Johnathan Davis was hot-to-trot, and he knew it. Only two years out of Harvard and he was already on the fast track to the board of directors of Gerald-Petersen Savings and Loan. A little more maneuvering, and nothing would be able to stop him.
That is, until She walked into his office.
Love at first sight would be melodramatic and inaccurate. Lust at first sight, however, was 'right on the money', as he liked to say. He stood up to greet the woman and, with barely veiled hunger in his eyes, he drank her in, from her long, sleek creamy legs to her short, white suede skirt-and-vest outfit, separated from her delicate face by a swan-like neck; her tight, platinum blonde curls were perfectly arranged beneath her snowy, wide-brimmed hat, which she wore fashionably slanting over her left eye. Her right eye was a captivating blue. Her lips were a delicate pink, and when she smiled politely at him, her perfect teeth practically glittered in the room's incandescent light.
"Mister Davis?" the woman asked, stepping right into his office.
"That's right," he replied, noting unhappily that his secretary had not announced her, nor had she accompanied her to his office.
"I let myself in, I hope you don't mind," the woman apologized gracefully, closing the door behind her and standing before him in her high heels, her handbag held in front of her by her long, perfectly manicured hands.
"Not at all," he lied graciously. "Miss...?"
"Scharline," she replied simply, offering her hand.
"... Charlene," he acknowledged when she didn't add a last name.
"Close enough," she replied enigmatically, looking around the office. It was fairly typical as far as bank offices go, its plain, conservative look making people feel better about leaving large sums of money in his hands.
"What is it I can do for you?" he prompted politely after a moment, taking a seat and gesturing to a comfortable chair near his desk. She certainly had the look of someone with plenty of money to invest.
She took her seat and studied him intently. "Mister Davis, it has come to my attention that your bank is foreclosing on a property at fifth and Delaware. Are you aware that the property is in use by a homeless shelter and soup kitchen which has saved hundreds of lives since it opened -"
Oh, Jesus, he thought to himself, immediately losing interest. He cut her off with a wave of the hand. "I'm sorry, Miss Charlene, but I am an investment banker, not a loans officer. My office is not handling the foreclosure."
She tilted her head, regarding him with both eyes, which seemed to glimmer slightly. "But, you are brokering the sale of said property, are you not?"
"Well, yes, I am," he replied, not pleased that this was common knowledge, "but I already have a buyer, I'm afraid."
"Oh?" she asked him, an edge building in her silky voice. "How many lives is the property worth?"
"I'm afraid I can't discuss the matter with you," he said, over top of her question, as he stood up. "Kindly leave, now." His hand hovered near his intercom button, indicating without words that he would have her removed if need be.
She stood up indignantly, her emerald green eyes sparking perfectly with her fiery red curls, which bounced around her shoulders with passion. "Is there nothing that can change your mind, then?" she tried one more time, hoping against hope.
He looked over her body again, but shook his head. Odd, hadn't she been blonde? She was a bombshell, but this deal was about more than money, it was about gaining the favour of some very important people. "Sorry, sweety," he informed her with a smug smile. He hit the intercom. "Ms Holland, please escort my guest out. We'll discuss your future here afterward... Ms Holland?"
There was no response on the intercom, and the woman before him, who seemed a lot less angelic than when she'd entered, had not moved toward the door. He hit a different button. "Security?"
The woman sighed and sashayed to the door as she said, "I was afraid it would come to this." Instead of letting herself out, however, she locked the door. "Let us discuss YOUR future, Mister Davis."
****
Scharline knew his kind all too well, that his dirty practices would make him disgustingly rich, and that he would eventually suffer for his treatment of others. He may turn around, but by that time, he would be old and ailing, and those her hurt would likely be long dead. She could take his body into the future, scare the feeling of immortality out of him, but aging always depressed her. So, she decided to try something new.
Turning back to the suddenly off-balance investment banker, she asked him, "Where along the way, I wonder, did you lose your compassion? When did you forget what it was like to be at someone's mercy?"
