Author’s note: My apologies for similarities in concepts to Vincent Jarrod's ‘Hosiery House of Horror’ stories, which I find awe-inspiring. I hope, VJ, that you don’t mind too much. I only hope my story will be as good as one of yours. This story will be darker in tone later on, so don't read it if you are sensitive to permanent statufications. -Bas

Melissa Sanchez had no idea why she was there. She surveyed the roomful of women with a placid expression, but inside she felt hollow with self-pity. All of the other girls in the room were, well, beautiful, especially compared to her, she thought. Not that all of them were skinny, far from it. But the heaviest of them would have been described as ‘voluptuous’, whereas Melissa was far beyond a size where any applied terminology could be considered favorable.

‘Fatso’, ‘porker’ and ‘blob’ where what she was usually called, and at 315 pounds, she more than made up for any three of the other girls in the room put together. Five foot two inches tall, she was also the shortest girl in the room, with the exception of one blond girl who couldn’t have been over four-eight in her stockinged feet. While Melissa was as wide as she was tall, the other girl was extremely slim, with the exception of a huge pair of jugs that were exaggerated into pumpkins by her elfish build and orange micro-mini.

Everywhere the rotund girl looked she saw stunning examples of feminine beauty, running the gamut from Blond Nordic to Asian, Black, and Hispanic, with every mix in between and some she couldn’t even say for sure where they came from. 25 girls or thereabouts, including herself. Being in a room with all these beautiful women aroused conflicting emotions in her. On one hand she was jealous and filled with self-loathing, which was not helped by the sly glances and snickering laughter that was directed at her. On the other hand, she found herself aroused by the dazzling display of feminine pulchritude. Men had never been interested in Melissa, and she had found herself developing a strong sexual attraction to beautiful women. She wanted to be like them, and she wanted to be with them as well. Melissa stared dreamily at the pumpkin girl. Balancing on a pair of 3-inch clog heels that almost, but not quite, propelled her into the five-foot stratosphere, the big titted little blonde’s sculpted calves glistened in a sheer nude nylon sheath. Melissa had just begun mentally lifting the mid thigh length tube dress when a voice brought her out of her reverie.

"Ladies! Can I have your attention please!" The elegantly dressed older woman began. "You all know that you have been selected by our mall search teams to participate in a cosmetic modeling test shoot. I’m sure you are eager to learn the exact details and the reason for having this secret out of the way meeting. I’m pleased to announce that you 25 lucky ladies have been chosen by none other then Donna DeOuro herself to be the 21st Century Golden Girls for our newest line of Glamour Gal cosmetics!

There were oohs and aahs throughout the room, and excited conversation among the women. DeOuro Cosmetics was THE up and coming brand among the young trendy set, specializing in metallic and sparkly make-ups that were all the rage right now. Melissa stood by herself, letting the impact of what she had just heard sink in. Her? A cosmetics model?

Were they going to make a line of fat girl cosmetics? She laughed to herself. Even if that were the case, they wouldn’t have picked her. She was not very pretty, not counting the weight, and even the so-called "big girl" models were no where near her girth. She had just chalked the whole thing up to a colossal (no pun intended she thought wryly) mistake when the lady continued.

"So you can see why we asked for complete secrecy and left you in the dark about who you were dealing with. We plan to take the fashion world by storm with our newest line of products. Without any further ado, let me introduce the lady who makes us all more beautiful, Ms. Donna DeOuro! There was a loud round of applause, and a few whoops, as a beautiful blond woman in her late 40’s stepped onto the stage from behind a curtain. Melissa recognized her from the print ads at once, from her glittering blond hair to her trademark gold jewelry, sort of the ‘Mr. T’ of female fashion. She was wearing what could only be described as a robe, or maybe a kimono, red with wide gold trim everywhere, and funny symbols that reminded Melissa of a cartoon wizard. The symbols were not really Asian in nature, and not the curvy script of Islam either, but somehow reminded her of both. Kinda funny looking, but wealthy fashion mavens are won’t to dress in all sorts of way out Haute Coutre.

"Golden Girls!" she began, raising both hands high. "Before we go any further into the mundane details of contracts and such, let me show you the future! Watch the monitor, this is the preliminary ad design we’ve worked up so far. I’m sure you will find it…delightful. I do!" The lights went out, plunging the room in blackness. Almost immediately, a large screen lit up behind the stage, and a slow rhythmic bass began to rumble out of hidden speakers around the room.

