That Which We Hate - The Changes Keep Coming

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Lunch had been the highlight of Claire's entire day. As much as she hated being associated with those kind of women, talking with the other secretaries had been a nice change of pace. It also helped that they did not seem to judge her when she ordered an extra serving of fries and an extra large milkshake with lunch. Claire had tried to stick to her usual diet, but after catching a glimpse of her new, fat body in a window, Claire realized "why bother?"

After lunch, work seemed to be even harder. The filling room was hot and reeked of hair-spray. By mid-afternoon, Claire's ankles were sore from carrying around all the extra weight and her feet had developed blisters from her heels. To make matters worse, she had been developing a splitting headache for the past hour and it was making it harder to read names on the files.

After Claire had stopped to rest her legs for what felt like the third time in twenty minutes, Deanne popped her head in the door.

"Hey Claire! First day is always the hardest," she said as she helped Claire to her feet.

Claire was embarrassed to have someone see her like this, but grateful for the help.

"Anyway there is this great local pub, right around the corner from here. A couple of us girls are going there right after work and we would love it if you would join us."

Claire was not exactly receptive. She wanted to get home as soon as possible to figure out what was happening to her. "I don't know. I am not sure if I want to go anyplace public for awhile." That was the truth. Claire felt like she needed to loose seventy pounds and acquire a new wardrobe before she ever wanted to be seen in front of people again. The fact that she would be going out with a bunch of fat, old-maids didn't help either.

"Nonsense, you look great. Why, you could probably give some of us a few tips about looking good. Just look at what you're wearing now. That outfit really brings out your best features."

That comment shut Claire up. She just meekly nodded until Deanne left the room.

Her best features? She had so many mixed feelings. On the one hand, the fact that someone had said she looked better than ugly was the kind of victory that made her want to climb up to the roof and sing. On the other hand, if she was receiving complements for deciding to match plain, brown heels with a plain, brown bedsheets of a dress and makeup that looked like it had been applied by a circus clown, than she had fallen very far below her old standards. Was this as really good as she was capable of looking?

Claire looked at the wall clock to see how long it would be until work had ended, but when she looked she was in for another shock. The clock was still there, but the hands and numbers were just a blur. She had to take her phone out of her purse to check the time.

Claire soon realized that her headaches were more than just a product of her stressful day. Her eyesight was going bad. Over the next hour she kept tripping over objects on the floor or bumping to people right in front of her. Every time she had to read the words on a document she had to hold it closer and closer to her face.

After another hour of this humiliation, Claire picked up a stray piece of paper that had fallen to the ground and realized that she couldn't read it at all. No matter how close she held it or how hard she squinted, the words would not come into focus. The paper may as well have been written in Japanese.

Claire tried to make her way to the women's washroom as inconspicuously as possible. Her arms were outstretched to keep her from running into every object in front of her. She could literally see the world fading out of focus. As she crossed the office her depth of vision dropped from about 10 feet, to 5 feet, until she could only see what was within arms reach of her body.

In the women's room, Claire tried splashing water in her eyes, but this only seemed to make things worse. When she blinked her eyes open, there was nothing but blobs of color and light. She tried waving her hand in front of her face, but only got the vaguest impression of a blob moving in front of her eyes.

Claire was crying now. The other changes were distressing, but this was genuinely terrifying. She was almost completely blind. Claire reached into her purse to find her phone, hoping to call an ambulance. As she looked for her phone, Claire's hand touched something that made her heart almost stop.

After a few moments of frightened shuttering, Claire took the pair of eyeglasses out of her purse and brought them in front of her face. It worked. Claire was in such a hurry to see again that it was not until after she had adjusted the strap and put the glasses on her nose that it occurred to her she might no like what she saw.

When Claire first saw the women's face staring back at her in the mirror, she didn't feel anything at all. After all, this face looked so different from her own that there could be no way. But as she tentatively used her long fingernails to poke her fat cheeks and saw the women in the mirror do the same, it slowly donned on Claire that this was what she looked like now.

Her fat cheeks were still there from this morning. She still had on the same pancake makeup she had put on in the bus, which, Claire noticed, had not smudged at all despite having just splashed her face in water. The biggest change was now to her hair. Her once stylish brunette hair was pilled high above her head in a 1960s style updo. Claire remembered the smell of hairspray from the filling room and shivered as she realized that it had been coming from her. She ran her fat fingers through her ridiculous do and saw that it was indeed holding firmly in place. There would be no restyling it with her fingers. She would have to wait until she could wash this gunk out of her hair.

Then there was the glasses. The good news was that the prescription was right. But the glasses themselves were horrid. The frames were black and in a style that had gone out of style over forty years ago. The lenses were thick as coke bottles and were so large they seemed to take up half her face. And if there was any doubt that these glasses belonged to an old lady, they were held in place by a glasses strap that had been beaded with plastic, fake pearls.

Claire tried to take them off but was given a jolting reminder that without these disgusting new accessories, she would not be able to find her way out of the bathroom. Exhausted to the point of no longer caring, Claire spent several more minutes in the bathroom weighing her options.

In the end, she decided that she had only an hour left of work and that it would pass faster if she got back to filling. She was more eager than ever to get home, which was good, as every hour she spent away was only accelerating her changes.

Claire adjusts her dress and realizes that it is feeling tighter, she has put on weights since this morning
Claire changes again, she goes from unattractive to outright ugly
A coworker asks Claire about her children, uh-oh!
Claire decides to head out for drinks with the other girls
Claire heads straight home after work
Claire tries to hit the gym to work off some of this new weight, it goes about as well as you would expect
Claire acquires an embarrassing new accent to go with her new look
Something Else
Something Else

Page created by: pinkhippo99 on 2016-08-28 12:01:39.

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