Five Minute Fantasies 2

by Cathryn Cooper

  Then I caught my reflection in a shop window. That word plain came back, slapping me across my insignificant face. My outlined faded into the background. Black trousers, brown jumper, safe duffle coat. I was the colour of the street, grey, unchallenging. I turned to look at the clothes on the mannequins. Bright, in-your-face reds, upstart black and white checks, cinched in waists, hip-hugging lycra. The sort of clothes I wouldn’t even try on. They could never have my name on, could they?

  I went in. It was a shop I knew was too expensive. The sort of shop where they serve you, where clothes aren’t jam-packed on the rails like a jumble sale but where they hang in stately splendour, to be admired and savoured. I told the salesgirl I wanted to try on every one of the items on the mannequins. Eagerly she rushed off then stood outside the changing room ready to hand me more as I slipped in and out of the luxurious materials. Pure new wool, soft leather, textured silk. I wasn’t fat, never had been. In fact I’d forgotten what my body looked like. I spent my time, day or night, in a self-imposed uniform of loose fitting shift-dresses with round necked jumpers designed to disguise, not enhance.

  As I completed one outfit exactly as it had been in the window I gingerly stepped out wanting to see the effect in a large mirror. With my new pheromones working overtime, the mirror had become friend, not foe. ‘Wow,’ said my salesgirl. ‘I’d never have believed you were the same woman.’ I gave her a sideways look. ‘No, honestly, I’m not just saying that. You’ve got a fantastic figure. You just need, if you don’t mind…’ she advanced towards my hips, I felt her hands over my waist and then smoothing the cashmere jumper over my stomach. Then she paused at my waist, tightening the leather belt, instantly granting me an hourglass shape. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, somewhat like being frisked at an airport, only more sensuous. ‘Mmm,’ she swooned, ‘that’s wonderful perfume you’re wearing.’ Nil points my friend. I wasn’t wearing any. Never have. I looked at her tight arse and small breasts. What was happening to me, for heaven’s sake? I was fancying girls! ‘There, that’s better. If you’ve got a tiny waist and a full bust, why hide it?’ She stepped back and looked at me admiringly, with a longing in her wide mouse eyes. These pheromones were gold dust. I wasn’t just becoming attractive to the male sex but to everyone. A perfectly hetero sales girl was developing a crush on me.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ she sighed. Was it true? There were certainly curves there, curves I’d given up on. ‘If you don’t mind my saying though, you ought to get yourself a decent bra. Support is vital.’

  I was persuaded. I bought two of the complete outfits, one of which I chose to wear immediately, and also some madly expensive underwear, a designer perfume and a pair of kid leather boots costing a month’s wages. Sod it. A months’ wages had bought me a million-dollar thrill. As I sashayed out with my bags, the girl pressed her card on me. I watched her lip-glossed mouth as she said, ‘I do personal shopping sessions. Feel free to phone me any time.’ She held my arm a fraction longer than was decent. I smiled and left. I was the one doing the choosing now. Maybe I’d phone her. Maybe not.

  But now, like a room that’s newly painted makes the curtains look shabby, I was aware of my nothing hairdo and porridge-coloured winter face. I looked over the road and there was one of London’s premier hairdressers. They didn’t have an instant appointment, but could do me in an hour. Just enough time for me to wander into the nearest department store and submit to one of those make-up girls.

  Half an hour of being gently caressed, painted with brushes and moulded with expensive cosmetics made me feel like a princess. The sensation of the make-up girl’s lithe body pressed warmly against me, her breath drifting across my skin, sent my head reeling. At fever pitch I prayed to God the pills were going to work in the way I hoped. If not my pussy would surely self-destruct with frustration.

