Driven to Extremes

By Alex Green
Proofreading by Leem

The setting spring sun shone directly into the eyes of David Green as he drove home from work. His day had seemed to last an eternity as they often do when you have other things on your mind. It had taken him the whole afternoon to model something that would have taken minutes had has brain been fully concentrating on the task. David, however, had other things on his mind.

He was worried about his situation at work. It had gradually mutated from a bright future with an up and coming rapid prototyping studio into the position where they were looking for the slightest excuse to be rid of him. David knew it was all his fault. He should have tried harder to get on with his fellow work mates but as of late he was becoming more and more distant. People would talk to him and he wouldn’t hear a thing they had said, leaving him in the position of not knowing whether what they had just said was important or not. This was a shame as he had once been such a good listener.

Gradually his co-workers stopped talking to him all together. It was the women who first became alienated by his lack of enthusiasm for other people. David couldn’t really blame them. Although he had always desperately wanted to be female, strangely he was terrible at making conversation with them. Eventually the rest of the his co-workers stopped bothering with him assuming he was probably gay or something, which he guessed he was, sort of.

He now hated his job and the responsibilities it forced upon him. David wondered if he could be happy with a job were he didn’t have to concentrate so much on the task in hand. Perhaps an usherette or a check-out girl? As he pulled into his street he put such thoughts to the back of his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so excited. The butterflies in his stomach had become a flock of birds and his spine felt as if it had just been injected with morphine. He collected his things from the car and made his way to his front door. He gave a quick glance at his answering machine as he dropped his work bag and walked to the spare room to switch on his computer.

One of David’s favourite pastimes was surfing the net looking for transvestite and transgender stories and images, and it was whilst doing this that he wound up hitting a link that took him to an ASFR site. The site was populated by images of beautifully dressed mannequins. Tempted by this he decided to log on to the news group.

As his computer booted up David threw of the shirt and trousers that he was required to wear for work and slipped on a pretty little turquoise shift dress that he had mail-ordered the previous week. He stood in front of his full length mirror admiring his freshly shaven legs until he heard the Windows start-up jingle in the other room.

The previous night he had been wading through all of the Spam on the ASFR news group when he came across an intriguing message posted only minutes before he logged on. The message said:

Wanted: Volunteers in the Boston area to required to test new Plastic Skin body suit on 24/25 of April. Admirers of Mannequins may be interested due to the nature of the suit design. Please contact lightshow @ mitp.cum as soon as posible.

David was immediately excited by the possibility. He actually owned a very tight fitting pair of pink PVC pants and a white rubber miniskirt. He loved the way his skin felt through the plastic and the way it moulded his into curvaceous shapes. He thought that modelling a plastic suit that was essentially a second skin would be great fun. He immediately replied to the address given saying that he was free on both days and would be delighted to test out such a suit for them.

Now as he connected to the internet he felt sure it would almost certainly turn out to be a joke posting, but it was worth sending a reply. In his free e-mail in-tray sat a reply from Lightshow Inc. David clicked on it and read its contents. The message said:

>“Congratulations, you have been chosen to test out our new prototype plastic body suit. Due to the nature of the material used we can guarantee a tight fit, so your sizes will not be needed. If the suit turns out to be satisfactory you may be allowed to keep it at the end of the testing period. If you accept please e-mail a confirmation as soon as possible. Should you accept, could you please meet with a suitable change of clothing outside Macys on Roosevelt Ave at 7am Sat. 24th.

David was a little confused. What did this company make these suits for? Why were they not interested in the gender of the volunteer? He decided to try and find out more about the company by searching the web. However, after half an hour he gave up after not one single hit for a plastic, fetish, rubber or any other kind of clothing manufacturer by the name of Lightshow. If only David had searched a short while longer and been a little less specific he might have stumbled across the Science Journal article about some equipment stolen from Lightshow Technologies, Inc. that would have saved him from his somewhat unlikely destiny...

