“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” – Coco Chanel, Nazi.

Fag break. My head’s a fucking mess, like usual, and the evening breeze brings a clarity like no other—even if it also freezes my tits off. My shoulders kiss the chilled brick wall behind it and I curse into the wind at the sensation. I’m not used to wearing something with an open back like this, but I wanted to dress up properly for my first work due since coming out to the office. Management were… well, management, but I was treated with as much respect as they were forced to give me, so it could have been worse.

I thought things would feel different tonight, to be honest. I’m still talking to the same few people I can actually tolerate on my floor, and I’m still just as terrified of the gendered toilets as I’ve always been. Maybe I’d feel more comfortable pissing out here on the street, like a dog. I know some people would just love that, half of them being government officials.

Taking one last drag of my cigarette before flicking it onto the ground and crushing it under the toe of my pump, I fix my posture and return to the party with a smile I actually rehearsed in the mirror before coming out tonight.

The inside of the venue is stuffy and loud. Several different teams from our office are mingling, be it on the dance floor or standing by the buffet, while I’m wandering back inside like a lost kitten looking for its mother. I suppose, in a grossly corporate-minded way of looking at things, I find her. Or, she finds me.

“There you are, love. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” I turn towards the commandeering voice that has my nerves jumping on instinct. It’s my boss so, even in a relaxed setting like this, it’s only natural for me to be startled by the sound of her voice coming from behind. Right?

Taking in the sight of her, I can’t say I’m any less intimidated. She’s glamour incarnate, having shed her cocoon of smart business attire and cloying perfume in a metamorphosis of blinding red beads and a v-neck that begs the question: how deep is too deep? As it turns out, there’s no such thing. Any lower and her navel would be showing. The woman has me captured, a fact I’m confronted by rather awkwardly as I recall the hell she’s put me through over the past 16 months of working under her. That usually tied back hair is spiralling down like a pop-star’s; her makeup screams woman in an almost aggressive manor, and her perfume… it’s assaulting. She’s gone all out, transformed herself, and I can’t help feeling that she’s looking down on my comparatively humble presentation like it’s an amateur imitation of the real deal. Her. It's not a welcome comparison. I hate this fucking dress and these stupid, uncomfortable shoes. I just felt like I had to look like this tonight or they’d never take my name change seriously. Wait, did she say she’s been looking for me?

“I have something for you,” she states, in her usual calm, authoritative voice—revealing absolutely nothing. I’m tense, because she's made a habit of putting me through hell in the office long before the meeting I had to sit through to confirm I’m trans, which was almost like an interview, and my workload only seemed to get even more intense after. Wanting to appear amicable, because she’s my fucking boss, I oblige her with a tight smile and wait for her to tell me what this is about. Maybe she got me a drink because she knows I’m almost a year sober. It’s the sort of thing I imagine a catty older woman like this doing to her unsociable tranny subordinate, but then maybe I’m a little paranoid. Ungenerous expectations aside, which I’m fairly sure the woman can read from my poorly held smile, a part of me does hope for something more positive here. An olive branch, whatever that could be.

“Follow me to the restroom, okay dear?” I obey the request like it’s a command, because socially, it is. Walking at her heel gives me a nice view of her legs, which I don’t dare ogle. The woman is in nice shape for her age; young enough to sleep with men in their thirties but old enough that she dyes her hair to hide the grey. Maybe I’m naive, but I actually rather look forward to getting old. There’s something about that natural, silvery-white colour that I find myself attracted to in older women, though I don’t appear to be in the majority in this. Such a little outcast, though maybe things are finally looking up in that department. I mean, am I seriously about to hit a line of coke with my boss? Is that what’s happening right now? I can’t imagine any other reason she’d be dragging me off to the restroom at a busy work party after telling me she has something for me.

Am I excited? Not really. Is bumping cocaine a breach of my sobriety? Probably not, but the thought of having to pretend I like this bitch for the rest of the night, while also being high, sounds like a veritable nightmare. But, if this is what it’ll take for everyone in the office to finally stop misgendering me, then screw it. I’m in.

In less than a minute of leading and following, we’re spilling into the women’s restroom and I realise, with a relaxed smile, that I hadn’t even felt strange about entering these facilities with the other woman at all. Oh god, she’s not about to give me a talk about how I’m allowed to be in here now, or something equally as well-meaningly condescending, is she? I’ll consider visiting the bar and ordering a gin and tonic if she does.

“Here we are.” She speaks like a patient mother about to instruct their child on proper behaviour, which puts me on edge and has me thinking back to how I’ve acted tonight. She smokes too, I see her by her car some mornings, so surely it can’t be about that.

“Mhm…” I reply, nervous. My eyes are darting around the room like I’m searching for hidden cameras. Then out comes the bottle. It gets my attention with a clack of glass against marble as my boss sets it down by the sink bowl. “Uhm?”

