
frizz induced slightly bemused glances from people passing by. It
had to go and Katherine’s assistant set about cropping it off. The fact she did
this while Marta was restrained with her hands behind her back only added to
the erotic stew that was now almost constantly boiling in Marta’s loins. Up
until now, Marta herself had driven the changes to her looks and appearance.
Now she could decide nothing. The assistant concluded that a tidy boyish cut
was sufficient and simple to keep coloured. Even if Marta’s light roots did
show for a day or two, it would now be very simple to keep her disguise intact
by wearing a cleaner’s cap.
39.
Upping the dose of Melatonin was the next step.
Katherine’s features, padded out by her growing weight, would also be softened
and lost in a darker skin. It took about 3 days for Marta’s skin to darken to a
hue the assistant preferred. Again the whole process was accompanied by a big
dose of gameplay and fun. By the time the assistant was finished, Marta looked
like she was possible from the South of Mexico, most probably a mixture of
native Indian and European ancestry some generations ago.
One game the assistant seemed to enjoy very much was
Marta divulging the remainder of Katherine’s secrets. Bank details, safe
details, passwords and insurance records. The assistant needed all of this, she
reassured the Latino girl, to look after Katherine’s interests. Not that Marta,
gagged and bound up tightly again seemed to care much. An outsider to their
little games might have concluded that Marta’s impulsiveness had gotten the
better of her. But she loved and trusted Katherine’s assistant too much to
question this greatly.
Perhaps she had never really known love and was
confusing lust and need with that elusive emotion. It was this feeling though
that drove her to fill any spare moments with her growing need to dive deeply
into Marta’s world. How other girls that looked similar to her would dress. Who
they would interact with. The assistant would bring her Spanish-language
magazines aimed at girls like her and she devoured the pictures, if not the
text just yet. She could not read after all, though had started a home course
in Spanish. Building on what she already knew, she could manage a few sentences
in a heavily mangled tongue, much the same as the level of English she was
permitted to speak by the assistant. Marta would see how happy it made the
assistant for her to speak elementary English and this filled her with more of
that confused love, driving her on.
Marta’s life as Katherine had never seemed so far
away. With her skin darkening by the day, her new boyish haircut, short and
cropped, and constant reinforcement of poor grammar she had never felt so
alienated from her old life. Indeed, while she would often find herself
wondering if this whole adventure had not gone too far and fretting about what
was happening to Katherine, it only took a moment to consider just how hard and
long it would be to recapture her former looks and life, before she felt that
uneasy sickness in the pit of her stomach.
For, in truth, while Marta often dwelt on how nice it
might have been to be Katherine. The journey to reclaim her former identity and
fortune seemed too outlandish, almost unreal. So it was that another
opportunity to assert herself and reverse this journey passed by. In the days
before moving to New York, Katherine’s assistant took delivery of Marta’s new
uniform and shoes. As stated before, this time, the purpose of the uniform was
not to draw attention, as had been the choice of the slutty Katherine. No Marta
was to live in the shadows, be as invisible as possible.
In fact, over the next few days as she grew used to
scrubbing clean the entrance way to her former Pernthouse, Marta would dwell on
how well the uniform occluded her from view. She almost became a part of the
scenery. People saw nothing unusual in a young Latino cleaner scrubbing the
floors clean, polishing the fixtures, collecting her Mistress’ shopping. She
needed to sink without a trace if that unfortunate incident in Abbotsville was
not come back and haunt her.
---------------------------------------------
Each time I heard footsteps on the floor, I wanted to
look up. I wanted to see who was coming into the apartments. Perhaps it was
someone I knew! But I knew I must resist. The manageress had told me that my
main job right now was to clean and to put on weight and I wanted to very hard
to please her. She had kept me safe all this time and I trusted what she was
telling me. That said, in the back of my mind, I could not quite shake the feeling
that weight gain was not the best solution. Would it not have been easier to
simple wear a bigger pair of glasses? But Katherine’s assistant knew best of
course. All these props would be useless if I was caught. Weight gain was best
form of disguise and would keep my secret safe.