"Gold." A husky female voice intoned

On the screen, a curvy blonde model clad in a skimp gold lamé bikini sauntered out of stygian darkness.

"Men have lusted after it for ages…"

The model stopped walking towards the camera, and struck a pose, one hand on her hip and the other on her thigh.

"Now you too can become the focus of passion that only gold arouses in men."

In the foreground, a woman’s hand appeared on screen, palm up, with glittering golden nails. A large conical pile of gold dust was held in it, appearing almost the same size as the model due to the foreshortening effect. The side of Ms. DeOuro’s face appeared, with dusky gold painted lips that appeared metallic and moist at the same time, like liquid metal. Puckering seductively, the lips gently blew the pile of gold dust towards the girl in the background. In slow motion the dust cloud billowed and swirled around the bikinied brunette, as DeOuro’s image withdrew from the foreground. In seconds the girl took on the golden hue of the dust, and as the cloud dissipated, she stood gilded from head to toe. Melissa was awed by the special effects, it must have been CGI, but it was the best she had seen. The transition was completely seamless, and didn’t seem computerized at all. Melissa found herself becoming aroused at the images on screen, "Are you ready to be the object of desire?" The Husky voice queried.

Ms. DeOuro appeared on the screen again, and walked up to the golden girl. In the close-up shot, it could be seen that it was the actual model seemingly covered in paint, every eyelash and strand of hair could be made out on the giant screen, covered in gold. Definitely too detailed for CGI. The model was doing an extraordinary job of not flinching or moving, even as Ms DeOuro placed an arm on her gilded shoulder. Most disconcerting were her eyes, which must have been covered in golden contacts, as they were wide open. Or maybe it was partial CGI? Melissa couldn’t tell, but had never seen anything like it done by a person masquerading as a statue. It was quite effective.

"Golden Girl Cosmetics," the on screen DeOuro began. "It will make you worth your weight... in gold." The image on the screen faded as the make-up Queen smiled wickedly out at the audience, almost Cheshire Cat like as the image returned to darkness. Funny though, the screen was black now, but there was a sort of flickering after image, not on the screen but on the back of Melissa’s retina. She felt like she was falling asleep, but with her eyes still open. The room lights slowly came back up, and she wanted to clap for the great commercial, but found she couldn’t move! She remained still, staring slack jawed at the screen, arms dangling at her sides. No one else seemed to be moving either.

"Excellent!" She heard Ms. DeOuro say. "I’m sure that those of you who can hear me are wondering what’s going on, so let me explain. You are indeed going to help me with my ‘Golden Girl’ campaign, no false pretenses there, but probably not in the capacity you expected. The commercial you just saw had a special hypnotic subliminal spell in it that overrode your consciousness to my bidding. The spell is much more effective on the weak willed and less intelligent, so I’m afraid that out of this lot only a few of you are slightly more than mindless zombies right now. If you can still think, consider yourself lucky, but understand that my control over your bodies is complete. Anywho, we didn’t select you for your mental capacity, now did we?! Miss Gilda, is everything in order? "

"Yes Mistress, the trucks are ready, we will be out of here in 5 minutes with no trace." The original hostess replied reverently.

"Very well, see to it that not one shred of evidence is left to connect us with this meeting."

"As you command, My Lady."

"OK Golden Girls! Off to the left. Through the doorway, and onto the trucks! Chop Chop! Not much time!" Melissa’s body turned and began to walk, while her mind screamed inside to run, stop, do something else, but to no avail. She gave up and was still wondering, in a detached way, what the hell she was doing here, when she heard footsteps behind her. "Miss Sanchez, come here please." Again her body defied her will and waddled up to face the Make-up Czarina.

"Oh, I know YOU can hear, me, you’re not a bimbo like most of the others. And I’m sure you're wondering why you were chosen." The woman began walking around the rotund young lady, inspecting her. "It’s a shame for to have let yourself go this way, it really is your own fault." She taunted, tracing a line on the girl’s flabby shoulder as she paced around her. "Still, it works perfectly for my plans, and you will enjoy it! Or so my research leads me to believe. At any rate, you will be the key ingredient in this project, the most important part of all. Now on to the truck with the others! And no need to worry about them making fun of you… I’m sure it will be a nice quiet ride! She laughed, a tinkling metallic laugh, as Melissa paced off to join the other girls in the truck…

Basilisk