The Gorgon's Blood Solution (4 page)

“He,” Marco blushed and paused, wishing he could speak privately to the shop owner, to quietly explain his mission, and then – he dreamed – she would laugh and dismiss him.

“He,” Marco began again, the pause in his sentence long enough and dramatic enough to make the other girls in the shop look at him, “said you needed me to be a model for your fashion show.”

That was it.  He’d said it out loud.

“We can use another model, no doubt,” Abrianna replied after three awkward seconds of pause, consideration, and evaluation, as all the feminine pairs of eyes stared at him appraisingly.

“Who has something large enough for him to wear?” she spoke to the rest of her staff.

“I’ve got a gown,” the blond girl on the end of the table immediately spoke up.

“I’ve got one too,” the girl next to her agreed.

“He’s not that heavy; I’ll bet he could squeeze into one of my skirts,” the girl on the other side of Abrianna said.

“We don’t have to split any seams stuffing him into our works,” the owner asserted.  “Don’t try to get too ambitious; just use him as you can.

“Get over here and let me take a look at you,” she told Marco, pointing at a spot on the floor in front of the counter.

Marco stepped quickly across the floor of the shop, and stood fearfully in front of Abrianna, as she reached out and put her fingers on his chin, then turned his head to each side while her eyes narrowed and inspected him critically. 

“Actually,” she said, “I think you’ll make a rather pretty girl.  You don’t need to shave yet.  We can put a little make-up on you and slap a wig on you, then wrap a scarf over your head and this will really work.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” she said.  “Just sit over there for a minute,” she pointed at a stool in the corner, and Marco scuttled over as all the girls’ heads dropped to resume focusing on the dresses they were preparing.

“What’s your name?” Abrianna asked five minutes later, as a clatter began to sound out in front of the shop.

“Marco,” he answered.

“Come with me, Marco,” she told him, then passed through a swinging door into the back of the shop.  “Those noises are the last seats being set up for the ladies to sit in; that should have been done two hours ago,” she spoke more to herself than to him as they entered a large room where half a dozen girls were carrying out various acts of cosmetic service on themselves and each other.

“Here Marco, this is Constance; Constance, this is Marco,” she introduced him to a very pretty blond girl who was brushing her hair.

“Constance, your job is to turn Marco into Margo this afternoon, so that he can model a few dresses for us,” Abrianna said briskly.  The girl’s brush stopped its rhythmic motion, and her eyes suddenly focused on Marco, paying the attention to him that she hadn’t bothered with during the introduction.

“Put some rouge on him, and some eye liner, then a wig and a scarf, and anything else you think he needs,” Abrianna said.  “Have him ready in half an hour.

“Can you keep an eye on him for me?  Make sure he slips into things appropriately?” she asked the silent model.

Constance’s eyes shifted from her horrified examination of Marco to look at Abrianna’s face, expecting to see a laughing smile, a sign that the request was a joke.  There was none.

“Of course, Mistress Abrianna,” she gulped.

“Thank you dear,” Abrianna gave a quick smile, and then turned and flew back to the front of the shop.

“What in the world is this all about?” Constance asked Marco, putting her brush down on the bench in front of her and looking at him.

“My master told me to be a model for Mistress Abrianna,” Marco answered.  “It wasn’t my idea.”

“What are you doing, Constance?” one of the other girls asked as she looked over from where she was powdering another girl’s shoulders.

“I’m going to make our new model Marco into a lovely girl; what do you think of that?” Constance said, causing all the heads among the other models to turn to look at him, and then the room descended into a scene that Marco found both extraordinarily painful and simultaneously sublimely wonderful.  The girls gathered around Marco and partook in a herd mentality that called for him to be critically commented upon as though he weren’t present, then poked and pinched and prodded and made to stand and turn.

The girls were in various stages of undress, and many of the mysteries of female anatomy were intriguingly available for his examination in turn, as the models traded scandalously frank suggestions and critiques about him.

After fifteen minutes, Constance had a plan of action, and busily began to change Marco’s appearance.  She forced him to keep his head unnaturally still, except when she needed it to move in some unnatural way, and the girl applied a baker’s dozen of lotions and powders to him it seemed.

Marco grew momentarily distracted as his professional curiosity tried to evaluate the smell and texture of the various products, trying to guess what might be included in each.  He’d not done any work at all with beauty products.  He knew that some other shops profitably produced them in profusion, but Algornia neglected that portion of the market, other than to point out to Phillippe where the formulae were located in the various text books that lined the shelf in the back room.

“Marco, you look so pretty I’m afraid you may have a few dates lined up before the end of the evening!” Constance told him after fifteen minutes.  She had been remarkably good-natured about her assignment to help Marco, even though it had reduced the time she had left to attend to her own needs.  She appeared beautiful already to Marco, not in need of any further enhancement or refinement with beauty products – the reason Abrianna had assigned her to work on Marco, he presumed.

