Story: The Cleaner Returns. Chapters 51-52.

by BigBird74

Dahlia had received a few shocks in the past few days and was about to experience one more. Until the moment she had stepped from the limousine, Dahlia’s newfound identity had been rather a private affair. Sure the doctor, Ms Nechita and now Melissa had provided a daily witness to her decline, but they all shared one important piece of knowledge. They all knew who it was under that vast bulk. For, despite all that had happened to her, inside her head, Dahlia still saw herself as a slim supermodel contained within some kind of fat suit. She had yet to accept that her new shape might be ‘permanent’ or long lasting in any meaningful way. But as she eased her fat body from the luxury of the limousine to the dusty poverty of Barton High Street, she was about to experience what her new life might really involve.

One cannot blame Dahlia for her myopia. After all, she had lived a life of luxury and privilege for almost the whole of her adult life, starting on her modelling career at such a tender age. Before that she had been cosseted within the bosom of a loving family. She had never wanted for anything, nor had to experience the harsh realities involved in ekeing out a living from one’s own meagre talents. Everything she was drove away in that car. Melissa now inhabited her space and seemed intent on shutting the door on Dahlia’s route back.

Luckily the weather was okay, not too warm, nor too cool. Dahlia was wearing in the cheap polyester dress used for her cleaning duties at the clinic. As she set off down the high street, she could feel it rub against her skin, an uncomfortable reminder of how she was dressed. Her hair was greasy and lank and hung lifelessly around her fat cheeks. There was no need to wear a wig anymore. No-one would recognise her as Dahlia Western and, besides, she was here for a hair appointment. How long had it been since she was last here? Other than that visit to pick up a uniform for herself at the outset of this whole affair, she had steered clear of Barton town centre most of her life. The graffiti etched onto the walls and shuttered shops spoke of depravation and reminded Dahlia of some of the slums she had seen during her trips to more exotic locations. It always disturbed her how such beautiful countries often carried a fat belly of poverty. Well this was the equivalent back home. She glanced left and then right, trying to make out where Hilltop would be. But the dark, dirty streets seemed to crowd in upon her, forbidding any peek outside its concrete mass.

As she walked to the salon, Dahlia grew increasingly aware not only of her grim surroundings but the way other people had started looking at her. Being so fat, she drew people’s stares. Some were full of pity, others carried a great deal of disdain. But the looks she was used to drawing, ones of adulation, admiration or sexual desire, were totally absent. Dahlia felt secure in her ‘disguise,’ certain that no-one would suspect the true identity of the obese woman waddling down the pavement. She fit in just perfectly. That realisation – that she looked no different; perhaps even worse - made her pulse, her heart skipping a beat as it adjusted to carrying such weight. The salon was perhaps 300m away yet it felt far longer and Dahlia was beginning to sweat profusely. Being shuttered away in the clinic had meant she had had few chances to go for a substantial walk in recent weeks. Now she was finding it a struggle and illustrated perfectly just how far her fitness had decayed as she had put on all that weight.

Her discomfort had also drawn the attention of some young teenagers hanging around one of the benches that lined the street.

“God.. look at her! So fat and ugly!!”… “F*ck, she’s like a bowling ball” and “ewww look at all that sweat”… “God she stinks!”

Though cruel, truth often flows from the mouths of children and, for the first time, Dahlia felt she might have wanted to remove her disguise. She had never experienced such nastiness before and found herself stunned into silence. She knew what they were saying was true, just she had never thought other people’s reactions might be so hostile. But out here, in Barton, where polite society barely existed, she found herself on the sharp end of the dog eat dog attitude that can set poor people off against one another. Rather than mounting any kind of fightback, Dahlia found herself obsessing over what they were saying, smelling herself to see if it was true. She would never have gone out unwashed usually, but in the rush today, she had not had the time to shower. It was in the middle of this kerfuffle that Dahlia entered the salon, raucous laughter from outside ringing in her ears as she stepped into the dingy hairdressers.

At first the salon seemed empty. Dahlia was about to call out when a woman in her mid-50s stepped out from a backroom.

“Oh… you must be Petra.” Her eyes scanned Dahlia’s face and body disbelievingly. “YOU work for Dahlia Western? The supermodel?” the look of incredulity seemed only to harden at the idea that a fat slob like that could ever work for one of the world’s premier models. She sighed and threw a tabard over her head, collecting her scissors and hairclips.

“Well. Sit down,” she motioned to the chair, clearly impatient to get started. The kids outside had finally tired of tormenting the fat lady in the salon and had slinked away, though their words reverberated in Dahlia’s head. As if to confirm her fears, the hairdresser seemed to wrinkle her nose as she got close to her sweaty customer in a sign of mild disgust. “It must be true”, Dahlia found herself fearing, as she surveyed herself in the mirror.

