It was one of those dank dressing rooms that the seedier strip clubs usually possess. What fluorescent lights remained gave everyone a washed out look to match the chill in the air. The chill would have been comforting if not for the accompanying humidity caused by faulty piping which led to a cloying feeling that reaches like fingers into the marrow of one’s bones. But this was of no concern to Chelsea. She sat before her mirror with Clinique shrapnel cast haphazardly about, the sign of a busy night. The large amounts of cash before her also proved that the night’s bounty had been lucrative, more lucrative than usual. “Probably because it’s Christmas,” she thought as she counted her piles of lucre. Pile number one: tips. “The bastards weren’t cheap but they could have done better” she thought between periodic licks of the thumb. Pile number two, photos at fifty bucks a pop, was by far the smallest pile yet enough to make your average street whore roll over once or twice. “Humph.” she grunted and grabbed a Virginia Slim Ultra Light Menthol 100. She lay the lighter down amidst a puff of unusually slowly moving blue smoke. The final pile: autographs at twenty-five bucks a shot.
Chelsea drew the cigarette from her lips and exhaled. She considered her now worn visage in the mirror. The jaded and used look that says nothing but, “What are you going to give me?” stared back from the inner recesses of a feigned dimension. “Its just age,” she told herself, “Time to check the net.”
Checking the net had become her nightly ritual. Her laptop’s monitor had become her stolid Narcissian comfort. First she would browse the BEA. After kicking up enough fuss some of those bastards still had the gall to post pictures of her!
“If they want to see me they better damn well go to my pay site!”
Next stop, her pay site. How many hits? To what heights had the counter risen this day? It was like tracking stock on a ticker, a moment-to-moment reassurance. But of course, being Christmas, hits on the site were seasonally low. “No matter! Yuletide bliss is but a passing thing and when the blush of too much eggnog vanishes from their cheeks they’ll soon realize what their wife actually looks like and come running back to my site!”
Normally, her next stop would have brought her to her favourite National Public radio station where she could slip away and get lost in the world’s affairs. Yet this night would prove to be different. This night would be like none other she had ever known except for the long faded memory or a tale once told long ago.
“DING”
Her IM rang. The ID read, “Lolo.”
“Who could this be at this hour?” she ruminated, “ Hopefully not another fan using a girls name as a guise.”
She could care less and hit the “Unavailable” option.
But much to Chelsea’s surprise the message again dinged out it’s familiar greeting.
Tentatively, her hand caressed the touch pad to bring the cursor to answer the missive.
“Joyeux Noel, et salutation de la saison!”
“What?” was her disinterested response?
“Excuse me while I shed my particular idiom. I know you do not speak French.”
“What do you want with me?
“Much!”
“Who are you?”
“Ask me who I was!”
“Who were you then?”
“Lolo!”
“Lolo who?”
“Why Lolo Ferrari of course!”
“That’s it!” Chelsea exclaimed.
She repugnantly thumbed the off button of her laptop yet it refused to deactivate! At that moment a colour picture of Lolo Ferrari appeared on her screen.
“You don’t believe me then?”
Dumfounded Chelsea continued to press the “off” button.
“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know! You could be a virus or some cruel hoax!”
“Let’s say I am a virus. If you do not listen to what I have to say I will wipe your precious web-site counter to zero!”
“No! No, please.”
“I thought that would do it. Do I now possess your undivided attention?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“This evening you will be visited by three spirits.”
“Huh?”
“Unbeknownst to you it is a dread path you walk. To escape the plight from which I myself have fallen I would come to warn you. Only by heeding these spirits may you avoid your calumnious fate.
“Yoikes!” exclaimed Chelsea in an uncharacteristically Scooby moment.
The picture of Lolo disappeared and the screen went dark. Chelsea looked around and wondered just what it was that had happened before her eyes. She was about to blow it all off as a nympholeptic spasm left over from the evening’s an exertion. “Yes, that must be what it was.” she thought as she noticed how hard her nipples had become. Little eraser heads protruded from her Lycra top.
At that moment the screen resurrected it’s incandescent flicker. Upon it’s face was a fractal pattern the like of which Chelsea had never seen before. It was both beautiful and entrancing. The patterns drew one into the screen. She felt as though she were falling forward yet staying still. She had to look away to avoid the hypnotic pattern. She looked to the left and saw a large black vertical expanse. She looked down and saw a similar black expanse. When she looked up she saw the room that she recently occupied. It looked as though it were behind glass. Before she could grasp the perplexity of her situation a figure appeared beside her.