Marco laughed good-naturedly with the girl. 

“Now you stay right here, and I’ll be back with your gown, and mine too,” she told him.

The next few minutes were a blur of mysterious activity to Marco, as Constance left and then returned with a pair of gowns draped over her arm, and one of the seamstresses from the front shop in tow.

“Take those things off,” Constance told him in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Where should I go?” Marco asked, looking for a screen to step behind.

“Right here; we don’t have time to be fussy.  Once this starts you’ll be changing in and out of clothes right here as fast as you can, so don’t think you have time to be shy around the girls,” the seamstress told him.  “You volunteered for this, so take what you asked for.”

“I did not volunteer!” Marco said heatedly.  “I was told to do this by my master; I had no choice.”

“Poor Marco,” Constance said sympathetically.  “Now, raise your arms,” she grabbed the bottom of his shirt, prepared to pull the garment up over his head.

Marco hastily grabbed the shirt with his own hands so that he could at least have the shred of dignity of undressing himself, and he pulled his shirt off, then dropped it on the floor.  He crouched and pulled his boots off, one by one, standing on each foot in a wobbly manner, and letting each boot hit the floor with a thud.  He then placed his hands on the buckle of his simple leather belt, and happened to look around as he took a deep breath.  Every other girl in the room was staring at him, but industriously turned to their own work as they saw his eyes sweep across them all.

He felt his blush deepen, as his cheeks grew warmer, and then he released the belt and wiggled his hips to help his hands push the tight pants down over his hips.  The pants slid down his legs, and with that he stood wearing only his cotton underpants, conscious in the extreme of his surroundings.

“Here, raise your arms,” Constance said again, “and bend down a little – you’re so tall!” she giggled as she held a gown ready to place on him.

Marco complied, and felt grateful as he felt the cloth sweep over him, cutting off his vision of the room around him, as well as cutting off the room’s view of his exposed flesh.  He was really only a little above average in height, but he appreciated Constance’s comment nonetheless.

“Ouch!” he suddenly yelped as he felt the cloth being pulled down over his torso; someone has pinched his rear end while he was helplessly unable to see or react!

“Who did that?” he asked as soon as his head popped through the neck opening, and he felt the seamstress’s hands mercilessly tug and pull at the cloth that swept along his body.

All the girls looked innocently away.  “Not me!” Constance told him.

His legs felt odd, as he felt soft air gently waft across them.  A dress was not a pair of pants, that was clear.

“Hey!” he yelped, as the seamstress grabbed the dress on his chest and a handful of flesh with it, as she tried to create the appearance of a fuller bust line.

“We’re going to have to do something about that; Constance, give me some of those wool scrapes on the counter,” she ordered, and waited for Constance to hand the material to her.  The seamstress’s hand plunged down into the front of the dress on Marco and began to shape the scrapes into two approximations of breasts, then she carefully lodged several pins in place to hold it all together after she was satisfied that she had accomplished her best results.

“Be careful,” she warned Marco.  “Don’t let those pins prick you.

“We don’t want to get blood on the dress,” she explained.

Marco suddenly felt something on top of his head.  “Don’t move,” Constance commanded, and he felt a wig being arranged atop his scalp.

Constance came around in front of him, and he saw that she had used the time while he had been pre-occupied with the seamstress, so than Constance now wore a rich red damask print gown, one that looked like the clothes that the well-to-do minor noblewomen wore when they came to Algornia’s shop.   The red color looked dramatic with her long blond tresses spread across the shoulders.

“You look tremendous,” he told her admiringly as she stood just inches in front of him, adjusting the hair on his head.

“Thank you,” she said absent-mindedly.  She pulled a silk scarf from some unseen location and whipped it over the wig, then knotted it loosely under Marco’s chin.  “You look delicious yourself,” she added.

“Let’s go girls,” Abrianna said without any irony as she suddenly appeared.  “The chairs are set up and the patrons are waiting – let’s not keep them waiting!

“You go first,” she pointed at a girl in a blue dress, “then you,” she pointed elsewhere, “and then you,” she motioned to Constance.  “The rest of you line up at the shop door and wait.”

Chapter 3 – A Model of Decorum

There was a rush of activity as Abrianna left the room and the girls stampeded towards the door.  Marco hung in the back of the crowd, dreading the moment of his actual appearance in public in the dress.  The experience of being surrounded and cosseted by pretty girls had been an unexpected – and at times unnerving – pleasant element of his afternoon of punishment.  But now, he recognized, the full weight of the horror of his assignment was about to come crashing down upon him.