Over a light evening meal (he was fanatical about keeping his weight in check and was immensely proud of the fact that he weighed only 3 pounds more than the average 5 foot 7 woman) David decided he would go to the testing dressed as his alter ego Kristen. David had no problem passing in public as he had been blessed with a slight frame, smallish hands and feet and a surpassingly pretty face given the right make-up. As he scraped the majority of the meal he had just cooked into the garbage bin David pondered on his longing to be a woman. Was this situation a result of his small build and delicate (for a man) features or was their some other reason? He could never pin it down.

David showered, dried and put on his expensive silk night gown. That night he slept deeply and was unable to remember dreaming about being stalked in a clothes shop’s lingerie department but being frozen to the spot.

Today was going to be special thought David as he applied a light coating of mascara to his eyelashes. He hadn’t had a completely female day for several months now and he was about to embark on a full week end. Whilst styling his hair into a short wavy style he wondered to himself how long they would want him to wear the body suit for and what kind of tests they would want to perform? David was tired, as he had got up at four-thirty in order to get ready, while it was still dark. Everybody else would still in bed, so there was less chance of being discovered by a nosy neighbour.

At five-thirty he was ready. He inspected himself in his beloved full length mirror and was immensely satisfied. Although only 25, David liked to dress like an older woman of around 40. Today he had opted for a feminine yellow floral print dress with a huge lacy collar that covered his to flat chest. Although his legs were quite free of stubble he decided to were a pair of white pantyhose which he felt most matched his white patent leather court shoes and purse. For a change of clothing he had packed a black and orange trouser suit that he had bought after seeing the local TV weather girl wearing one the previous autumn. He grabbed his car keys and his large full length Mack and quietly opened his front door. A quick check left and right showed that none was around.

Five minutes later he was heading east on I-90 and would soon be in Boston. He arrived half an hour early and parked in an empty multi-storey car park 3 blocks away and waited for a while before walking to the storefront of Macys. The walk to the store was as always, exhilarating. The wind blew coolly around his stocking-clad legs lifting his skirt so that he had to hold it down Marilyn Monroe style. The only people he passed were a few business-looking types and a road sweeper, the latter of which gave him an admiring glance. As he approached Macys' storefront he noticed a large blue van parked outside with its side lights on. As he got closer the drivers side electric window descended and from inside a voice said clearly:

“Lightshow Technology?”

“Yes, I’m your volunteer,” said David in his quite convincingly female voice.

The driver looked over his shoulder to an unseen other and gave a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders.

“Get in the back,” motioned the driver.

David walked around what he now realised was a kind of converted motor home, and climbed in in as ladylike a manner as he could. Once inside he was greeted by a young woman of about his own age. He introduced himself as Kristen, and stood by the back door and gave her his best “new friend” smile whilst waiting for her to introduce herself.

Quite abruptly the van started to move. David steadied himself and then took a seat further down inside the van. Finally the young woman broke the silence and said,

“I’m sorry if I’m staring but we’ve never had a woman volunteer before. We’ve had men of all ages... but never a real woman.”

David was just about to say something when the young lady turned around and walked over to the driver where upon they commenced a whispered discussion. David caught some of it, along the lines of “like my mum” and “let her go...”. As he sat there, legs crossed and hands in lap, the young lady returned and said,

“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. The driver is going to turn around and drop you back off.”

“Oh but why?” David said in a breathy voice.

“Let me ask you this” said the woman. “why did you want to wear a plastic body suit? Are you into kinky stuff with your husband, you know, tarty PVC boots and the like?”

“I’m not married, but I have got a rubber mini skirt, I love the feel of it on my skin” replied David shyly bowing his head at the revelation.

“But that’s as far as goes?” asked the woman.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

The van had stopped and David realised that they were back outside Macys were he had been picked up.

“What were you doing looking round on an ASFR news group?” asked the man over his shoulder.

“Well, I was looking through the links of a transvestite’s home page and I came across this site devoted to mannequins, of all things” said David theatrically. “I thought I must have a look-see what all this is about... all those beautiful clothes”

“In that case, why were you looking round a transvestite web site?” asked the young woman.