“Perfume.” Her expression is light, her tone casual. I’m staring now, wondering if she means to elaborate on that single word response. Thankfully, she does. “I noticed you weren’t wearing any, love. I thought it was just a case of you preferring to keep a low profile in the office, given your… well, you know.” Is this woman fucking serious? “But you made an effort tonight. You even wore a dress.” My fingers tense by my sides; my jaw clenches. “And I can see you had your makeup done too, so only one thing is missing.”

My head feels light. I did my own damn makeup. Sure, I had to learn for the first time ever, following an online tutorial, but I fucking did it. God, I want another cigarette.

“Don’t worry, I brought a spare bottle. I don’t use this one, it’s a little too smoky for me, but it seems perfect for you. Hold out your wrist.” Oh, she really is serious. I can’t tell if this is hazing or genuinely well-meaning. Maybe I’m the dickhead here for thinking this is weird at all. Maybe this is just what cis women are like.

“Uh, sure… I guess.” It’s not like I intentionally went without. There’s so many things to keep track of as I figure everything out, so perfume just slipped through the cracks. With only a hint of reluctance, I present my wrist to the woman, eyes cast down.

“Perfume is a mark of female identity and the final touch of her style.” The woman gently takes my wrist, her well-matured smile bearing down on me almost sinisterly. I’m being stupid. This is a nice gesture. A single spritz leaves the bottle and the mist coats my skin, just below my palm. “Dior said that. Christian Dior. See? Men can be into this sort of thing, too.”

I tear my wrist out of her grip and stumble back, staring at the woman with the most incredulous look I can muster.

“Rub that against your other wrist.” It’s like she doesn’t perceive my shock at all, or simply doesn’t care. “Then turn around so I can spray your neck, behind your ears.”

I don’t even know if I like the damn scent. Taking a moment to think, I absent-mindedly raise my hand to my face and inhale. I’d like to say it calms me down but instead the sharp smell almost makes me sneeze. It’s… not sweet, nor floral. Smoky, like she said, but… it’s more like… I don’t know. What is that?

“What is this?” I ask her, lowering my arm and passively rubbing my wrists together. I’m moving on auto-pilot—thinking on it, too.

My manager of 16 months shrugs, turning to check her hair and makeup in the mirror. “It was a gift from my sister, who lives overseas. That’s all there is to say on the matter.”

Why is she speaking like that? I take another whiff to placate myself before shrugging too, mimicking her like I’m just another mirror. Wouldn’t that be nice—to be as confidently feminine as a bitch like her?

For some reason, despite what she said before, I find myself turning for her. I’m as calm as she is now. The mirror to a woman. I’m catching that scent even with my hands down by my sides, and it’s reminding me of that stupid quote she said. A mark of feminine identity huh? Well then.

Her heels clack twice. Then, she is upon me. One spritz, two spritz, then another on each side for equal measure. Just when I think she’s done, turning around to thank her for the trouble, she sprays me one last time. The mist spreads across my throat and I feel it sitting there, wet and redolent. I can really smell it now, and by the look on my manager’s face, so can she.

“There, you’re a real woman now.” She laughs. I want to challenge her condescending words, but I can’t, because I’m too busy staring at my imitation. She can barely stand, holding onto the counter with one hand while leaning on me with the other. Did she have one too many at the bar? I didn’t sense that she was even remotely tipsy on the way in here, not until she started spraying that bottle in this poorly ventilated public restroom.

“I’m a woman now.” I agree, instead of saying what I had meant to. I… had intended to ask her if she was alright, but the words just came out all wrong. Not wrong, honest. Instead of acting fake, pretending to give a shit about her condition, I simply spoke the truth instead. It’s liberating.

My boss stumbles, losing balance, and before I can even make an attempt to catch her I find myself tumbling onto the ground from the sudden weight. My naked back hits the restroom tiles with a hard impact that has me gasping in pain. Then, the air in my lungs is expelled entirely as my older manager collapses atop me in a heap of confused flesh. Legs splay; arms flail. Where does one woman end and the other begin? That, too, can be affirming in a twisted sort of way. A horror-showcase of femininity, old and new.

“Sorry,” the lump atop me croaks, pushing her face close and gorging herself on the scent of my perfumed throat. It’s like watching a predator going in for the bite, but her hunt is purely olfactory. “You’re a woman now.”

Why is that what she's apologising for?

“Can you get off of me, please?” I plead, not wanting to lay my hands on her but beginning to worry that I have no other choice. My manager appears to be in some sort of trance, her eyes rolling in their sockets as she helps herself to my new, perfumed scent like this was all just some weird fetish ritual I didn’t consent to participating in. Is… is this a sex thing?

While she breathes in my scent, I’m helpless against returning the favour. Her heady feminine aroma infiltrates my nostrils and—in collaboration with the weight of her soft body smothering my own—wakes my libido at the worst possible time. Wordlessly, I beg her not to notice as my half erect cock presses up against her thigh. She’s too enraptured in whatever my perfume is doing to her to notice, thankfully, but that presents a whole other world of worry. My perfume? No, I don’t even know what the hell this is… if this is an elaborate prank, that isn’t going to stop me from reporting the assault to HR.