He lined up at the back of the girls who stood behind the door.  “Marco, you move up so you’ll be back through the rotation sooner,” the seamstress who had dressed him ordered.  “You’ll need some extra time to put on your next outfit,” she explained as her hand on his shoulder propelled him forward, closer to the doorway to his doom, so that he stood behind Constance.

“What do we do out there?” he asked the girl behind him.

“Just walk,” she told him.  “Walk to the end of the red carpet, then turn and walk back.  Go slow, so that they can look at the dress and decide if they like it,” she added, then turned away from
him to speak to the girl ahead of her in a hurried whisper.

The door suddenly opened, and he saw Abrianna’s hand motioning in a demanding fashion, calling the first girl out onto the carpet, in front of the filled chairs, her blue dress seeming to pick up a glow as the sun’s rays struck it with her first step out of the shop.  The door immediately closed, but Marco heard the appreciative murmur of the audience examining the dress and the girl as she walked along her carpet.  Marco caught a momentary glimpse of her as she passed by the window, and then she was gone from view.

The room was filled with excitement and tension.  Marco stood still, a large knot in his stomach that threatened to make itself into a mess on the floor beneath him, as he felt the fear inside him growing.  The girls around him chattered in thrilled tones, until the door opened and the girl in the blue dress returned, while the next girl promptly went out.

“They’re very interested,” the blue dress girl said as she whizzed past the line of waiting girls, heading back to the waiting room to change into her next gown.

“I hope Senora Rivera has her son with her again,” Constance whispered to Marco.  She stood next to the door, ready to walk out next.  “He winked at me the last time I modeled, and his mother said he was quite smitten with my looks when she came into the shop last month!”

The door opened inward as the second model returned, and Constance strutted out.  The door closed, the returning model immediately disappeared, and Marco found himself facing the moment of doom.

He felt his breath start to come faster, in shallow gasps as panic started to sweep through him.  There was clearly no last second reprieve, no miraculous salvation that could prevent him from making a fool of himself.  Constance’s shadow passed in front of the window as she returned, and he stood and stared at the door in fear, then heard the latch lift.

Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion.  The door quietly swung inward, every inch of progress seeming to take an hour, and then Constance’s blond head appeared.  She had a broad smile.  “He smiled at me!” she whispered to Marco, and then she was gone past him, leaving the yawning opening of the expectant doorway calling him forward.

Marco froze in place.  The daylight outside seemed incredibly bright, like a searing beam of sunlight beating into his eyes.  He was blinded, and then a hand behind him gently pushed the small of his back, and he lurched across the threshold, and into the public eye.

He put his hand up to shade his eyes as he stepped outward.  He had forgotten to pull the door closed behind him, but he heard it shut from someone else’s action while he took two more steps.

He was in panic mode.  There were people everywhere – indistinct shapes that were blurs.  The red carpet suddenly came into focus, a narrow path that he remembered he was supposed to follow.

“This new design is being worn by a brand new model, so please kindly welcome her to our shop,” Abrianna’s voice spoke from somewhere.  “The gown is a heavier material, suitable for the fall and winter seasons, when its colors will help to brighten an otherwise gray day.

“Walk on, dear,” Abrianna urged Marco, and he began to step along the red carpet, his hand still raised to shade his eyes.

Abrianna said something further to the crowd, but the sounds of her words blurred into the rest of the sensory overload that Marco was succumbing to, as he focused all his efforts on walking along the carpet.  There was the safety of the building on one side, and the frightening bank of chairs on the other side.  His shoe caught in an uneven paving stone under the red carpet, and his ankle buckled slightly, making him lurch forward.  Murmurs arose from the crowd, but Marco went on.

He reached the end of the carpet and turned, then lowered his hand as he looked away from the sun.  As soon as he did, the crowd came into focus, and he wished he could put his hand up again, to shield his face from the probing glances that were directed at him.  Women, and women, and more women, all stared at him, with a sprinkling of boys and men scattered discreetly among the women.

He took a step forward, and then another and another, increasing his pace, wanting to retreat to the sanctuary of the shop.

“And as you can see, even an athletic walker can move swiftly in this gown!” Abrianna said as he approached where she sat on a stool next to the shop door.  He lunged at the handle and shoved the door open, then fled inside and gasped with relief as he vaguely noticed the next girl step out into the square to display her dress.

Wordlessly, Marco plowed forward and into the back room, where he stopped momentarily in astonishment, as he saw Constance and another girl standing in the middle of the room wearing even fewer underthings than he had seen them wear before.

“Come over here!” the seamstress ordered him, prompting him to move into the room.  She stood him practically elbow-to-elbow next to Constance, who stood demurely, waiting for a servant to stitch up a dress.  The seamstress reached down the front of Marco’s chest and pulled out his breasts of fabric, then reached up under his chin and untied his scarf.