For over a week now I had been eating voraciously. A
particularly high calorie diet had made me feel bloated and constipated. My
stomach was bulging ever so slightly after just a single week, though I knew
this reflected the stodge of the food in my stomach, rather than weight gain
per se. Still, I thought this would be a hard road to climb. For any disguise
to be convincing it must change the face, and that was always the last place I
put on weight: it was my hips and ass that any excess weight had clung to in
the past.
40.
Katherine’s assistant had gone on something of a
purge. A number of the people I dealt with on a daily basis had either been
transferred or removed from their position. Doormen, handymen, even suppliers
to the building, all had been changed. The effect, no doubt, was to surround me
with people that could never suspect who I was. The powerlessness I suddenly
felt gave rise to a familiar, delicious tingle between my thighs. It is amazing
how those three words, ‘who I was’, could elicit such delight. I had found it
increasingly wasteful to fret about the question. The anxiety I had experienced
at the start of this adventure had given way to tiredness and exhaustion. As
time ran away from weeks to months, I had found it difficult to even start
contemplating turning back without eliciting a degree of horror at what that
would involve. My exit from this life depended on one person and she showed no
signs of changing anything.
As well as attending to the lobby and the various
communal areas of the building, my duties extended to cover my former
penthouse. Katherine’s assistant now lived here and was revelling in the luxury
that it offered her. She had taken to wearing many of my former clothes and
jewels, and for all intents and purposes, was living a similar life to the one
I had vacated. I assumed that both of us got a thrill from my servile role in
my former home. At least I was sure at the outset, though as we grew used to
the situation, things turned a little more routine. The dominatrix-style
sessions we had enjoyed previously became rarer and, eventually ceased.
I am not sure whether she did it on purpose or not,
but Katherine’s assistant had the habit of leaving important papers on her desk
when she knew I would be tidying upstairs. I felt she did it as a way of
taunting me about my former life, reminding me that Katherine was now something
else: a fiction, less real now than Marta. How else could one explain printed
emails for goodness sake! Most often they were emails from ‘Katherine’ to her,
granting her privileges or roles within the company that elevated her yet
higher.
As part of my induction – some might say brainwashing
– I had been given no access to local media. The only things I could watch were
designed to help my Spanish skills. In those early stages, this meant a
constant diet of cheap soap operas. Katherine’s assistant and I spoke less and
less, but when we did, she would not discuss anything that I may be familiar
with. She seemed most interested in soap operas. In my warped reality
therefore, retelling her the latest storylines was a way of pleasing her, or
engaging with her. I felt good when she listened and this was about the only
way she did. Otherwise our ‘conversations’ were one-way: her telling me what
she wanted me to do or how I should act. I was now able, with extreme focus, to
speak with a convincing Spanish lilt to my accent, a side effect of improving
language skills. In short, I lived in a bubble. All the people around me, who I
might deal with on a daily basis had changed. My tired mind was most
pre-occupied with remembering the details of the latest episodes of some
dreadful TV serial.
However today would prove very different. As soon as I
walked into the room, I saw there was just one thing on the desk, a newspaper.
Katherine’s assistant was still getting ready to leave in an adjoining room, so
I had to wait before going to look. Besides I did not get that often to be
close to her these days. I missed the intensity of the relationship we had
struck up as we had left Abbotsville. I kept hoping, somewhat forlornly, that
she may want to use me in that way again, though a quick glance in the mirror
would disabuse me of such hopes.
The previously loose dress she had given me was now
tight around my bust and hips. In fact, my uniform was now so tight it clung to
my body in a rather ungainly way, creasing and bulging at my widest points. I
straightened my maid’s cap and pinned it back into position over my short,
cropped hair, slicked back with straightening lotion that black girls commonly
use to control their otherwise frizzy hair. My skin, dark now for many months,
was a little dry in places. I had no money for moisturiser or other fineries of
life. That made it all the more galling when I saw Katherine’s assistant
applying the last of her expensive makeup and earrings. She looked wonderful in
her tight skirt, hugging her figure closely to the knee. An expensive looking,
silk blouse, tailored beautifully to accentuate her feminine curves. I was
gawping at her. Like a child staring into a shop window at all the things she
could not have. Our eyes met for a moment as she brushed past me into the
office. She remained silent and went to the desk.