As the hairdresser inspected Dahlia’s scalp and hair, she admired the handiwork of the last person to cut her hair. “Where did you get this done? It is a good job.” After a moment’s pause she asked, “You sure you want it all off? And to dye it dark brown? Seems a shame really…”

Dahlia must have looked totally spaced out for a moment, as she took in what the hairdresser was saying with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. Her hair had literally been her crowning glory all her life, forming one of her strongest assets: a thick luxurious mane, naturally blonde, that fell flawlessly however she styled it. Wearing a short-cropped dark wig at the clinic had proved horribly disconcerting at first. In a single moment, it had robbed her of much of her identity and, by removing the frame from her around her face, changed her appearance massively. Hair plays an important role in softening the face, drawing attention away from a person’s more pointed features and highlighting more of what they wish you to see. It was no different for Dahlia. Though to most ‘normal’ people, her appearance was flawless, her face perfectly proportioned, Dahlia sensed imperfections that she tried to hide. When deprived of her long locks and forced to rely on minimal coverage, she found all her ‘flaws’ exposed and it played on her mind, adding to a creeping feeling that she was not all that special – that she did not really deserve all the adulation and success heaped upon her.

That nagging, insistent doubt had been confirmed in the manner in which she had let her body degenerate so extremely. For the past months, Dahlia had had few reliable yardsticks with which to chart her changing form. Now she had one. The armrests of the salon chair pinched her sides, pressing painfully into her fleshy thighs and torso. Most ‘normal’ people would have fitted in just fine. But Dahlia had never been normal, she had always been exceptional, though the journey from exceptionally beautiful to exceptionally fat had largely been invisible to her. She saw how her bulbous breasts sat on the rolls of fat forming her belly and felt horrified. She wanted to vanish from that chair as fast as possible and to slide into the background. Whatever hopes she harboured for returning to her old body, that could only be months away, if not years. She had to assume her new place quietly, without fuss, and let Melissa handle things for now and try to work out how she could recover at a later date.

That was when she nodded “yes… that’s right,” she replied to the bemused hairdresser, “just as Ms Western said. Short and brown.”

The hairdresser raised an eyebrow and started to work. Dahlia sat in helpless agony as the hairdresser pulled her long hair into a ponytail and cut the bulk of her hair off in one sweeping motion of the scissors. Up until that dreadful point, Dahlia had kept thinking she might change her mind; perhaps just a trim? But Melissa’s warning to her was fresh in her mind. The fact that she could reveal the truth of Dahlia’s warped descent at any moment was a terrifying prospect. Dahlia imagined being unmasked publicly, the world’s ridicule aimed toward her. The utter contempt she would be met with by those jealous of her looks, who would walk over red hot coals for a shot at her fame and good fortune. Only by trusting Melissa, could Dahlia see a way out of her immediate problems.

An awkward silence hung around the salon speaking volumes for the tension of the moment. Once that decisive cut had been made, the hairdresser eased up a little and tried to strike up a conversation as she went about her job butchering Dahlia’s style. If ever a moment had made Dahlia feel less herself it was then. She could scarcely manage more than a monosyllabic yes or no as the hairdresser gamely tried to lighten the mood. All the while Dahlia was transfixed on her face as the cut seemed to make her uglier as she sat helplessly in the chair.

“So what’s Ms Western like?” The hairdresser eventually asked. “She was in the news a lot a few months ago and… well… is she okay now?”

Dahlia looked at her, comforted in a way that the hairdresser truly had no idea who was sitting in her chair. The implication that she – and everyone she had encountered in Barton today – saw her as nothing more than a grossly overweight cleaner was still jarring to Dahlia. But better that than the alternative, she thought.

“She’s nice to me. She had a few problems and is feeling much better now.”

The hairdresser was having none of it. “That’s not what they said in the papers. They said she was addicted to those happy pills. Took too many of them. Cannot see what she has to worry about. All her money and that big house. God if only I had her problems.”

Dahlia listened unsure whether the hairdresser actually expected her to reply or whether she could stay silent and listen. She nodded along not wanting to talk about ‘herself’ this way, but could not stop listening. The events as portrayed in the media had clearly been unkind and scandalous, barely resembling anything Dahlia remembered. If earlier she had felt she might wish to ditch her fat disguise, now she was feeling relieved to be in it. The woman was clearly after some prize gossip and Dahlia was anxious not to say anything that could annoy Melissa, just in case word somehow got back to her. Instead she palmed the hairdresser off with a series of yesses and noes.

By the time the hairdresser had finished, Dahlia knew that she was trapped. For one thing, she knew that trying to recapture her life as Dahlia now would be reckless and hopeless. More than that, the startling change in her appearance, with the loss of her long hair, had seemed to shake Dahlia so much that she was seeing that the person she saw in the mirror was truly her. There was no sense of any disguise now. She possessed only the clothes she wore and, now, needed no wig. Only her thick-rimmed glasses could be taken as an element of disguise. It was a moment of complete revelation for Dahlia and a small part of her was grateful. For while the fear and anxiety she felt at losing her identity as a graceful supermodel was terrible, the challenge that faced Melissa in rebuilding ‘brand Dahlia’ seemed nearly insurmountable and scared her. 

When preparing to leave the salon, the hairdresser seemed mildly annoyed at the lack of conversation, so Dahlia paid her a fat tip to keep her sweet. The problem was that, altogether, she had used up virtually all of the money Melissa had given her and now needed to make her way back to Hilltop. Leaving the salon, she was relieved to see that the street was relatively quiet. As she made her way to the bus stop, Dahlia reflected on how real all of this was becoming.

 

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