Choose to Be Me

"So," Adriana said, stepping back so that Betty could see the mirror. "How do you feel about it so far?"

Francesca broke in before Betty could say a word. "She loves it, of course," she replied with just a hint of steel in her voice. "How could she not? All those blotches and divots brushed away into smooth, soft perfection. She looks in that mirror and sees beauty, style, glamour...all that dreary Betty wiped away, not to put too fine a point on it. Isn't that right, Lisette?"

Betty tried to find a diplomatic way to challenge Francesca-she enjoyed looking stunningly beautiful, but she wasn't quite ready to embrace Caleb's attitude about her old self. "I can't really see much of anything without my glasses," she said, choosing to deflect the question. She squinted theatrically at the mirror, and both women gasped in horror.

"Wrinkles!" Adriana shrieked, the same way a horror movie character might scream 'Jason!' or 'Freddy!' She lunged for the make-up table and pulled out a contact lens case. "Here, my darling, foolish child. Let me save you from yourself." Adriana opened the case and scooped out one of the lenses. Before Betty could say a word in protest, Adriana gripped her face and planted the lens precisely onto Betty's eye.

She blinked in stunned amazement, so shocked by the sudden turn of events that she couldn't stop Adriana from popping the other lens in. Surprisingly enough, they made her vision crystal-clear; she could see every detail of the room, and examine herself perfectly in the mirror. Her eyes had changed color, matching Francesca's lustrous brown, and somehow Betty could tell that the change wasn't simply cosmetic. Her vision had genuinely been transformed.

And not just improved, either. Betty looked at Francesca and Adriana, and she could now tell them apart perfectly. The minor variations on their physical perfection seemed like differences as vast as those of a blonde and a brunette; Betty couldn't think how she'd ever mistaken them for each other before. They stood out against the dreariness of the world, and Betty found herself lost in the vision of their beauty for a long moment before Adriana turned her face back to the mirror. "We're not finished yet, dear. Are we?"

"I...no," Betty murmured, half in horror. Her face looked so wrong when she saw it with her new eyes; the skin looked normal enough, even beautiful, but her lips, her eyelashes, her hair... The contact lenses magnified every imperfection, making all of the old Betty's features seem distorted into grotesqueries. "Please," she whimpered, desperately struggling to turn away even as Adriana held her in position. "Please I can't look please..."

"Ah, to see the world through the eyes of Francesca is a blessing and a curse, isn't it, my sweet?" Francesa sighed out. She stepped up to the table and gripped Betty's head tightly. "This is always the most difficult part, when you are confronted with the horrors of how you looked to others all along. But don't worry. That old you is going away, now. You won't have to worry about her ever again."

Betty wanted to protest, to say that even in her darkest moments of self-loathing she'd never hated her own body that much, but...she couldn't stop seeing. Francesca's eyes picked out every flaw with the precision of a microscope, cruelly caricaturing Betty's face in her own mind until she couldn't stand the sight of herself. It hurt to look in the mirror, a physical pain, and Betty could only withstand it for a few moments before she gave in and let her eyelids close.

She felt Adriana's brush gently sweep across those same eyelids, painting them with eyeshadow, and another brush applying a coat of mascara. "Pucker up, please," Adriana said, her words accompanied by the hollow pop of a tube of lipstick being opened. "You need those beautiful cocksucking lips men love so very much. A cultured woman always knows how to please with her mouth, even if she only bestows that favor on a select few."

"But I-ooph!" Betty began to protest that she wasn't at all sure she wanted to suck anything, but then Francesca put her fingers at the corners of Betty's mouth and squeezed the protest into an indecipherable grunt of protest. Betty felt the lipstick smoothed onto her, somehow seeming to soak into her skin as Adriana applied it. She breathed out, and suddenly she could sense every little whisper of air as it crossed her delicate, sensitive lips. It felt...it felt marvelous, was how it felt. Simply breathing had become an erotic, sensual experience.

Betty imagined those same lips sliding over the head of a man's cock, gliding down the shaft. It made her wetter than any fantasy she'd ever imagined.

"There we go!" Adriana cooed, giving Betty's face one last whisk with the make-up brush. "So much better. You're almost ready now, I think. Wouldn't you agree, Francesca?" Betty's eyes opened, but she reflexively turned her head away from the mirror on seeing the mop of stringy, flat hair on top of her perfect face.