“Take your wig off,” she ordered, but before Marco could react, Constance reached over and removed it for him.

“Here, keep it safe for a few minutes until you have your next gown on, and then we’ll put it back on you,” the helpful girl told him, though he hardly heard her as his eyes swung wildly around the room, trying to avoid staring at her body as it leaned just inches away from his face.

“Now, we need to get the gown off,” the seamstress relentless told him, and she pulled it up over his hips, then began to carefully tug it above his shoulders and over his head.

“How did it go out there?” she asked conversationally as she turned to hang the gown up carefully, then turned back to look at him, studying his virtually naked body with a clinical thoroughness that unnerved him.

“I was scared stiff,” he replied.

“No reason to be scared,” she told him absentmindedly, as she ran her finger across his stomach, testing the firmness of his flesh.

“Arms up,” she ordered, then she whipped a pink chiffon dress up and over his head, and pulled it down upon him.

“A pink dress?” he asked pleadingly, hoping to salvage some shred of dignity.

“No time to be squeamish,” the seamstress answered.  “This will fit your frame.

“Now hold still,” she ordered, and she stuffed the front of the dress again, then sent him on his way to the front of the store.  “Put your wig on,” she told him.

Constance was just in front of him.  “Would you button the back of my dress?” she asked as they stood behind one more girl, in the line that was moving rapidly.

Marco’s fingers fumbled and buttoned two of the three buttons, acutely aware of the feel of her skin as he managed to partially complete the job before the door opened and she was gone.  He realized he hadn’t tied his scarf over his wig, and he hastily threw the cloth on top of his head, but had only pulled the two ends under his chin when the door opened and he found himself headed back outside in front of the crowd once again.

The sun was lower, but still in his eyes, and so he turned and started to walk with one hand holding his scarf and the other shielding his eyes, scared and confused and heading towards the red carpet based only on memory.

His senses returned as he made his turn at the end of the carpet and started to walk back, but then he saw Teresa smugly standing by her mother, watching him walk, and his composure crumbled.  He twisted a heel on the cobblestones, then pulled his scarf off his wig to wipe the sweat off his forehead, just before he reached the door and bolted back inside, leaving the carpet space open for the next girl to walk.

“That’s it, I’m done,” he announced as he reached the work room in the back.  He dropped the scarf on a table, and pulled the wig off his head, just as Teresa came into the room.

“I can’t believe you really did this!” she said with a hearty laugh.  “Grandfather said you would, but I was sure you’d skip it and make some excuse!”

“I didn’t have a choice, did I?” Marco asked hotly.  He handed the wig to the seamstress, then reached down and pulled up on the bottom of the gown, and pulled it off.

“You did great Marco,” one of the other girls said as she ran back towards the front room.

“You’ve done enough for us Marco, you don’t need to wear anymore,” his seamstress agreed.  “Thank you for helping,” she told his with a covert glance at Teresa as she took the gown from his hands and hung it up.

“You were a real trooper,” Constance told him.  “You’ll come back and visit us sometime, won’t you?” she asked with a meaningful glance as she began to hook her new garment closed in the front.

“I’d enjoy seeing you again,” she added.  She started towards the door, then stopped and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek.   “Don’t forget to wash that make up off your face,” she whispered softly in his ear, and then she was gone.

Kestrel and Teresa were suddenly alone, as the seamstress left to hang up Kestrel’s last gown.  Kestrel angrily picked up his pants and pulled them on, then jammed his feet into his boots and picked up his shirt and vest.  Without a word he stalked away from Teresa, into the unknown back rooms of the shop, looking for a place to wash and a door to exit through.

“Marco, wait!” Teresa’s voice called after him, with a catch as she spoke his name, but he was in no mood to accommodate her, and he blundered onward through the next room, and the room after that, where he found a tub of water that he splashed liberally upon his face.  He wiped his shirt across his brow, observing the smear of make-up that appeared on the cloth of his shirt, then he finished dressing and found the back way out of the building, as he emerged in a narrow alley.

He wasn’t going to go back to Algornia’s shop that evening, he knew that.  And his emotions were too roiled to enjoy the prospect of romping through the festival activities with his friends.  He’d go by the cheap wine shop down by the docks, he decided, and take a bottle of the terribly adulterated sweet wine that the shop sold in such vast quantities.  He’d spend a nice quiet evening in his hidden retreat, drinking his wine and letting the horror of the afternoon gradually melt away.

Although the afternoon hadn’t been a complete horror.  Considering the circumstances, or perhaps because of the circumstances, his new acquaintance with Constance had been a pleasant diversion from the degradation of his forced impersonation of a girl.  Perhaps when he had sufficiently recovered, he’d journey back to the shop to try to extend his acquaintance with the lovely girl.