He was dumbfounded. The woman before him now wore a green outfit with a longer, looser skirt, complete with a green hat perched over her flaming red hair. She tapped her lip in thought. "You do look sharp, don't you? All dressed up. You've even tricked yourself, haven't you? Putting on layer after layer, building your appearance until you think you are happy." She stopped walking and looked at him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. Then she cited softly to him,
"Maturity is
A trapping you wear;
Stripped of your trappings,
The boy is laid bare."
Davis' clothing instantly started to crawl over his skin, rearranging itself in a most disturbing way. He looked down at himself in horror, but found that he still seemed well dressed; a black tie and jacket over a fancy white shirt and dark trousers. But the outfit was no longer his Armani suit; it looked like a horrible mix-match of hand-me-downs. His white shirt was a cheap knock-off, and his pants were a pair of black jeans, and his shoes were garishly red, childish running shoes with neon green laces.
"Wha... wha..." was all he could manage at the moment. This couldn't be happening. Ms Holland had laced his coffee, he decided; when he came down from whatever drug he was on, he'd ruin that bitch's life, permanently this time.
For now, all he could do was gape down at himself as if Scharline had just doused him with a bucket of blood.
The woman walked up to him and looked him over appraisingly. "So, this is what you've wrapped yourself in. Let's see..." She reached over his desk and grabbed his lapel, looking it over and under like a seamstress. It was the only piece of Armani suit still on him. "Ah yes, from your first expensive suit, isn't it? Made you feel all important, like you'd finally made it." Davis remembered that day like it was yesterday. He was finally gaining the respect he deserved, though he'd had to sabotage an associate's project to get the promotion so early.
She jerked at his lapel sharply, harder than he could understand, and the jacket ripped apart along its seams. She let go, and the material dropped to the floor and vanished without a trace. Davis suddenly felt an emptiness, as if that promotion had never taken place, and he was back to the eager junior executive he'd been two years ago. "Jesus fucking Christ!" he blurted, stepping back out of her reach. "What the hell are you doing to me?!"
The woman studied him critically. "Looks like that was just the icing on the cake. We're going to have to go much deeper, I'm afraid."
Davis tried to move around the desk toward the door, but suddenly she was there in front of him. She grabbed him by the tie and swung him off balance, tossing him into the chair she had vacated. Then, catching hold of his left hand, she examined the ring on his wedding finger. "Hm, Havard Business, class of 2000, instead of a wedding ring. Why am I not surprised?" With a yank that cracked his knuckle, his trophy left his finger, and suddenly so did the joy, relief and accomplishment of his graduation. He felt like he was being shoved further and further down the side of a mountain he'd spent most of his life clawing up. The tension of final exams flooded him again, and he almost wept with the frustration of a hardship he thought he was done with for good.
Scharline shushed him. "There there, I know," she told him, as if he were a child worked up over something harmless. "It won't last long." She bent over him and fished in his pockets. "Let's see what else is in the picture, behind the scenes. Aha!" she crowed, emerging with the key to his Jaguar convertible. He reached for it desperately; he loved that car more than anything in his life. His father had given it to him on his twenty-second birthday; it was the only thing that kept him sane through his remaining four years at Harvard. But his hand closed on empty air; the key was gone. A feeling of desolation set in. He didn't think he could make it through his fourth year without his Jag.
He blinked tears from his eyes. I'm not in college any more, he reminded himself, but it didn't stop the intense revisiting feelings that told him otherwise.
Scharline smiled at him kindly, as though she were doing him a favour. "Here now, let's get this little nasty off you." She took hold of his tie in both hands and snapped it easily, removing the first tie he'd ever worn formally. He'd hated the idea of wearing ties before then, when... when... he couldn't remember. Something to do with his father introducing him to men of prestige. Butterflies erupted in his stomach as he suddenly felt woefully unprepared to meet them. He hadn't even started Harvard yet, after all.
The terrible, flaming beauty before him took hold of his shirt and ripped it wide, sending buttons everywhere. The shirt he had worn to highschool graduation dissolved from his thinning teenage frame. Angst flooded his head, made his chest ache with tension. How was he supposed to keep his grades up for Harvard? At least, without getting caught? There had to be a way...