“Oh, you’ve found me out already” said David, enjoying the imagined humiliation of the situation.

The two Lightshow employees shot each other a glance and then looked back at David.

“When do I get to try on this plastic cat suit?” asked David excitedly.

“Soon” said driver, and with that the van sped off causing the young woman and the young man dressed like a middle aged woman to lurch backwards.

Outside David could see through the darkened windows that it was starting to get light. Shortly, they rounded a corner and David saw that they were pulling in to the very same multi-storey car park in which he had parked his VW rabbit. On the journey their the young woman had said nothing to either David or the driver and had busied herself unravelling the flex on what looked like a hot air wallpaper stripper. A minute later the van was parked up on the same floor where David had parked, a few spaces down.

“What are we doing here?” asked David, no longer trying to disguise his maleness.

“This is were we begin the tests,” offered the driver.

“Why here? What sort of tests are they?” asked David, who was becoming confused and a little scared at the manner in which the meeting had gone so far.

“I’m afraid we can’t tell you that yet, otherwise it might effect the results,” lied the woman.

“Oh, I see,” sighed David, even more confused.

“Firstly, we need you to take all of your clothes off. There’s a changing room here,” said the woman, as she pointed to what David had assumed was the mobile home’s lavatory.

“Will I put the suit on in there?” asked David.

“Yes. Tracy will hand it to you when you ask her to.”

“Right, in you go, and remember, ask for the suit when you are fully naked,” said the driver, motioning David to the cubicle.

The young woman who David now knew was called Tracy opened the door and closed it behind him as he stepped in. Inside the room was unlike any changing room or lavatory cubicle that he had ever seen, in fact it wasn’t like any room he’d seen at all. The walls and the back of the door were covered in thin fluorescent-tube-like strips. Even the ceiling and floor had circular versions, the latter under a layer of glass. Light was provided by a small ceiling lamp that seemed to be positioned at the centre of a kind of fan that lead outside. As David was getting undressed he wondered how bright it would be in the cubicle with all the lamps on. This lead him to think that the room was probably some sort of tanning chamber like those at expensive fitness clubs.

When he had finished undressing he said he was ready, loudly enough for Tracy to hear him. Tracy said, “Pass out all your clothes, and your shoes, please.”

David did this through as small a slit in the door as possible, and at the same time was given a pair of flesh-coloured plastic briefs.

“put those on and give us another shout when you’re ready,” said the man this time.

David slid on the briefs, which were incredibly tight and squashed his penis and balls into a tight little package. This kind of excited David and he wondered what the suit would do to his body shape.

“Right, I’m ready,” shouted David, and was surprised when instead of the door opening and a skin tight cat suit being passed to him, the mobile home/van’s engines sprang into life. Anxious moments passed as David listened to the engine being fiercely revved by the driver. David was just starting to become worried that something horrible was going to happen when, all of a sudden, it did.

At the flick of some unheard switch the tubes in the ceiling, walls and floor gradually began to glow brighter and brighter. David threw up his hands to shield his now tightly-shut eyes against the weird light that the now filled the cubicle. He tried to open his mouth to shout something but only managed to part it slightly before it became impossible to move any further. He held his eyes tightly shut he wondered why his legs hadn’t buckled in fear as he had stopped trying to stand up some time ago. The last thought that passed through his mind before he slipped into unconsciousness was a realisation that the light that surrounded his naked body was of a colour neither he nor anyone else had ever seen before.

Outside the van the sun was coming up. The third floor of the multi-storey car park rang with the sound of the stationary van being revved to within an inch of its useful life and barely audible whoops and hollers from the driver at the wheel. Projected onto the ceiling of the multi-storey car park was an intense circle of strangely coloured light being emitted from what seemed to be a smoking air vent in the top of the van.

“Right, that should be enough,” said the man in the driver’s seat, and killed the ignition.

“Gloves on, he’s gonna be hot.”