I expected her to retrieve the newspaper. But she did
not. She fingered it and opened it at a specific page and then, ignoring me
like I was not even there, strode away and out of the penthouse, her heels
clacking all the way. She had only been gone a few seconds when the temptation
to look became unbearable and I hopped over to see what she had left me to
read.
All by itself the headline was enough to panic me in a
way I had not experienced before. Any notions I may have had of returning to my
old life suddenly crashed and burned.
‘Rich Heiress Dies in Freak Yachting Accident’. I did
not need to read further to know that it was Katherine that had met a grisly
end somewhere out at sea, but still I ploughed on to confirm what I already
suspected. I was feeling dizzy and faint and fell back into the chair,
struggling to summon up sufficient focus to read on. For a moment I felt like I
was in the plot of one of the tawdry soap operas I had been binge watching. A
sense of rage gripped me only to slip away into mortal fear when I read that a
body was unlikely to be recovered as the location was so deep and outside of
any territorial waters. My father, looking somewhat frail in the photographs,
was said to be ‘devastated’. Nothing was mentioned of my sister. I scoured the
articles for details – any details about what was happening, but only found
equally devastating news and the reason my father looked so unwell.
It seems he had been pocketing serious sums of money
from the company that he was not entitled to. My heart raced as I read that he
was co-operating with investigators and was facing jail time of around 10-15
years, a virtual death sentence for someone of his age. The agony I felt was so
extreme, for a moment, my heart skipped several beats. Though my father and I
were not close, he was not the man the papers were portraying, with their
salacious reading of recent events. I ached to comfort him; to be with him. For
a moment, I thought of going to see him. But what would make him believe it was
me? Again, I looked in the mirror to see an increasingly overweight woman from
somewhere south of Mexico.
My god! My identity had literally been taken from me
and was now lost forever! Who could and would believe anything I say? At times
like this, when people feature heavily in the news, all kinds of cranks appear
from the woodwork to try and profit from the situation. Would anyone see me as
anything but another one of them? I look very little like my former self.
Perhaps though, if only I could get to my father, I could convince him of who I
was. I could remind him of something only he and I would know, proving I was
who I say I was. I then looked at the picture of him again. Would it help?
Seeing his daughter this way? Surely, he would conclude I was crazy or mad. He
already thinks I am dead; would it be better to stay that way?
I forgot everything I was meant to be doing and sat
there frozen by indecision, barely able to compute all that was happening right
now. It all seemed so fanciful, but there it was, laid out in black and white.
While I panicked, a little voice in my head suggested: you can just run away
from it all. I shunted it aside, but the notion made me feel better. In a
moment of reflection, I later considered this a fight or flight moment, though
my freedom of manoeuvre was so limited that I had little sense of it at the
time. In many ways, I was already hiding. This just meant that, rather than
hiding from my life for reasons never wholly apparent, I would now need to do
it to protect myself.
41.
Just how vulnerable was I? It appeared extremely. I
could try to get to my father. I could run from the whole ghastly situation.
Anything would be better than simply waiting and sinking further into this new
life! But I sat still. For the moment it felt that my options had run out and I
was safest staying just where I was. As an undocumented worker, I had no money,
nowhere to go. I did not even have an official identity. All my life I had
received the very best money could buy. Everything had been so simple and
natural, one easy, obvious option after the other. I was totally unprepared for
anything involving such a wrenching dilemma like this. I felt dizzy,
disoriented and very afraid.