A shapely yet lean figure dressed in nothing but leopard skins stood eye to eye with her. Chelsea stared into the pale face surrounded by black bobbed hair.
Is that real leopard?” she croaked.
“Sure is kiddo.” came the reply.
“You’re not…”
“I am! Betty Page, the ghost of Christmas past!”
“Wow! Betty Page! I have so many questions! What was it like to be one of the first risqué pinups? How did you deal with the fame? Where did the money…”
“Shut up kid ya’ bother me. We have more important things to deal with.”
“Me?”
“And I thought I was full of myself!”
“Yeah but isn’t that why I’m here? To learn all about who I am?” the story was being vaguely remembered.
“I’m not here to show you who you are, darlin’, I’m here to show you who you were!”
With that Betty waved a hand and the entire scene changed. Suddenly they were both enraptured within a montage of events: photo shoots, surgery, runways and WebPages; a truly multimedia affair.
“Do you see what I see?” inquired Betty?
“What?” was Chelsea’s indignant response.
“A child. Look behind the eyes!”
And as surely as she looked there stood the child looking back. It was that little girl-next-door that looked back at her. No matter how big her boobs were there was always that provincial look of innocence. She needed no glitzy makeup, no showy wigs; all of her assets were accentuated by gargantuan tits! And how the audiences loved her. She packed the house I some of the most exclusive clubs. People liked her, they really liked her!
“But what good did this ever do me? I can get $1000 for a date now! Who needs those sweaty lowlifes?”
“But look at your face. Look how young and vibrant you are! You bring pleasure to anyone who adores you. Your visage is a reflection of their adulation. You would actually smile at a man who gave you a dollar!”
“Yes those were good times but…”
The world began to churn and swirl. Chelsea felt as though her insides were put through a salad shooter. She awoke.
“It must have been a dream.” She leant forward and her massive breasts pressed up against the table. She reached across the table and uncorked her bottle of Glen Morangie 10 year old. Shit like that deserved a stiff belt! The ice rattled in the bottom of the glass as the neck of the bottle clinked against the lip.
“It was no dream.” said the husky blonde voice.
“Maxi!” Chelsea exclaimed!
“Punctilious, aren’t we?” came her droll response.
“Oh no. Punctilious? This sounds dreadfully like artistic license. Not that I don’t think you would ever use such a word but coming from a…”
“Silence! Bitch! You think I don’t know who was behind my untimely demise?”
“Hey! Garden hoes are very dangerous implements! And forensics never proved that a hoe could never…
“Silence! Whatever the reason I have been elected to show you the Christmas which is present.”
“Oh joy.”
It was like a giant VCR on rewind except it happened to the surroundings and not the actors. The shift was not so much in time as it was in space. Maxi and Chelsea stood before an office, which said “Closed.”
“That’s Doctor Johnson’s office!” exclaimed Chelsea.
“It used to be.”
“What happened?”
“You happened! Your tits continued to grow and grow bigger! You became so popular and capitalized on your fame so much, that Dr. Johnson had to shut down! The publicity was too much for him to handle.”
“But you had the silly string too!”
“Not long after Dr.J. shut down! Look…”
The image swirled and finally settled into a dive of a joint, the Artist’s Café, New Orleans. Most of the girls here earned their money in the biblically recumbent manner. One girl danced upon the stage, in a desultory manner to the crumpled, stained dollars waved by what few customers who graced the joint. It was none other than a D-cup Maxi! Sure she was bigger than most of the other girls. She also possessed less gravitational attraction than the others. She was the star. But far from the star she had been.
“You went out there and told everybody who did your boobs! You sent women, you sent men you sent everyone to see Dr. J. Pretty soon everyone got news of, “The man who makes giant tits.” Boyfriends flocked from the four corners of the globe! Then the FDA was all over him like Princess Grace on a dashboard! POW! He was shut down. He asked you not to tell but you just couldn’t keep your big mouth shut!”
Chelsea knew her garrulous attitude was intentional. If Dr. J shut down her strangely tumescent boobs would be the biggest of them all! She had no idea how it would effect others in the business.
“Without my regular checkups my string had to come out! Minka’s implants became deformed and everyone else had problems. But we could no longer seek Dr. Johnson’s help! You were the lucky one who had no problems! I pudically resumed the stage with normal implants of a mere DDD size. Can you imagine my chagrin! I used to be somebody! I used to be a contender!”