The young woman put on a pair of fleece mittens and waited a minute for the mist inside the cubicle to be expelled by the ceiling fan. When she thought enough time had passed she opened the door and took a hold of the body inside the cubicle by its right arm. The driver grabbed a hold of the left arm and together they lifted the rigid figure out into the centre of the van. A sharp chemical smell filled the van as wisps of vapour rose from the smooth surface of David’s new plastic skin. Tracy noticed that this one smelled less than the others, and wondered if this meant that the process hadn’t been given enough time. However, a slight tug on the figure’s rigid arm told her that it had.

“Oh look, this one managed to close his eyes. He won’t be blind&8221; Exclaimed the driver.

“Who’s a lucky boy then? You’ll get to see what we’ve done to you” said the driver mockingly to the still unconscious David.

Whilst David had been getting undressed, Tracy had been Blu-Tacking several pictures of a mannequin taken from different angles to the wall of the van. Now, whilst the driver held the figure of David upright, Tracy set about shaping David’s figure into the same pose as the one on the wall.

The process that David had unknowingly just taken part in was that of polymerisation of the skin by high intensity UV light. The top six millimetres of his body’s surface was now a curious mixture of thermoplastics. Tracy used the heat gun to soften his now hard plastic skin. She had learned through practice just how much heat to apply to soften the it up without causing it to shrink. Shortly, mainly due to the fact that David had set in a pose similar to the that of the mannequin he was to replace, he began to resemble the figure in the picture.

“Do his eye.” said the driver, who seemed to get a kick out of revealing to his hapless victims their smooth-skinned fate.

“OK,” said Tracy and set about gently softening the figures tightly shut eye lids with the heat gun. Delicately she prised open first one then the other with her thumb and was surprised to see them still moist and lifelike. The sudden influx of light awoke David from his unconscious slumber. The first thing he noticed was that he was unable to blink. A hand hovered in front of his face with what looked like a large contact lens between its thumb and forefinger. It was being placed over his left eye and was shortly followed by another for his right. David tried but he couldn’t move a muscle to stop the hand. He could feel all of his extremities, he just couldn’t move them.

“Can you here me in their?” said the driver giving David several taps to his now shiny plastic forehead.

“Don’t,” said the young woman. “He must be petrified in there. I’m not sure this one wanted this at all. I think he might have just been into women’s clothes,” offered Tracy.

“Well, he’ll get to wear plenty of them where he’s going,” said the driver, looking directly into David’s face with an evil grin.

David could see the smooth fingers of a pair of hands fixed rigidly to ether side of his field of vision. A stab of panic entered his thoughts as he realised that his hands felt as if they were held in the very same position.

“What time is it?” asked the driver.

“Quarter to eight.” replied the young woman.

“Better get a move on, he’s due for delivery at a quarter to nine.”

‘Delivery?’ thought David, and wondered what the hell was going on. If he was wearing the plastic suit then it was a failure. He wanted to tell them to get him out of it, but he had no possible means of communicating with them.

“You know, we should take Polaroids so we can do a before and after shots like they do on those TV makeover programs” mused the driver.

David’s mind was hearing all this, but like back at work, it had stopped going in, only this time for a different reason. He was in complete shock. His mind couldn’t comprehend such a level of immobility.

Tracy turned on the heat gun again and said to David,“I’m sorry about this, honey, but I guess this is gonna hurt.”

“No pain, no gain,” chirped in the driver from an unseen position. “She’s gonna give you those pretty, womanly curves you probably always dreamt of.”

Tracy set about heating the small of David’s back with the gun only this time she was going to shrink the plastic. It took great skill to do it just right but when she was finished David’s waistline would be slimmer than he could ever have hoped for, diet or no diet.

“You’re probably wondering what the hell’s happening, aren’t you?” said the driver, tapping David on the forehead again. “Well, in true movie villain style, I’ll tell you.

“Two years ago young Tracy here was working as a cleaner for company called Lightshow Inc. They were trying to develop a treatment for burns victims, something to do with using plastic skin that would eventually be adsorbed by the flesh, leaving smooth unburned skin in the process. Well, this was a nice idea, but unfortunately all they managed to produce was that thing over there which does the exact opposite, i.e. turns skin into plastic.

