Page 2 of Fast Forward

“Why’d you do that?” Grant asked when I returned to his side. “She’s likely to just spend it on booze or drugs.”

I shrugged. “Maybe she’s hungry and she could sure do with a change of clothes.” And her eyes reminded me of my mother’s. I recognised that desperate stare too well.

“Here.” Grant withdrew something from his wallet. “You don’t know where her hands have been.”

He held out a sanitisation wipe and I flicked my hand. “Oh, I don’t think it’s necessary. There are probably worse germs in the bar we’ve just been to.” But at my boyfriend’s insistence I took the wipe and slid it over my hands before tossing it in a nearby bin. It was nice that he wanted to protect me, despite an invisible and possibly non-existent threat.

“Quick, there’s a taxi letting people out over the road, let’s catch it,” Grant urged, tugging on my hand and stepping out onto the road.

An engine revved and the screech of car tires stung my ears as a black Holden spun around the corner. “Grant, watch out!” I yanked his arm, just as the car sped past. He toppled backwards onto me and I lay panting on the sidewalk, my hands clutching his body.

“Whoa, that was close.” Grant remained still, his expression stunned.

“Oh my God! That idiot driver! He could have killed you!” I clung tighter to Grant as we stood back up, moving as one body.

“But he didn’t. I’m okay, don’t worry,” Grant said, and he resumed walking while I remained stuck to the spot. “Kel, you coming?”

Visions of Grant sprawled on the road, thick dark blood oozing from his broken body flashed in my mind. I shook my head at the disturbing visual and at the thought of my dream man suddenly vanishing from my life.

“Are you all right, babe?”

“It’s just… you could have died,” I replied. “And I just wondered… what would I do without you?”

“Well, unless the universe has something against me, you won’t ever have to find out.” He smiled as he slid an arm around my waist and we walked over to a taxi pulled up on our side of the road.

My eyes strained to open and my body struggled to move the next morning, but the need to use the bathroom won out. Eyes half-closed, I stumbled out of bed and headed for the en suite. It seemed further away than usual, but eventually I got there. My body ached with an unfamiliar heaviness, but I’d only had three drinks. It didn’t make sense. Maybe at twenty-five the human body suddenly becomes less capable of holding its liquor or something.

A shower. That’s what I needed to wake me up. I lifted off my nightgown and went to turn on the shower, but it wasn’t where it should be. It was in a different corner. Weird. Inching my eyes open a little further I noticed that everything was different.

This wasn’t my bathroom!

Had I slept at someone else’s house last night? No, I distinctly remembered crawling into my bed at eleven forty-five, after washing my face and applying Age-Proof Smoothing Serum. So where the hell was I?

My eyes darted around the strange bathroom and the even stranger contraption on the wall of the shower. There was also a device against the far wall that resembled a giant hand-dryer, large enough to fit a person. I looked in the mirror and saw the scariest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life staring back at me. Wrinkles… a ton of them.

Crow’s feet, laughter lines, forehead furrows and… Oh. My. God. Were there wrinkles on… my lips? I squinted and leaned closer to the mirror. If that wasn’t bad enough, I even had a few rogue hairs on my chin and a neck that looked like a turkey’s. Plus, no longer did my hair resemble a silky black cascading waterfall, but instead a burnt-out forest with pathetic little branches of smoky-grey hairs poking out from my scalp. This had to be a nightmare! Yes, that must be it. I’d had one drink too many last night and now I was paying the price.

But it feels so real! Maybe someone spiked my drink. I didn’t know how, but it was possible. I bet it was that creepy dude hiding behind his phone at the table nearby. Probably filmed me too, the jerk. I bet I’m being viewed on YouTube as we speak. And maybe it’s going viral and I’d be in tomorrow’s newspaper:

Exposed! Aspiring Supermodel Kelli Crawford Is An Alcoholic!

My hands cautiously touched the face that was me but wasn’t. I took a step back and then another, edging away from the nightmarish vision in the mirror. Until the cold edge of the bathtub collided with my legs. I fell backwards, knocking over some bottles. A glass vase fell to the floor with a high-pitched, splintering smash. Glass shards launched themselves up into the air like rockets, puncturing the skin on my left arm and dark red blobs of blood bulged out. “Ouch!” I winced, grasping my arm.

And then I saw something even scarier. In terror, I struggled to lift myself from the bath, flailing around naked like a fish out of water, falling back in twice – until I finally stood again at the mirror, my mouth gaping. I lowered my hands to my abdomen, lifting and prodding clumps of loose skin that felt like a bag of jelly.

What in the name of Dior happened to my flat stomach? Not only did I have a freaking jelly belly, my breasts drooped so far south they were practically residents of Antarctica!

There is no God.

Nope, this wasn’t a nightmare and I’m positive no one could have spiked my drink. This was real. I could feel it. Not to mention see it. Here I was; still me, but… old. And if the hideous vision before me was anything to go by, there was no way in hell I was turning around to look at my arse.

“What was that noise, did something break?” A man barged into the bathroom.

“Arghh!!” I instinctively covered myself as much as possible with my hands, cowering in the corner near the toilet, my eyes searching frantically for a towel. Why were there no towels in this bathroom? My nightgown, oh thank God! I picked it up and held it in front of me. “Get out of here!” I shooed him backwards like an annoying insect, but he kept coming towards me.

“What’s the matter, honey?” He glanced at the vase remnants on the floor and then at my arm, blood dripping from the wound. “Are you all right?” The brown-haired man eyed me with genuine concern. His skin oozed the spicy scent of an aftershave I didn’t recognise.

“I’m fine, go away!” He appeared perplexed at the continued shooing movements I made with my hands.

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