“Would they believe you, though? Take your word over hers?” speaks a voice in my head.

“Yes,” I reply, confidently. “I’m a real woman now.”

The voice laughs.

My struggle is in vain. The woman is able to pin me down quite easily, in fact. She looks completely gone, like a feral animal. Her face is almost as red as her dress, and from lips an even deeper scarlet hangs a line of thick drool that has me questioning my vision. Or my sanity.

“H-Hey! Can you fucking hear me? Get off!” I consider kicking her, but I’m already worried that my yelling has alerted others outside of the restroom. Naturally I’m hoping it has, so somebody can pull her off of me, but I can already predict how the narrative would settle if our co-workers barged in to the sight of me fighting back. The violent tranny beating her boss in the bathroom! It’s laughable, really, because I have less muscle than any of the other women I work alongside; it turns out that holding up a wireless controller for nine hours straight on my days off doesn’t constitute as weight lifting.

“You’re…” My boss straddles my waist more deliberately now, pinning my wrists against the tiled flooring, above my head. “…a real…” She lets out a low, guttural sounding grunt that has me falling still and shrinking under her. When her face trails lower, however, and she begins to drag her nose between my fucking breasts, I finally decide that enough is enough. “Mmgh… Woma—”

“Get the fuck off of me!” With all the force I can muster, thrashing like a caged animal, I manage to plant my foot—pumps having slipped off in the initial clatter of bodies—against her abdomen and push as hard as I’m able. I watch her body flail upwards, and then trip backwards. By the time I’ve caught my breath and find myself able to sit up, I find her. “Oh, god.”

My boss is laying on her back, head against the opposite wall, unconscious. I hope she’s just unconscious, because that red against the white tile directly behind her head makes me nauseous. I didn’t just… did I?

“Hey, uh…” Before saying anything further, I whip my head over to the door behind me and feel the panic setting in. If anyone walks in now, either because they need to use the facilities, or because they heard the commotion, this is going to look terrible. It is terrible. Turning back and assessing the scene, I feel transported into the plot of a horror movie. My pumps lay on the ground like evidence to be outlined, before the corpse that surely isn’t.

Then, my nose picks up the scent. It’s overwhelming, and I soon realise why. Beside the slumped body in front of me is the bottle of perfume it had sprayed me with, smashed open from an impact I don’t recall. It was likely when we first fell, now that I think about it. I was so laboured during the struggle I must have breathed a lot of it in, but I’m already getting used to it. So this is perfume? A mark of female identity and the final touch of her style. I… can’t let it go to waste.

Ignoring my manager, who is either concussed or dead, I drop to my knees beside the bottle, hike up my dress to ensure it doesn’t soak up the perfume, and lower my head to press my nose into the shards of broken glass scattered over the restroom floor.

I take a deep inhale and let it calm me, before lifting my head and blinking a few times. This is… it’s still impossible to place, but it’s my scent now. It made me irresistible, perhaps dangerously so, but I’d never felt like more of a woman than I did while my boss of 16 months was assaulting me.

My head is swimming with sensation as the perfume accosts my reason. It’s unravelling, this scent, and I’m powerless against its caustic feminine allure. The more I inhale, the more that smoky scent blackens my insides. And yet, my mind tints pink. I’m becoming more than I was before, because that’s what it does, this thing. The perfume. It’s cutting apart everything I once was and restitching it into a woman-shaped tapestry. No wonder my boss was so obsessed, I’d rape me too if I could, that’s how good of a girl I am. I love this scent. It quickly becomes all you can think about. God, am I drooling? I can’t let it die here on the floor.

My wrist presses down against the liquid coating the tile, and the sting of sharp glass deters me none. I make sure to get it nice and coated before doing the same again with the other wrist, bringing both of my arms up to transfer the scent to my neck, too, and then my chest for good measure. By the time I am finished, I feel born anew. Perfume makes you a woman. It’s true. I smell so fucking good; I feel like a pretty girl.

I stand and look upon the wall mirror, rehearsing my perfect smile once more. There’s something wrong with this image, I realise, but I can’t quite place my finger on what it is. I must appear different now that I’m a real woman.

There’s a knock at the door. Why knock, it’s a public restroom?

“Come in,” I call out pleasantly, before remembering that I’m supposed to fear being caught in here, like this, though I don’t fully remember why. I’m so calm it’s creepy.

“Hey, we heard shouting and—” The first voice stops, only to be replaced by a shrill scream seconds later. I’m still smiling, like I practised, staring at the crowd of three female coworkers who all give the same wide-eyed stare. It really is a horror film, but why do I have the point of view of the slasher? Oh, right, I’ve already killed one of them. There’s more red on that tile behind its head now. Too much. This is a HR nightmare.

“Tara?” one of the women asks, her voice barely louder than a whisper. I want to ask her to speak up, but she continues before I can get the words in. “Wh-what’s going on? You’re bleeding all over!”