“Tracy here told me about an accident they had with it one day after work. Some technician had his hand plasticised, the result of which was that the project was put on indefinite hold. Well, I, being the evil genius that I am, thought this over and came up with this little scam. You see, I used to deliver shop dummies - or mannequins, as you connoisseurs prefer to call them - to retailers throughout the north-east.”

David was paying attention now, but only to take his mind of the excruciating pain, subsiding in his back but starting on his tummy.

“Do you know how much those things cost? You don’t know it, but you’re worth a fortune. Well, a few dodgy phone calls later and I was in business. I now supply seamless, repositionable mannequins to 3 major high street retailers. And you, my dear, are my latest acquisition.”

A mannequin, thought David who promptly blacked out again from a mixture of pain and shock.

Tracy continued transforming David into the mannequin in the photo. A quick measure around his waist told her that it was time to move on to his knees and lower legs. Tracy shrunk the skin around David’s knees to give them the shape of petite young ladies.

When Tracy had licked David’s lower legs into shape she set the gun on his ankles to position David’s in a downward position. He would be wearing high heels from now on.

The driver set about drilling two small holes in David’s chest were his nipples had been. Tracy then turned the heat gun on David’s chest. When she thought it was soft enough she motioned the driver to hand her a small air hose. She expertly inflated the softened plastic into a stylised mannequin breast and kept the pressure on until the skin had cooled sufficiently to support its own weight.

The driver carried on telling David about his evil exploits, but it all fell on deaf ears. As the time approached half past eight, Tracy was just putting the finishing touches that would make David indistinguishable from any other elegant shop mannequin. With the heat gun she skilfully shrunk David’s nose, chin and jaw line into a more feminine profile. Next she shrunk his neck, but not too much in case he couldn’t breathe. She liked to think that her creations lived for as long as humanly possible.

The plastic pants they had asked him to slip on had helped nicely meld his genitals into his groin area. However, a few licks with the hot air gun shrunk them further, thereby making him eligible for placement in the swimsuit section.

The process had completely burned off all of the “volunteer’s” hair, so Tracy stencilled a pair of quizzically arched eyebrows back on to David’s forehead. She then artfully painted brown eyeshadow on to David’s pale pinky-grey complexion. David’s lips had frozen into a suggestive, slightly parted pout that made making them look sexy a doddle. Tracy first painted them bright red and the applied a layer of clear varnish the give them a wet look that would last forever. The finishing touch was a swift airbrush of blusher to highlight his striking cheek bone, and a large set of false eyelashes to replace his own. On David’s head she placed the same short-permed auburn wig that the mannequin he was replacing had worn.

Again, when Tracy touched his eyes, David was jolted into consciousness. At first he wasn’t sure were he was or what was happening, but the sound of the drivers voice droning on about plasticisation and profit margins soon brought him back to reality. He found that the top and bottom of his vision was blurred by black and fuzzy. He was aware of someone fussing around him and, although faintly, he could feel things brushing what he now knew was his plastic skin. Again the driver delivered three sharp knocks onto David’s forehead and said, “Hello. I do hope you’re awake for this.”

Tracy and the driver lifted David and positioned him in front of a wood panelling wall with a curtain over it.

“Well, this is your big moment sugar, what all of you mannequin lovers dream of... Glad to be of assistance.”

And with that the driver drew back the curtain to reveal a full length mirror. In the mirror David could see Tracy and the driver, each holding one arm of an incredibly beautiful shop window mannequin. As they lifted it up and turned it from side to side, David got the full extent of its svelte beauty.

His mind reeled with alternative explanations to the truth of his situation. ‘Magicians use mirrors all the time’, thought David. ‘That thing isn’t necessarily me.’ But as they brought him up close to the mirror to get a better look at his new face, he caught a glimpse of his own eyes. It was definitely him all right. At this moment any last rational thoughts flew from David’s mind like startled crows from a field.

