Story: The Cleaner Returns. Chapters 32-33.

by BigBird74

The doctor was regretting his decision to drive all the way to the resort at which Melissa was staying. He should have taken a redeye flight at the crack of dawn, but had somehow convinced himself a two-day road trip would have been better. It was now over two weeks since he had last seen Melissa. Since then he had been busily attending to her sister’s journey of discovery as she unveiled her self-destructive streak. To get away for a few days would be a welcome relief. No matter how you framed it, screwing with people’s heads was morally repellent and it took a toll on the doctor, who was only too happy to escape the confines of the clinic for a couple of days. It also helped that Melissa’s treatment was less morally dubious. Indeed lifting her out of her malaise might be seen as a positive endeavour in its own right.

He had intended to visit much earlier, but Dahlia’s rapid progress had meant he had needed to stay at the clinic almost constantly. Were he to commute regularly, given the clinic’s isolation, he would have been spending too much of his time on the road. Besides the amount he was charging Dahlia justified cancelling his other patients for a few weeks. Even so, he could not neglect Melissa. For his plan to work, he needed to make sure that the ‘viable option’ he was crafting for Dahlia existed. For that, Melissa’s adherence to her own ‘timetable’ was critical.

He really had little idea at this stage how long he could keep Dahlia at the clinic. No amount of hypnotic suggestion could stop someone from leaving if that was their intention. To date Dahlia had shown no real inclination to leave. Like patients that become institutionalised at a hospital or care home, Dahlia’s near total breakdown had left her confidence in tatters and her new life had been a welcome discovery, proving simple and predictable enough for her to recover. Even so problems remained. At some point her subconscious mind could fight back and her deeper character traits might try to re-establish themselves. If that were to happen – and nothing was guaranteed – he would want her old persona to be buried so deeply under her new one that she would adapt permanently. Was that a realistic proposition? Her ‘progress’ had astonished the doctor and, deep down, he felt confident.

The resort Melissa was staying in contrasted starkly with the facility Dahlia was in. It did not take long for a visitor to realise that Dahlia’s current abode had been set up with some kind of medical purpose in mind. Meanwhile Melissa’s residence was more of a holiday palace. It dripped of luxury and privilege. Perversely enough, though the clinic was by far the more expensive of the two, you would never have guessed from mere appearances.

The doctor called in at registration and arranged to see Miss Chapman in an hour or so. This left him sufficient time to handle the few queries that had collected on his phone. Yes, raise Dahlia’s portions another 10% and, yes, start giving her a few appetite stimulants. He smiled, nothing unexpected had happened in his first night away. Perhaps he would be able to get away from the clinic a little more and leave Dahlia to sink slowly into her new persona? Right now though, he put such thoughts from his mind and prepared himself to meet Melissa.

Though it took the doctor some moments to recognise Melissa, he was instantly happy with what he saw. Melissa had been at the resort for only two weeks and already her weight loss was clearly discernible. The dress she wore looked a little loose on her hips and bust and, as for Melissa herself, a bright grin ran from ear to ear, signalling how thrilled she was with the early results. Any doubts she had going into this programme had evaporated in the face of the rapid weight loss. Her confidence and enthusiasm were both sky high. Also gone was the general pall of negativity that had hung over her on their previous meetings. In short, Melissa was virtually reborn.

Melissa’s hard work and enthusiasm was infectious. The doctor also felt excited seeing the various strands of his plan coming together. In the ensuing conversion, Melissa only needed a little encouragement to extend her stay at the resort. Not once did Dahlia’s name crop up in their conversation. The doctor reflected that the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’, had never been truer. Without the constant comparison with her sister weighing down on her self-confidence, Melissa was a person reborn. Though not nearly as attractive as her supermodel sibling, the similarities between the sisters was clearly apparent. It struck him that Melissa’s newfound vivaciousness resembled Dahlia’s when the doctor first met her: bright and bubbly with issues lingering deep down that she was doing her best to hide. The key difference was that Melissa’s issues seemed contained and rationalised. Her time here was helping her deal with them and she was in an increasingly comfortable place. For Dahlia, the opposite was true, as her confidence diminished in the face of demons that were getting stronger.

Whatever the dynamics, the similarity between the two’s body language was striking. Little things, such as the way their eyes moved, the curl of their lips when they smiled and the way they pushed their hair back with their fingers. Closing his eyes for a moment, he could hear how similar their tone of voice was, the accent almost identical. The only ‘problem’ was her nose and chin. The fine line between beautiful and ordinary was clearly evident in the poor hand Melissa had been dealt compared to her sister.

Their body proportions were also very similar. Melissa was carrying a lot more weight than Dahlia, but underneath that she had the same skeletal shape. There was no reason to think that, with their lifestyles reversed, the two would not resemble each other. As that idea percolated in his mind, the doctor’s excitement grew. It looked increasingly possible that Dahlia could let go completely without irrevocably damaging her brand. If only Melissa could be persuaded somehow to take her place. It would require a little surgery, a lot more work here at the resort and a great deal of persuasion, but he was confident that he could get very rich in the process. But there was more.

His acute state of arousal also told him that he wanted it. Thoughts of Dahlia as a fat-assed cleaner, mopping and scrubbing the floor of his office, knowing what she used to be. He swallowed. Games like this could end in disaster. Sure, exploring our Freudian desires was one thing, but this was putting flesh on the bones of a fantasy that could easily run out of his control. There were simply too many moving parts to be sure of how things would unfold exactly. No plan could envisage everything that could go wrong. But his desire to push harder was intensifying and he had invested too much of his time and focus to stop. Besides, it was not as if Dahlia was unhappy. She was plainly content with her current lot. Granted, he had used some of the darker arts of his profession to help things along, but she would not have gone along with the treatment if her subconscious had truly fought against it. No, Dahlia was not all she appeared to be on the surface and, like him, clearly got something perversely sexual from it all.

Two things worried him most. Firstly, could he reveal his intentions to Melissa? Would a sisterly love suddenly bubble to the surface upon seeing what he was doing to Dahlia? The other doubt was whether Dahlia would, at some point, rebel against her new persona? People’s psychologies could be unpredictable and, if he pushed too far too fast there could be trouble.

Today though was not the moment to tackle either of these worries. He did not want to break the positive bubble building around Melissa with talk of her sister. They had spent most of their lives in a tight sibling rivalry that had always favoured Dahlia. He was confident that, when presented with a chance to experience their relationship with the roles reversed, Melissa would jump at it. Even more so if Dahlia herself asked her to do it. That thought made his lips curl wickedly.

As he left and Melissa resumed her day of exercise and healthy eating, his mind wandered and cast itself into the future. That image of a curvaceous Dahlia scrubbing at the floor of his offices continued to excite him and, as he drove back to the clinic, he imagined the scene when Melissa and Dahlia would see each other for the first time. The shock and humiliation. The profound alienation both of them felt from their previous relationship. The images were fuzzy. He had no idea just how Dahlia might look, but Melissa was clearer. A copy of her sister, down to the cute little nose and chin. He smiled as she confidently strode across the room to her sister. He could not hear what was said, but Dahlia seemed to squirm, partly from excitement, partly from fear.

The imaginary scene stuck with him all the way back to the clinic. By the time he pulled up outside, his resolve was that much stronger.  

 

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