I am? Oh, right. The glass. The glass that was sharp. The glass that cut me and hurt. I had forgotten it entirely in my new reverie of womanhood. I should get closer, maybe then they’ll get it.

“She had one too many. She slipped and hit her head. We need to help her.” I’m struggling to speak like a convincing human being, and my coworkers notice. That’s what my scent does, I think; it rips the person out of you and shreds it, leaving only the woman, impulse driven and hungry.

“She wasn’t drinking…” They’re too wary, because I look like a horror-show. That’s okay, I’ll just have to come to them. Gently do I approach. My coworkers back away slowly, almost spilling out of the door before I manage to seize the closest’s wrist and pull her closer. I give credit to the other two for not running away, each of them becoming alarmed by my actions while the one in my arms struggles weakly. Then weaker. And weaker still. Until she’s passively breathing in the scent that puts half of humanity in heat. I’m the superior sex to these fragile little girls. They are larval; I am fully grown. As the first succumbs to my perfume and buckles under my touch—my hand lifting her skirt to show the others her truth—I smile, and sigh, and I breathe into her ear with words that blow her entire world to pieces. It’s necessary, though; if your hands aren’t all over me in my presence, you’re clearly defective goods. “You’re not a real woman,” I tell it, smugly, kissing across its ear and neck wantonly.

“Um… h-huh?” the girl replies breathlessly, staring out at the workmates who ogle its dripping pantyhose with lustful eyes after catching waft of me themselves. This nobody appears to have wet itself. I’m smug, painting the side of its face red with my bleeding neck as I kiss the top of its head reassuringly.

“You’re not real.” I push it down even further, getting a taste for this power my words hold. This one’s not the bitch in heat that my manager was, but I can see the other two barely holding themselves back already. That’s okay. I prefer that. This thing isn’t necessary. What use is a workmate that doesn’t have the urge to mate? “You don’t exist anymore, okay? You’re nothing. Break.”

The object in my arms slumps like a corpse, and I release it. It drops to its knees, in the puddle it made, muttering to itself over and over and over: “I’m not real. I don’t exist.” Blood drips down one half of its face as it shakes uncontrollably. Still, it learned its place as a broken, discarded thing. I’m almost proud of it, in a maternal sort of way, but any daughters of mine will have more substance.

“You two won’t disappoint me like that, will you? You… w-want me, don’t you?” I look upon the two remaining coworkers, who I recognise as direct colleagues, and I see it in their eyes immediately. They’re no longer human. They are beasts, bred to fuck, and I am their whore. I am mankind’s mistress, it’s willing concubine, unparalleled in sheer femininity and animal magnetism. I am pleasure.

“What’s wrong with us?” One of my mates asks as they cross the room, pushing past the runtish empty vessel they were close with while it yet wore a name. The beast pushes me back, against the counter, and hoists me up onto it gleefully. My hands smear blood onto the marble, but nobody cares a lick about that anymore.

“You’re imitation. Art.” I tell them, kindly. “Like a mirror, you only reflect. You covet the original. A real woman like me.” The sentiment shouldn’t make sense, and yet, it is perfectly clear. All the unspoken judgements and fears in this hostile place have been inverted. I am the woman, and they are what they made of me in their minds: a dangerous animal masquerading as woman, as aggressive as they are strong. Perhaps this is why the only one of this trio who got my fucking name right is kneeling on the ground telling herself she doesn’t exist instead of closing in on me with predatory intent. My scent turns these two into their fears of me, and in turn, I become what they think of themselves. I make this trade with a smile, and a deep inhale, surrendering gladly to that olfactory suicide in which my old self has to die. For I, too, doubted myself far too fucking much.

They do much the same: commit to death and rebirth in the exchange of scent and sentiment. They breathe in deep and shuck themselves from their feminine shells, exposing the monster within. Good, I understand now. I’ll try not to kill these ones.

“Don’t be shy,” I tell the one not presently sinking hands into my thighs. “Have you never seen a real woman before?” My chuckle goes right through it, alongside the scent that devastates its old, outdated perspective. I watch as drool cascades down my former coworker’s pretty v-line dress and as those wide eyes narrow in predatory delight. The beast has found its prey, and now there’s nothing left to do but pounce.

And so, the both of them are upon me. One of them pushes my knees apart and leans against the counter between them, rubbing its face against my chest and inhaling my metamorphic scent in an act of willing suicide. I don’t kick this one away, as I had my manager, because I, too, have learned my place now. It’s wonderful, to be bloodied and beset by beasts, each of them snarling in dresses that no longer suit them. They are masquerading, badly, and so I click my tongue and tell them to pretend no longer.