  As I looked at my made-up self in the mirror, I felt as if I were wearing a magic mask. My ordinary features were transformed into a vibrant terrain of shadows and light. Turning my face to the warm lights, I discovered I had cheekbones. Could those really be my luscious claret red lips and eyelashes to die for? As she admired her work, making adjustments here and there, the girl said, ‘I love doing faces like yours. If you don’t mind my saying, scrubbed clean your face looks quite ordinary. But it’s very symmetrical, like lots of models. So it’s easy to transform. Your skin hasn’t got a blemish. It’s the perfect sort of face for going to town on. These smouldery, smoky colours really suit you. I love them. Don’t you?’ I could have kissed her, partly with gratitude and partly because she was extraordinarily cute. I bought every potion, lotion, powder, gloss and sparkly, sprinkly pot of witchery and sorcery she had on offer. ‘Come back again,’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll do you for free any time.’

  The hairdresser pouted and lifted up a skein of listless hair. He looked as if he was fingering a rodent that had expired messily on the front step of the salon.

  ‘Well, we have our work cut out here, haven’t we?’ He yanked a comb through my offensive hair and let it sag. ‘Who cut this for you last time? Or have you never had it cut? It’s very long.’

  ‘Me,’ I confessed.

  ‘No surprise there then.’ I gave him a look which I hoped said, ‘okay, smartarse, I’m paying through the nose for this, just do your job’.

  ‘Still,’ he mused, redeeming himself, ‘the raw material’s good. You’re lucky your hair’s thick and because it’s had no colouring it’s in good order. Pierre,’ he clicked his fingers, ‘shampoo my lady now.’ I lay back and let the shampoo boy massage my scalp. I could really feel those pheromones kicking in with a vengeance as he worked on me. Deep down inside my sex, the rhythmic massaging made me swell, feeling the ebb and flow of my senses dipping into my depths. He pushed his fingers into the indents at the back of my skull and I felt my meridians clearing, the blood surging through my body. As he wrapped the towel around my head he almost had to help me to the stylist’s chair, I felt so relaxed.

  Like a sculptor practising his art, the hairdresser crimped his way, snipping a sprig here, teasing a curl there. Once he’d cut he started with the hairdryer, running his fingers through now bouncy, flouncy, frankly fantastic hair. All superciliousness had evaporated as he walked behind me revealing his handiwork to me with a hand-mirror. I had obviously proved to be his most remarkable transition. Like a lion with a mane of curls I hardly recognised myself. Handing over the plastic, I’d have happily paid double for this feeling and tipped him an obscene amount just to prove who was boss.

  Bags swinging, looking and feeling like a Hollywood starlet, I made my way back to the scene of my earlier conquest. Tousle-haired Romeo was still there, and I stood on the pavement admiring his simply staggering beauty. I wanted him more than anything I had ever wanted. And for once in my life I believed I really could have a guy like that. As he talked to his current victim, I saw his eyes zero in on me, and do the most perfect double take. He drank me up like a man in the Mojave Desert cracking open a freezing can of beer. He finished and dismissed the person he was with. I stood and watched, challenge in my every fibre, as he placed one leg in front of the other to ease his way over to me. He got the clipboard out. ‘Ma’am, could you spare a few minutes to answer some questions.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I pouted crimson lips at him.

  His voice entered my ears and shot straight to the top of my legs. What the hell he was saying I couldn’t register. None of it mattered until the last bit where he snapped shut his clipboard and said. ‘Look, I’ve finished for the day and what I really wanted to ask is whether you’ll come for a drink with me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘On one condition?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Champagne’s my favourite drink. Could you run to that?’

  ‘As a poor charity worker, I’ll have to take up robbing banks. But for you, it’d be worth it.’

  Looks, brains and a sense of humour. The man was a triple whammy.

  We drank a bo
ttle together, starting off in a dimly lit bar and finishing it on the carpet of his bachelor flat. Fully clothed, he said, ‘would you like to come to bed now?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  He lifted me as if I was a single white rose, cradling me in his arms and enfolding me onto the leather armchair in his bedroom. I watched from my ringside seat, heart pounding as he walked with the pace of a tiger. He paused by scented candles standing in the fireplace and lit every one. The candlelight was kind. Where I once would have been creased with embarrassment, with this man, in this half light, I held my body straight and proud as he knelt before me and ran practised fingers over my tingling skin. I breathed in jasmine scent emanating from the candles and held my arms up. I allowed him to ease off my top, and heard his hungry gasp as my breasts in their new lilac bra bounced into his face. He kissed every inch of skin between my neck and my thighs, pausing to breathe deep where those sassy old pheromones were gathering in my warmest places. Have you ever had a man who so desired you, that he breathed the natural scent in the pit of your arm as if it were a newly gathered bunch of white lilies? No? Well try it sometime. Forget every aphrodisiac known to man. That level of devotion to the art of sex sends a girl weak-kneed begging for completion.