I obsessively scanned the same pages in the newspaper
several times, hoping to gleam something new, a ray of hope, perhaps, something
I had misread earlier. But, of course, nothing changed and the situation
remained bleak. As much as I focused on my father’s fate, I also needed to find
out what had happened to my sister. Had she been caught up in the same
imbroglio? There was nothing mentioned in the paper. If she had any part in the
scandal, it was not immediately obvious. The fear or flight battle taking part
inside of me then flared back into life: I could go and find her! At least to
see where she might be? It had been months of zero contact and I needed to know
what had happened. The impulsive side to my character, the one that had led me
to this point, again took hold of the reins. I knew that on a normal day
Katherine’s assistant would return after several hours. That gave me more than
enough time to work my way to my sister’s apartments, several blocks away. I
grabbed a light coat from my former wardrobe and tried to cover my ill-fitting,
drab uniform as best I could and headed out of the building to see.
I had made this journey so many times in my limousine,
though this felt so different trudging down the road in my current guise.
Though I worked hard with my cleaning duties, I was not terribly mobile and I
was feeling a touch breathless as soon as I cleared the first block. I reckon I
was carrying almost a third more bodyweight than before. My thickening thighs
forced me to adopt a slight waddle when bustling down the road quickly. Like
any supplicant in life, my eyes were cast downwards. I wanted to avoid the
judgmental stares of the strangers now passing me. Each time I did, I met
someone’s eye, I saw a look of reproach barely concealed in a brief smirk or
outright stare.
A few streets from my sister’s apartment, I saw a
group of policemen busily dealing with some disturbance. Whereas I used to feel
a degree of comfort from seeing authority clearly displayed, now I ducked away
from the scene, crossing the street to avoid potential trouble. I had become a
near outcast. My madness had pushed me to a place from which I could never
return, unless I accepted a huge dose of public humiliation, perhaps even being
put into care? I shuddered, for that was the reality I might face if not
careful.
When I reached my sister’s building, I stared upwards
and saw a mist had descended around the top floors. I had an idea on how to get
inside, I just needed to summon all my courage and make sure I kept my head
down and avoided looking too suspicious. The key card I had for my building,
might, just might work in this one. We had a number of staff that worked in
multiple properties and the pass I had looked very similar. With a growing
sense of trepidation, I approached the service doors at the rear of the
building. The key card panel looked different to the one back at Katherine’s
building. My sinking feeling only grew as the lighting on the panel lit up red,
denying me access. I felt an acute sense of hopelessness at that moment, shut
out of nearly every part of my former life. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I
tried the card again and again, to no avail.
Then something of a small miracle occurred. The door
opened and a doorman strode into the alleyway for a cigarette. He saw me
standing there with the card aloft, and smiled, pushing it farther ajar for me.
Still shaking a little from all the pent-up adrenalin of the moment, I thanked
him in my now-thick Spanish accent and hurried through the gap and moved
directly to the service elevator.
By itself that stroke of good fortune would not be
enough to get me to the penthouse, surely? As the lift rose higher and higher,
stopping a few times to pick up and drop off some other staff, my inner doubts
reached fever point. The lift deposited me on the very top floor, about 10
metres from the door to my sister’s penthouse. I suddenly felt very afraid. I
had no idea what I may find inside of there. It had been such a long while
since I had laid eyes on her or even spoken to her. And besides, what would she
make of me? Like a shrinking violet, I stood there shaking, not knowing what to
do, then I heard footsteps!
Someone was approaching the door! In what seemed like
a slow-motion moment, the door opened and within a few lingering seconds I was
standing face-to-face with my sister. As had happened a few times already over
the past months, I now faced a choice that I had not prepared for. Do I speak
as Katherine or as Marta? The adrenalin coursing through my veins had driven to
this point with very little time for reflection. I felt totally adrift and
unable to think my way out of this.
“Well?” My sister snapped back.
Then for those that do not believe in miracles, a
second one struck. “Who is it?” A familiar voice reached out from behind the
door.
“Just some cleaner”, my sister shot back.