Acquiescing quickly, despite being my assaulters, the two hungry mutts strip out of their false coverings and return to me with their flesh—their truth—bared. Two naked heaps of human flesh begin to smother me, their breasts compressing against my crushed velvet body. I am jade, housing a pale interior that presents an irresistible reward to any who may choose to take. They do so liberally, seizing handfuls of flesh with digging nails, and painting me slick with their wanton tongues. Soon, I feel their teeth. Like the glass, it should hurt, but it all just feels unbearably good instead. This is what I’m for, so it stands to reason that I would be well programmed to enjoy it. The pleasure leaks out of my throbbing hard cock and when the creatures notice, their excitement reaches a new peak.

I’m pulled down onto the floor again, ungraciously—as it should be—and my dress is hiked up roughly. One of the beasts mounts me, while the other straddles my face and begins to ride it with an orchestral accompaniment of gasps, groans and grunts. This is the mark of my female identity, so says Dior. The transgender poltergeist is excised and a real woman is created through blood, sweat and semen. It’s nothing but a ghost of a memory now, the thug they once saw behind my thin veneer of inadequate femininity. I’m pure now. Perfect. And they are single minded animals, rutting against my iridescent beauty in the women’s restroom.

Each of them is well lubricated; their lust is overflowing. Their naked, sweaty bodies heave and huff as they fuck me with every fibre of their being. At the same time, the nobody still kneels in its own piss by the entrance, repeating its self-annihilating mantra. The oblivion it experiences has transformed it into something just as sexually gratifying as being a beast, or a woman, and so the fragile nothing has begun to pleasure itself to help cement its new status. “I’m not real,” the former administrative assistant repeats, absent-mindedly, while rubbing itself through its pantyhose with the fervour of a religious zealot. “I don’t exist.” It is tranquil, pushing deep inside and kissing its womb with the tips of its worthless fingers and salivating so terribly that its entire chin is slick with drool that hangs above its rutting hips. One could imagine that dangling rope of spit as the last vestiges of its identity as a somebody. Once it snaps and hits the restroom tile, everything it ever was will be little more than a wet stain against the ground, ready to be mopped up. Good. Everything in its right place.

My body twitches and I feel the convulsions of my fellows take them, too. Our orgasm is in complete sync, and I fill my victimiser with a small load that isn’t likely to impregnate it. When the hips lift from my face, I’m sticky and hot with the remnants of cunt now coating it. Still, my perfume persists above all else. I’m just gaining a more full bodied aroma.

My head turns onto its side as the other one slides my cock out of it, because I heard a sound. Coughing.

“Mmmgh…” Oh. It’s my boss. “Unnh… where…” She’s not dead, then. In that case, she can learn her place too.

With the help of my defilers, who have turned docile in the aftermath of our coupling ritual, I stand up straight and assess the disoriented older lady with a passive tilt of my head. I’m barefoot, wearing an expensive dress now smeared with myriad bodily fluids. My hair is a mess and I’m wearing bloodstains like jewellery. Despite all of this, once her consciousness clicks back into place, my former manager looks upon me with the awe I am owed. She sees nothing but a beautiful woman, as she very well should, and I see nothing but trash to be paraded through the party alongside the others, until nothing remains but a human zoo in which nature can take its proper course.

“You’re… you’re a real… aahhh…” I grab a fistful of the older woman’s hair as she mumbles incoherently through those perfect red lips, which are wasted on a mongrel like her.

“Come on now,” I hum, dragging her along on her hands and knees over broken glass and that warm puddle of our resident nobody’s cowardice. The two naked ones cling to me like the hopeless cases they are, decorating my arms as simple accessories, huffing my lobotomising scent over and over in self-destructive vice. My perfume is apocalyptic, warping all reason in favour of the end-times circus we now fill out roles in. Let us go and join the rest of our troupe.

The night is still young.

Rachel Maddison stands in the elevator of her office’s building and yawns into her sleeve. 6 a.m. starts are going to be the death of her, she thinks, once again grumbling to herself, under the safety of solitude, over the fact that it’s only their floor that has to start this fucking early. Save for the skeleton crew of janitorial staff and the building’s receptionist, none of the other office floors start work until 8. Still, she supposes, reluctantly, that getting to leave early while the rest of the building is still hard at work, can be satisfying.

The young 20-something checks her phone with a sigh, wondering why her best friend of over a year now has been ghosting her since the Christmas do. Rachel and Tara are what you could call ‘work wives’, and so being shut out from hearing gossip about the party she had to skip out on makes Miss Maddison feel more than a little shafted, and concerned. Perhaps it didn’t go well at all, and Tara’s too humiliated to reply. Oh no, maybe she quit? Rachel tries to calm her nerves on the short elevator trip. She was the first person Tara came out to, though Rachel thought that anybody paying any serious attention to her would have found it obvious.