  I lay back on the coolness of Egyptian cotton sheets and felt his warm hard eager body cover my own as I shook with desire. I felt the roughness of his jeans against the nakedness of my skin. I could almost feel the pheromones collecting on my sweating body as I looked wide-eyed while he brazenly peeled off his clothes. Then he presented me with the finest gift any woman in a high state of arousal can have – the glowing torso of a man fired with passion. He lay back on the bed and straddled me over his stubbled chin. He unhooked my bra and kneaded my breasts as I rested my sex over his half-open mouth. Gently I sank on to his waiting lips, landing my pussy onto the warmth of his tongue. As I gripped the leather bed head, my head swam while he sucked and blew, his fingers digging into my thighs. Never before had I wanted to come so urgently.

  But, like the expert he was, he didn’t let me. Instead, he pushed me down over him positioning my thighs either side of his. I teased myself with his moist erection, my mane of shampoo-fresh hair falling onto his face. He placed me expertly, teasing my opening with one glorious erect cock. I sensed him watching me, studying my face as I chose exactly which moment was right, bucked up and then down, pinioning myself on his superb hardness. I sank into him as he grasped my hips and lifted me up and down, causing his breath to issue ragged and urgent.

  When he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked leaving it slippery and warm, and pressed it against the top of my clitoris I thought I might faint. My eyes closed, I leant back at the knees, swimming in the feeling of his gentle rubbing, filled with his erection. He could tell I was climbing the mountain, upwards and upwards until with a sensational burst of release, I shuddered to a climax, gripping his ankles for support. As I lay my head, sated and exhausted, on his chest I heard him murmur, ‘you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ It wasn’t true, I knew it wasn’t true, but for that one ticking second I found myself believing and held him so tight I thought he’d cry out, when all he did was smile and hold me tighter.

  It was with feet heavy with trepidation that I headed back to the clinic to hear the results of the trial. Oh, I had a tale to tell them. A tale of making love every single day since I had been popping those little blue pills. A tale that would fill them with joy for the efficacy of their preparation but which filled me with blinding horror. Because when the trial was over, the supply would stop. It would have to. What about the other ugly girls’ successes or failures? If their development hadn’t been so spectacular as mine, maybe the wonder drug, the drug that had transformed my life would never be manufactured, would never come on sale, would fade into obscurity. And I would fade with it. My enthusiastic lover, the lover of my sleeping and waking dreams would sense a change. He would go off me. He would look at me through creased eyes and wonder what on earth he had seen in such a lumpy, dumpy specimen. My life would return to its greyness and I would live alone and unloved.

  I eased myself in my tight black pencil skirt into the chair opposite the doctor, crossed my stockinged legs and told him of my great adventure. I waited, listening under the strip lights to his breathing as he wrote my results down. ‘So,’ I asked with a catch in my throat. ‘Was the trial a success?’

  ‘Totally and utterly.’ The doctor sat back closing his notebook. ‘You and the others were a resounding success.’

  I trembled, hope escalating, ‘has the drug finished its trials, will it be on sale soon? Where can I buy it?’

  The doctor steepled his hands and looked me over, shaking his head gently from side to side. ‘There is no drug,’ he stated.

  ‘Well, no, I don’t have any now. I finished them all off yesterday. I just wanted to know when and where I can get some more.’

  ‘There is no drug. There never was a drug.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Then what have I been taking?’

  ‘Just a sugar coated pill. A placebo.’

  ‘That can’t be,’ I stuttered, painted finger nails holding the empty box up at him as if he were an idiot. I ran a shaking hand through my soft wild curls. ‘I’ve been transformed. You gave me pills and I was transformed.’