The door was pushed open to reveal Katherine’s
assistant standing there. “Oh!” she exclaimed, looking a little taken aback. “I
know this one. This is Marta Fernandez, she is one of our leading staff. Your
sister had taken a keen interest in her before ……” Her voice trailed off,
knowing that this was not a subject to raise right now.
My sister’s sudden faraway look told me that she had
been hurt by the events. Then, as if to confirm how much I had changed
physically, she muttered angrily: “Don’t talk to me about that stupid bitch! It
is her fault Daddy is in such trouble.”
I looked down, the sickness in my belly seemed to grow
worse and I was almost sick.
“What do you want?” She directed an angry question at
me.
Katherine’s assistant intervened, “I think she is here
to start her duties,” before turning back to my sister who was gazing up at her
with a doe-eyed expression. “I believe we can trust this one.”
For a moment the assistant’s eyes met mine and the
fear and sickness gave way to that warmth. “Oh god no!” I thought as she again
stoked my depravity. “I cannot do this!”
“Marta go down to the lobby and help the cleaner
there. I will come find you.” As if sensing I may be breaking at that very
moment, she underlined her diktat: “Now!”
The door was closed in my face. I thought about
hammering on it, but, as had been the case throughout this sorry affair, I soon
felt myself shrinking back into the character I felt most at ease with: Marta. I turned and walked back
to the elevator.
42.
From this moment my life suddenly narrowed onto a far simpler path. I had
lost any semblance of control over what would now happen to me. The sinking
feeling that accompanied my journey down in the elevator mirrored how I felt
more generally, as any prospects I may have had of returning to my former life
were rapidly snuffed out. I was still in shock from the events of the past 24
hours, a flurry of body blows and revelations that risked shattering my already
fraught nerves. Whenever I closed my eyes, I could still see the anger etched
onto my sister’s face as she had spoken of her feelings for Katherine and the
deep seated resentment that underlined it all. Even were I able to talk to her
freely, I had no idea what I could do to reverse any of this. My hopelessness
was compounded by the presence of the manageress and the way my sister had
looked towards her for support. I recognised that wide-eyed look: it spoke of
the captivation I too had held felt in those heady days we spent together
before moving to New York. Could she have my sister in her spell too?
Walking into the entranceway of the tower block, I slinked towards the
cleaning cupboard that sat alongside the elevator shafts. I did not see the other
cleaner, but I saw her tools. My hands shook as I took the mop and bucket and
went to the middle of atrium that housed the building’s foyer. I felt my whole
body tremble as I did my best to stay out of the way of the busy people cycling
back and forth across the shiny floor. The surface was already clean, but
something within me drove me to go further. It was not enough to simply mop the
floor lightly, I had to get close to the floor, on my hands and knees. I wanted
to see myself in the floor, to look at my face as I wiped clean the tiles that
I myself had chosen a few years ago to decorate this expensive hallway.
Stumbling to my knees, I stared at the face of the downtrodden Latino that
gazed back at me. Her face, now rounding out a little, a deep, dark brown hue,
was nothing like the rich, pampered princess that had once strode across this
floor. Her aim from the very start of this sordid tale – to feel what it was
like to be utterly powerless, fuelled by that chance observation of the Latino
maid at one the family’s hotels – had led her to this moment of utter ruin.
What escape could there possibly be? A long jail sentence? Humiliation and
hatred? Life as Marta was small and humiliating for a woman who had once had
the world at her feet, but at least she had some inner freedom into which to
escape.
Her body was trembling visibly from the enormity of coming to terms with
what she had lost on the one hand and the grim realisation that she needed to
completely sink herself into her life as Marta if she were not to ruin herself
further. Better dead she thought than bring back Katherine to be locked up and
ridiculed - that was assuming anyone would believe her!
When she heard the manageress walk up behind her, she had no need to turn
and look. She just knew from a nagging sensation in the back of her head that
she was near.
“No need to get up Marta,” she expressed calmly and confidently, “you can
stay on your hands and knees. It is where you belong now.”