It’s probably fine, the data entry clerk reasons. Tara usually vents to her before anyone else, should anything major have happened. Sometimes she maybe vents too much, but that’s neither here nor there; Rachel can only imagine how hard it is to work on a floor like this, with a group of stubborn older cis women, as an openly transgender employee. Rachel isn’t trans, but she considers herself open minded enough not to care how someone else chooses to live their life. She’s not perfect, but she tries, and until recently she had thought that was enough. Now, she isn’t so sure. A week and a half with no reply from her work wife; it’s gnawing at her. She believes, naively, that the sense of unease presently gripping her will be expelled by the mundane reality that reveals itself the moment these damn doors slide open. The elucidating light of an unexciting, perfectly reasonable explanation, will wash over her and then she’ll trudge through yet another dull day of entering data at her desk. Maybe Tara’s phone broke, or she lost it. Or maybe she simply opened the text while drunk, or sleepy, and forgot to reply. And then did the same for the two follow up messages also. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be plain and simple and she’ll forget this strange fear in mere moments.

Two more floors, and then it’ll go away forever.

One more. The work day starts, and fantasy dies. Good riddance, in this case.

Then, the doors slide open… and reveal exactly what Rachel Maddison had been expecting. The woman sighs out her irrational worry and steps onto her floor, overpriced coffee in hand. There’s something new in the air, she notes, catching the faint whiff of an unfamiliar perfume one of her co-workers must have applied too thickly. It tickles her nostrils, but she’s otherwise fine, making her way over to her desk with her head down as usual, so as to avoid drawing the attention of her manager; the woman treats her and Tara like packhorses with the amount of workload she dumps on them.

“Morning,” Rachel mutters as she reaches her desk and sets her coffee down, still picking up that scent after walking all the way to the other side of the office. It’s like it’s stuck to the whole floor. The office clerk drops her bag and powers her computer on, running the motions while whipping her head over to the desk left of her. “Tara not in yet? Heh, I’m first for once…” Again, she convinces herself that everything is going to be fine. Her friend is simply running late; this does not have to mean she quit over some altercation at the party. Rachel would feel too guilty, in a slightly selfish line of thought, because she was the one who picked out the other’s dress.

No reply comes from the women sitting at the desks opposite her, which gives Rachel pause. She’s staved off her anxieties well thus far, but this is getting uncomfortable. “Hey,” she stands up and assesses her workmates closely, “did you hear me? Morning, sleepyheads.”

Finally, the women lift their heads. Each of them are dressed appropriately enough, in smart business attire, but their jaws are just a little too slack—their gazes hollow.

“Morning,” the women state, almost in perfect unison. Their response causes a groggy Rachel to rub her eyes to make sure she’s properly awake, before leaving her desk and timidly circling around to get a better look at her colleagues.

“You’re uh, tired too? 6 a.m. is too fucking early, ahaha, I have to wake up at half four…” The small talk isn’t making her feel any less insane, she realises, but her mouth won’t stop flapping of it’s own accord. A nervous habit.

Sensing that she’s not going to get a response from her catatonic co-workers any time soon, Rachel takes another look around the office to make sure everyone else is at least acting like their normal selves. It’s only now that she notices, with her head held up, that half the floor is missing. That’s… not too unusual for the first day back after Christmas, but… “Hey, where are…” Rachel considers the absurdity of her question and suddenly feels self-conscious, but then, it is a strange coincidence… “Is it me, or is it only women that have shown up today, haha? Can’t rely on men for anything, r-right?”

Rachel’s fingers dig into her blouse and she finally realises just how tense she is. This whole morning feels like a surreal dream already, and she’s only been here for a few minutes.

“They’re on the roof.” Finally, one of the women replies to her. Though it does not take long for Rachel to wish they hadn’t. What is she supposed to do with a response like that? Is this a prank?

“Yeah? Aha, what… are they doing on the roof? It just started raining…”

“Roof duty,” the other colleague states, placidly.

Rachel blinks, staring at both women with a bemused grin on her face, waiting for them to break character and start making fun of her for buying into the act for even just a second. But no laughter comes. The women are gazing right through her, swallowing occasionally but remaining otherwise still. Like statues, or machines left on stand-by.

“Well uh, wh-whats roof—” Rachel’s sentence is severed clean, along with her thought process, as she picks up that scent again—much more strongly. It wafts over her from behind and she almost loses her balance at the ensuing head rush.

“Hey, bestie,” speaks a voice from behind her, causing a slightly dizzy Rachel Maddison to turn around and face her work wife, who is smiling coyly in her direction. Tara looks beautiful, she thinks, taking in the sight of her friend dressed in black, high waisted slacks and a white shirt buttoned down low enough to showcase the lace underwear behind it. There’s something wrong with the image, but as Rachel takes another slow inhale, she cannot quite place it. Past all the bites and bruises, all Rachel can see is a beautiful woman in the vague shape of the workmate she once knew. A real woman. Happiness overtakes her.

“H-Hey you! Uh, there’s some real weird energy in the office today… it’s not just me, right? I feel so funny…” The auburn haired 20-something tries to pry her eyes away from her work wife, but the woman is just too stunning. Rachel swallows the build up of saliva in her mouth and feels herself growing meeker by the second. Within mere seconds, she has shrunken down into a bashful teenage girl, tongue-tied and timid.