“36, 24, 36, in case you where wondering... exactly as ordered.” said the driver. “Right, gotta go, you’ve got a date with the Miss Selfridges spring/summer collection. Tracy fix that stand to twinkle-tits here. We’d better get a move on or were gonna be late. ”

As the driver set off Tracy screwed David onto the stand that would keep him upright. His feet had been positioned for use in high-heeled shoes, so without it he would topple over, being unable to do much steadying himself. As she did this David got a better look at himself, starting from his legs which were now impossibly slender. His knees were much smaller than before, almost birdlike. His skin was now a unnatural pale pink-grey colour and looked hard and shiny. His groin was now perfectly smooth, something he had wished for all of his life. Cruelly, now that he had it he couldn’t fully appreciate it. At that moment he would have given anything to reach down and stroke its smoothness.

His waist was now that of a young girl. He bet that if he could move he would be able to span it with the finger of his hands. His chest was adorned by two perky, pointy little breasts, and his arms looked like that of a Cindy dolls, pencil thin and muscle-less. They were positioned in a very feminine mock surprise gesture. His new body form was hard enough to comprehend, but his face was even more of a shock. He had the features of an elegant young lady, and they were formed into a kind of mildly surprised expression which looked very appropriate to how he felt Kristen would have reacted. He also realised that he was a red-head. He had always felt that he wouldn’t suit red hair, but now he was having second thoughts.

When the curtain was thrown back across the mirror David’s mind longed to see more. He realised that his mind was accepting his fate and was a little ashamed at the speed of his acceptance. He also realised he had been on the verge of reaching some kind of orgasm. However, it felt different to his pre statuette verity, more of an all over body affair. He had fallen in love with himself.

David realised that he was being delivered to the back entrance of some department store back in Boston. He couldn’t tell which one because Tracy had slipped a large linen bag over his body to protect it from scratches and chips. David was man handled into a back room, weere he was mildly amused to over hear that he had been sold for $3000. When the deal was done the room was vacated and the lights switched off.

David’s mind was once again tormented with questions. ‘How can I still be alive when I can’t feel myself breathing? Is this permanent? Which department will I be used in? Will I live forever? What will the spring and summer colours be this year?’

In the darkness David felt completely unattached, as if he was floating in space. With this came a calm which led to a complete acceptance of his situation. In a way he was dead, but really, was his fate so bad?

A little while later he heard a group of women enter the room. He could tell this by the sound their shoes made. The bag was carefully removed from him so as not to damage his delicate eyelashes. A small “Ooh” was murmured by the surrounding sales assistants, and one of them exclaimed, “Ooh. They have done a good job on you. You must be the happiest mannequin in the world.”

“He looks just like Trudy” said a junior sales assistant.

“Yeah, Tracey’s done a really good job with this one,” said another.

“I wonder what he looked like before? Perhaps one of us knew him,” said one of the girls.

“Well, we’ll never know... all we can do is fulfil his final wish and keep him dressed in pretty clothes where everyone can see him.”

Later, David was transferred to the shop window and dressed in a pink two-piece swimsuit and matching pink high-heeled shoes. On his head was placed a large-brimmed pink sun hat which shaded his eyes from the sunny day outside. At the stroke of nine the doors were thrown open and the general public allowed in. David was immensely proud at being chosen to be the centrepiece of the new spring/summer display.

Every now and again the panic in his mind would resurface as he realised he would never again take another step or utter another word. When this happened he consoled himself with the thought that he had inadvertently got what he wanted; a job where he didn’t need to think and his only responsibility was to keep still and look beautiful. He could do nothing else.

He never really got to see himself during the daytime, but at night when it was dark outside the shop windows acted as almost perfect mirrors in which he could study his every curve. He fell deeply in love with himself and orgasmed nightly at his beauty. Time became meaningless. Spring/Summer, Autumn/Winter, defined only by the clothes that he wore. He wondered how long he would remain the shops centrepiece and felt immensely proud at the fact that he must be the prettiest mannequin alive.

The End.