The modulation of her voice betrayed a mocking sense of satisfaction and
self-belief that I could never have hoped to muster, even in my most confident
days. I slumped onto my chubby backside and looked up. I hated myself at that
moment. Instead of feeling any resolve or sense of purpose, I simply pulsed
inwardly as I stared up at the manageress’ shapely legs, up towards her finely
honed body, encased in a snug, form-fitting dress to those steely eyes that
held me in their magnetic grasp. I continued to tremble as she laid out my
future for me, passing me a note with a list of names and addresses upon it.
As she spoke, I froze. I was not talk to her again unless she called for
me. After all it would not be right for a woman of her position – now a CFO of
what remained of the company – to been seen concerning herself about a lowly
individual such as myself. Instead I was to report to the building manager. My
main job would be here in this building. A side responsibility would be
catering to the needs of the residents on the top floor. I swallowed intently,
knowing this covered my sister’s penthouse.
A flat with a month’s rent had been graciously provided on the other side
of the city – the side that I had assiduously avoided for the best part of my
life, stuffed full of recent arrivals to the city and those hiding in the
shadows. A part of town someone like Marta would be familiar with of course. So
familiar in fact that no one would bat an eyelid as she carried her
increasingly bulky frame down the streets to her barely furnished apartment.
Very little remained to keep any sense of hope alive within me. Was the
manageress hoping I would simply disappear? That thought was crystallising in
my mind when she dropped the final part of the one-way bargain, a proverbial
glint of light at the end of this increasingly dark and long tunnel: “If you
manage to stick with this life for, say, 12 months we will meet again and you
will receive a way out.”
I squinted gently as I looked up, still knelt before her. She knew I would
have questions but, in her typically brusque manner, refused to entertain any
further discussion. “In one year, if you stick to this deal, I will meet you
and you will be given an alternative path.”
Towards the back of my mind I felt extreme doubt. Was she hiding something?
Did she need me to stay quiet? Is she showing a glimmer of concern for me?
“One year,” she said again before turning on her heels and returning the
upper reaches of the building. I had not nodded or agreed anything. Nothing held
me in place anymore. Was it good for me to stay? How else could I ever hope to
amount to anything again?
I bowed my head and returned to cleaning the floor.
Finale (narrative)
It is the 22nd December. Tomorrow is a big day for Marta
Fernandez. It is her day of reckoning. At least that is what her fevered imagination
has built it up to be, though she has little indication of what to expect. Her
busy life allows so little time for any self-contemplation.
She stands looking into the mirror of her dresser, smoothing down the folds
and creases her cheap uniform. This uniform is nothing like the one she had
been foolish enough to order for the cleaning staff when Katherine. It was
practical, cut below the knee, a dark grey colour to hide any unfortunate splashes
and stains. She straightens her cheap, thick rimmed glasses and ruffles up her
short, lifeless hair, which never seems to grow back to any length. The dyes
she had been using all these months have robbed it of any life, leaving it
resembling a frizzy bush that she cuts herself to save money from her meagre
pay.
The uniform was new. She had been forced to purchase a few given her
expanding girth. While not obese – she worked too hard for that – her breasts
had grown pendulous and her trim figure was now buried under a thick layer of
fat. She had trouble finding clothes that fitted round her thick thighs and
bust, alongside a relatively slim waist. One would not characterise it as an
unattractive look. Her boyfriend liked it. Simon, a large, muscular security
guard used to tease her as ‘thunder thighs’, carefully hedging his comments
with lewd complements about what he wanted to do between them. It was never
long before he was between her legs. She had never known anything like it. A
sense of being lust after in a way she had never experienced before. Of course,
while Katherine had needed to pick and choose carefully, Marta was a tease and
the men she had grown intimate with over the past twelve months had not picked
up on the curious things going through her head.