Johnathan Davis gazed up at the beautiful woman leaning over him Unable to control himself, he grew an erection, though she ignored it as she fished something else from his pocket. His driver's licence. "Oh no!" he complained, as he shrank again. "Not that!" Along with that licence had come a summer job from his father, and a lot of priviledges and responsibilities that let him know he was on the cusp of manhood. Now, all that was gone. He was back under his father's thumb, forced to ride his bike everywhere and to be back home before dark.
For some reason, Johnny's erection was putting him in great pain. He writhed, trying desperately to set it straight, but couldn't. Frowning in concern, his radiant tormentor directed her attention to the odd bulge at the boy's crotch. She knocked on it, eliciting a solid 'thunk' from it. She tore open the waist of the 'cool' black jeans that had made him popular when he was fourteen, and revealed his first athletic supporter he'd gotten when he was twelve. She giggled at it as his jeans evaporated, then tore off the supporter's straps and cup, revealing colourful padded shorts beneath.
Johnny blushed horribly as his body dwindled, all vestiges of puberty draining from him, the bulge in his shorts disappearing as well. His remaining articles of clothing continued to fit him perfectly, though he knew they shouldn't. He was left wearing what looked like a large diaper, little-kid shoes, a green t-shirt with Cookie Monster emblazoned on it, and a Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist that he remembered from his eighth birthday. He tried to rise, but fell back when she gave his chest an almost negligent nudge, splaying his weak, skinny, bare legs and arms wide in his attempt to catch himself.
Johnny was terrified and on the verge of tears. What did this lady want? Why was she being so mean to him?
She 'hmm'ed to herself and fished his house key out of his shirt, on the dirty shoestring around his neck. "Nooo! Not that!" he cried shrilly. He needed it to get home. His daddy gave it to him when he was ten, and he said that if he lost it, then he prooved himself too immature to be home alone in the afternoons! The key and shoestring disappeared, and little Johnny shrank again as he cried in earnest.
Scharline tsked and looked at his wrist watch. "Another gift from your father, I take it? Yes, I think I'm beginning to understand the problem." She easily snapped the plastic band from his wrist. The boy shrank down to a bawling six-year-old, his remaining clothing becoming more appropriate by the minute. She looked at his laced shoes, and smiled. "Finally, an accomplishment for your mother. Good for you!" But then she undid the laces and the shoes disappeared, leaving the small boy barefoot as he approached the edge of toddlerhood.
He continued to blubber as she frowned at his shirt and sighed. "Quite the personal accomplishment, Johnny: whining at your mother until she got you 'Cookie Monstuh'. Ah, well." She sat him up and gently but quickly slipped the shirt off, leaving him bare chested. The toddler wailed unhappily as she examined his final trapping. "Ah yes, potty training," she acknowedged, then tipped him over, with his legs in the air, and stripped him of that as well.
The terrified baby wailed at the top of his lungs as he lost the ability to walk, to talk, to think beyond the very basics of a six-month-old's existence.
One final item caught Scharline's eye as it dropped out of the diaper in her hand. It was a pacifier. Smiling to herself in sudden understanding, she lifted the naked, helpless baby to her shoulder and placed the pacifier's nipple into his mouth. "Now," she crooned, "we can begin."
********
"Yes sir, I-- No, sir- Yes, er, no, sir..." Davis was in hot water, but there was no help for it. He could not in good conscience allow the re-zoning of the homeless shelter for yet another mall. It had come to him like a ton of bricks had been dropped on his head, when he awoke that morning, after an all-nighter he couldn't remember. He had remaneuvered to allow the shelter to remain where it was, by hooking them up with a corporation looking for a tax break and a good public relations incident. His boss was livid, and his former clients would never deal with him again, but if he was going to be fired, his boss would have done so by now. The truth was, he'd managed to make his own company look good in the process. He only thanked God he hadn't shown up at the acquisition meeting the day before with the papers, or they'd be facing one hell of a lawsuit.
When his boss was through with him, David hung up the phone and sighed. He felt battered and bruised, but good about himself. Leaning back in his chair, he gazed out the window at the sunset, and started to suck soothingly on the end of his pen.