“It’s not just you, okay? Come, I want to show you something.” Tara holds out her hand, and Rachel stares at it for a few seconds before swallowing again and taking it shyly. Her face turns a dark red and her eyes dart to the other’s heels, following her crush through the office obediently. Wait, crush? No, she’s not… she always thought Tara had feelings for her, because it just made sense, but she never reciprocated them. In fact, she was trying to figure out a good way to let the other down gently. In Rachel’s mind, it would have been wrong to date Tara, because the parts of her she was attracted to were… what she liked in guys.

Now, none of that seems to matter at all. “You uhm… ehe… you look nice today. Really nice…” Her heart is pounding, and she feels like she could pass out from the embarrassment at how lame she just sounded. Tara isn’t even looking at her at all, just leading her to the manager’s office with a confident, feminine stride that Rachel wants to swoon at.

Another deep inhale. Rachel no longer cares about how strange all of this feels, not when it makes her so giddy. She feels high, vision blurring and mouth pooling with spit.

“I know I do. I’m beautiful, aren’t I?” The reply makes Rachel wet between her thighs and so flush she can feel the heat radiating from her face.

“Ah… y-y-y-yesss… b-b-beautiful… so beautiful… m’confused… I-I never…”

“It’s okay. Whatever you knew before isn’t useful anymore. Forget everything but the way I make you feel right now. It’ll make much more sense soon, Rachel. You were always my favourite.”

Tara’s favourite? Finally, Rachel forgets to swallow. Drool spills from her lips and a portion of her intelligence disappears with it. Her awareness has been narrowed with each and every breath. She’s smiling now, like a dullard. She’s the favourite.

“Take a look around. The way our colleagues look at me. We’re in a den of vipers, bestie. They’re all fucking themselves under their desks to the thought of claiming a real woman like me for a little while, of holding me down and gorging themselves on my perfect body. Animals that they are. The only thing holding them back is… hierarchy. This is the first day back, see, and I’ve told them all that if we do not establish order I will become ruined, and then they will have nothing to look forward to.”

“What… that… that all sounds terrible. I-I don’t understand.” Rachel specks her chest with drool as she tries to fight through all this mental fog to make sense of the sideshow reality being explained to her.

“You will. Come.” The beautiful woman guides her favourite co-worker into the manager’s office, which Rachel is not capable of questioning anymore. Why wouldn’t Tara have the highest authority on this floor? She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, so the position should be hers by right. Rachel, meanwhile, must make do by relying on the benevolence of this goddess leading her. Rachel should feel grateful for the attention, and the kindness, of her perfect colleague.

In the manager’s office, something is awry. Rachel notices immediately that she and Tara are not alone as the latter moves around her desk. Her desk? No, isn’t that…

“Which of them has caught your eye more? Our former boss, or the trash bin in the corner.” Tara smirks cruelly, as is her right, curling her fingers around something inconspicuous sitting on the corner of her desk. Rachel can see it as such more confidently now that she lays eyes upon the old manager, who sits up on her haunches with a cheap dog muzzle fastened around her face. It’s nothing bespoke, the muzzle; it looks like one you could find in any random pet store. Rachel should find it ill fitting on the adult woman, well into her fifties with grey roots coming in and a face aged by decades of hard work, but she doesn’t. The look suits it because of the way the stupid mongrel is acting: it growls at the sight of Rachel approaching Tara and falls down onto all fours, ready to pounce.

“Now, now.” The woman placates her beast, running fingers through that dyed blonde hair and then tightening until the animal yelps and softens.

“Tara, what’s…”

“She’d be pinning me to the carpet right now, having her way with me, if I didn’t act firm…” Tara slips her nylon covered foot out of her shiny black loafer and pushes her leg out. Rachel watches, in horror and fascination, as her former manager lowers its head and placates itself with her work wife’s foot. The thing, that can hardly be considered human from the way it acts, presses its muzzled face as close to that proffered foot as it can and breathes deep. Its face wears a candid, perverse delight that Rachel is sure to remember for the rest of her days.

“I-I see. And the trash bin in the corner…” Rachel turns to face the corner of the room after having remembered those strange words. Oh. Tucked away in the corner sits Rachel’s colleague, Harriet, who wears a completely blank expression until their eyes meet and it gives her an eager smile. “Uhm. Hi!” Rachel declares, not sure what else to say at the sight of her former friend now kneeling, completely naked, with marker pen written across its chest to label it ‘trash’.

“Do… do you have any garbage?” asks the dutiful trash bin. “You can put it in, o-okay?” The young brunette opens its mouth wide, pointing at the cavity with an air of desperation that Rachel cannot help pitying.

“What’s… wrong with Harriet?” Rachel steps back, away from the disturbing sight, and collapses back against her crush with a light gasp. “O-Oh!”