Each of them, recent arrivals to the US from Lagos, Abuja and Freetown, had
towered over her physically. She loves the submissive wave that crested over
her as they took her body for their own. People she would never have associated
with in her wildest dreams, became her new confidents. She loved them each in
turn and was heartbroken when they had left or cheated on her. Simon, the last
of the three, seemed different. He had already proposed to her, confident that
she would say yes. Yet he had not reckoned with the 23rd December
and all it represented for Marta. Not that she felt good about herself saying
no. Far from it. Her loins still flickered whenever she considered what she had
been and what she was now, and how far from her origins she had now strayed.
The walk to the metro station no longer seemed as difficult or as risky as
it had in those first weeks after moving to her simple apartment. As her
Spanish improved and her new accent became natural, she felt more at ease in
her new surroundings. Things that had seemed unfamiliar and menacing were now
taken in her stride as part of her daily routine.
Adjusting to her new standard of living proved difficult and, after almost
running out of cash several times, Marta had decided upon getting a second
cleaning job. A few months into her busy routine, working at the shopping mall
she had visited in the early stages of her sordid fantasy seemed only natural
now. Her body still fizzed every time a well-to-do woman, of the type she had
been, walked past, resuscitating memories of herself at the feet of the manageress.
Rarely a day went by when she did not think of those times and the feelings it
provoked. Indeed the knowledge that she was living this life because of the
manageress served to soften the harshness of the whole experience, as though
someone knowing who she was REALLY still gave her the tiniest of reasons to
think she was not this woman. For the briefest of moments, she was looking back
at herself as though in disguise.
Poor Marta could not quite let go of Katherine for another reason. Her
everyday routine also led her to her sister’s penthouse. Wandering about amid
that particular lap of luxury provided a rude memory of what she had
surrendered when losing her identity as Katherine. It also meant sometimes
coming face to face with the one person who could potentially unmask her.
Perhaps a part of Marta had hoped that would happen, even if it meant enduring
her sister’s withering anger towards Katherine. The passage of time can heal
many things, but not the kind of deception Katherine had undertaken, nor the
bitterness of feelings her family had towards her. Those glimmers of hope –
moments when Marta thought of dropping subtle hints or breaking her character –
passed by rapidly in the first months. Also, the manageress seemed fully aware
of the potential danger and scheduled Marta’s cleaning times for when her
sister was gone from the penthouse. Thus, as the months dripped away, any
notion Marta may have held to reveal her true identity faded away.
The eroticism of what was happening to her softened only gradually and only
recently had stopped affecting her. As her life as Katherine sank into the
recesses of her memory and the magnitude of her new life became apparent, she
found new sources of excitement in her daily life. Things that never could have
happened as Katherine were everyday occurrences for Marta. As time wore on, she
felt more Marta and less Katherine. The genuine love she felt for and
experienced from her trio of lovers gave her fewer reasons to cling onto the
past. But, as she assumed her position in the atrium of her sister’s tower
block that fateful day and started mopping the floor, her attention was never
far from the elevator doors. Each passer-by made her heart race faster as she
wondered: ‘was this the moment?’ The last time she had seen the manageress,
several months before, Marta had fruitlessly tried to establish eye contact.
The manageress, busy with a gaggle of staff deliberating something about the
building’s décor, did not even seem to be aware of my presence in the corner of
the atrium. She hoped, this time, it would be different.
The day was long and tiring, punctuated by moments of excitement when she
thought something may happen. By 4pm, she was feeling a touch of raw anger and
frustration. She began to suspect that the manageress had lied to her and had
just made a vague promise she had no intention of fulfilling. Had she wasted a
whole year for this?!
It was in the middle of all these doubts crowding my thoughts that the
manageress walked towards her, a smile crossing her face as though my very
presence confirmed the hold she still had on me. Silently she nodded to me and
I walked after her into a side room, the door closed firmly behind me.
(Marta’s perspective)
“My… you have blossomed.” The manageress observed in a vaguely sarcastic
tone. I felt the curvature of my ripened body more keenly at that moment than I
had for several months. I stammered, struggling to remember my own voice. When
I did speak it was with a mongrel accent, a obvious mixture of Spanish lisp and
Poor English.