  ‘Yes, I gave you pills. Little blue tablets of confidence. You transformed yourself. You believed and so it came to pass. You are beautiful because you believe yourself to be beautiful.’

  ‘And the trial?’

  ‘A psychological trial into the mysteries of the human mind. You weren’t the only one. All the women responded in a similar fashion. You all had it in you all along. You just needed those little blue smarties to make it happen.’

  I shook his hand and walked down the street, back to my gorgeous lover, the little pill box, moving silent and empty and unnecessary, in my handbag.

  Half Measures

  by Jeremy Edwards

  I never did learn exactly why Millicent showed up at my place with no pants on at 1:30 in the morning. I had a general idea, of course, of the type of evening out that might have resulted in this scenario. But I still don’t know any of the specific details. I’m delighted to report that Millicent and I see each other quite often. But by the time it crosses my mind that she still owes me the rundown on this incident (among others), we’re always too busy living in the moment for me to interrupt with sentimental reminiscences and pump her for back stories. Not that there isn’t usually some pumping going on – but that’s different.

  It had been a quiet Saturday night at home for me, and I was looking forward to hitting the sack and perhaps indulging the autoeroticism habit before nodding off. First choice for me under the covers is always to be part of a dynamic duo; but I don’t mind admitting that I like masturbation, too. And anyway, it happened to be the best proposition I’d had that night.

  I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear the knock on the door. I live near the strip of groovy bars, and my friends – some of whom are a little wild – know that I am usually a congenial host, even to spontaneous, inebriated guests, and that if I really don’t want to be bothered, I won’t answer. I had learned, though, to ascertain who it was before opening up. There are some people whom I consider friends by daylight but do not wish to entertain in the wee hours of the morning.

  ‘Hi. Who is it?’ I asked in my most noncommittal, to-host-or-not-to-host tone.

  ‘It’s Millicent,’ a voice hissed back in a courteous, don’t-disturb-the-neighbours sort of whisper.

  Millicent! This was the best thing that had happened in weeks.

  ‘Can I come in? I don’t have any pants on.’ And then she laughed, just loud enough for me to hear.

  I laughed, too. ‘Now Millicent, you know you don’t have to pretend to be half-undressed to gain entry to any apartment of mine. You’re always welcome, even fully clothed.’

  ‘I’m not kidding, Ste
wart.’

  ‘What? No pants?’

  ‘No pants.’ She laughed again. ‘Why don’t you open the door and see for yourself?’

  Millicent and I were the kind of pair who could turn almost anything into a game. ‘You can’t fool me so easily,’ I reasoned. ‘You’re wearing a skirt, of course.’

  ‘Nope.’ More giggles. Millicent was obviously enjoying this as much as I was, so I decided to drag it out.

  ‘A dress?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shorts?’

  ‘Nuh-uh.’

  ‘A swimsuit? A skirt? Culottes?’ My guesses were getting more far-fetched. I wasn’t even sure what culottes were.

  ‘None of the above,’ she tittered. Her laughter was as beautiful as it was contagious. She didn’t even sound drunk.

  ‘Commencement robes? A sari? A paisley dressing-gown?’

  ‘No, no, and no again.’

  ‘A kilt? A leotard? One of those big ol’ Native American blankets?’

  Now she was laughing too hard to say ‘No,’ but it was clear that I was still flunking out.

  ‘Car-repair coveralls? Scuba gear?’

  ‘No, Stewart. I’m completely bare-assed.’

  ‘Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so.’ I opened the door, beaming at her. Millicent scurried in, naked from the waist down and elfin from the neck up, and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

  She stood next to me for an instant, catching her breath after all the laughing. Then, without standing on ceremony, she zipped past me and headed down the hall that led to my bathroom. I noticed how well her long-sleeved coral-pink blouse hugged the petite, elegant contours of her back. Its smoothness led my eyes down to Millicent’s waist, where the silk signed off and creamy, bare flesh took over. I watched the neat little globes of her bottom jiggle purposefully as she receded. Too soon, the dreamy ass wished me au revoir as its owner took a sharp right turn into the john.