“There is no Harriet, silly. She doesn’t exist anymore, okay?” Snaking an arm around Rachel’s waist while her office pet fills its stupid head with the scent of her perfumed toes, the beautiful woman grins. In her hand is a bottle, which steals Rachel’s focus away from the nameless trash bin.

“Okay…” Accepting becomes easier the more she inhales. With every breath, the discomfort dies. In its place, a new understanding of reality is born. All of this slowly becomes the new normal, and Rachel struggles to remember why it seemed so out of place before. Tara’s perfume makes her perceptions weak and malleable, like clay, ready to be remoulded into a more fitting shape for this new era of… of what? What does Tara have for her?

“Perfume,” states the blonde with a light smile, as though she had read her workmate’s mind.

“Uhm?”

Tara smirks, holding Rachel’s shoulders and turning her around, leaning close. “Perfume follows you; it chases you and lingers behind you,” she whispers, pressing her nose against the back of her colleague’s neck and inhaling deeply. Her lips brush against Rachel’s skin, and her empty hand clutches the other’s shoulder tightly. “Sonia Rykiel.”

Rachel shudders involuntarily, staring over at the empty receptacle in the corner and understanding the threat it represents. Is she going to stop existing too? No, she’s the favourite. Tara… lovely Tara… will take good care.

“I can smell it on you, that cheap shit you always wear. I’m going to replace it with something better, okay? Make you something better, too. Hierarchy, like I mentioned. I want you to be my alpha.” The woman giggles against the back of Rachel’s neck, the timid creature’s hairs standing up in response.

“I… your what?” Talking is so hard on account of all the drool, but Rachel manages to get a few words out. A few is all she needs.

A cold spritz hits the back of the trembling girl’s neck, spreading its scent across her skin like a virus. Then, the same on the other side. Tara hums, before replying in her lilting, sing-song voice.

“Yes, ehehe. I don’t see anybody here as a real woman anymore, and that’s far too lonely. I went through great lengths to procure this, for you, so that I could see you the way I see myself. And I’ll see myself the way I see you right now. My mutt here… her sister explained it all to me when I staged a ransom for the second bottle. Though, I’d already figured it out.” It’s not magic, this chemical, but lab made; developed in a country with looser regulations. Until it accidentally came into the hands of the miss manager mongrel, it had only ever been tested on mice. As you can imagine, the results were not so catastrophic. The tests simply had them swap the behavioural characteristics of the males and females, for study that nobody in this building is smart enough to understand the value of.

Now, it has become something more godlike.

“Mmgh… I can’t wait. I hope you’re ready, Rachel?” Tara sets the bottle down after only two light sprays; she intends to help herself to that scent greedily, be the only one changed by it fully. Then, the hierarchy can be cemented. An office cult full of hungry, manipulable rapists all desperate to help themselves to the women they covet, and above them all, an alpha.

“I’m r-r-ready.” The girl stammers, not entirely sure what it is that she agrees to but knowing that she would do absolutely anything within her power to impress the perfect beauty at her back.

And with that, Tara presses her face into the other’s flesh once again. This time, her nostrils flare with purpose. Her pupils dilate heavily as drool begins to cascade down the auburn haired alpha’s back. Tara huffs the scent, rubs her face against it, with the determination to imprint so deeply that she never has to go it alone again. Each and every sniff is suicide, snuffing her old self, again and again, in favour of a new iteration of woman. This one will be better, she tells herself, because it will have a partner. An equal. Rachel can help decide who uses her, and when, and keep the predators well sated. She needs this. Order.

Perhaps, once the floor operates like clockwork, they can even branch out further.

“Y-You’re so fucking pretty…” Tara moans, wrapping both arms around Rachel’s neck and inhaling her like cocaine. “The prettiest… you’re perfect. God, I… need you so badly.”

Rachel’s blush burns against her cheeks, but then the perfume she wears begins to reach her, too, and the narrative shifts once again. Her perception of her crush metamorphoses into something much sharper. After allowing Tara to enjoy her neck for just a little while longer, Rachel shrugs the woman off and turns around. Tara’s work wife runs fingers through her hair as her eyes narrow, a lecherous stare replacing the awestruck gaze she had been wearing only seconds before. Her attraction to the other has not faltered in the slightest, but her confidence in what she is owed has been almost completely inverted. Perfume really does make you a woman; she is femme fatale, provocateur, mother superior. She is elegance and class and cunning. The old Rachel sacrifices herself upon the altar of change, gaining the swagger of a divinity that knows no contestation. One of her hands slips into her pocket as her shoulders roll back, and the other reaches out to firmly cup her partner’s face.

The two of them share a look. For a few seconds, the manager’s office is silent and still. Tara, who had been nothing but imperious, now looks upon the other with starry eyes and a twitching in her slacks that she can no longer hope to control. She’s completely at the other’s mercy now, because of the trade that had just been initiated. Tara, beautiful and loved, needs to be treated like the commodity that she is. Protected, but well used. She begs, with just her eyes, for the newly appointed alpha to put her in her place.

Noticing this, Rachel smirks.