“Thank you.” I
mumbled.
“As promised I am here to offer you a reward for your persistence. I am
impressed, I never imagined you would stick it out.” She paused, a touch
disturbed by how I was staring at her. It had been a year since I had seen her
up close. A year since I had laid eyes on the woman who had stirred my erotic
consciousness to such new extremes and I was struggling to contain all my
emotions. It was painfully clear to me the degree to which I had immersed
myself in this life. How much I invested in living Marta’s life for real. It
dawned on me that is was real. No-one mourned Katherine. She was gone for good.
Marta on the other hand was alive and her life so vibrant.
“I suspect you already know there is no way you can become Katherine again.
Too many bones have been laid at her door for you to go back. Instead, what I
have to offer you is a chance to live out of the shadows. You can re-enter life
as a legal migrant.” In her fingers she twisted a passport that she dropped
into my hands. Opening it I saw my company mugshot and my name emblazoned
across the title: Marta Fernandez. “I have some favours I called in for this.
This will let you get married, have children, live in the daylight again……
though…… as Marta.” She paused and rummaged about for another booklet. “This is
a savings account. In it you will find 20,000 dollars. Use it as you wish.”
At that moment, the manageress reached across and caressed my cheek.
Smiling at me, what she said next came as a surprise, though not nearly as
grievously as it might had she declared it a year ago. “The Webb Corporation is
being wound up and bought by a new company. I am leaving for Paris shortly
thereafter. I .. doubt… you will see me again.” Her voice trailed off and we
were left in awkward silence.
Finally I had reached the end. Katherine was dead and buried, and I had no
reason to ever try and resurrect her. The final moments spent with the
manageress were soft and warm, but formal. I was not her equal and I could
never hope to speak to her as such. A chasm had now opened up between us. Our
lives had very little in common and finally, nothing was left to hold us
together. And so, when we parted ways, my journey had reached an end of sorts.
I legally became Marta Fernandez and Katherine Webb, laid to rest a year
before, ceased to be. I had gotten my wish and found a new life along the way.
Whenever I looked back on this period of my life, I feel astonished at how I
managed to stay intact. “Penny for your thoughts?” Simon asked me. “Oh! Nothing
sweetheart, just thinking of an old friend,” I replied.
I waited a long time to see the end or the next episode of this great story
ReplyDeleteand I really liked it
I'm fascinated by how Katherine practically disappeared when she was consumed by marta fernandez
An excellent finale from a gifted writer!
ReplyDeleteI've been hoping for a continuation of this story. Outstanding conclusion. I love how Marta is forced into the shadows with no recourse by someone who understands the dynamics of her motivations.
ReplyDeleteI love the introduction of melanin to permanently darken her skin combined with the change in her diet to make her unrecognizeable. The application of the shots with sexual tension was a nice touch. I love how each change gets locked in and her options slip away under the passage of time. Thank you for republishing the story in its entirety. We'll done!
Really great Finale!!! "Stuck in her new life forever" Amazing.
ReplyDeleteNow you can finish Anabelles story. Please BigBird make her also be stuck in the lowest of the scummy street whores or an errant stripper in the sleaziest clubs of the country
It has been a while but what a great ending looking forward to more stories in the future
ReplyDeleteA great story for which I thank you very much. I hope to read similar excellent stories from you in the future. Until then I wish you all the best and a happy and prosperous New Year 2020.
ReplyDeleteloved this story it contains everything and written so well. Thank you
ReplyDeleteHugs
Jackie J
XX
I am so happy for Marta. Trading her life as a White heiress to become a Mexican maid must have been fulfilling for her.Growing into her superior Latina body must have been exciting! Great story!
ReplyDeleteI just want to thank you for sharing your information and your site or blog this is simple but nice Information I’ve ever seen i like it i learn something today. I MUST SACK MY HOUSEMAID: INSPIRATIONAL STORY
ReplyDelete