“Well thank you for that Elia Kazan moment but I can’t see how my actions, my attitudes or anything else could have effected anyone else but me! Even if they did affect you, what do I care? I am making more money than ever now, off the poor saps that still worship me and could care less about the rest of you old used up bitches!”
At that moment the ground trembled so violently that Maxi fell to her knees (a position with which she was not uncomfortable but yet found strange due to it’s abruptness) and Chelsea stumbled backwards. A voice beyond human cognition boomed throughout the room and it said one word:
“WOTAN”
The walls of the room crumbled away as the Stark Fist of Removal burst through the very fundament of reality. The hand of JHVH1 grabbed Chelsea and yanked her soundly into the future. The hand released her and left her there to view an elderly woman, living in a trailer.
The woman heard a thump and lifted her head; it was the daily paper. With age there is some solace in the printed word. The more elderly one becomes the more one realizes the wisdom of the great Hearst (unless you’re a Well’s fanatic). Her enormous breasts weighed her down as she exited the door of her Floridian trailer. She nodded to Chili, her lawn penguin. She vaguely remembered someone else with that name at one time. She looked to the left. She looked to the right. She then shuffled her fuzzy Kmart slippers down her tastefully laid brick path to the edge of what may have been reality.
“Do we have to do this again Bob?” she said to no one in particular.
“I am afraid we do.” said a tall lean slick fifties man smoking a pipe, looking very much (un)iconographic.
The trepidation quivering on her lip and the early onset of Parkinson’s disease quivering in her hand, she approached the paper.
From nowhere children of all ages came from within the tornado threatened project. They hurled rocks and stones and the freak lady.
“What’s this? What’s going on?”
A self-assured smile on his face BOB replies, “Nothing, nothing my dear.”
“Nothing! Those urchins are pelting me with rocks!”
“Oh that! Well, yes, there is that. It seems you no longer have the fame to which you aspired. As a matter of fact the Masons deemed your activities unsound some years ago.
“The Masons?”
“You’re not supposed to know.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, this lothario was someone within the Scottish Rite and he took umbrage to your raffish behaviour. It seems you just weren’t “good enough for him” and there lies the crux of the matter. Once this man had decried you you were then ostracized from all lucrative positions. Your manager ran away with what little you had and there you were, destitute, penniless. No longer could you afford the reduction you so greatly desired. Stripping was the only way to make a day-to-day living. You could have been an elderly man in India but you were lucky enough to have been a fairly pretty girl in America with just a smidgeon of fame. You made your way day by day until you retired to this particular park of trailers.”
A look of horror spread across Chelsea’s face.
“My God!”
“He would dislike the possessive.”
“Please! Please tell me spirit there is a way to avoid these desultory images! Many are the things which have come to mine eyes this evening. I now understand. I wish to make amends for that which I have wrought. Please, let not this be my ultimate reckoning!
“ I have been brought here by the author to serve as merely a warning. You may freely leave if you possess the proper coinage.”
“One needs coins for the vending machines on the great spaceship.”
“OK, now you’re weirding me out.”
“Walk into the ship, accept the slack, and return to your milieu.”
“Ummm, yeah.”
At that surrealistic moment a huge spaceship appeared and beamed Chelsea aboard, where, shortly after being anally probed, she lost consciousness, though not ungratefully.
The room was still damp and cold and Chelsea’s screen still had an email on it from a guy named Bob. She looked around her squalid surroundings and gave out a whoop of joy!
She picked up the phone and dialed. What she heard at the end of the phone was an answering service.
“Hello? Hey boy, tell the Doctor to stock up! I’m going to have the biggest chest in the industry! He better have a lot of string on hand! My tits are going to boggle the mind! Damn the weight, full size ahead!”
Chelsea, chin held high, exited the dressing room. She tapped a late night dancer on the shoulder and asked her if she “wouldn’t mind.”
“Knock yourself out.” replied the woman.
“Thanks, you don’t know how much this means to me.”
The managers were astonished! Chelsea giving a free encore! It had been days of yore since such had happened. But here she was in all of her glory!
Chelsea danced. She shook he immense breasts and watched the amazed faces of those before her. One man, in a slump, just puffed on his cigarette. Chelsea let out a little, “Woo Hoo!” and he looked up briefly. He looked up. He looked up and then he smiled. She flashed him that country girl look that all believed was forgotten. And then, like a sunrise, his eyes brightened with epiphianic acknowledgement of her massive endowments. He smiled. It was a merry Christmas after all.
THE END