"Almost, yes," Francesca said, taking Betty's hand and drawing her to her feet. "Just a few final steps, I think." She led Betty through to a room beyond the make-up parlor, one that left Betty's spatial perceptions just a tiny bit confused-surely they were into the store next door by now, weren't they? But then Francesca guided her to a reclining chair next to a wash basin, and she was distracted from the confusion by the preparations for her hair treatment.

"Just a bit more work, my dear," Francesca said, covering Betty with a towel, "and then you will be ready to truly be beautiful like Francesca. Such a devoutly desired culmination, is it not? To see that dreary boy of yours humbled and humiliated, to watch every girl who laughed at you seethe with envy...they will all want to be you, of course. And perhaps a few, perhaps a very special few, will be allowed to do exactly that." She gestured, and another woman stepped in to begin rinsing Betty's hair.

A part of Betty was beginning to feel like this had become a bit more like a deal with the devil than a visit from a fairy godmother, but that part of her subsided into dreamy passivity under the warm water and the sensual massage of the hairstylist's fingers. It felt so good just to recline, not to worry about all the stress of Caleb's rejection or the barbs Francesca flung her way or the shocks of her transformation. Betty was allowed to simply relax now, and she found that she couldn't help sinking into that gift of quiescence.

She drifted into a timeless reverie, floating in peace and relaxation as the scalp massage soothed her thoughts away. The acrid stink of the chemical dyes barely even dented her placid sense of calm, and her eyes simply refused to open when she tried. She stopped trying. There was no need to act. She could let herself be acted on, instead. It felt blissful to give in and be the object of their attentions.

She was almost dripping with arousal by the time they finally straightened the chair and showed Betty herself in a hand mirror. Her long hair now rolled in gentle curves down her back, shining with the iridescent black of a raven's wing. Betty couldn't see it as anything but beautiful now. She couldn't see herself as anything but beautiful now. The mirror's gaze trapped her in dreamy, thoughtless complacence as she stared at her own gorgeous reflection and sighed in contentment.

Betty was seeing herself as Francesca saw her now, she knew, and she shivered with desire as she realized how much the other woman must want her. Everyone wanted her, everyone needed to surrender to that beauty and obey it completely. She had never stood a chance. Nobody did. Men would fall to their feet for her, women would discover their secret lust and envy and Betty could use it as a lever to break their to her will. The woman in the mirror nodded in approval at the thought.

"And now, one final step, darling Lisette," Francesca said, taking out an old-fashioned bottle of perfume. "A sweet scent to breath deep into your lungs and your mind, washing away the last of boring Betty and making you as wonderful in spirit as you are in body. Doesn't that sound so nice, my dear? Choosing to turn your back on the ordinary, give up on the mundane and the dull and the ugly, and becoming just like me instead?"

A part of Betty wanted to do nothing but nod in agreement, to lose herself in Francesca's beauty the way she lost herself in her own and do everything the other woman told her. She'd already given up so much of the old her anyway. She'd accepted a new look, why not embrace a new attitude to go with it? Letting go of Betty and adopting Lisette seemed so natural that she almost didn't fight it at all.

But she forced herself to remember who Betty was. She made herself remember keeping salamanders and frogs in an aquarium in her bedroom, watching them with endless fascination as they hunted down the insects she fed them. She forced herself to think about long, rainy afternoons sitting at the kitchen table with a grilled cheese sandwich and a Harry Potter book, absorbed in the stories of other worlds. She pushed herself to think about watching Twiggy on the Muppet Show with her mother, hearing stories about how beauty changes all the time but a loving heart will never grow ugly. She made herself be Betty. And then she said, "No."

It got easier when she said it again. "No," she forced out, past impossibly sensitive lips. "No. No. No. No! I don't want to be Lisette. I don't want to be you. Take it all back if you want, make me everything I was again and I still won't do it. I'm happy with who I am, I'm happy with how I look and feel and I didn't ask you for this. Go find your next victim somewhere else, do you hear me?" She didn't know how anyone could fail to hear her, she was practically shouting now, but she didn't care. "I am Betty and I love being me! And I don't care what you or Caleb or anyone else thinks!"

Francesca smiled. With her new eyes, Betty could see every ounce of cruelty that dripped from those perfect lips. "That's just lovely, dear," she said, her voice musical with amusement as the hairstylist grabbed Betty from behind and held her tightly. "But 'choose' was really more of a...rhetorical device. The only one who chooses at Fascino is me."

She held up the perfume bottle to Betty's face. "But don't worry. You'll have plenty of choices soon enough. Because soon enough, you will be me. Just like all the rest." She squeezed the bulb, and the scent of sandalwood and violets filled Betty's world.

THE END