“Mm. I appreciate a strong work ethic, but it’s much too early in your career for you to be staying until this hour. Do you really have that much work piling up?”
“Oh, no, sir. It’s not so much that it’s piling up…”
“In that case, I think you should head home for tonight. All work and no play will take its toll on your health!”
“But, sir…”
“Young MacMillia. When someone offers you a modicum of decency, I do think you should take it.”
What a great president!
“Ha-ha… Well, if you say so, sir…”
I gave him a polite good-bye, but inside I was crying. There was a scary red-haired lady on my way home!
“Hmm, it’s after dark already. Maybe I should see you off. You live over by the cathedral, don’t you?”
What a wonderful president!
He was offering me another bit of decency, and this time I didn’t argue.
We chatted amiably about nothing as we walked through pools of light cast by the streetlamps. He asked if I was getting used to the work, if I enjoyed it, how things were going with my coworkers.
“Oh, you know, it’s all right” was all I could manage. I couldn’t exactly tell him I’d overplayed my hand from day one and made myself an object of resentment among the other women.
Ahead, I could see a street shining golden. It was the avenue that led to the cathedral.
Ugh! I don’t wanna go home!
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a few minutes to spare right now, would you?” the president asked. “Maybe we could go grab a drink together.” He stood between me and the avenue, blocking the light. “Somehow I always seem to end up drinking alone in the evenings… Just once, it would be nice to have someone to share my cups with. I know a place near here. What do you say?”
I wasn’t much of a drinker myself. Anyway, what was going on here? He’d been so insistent on my hurrying home, and now he was inviting me out for a drink?
“I’d love to!”
I nodded furiously. That’s where I was at that moment. Anything to keep from having to go home!
We cut across the road to the cathedral and headed down a side street lit by those same small, glowing lamps.
“You seem to live near the cathedral. If I may ask, you don’t live with your family, do you?” the president said.
“No, sir. My family lives in the suburbs. I’m on my own here in town.” I was starting to warm to the conversation. “Oh! But we get along just fine, so don’t worry about us!”
“That’s good to know. I can’t help noticing—your body is quite toned. Do you happen to play any sports?”
“Who, me? No, not especially…” I wasn’t thinking too hard about my answers, but suddenly I noticed his eyes working their way across my body. I felt a chill. “I used to work on a construction site, though, so I’m not afraid to do some heavy lifting!” I chirped, forcing myself to smile as hard as I could in an effort to dispel the nasty feeling I was getting.
“That’s good to know,” he repeated, nodding. All he’d done that night was nod and agree. “I just have to ask—are you seeing anyone right now? A boyfriend, maybe?”
“Huh? No, sir, never had one of those in my life…”
There were fewer and fewer lights on the street.
“Any good friends? Acquaintances with whom you regularly keep in touch?”
“Um… No, not especially…”
“No? Good, good. By the way, I can’t help but notice you’re not wearing your perfume today.”
“Sir?”
My perfume? Why were we suddenly talking about that? For that matter, how did he even know about it?
As the questions crowded in on me, I had a thought: Was there really a bar way out here? There were hardly any streetlamps, let alone any businesses.
The only light in this darkness came from the president’s eyes, which glinted in the gloom.
“It’s been, oh, a week now since I first realized how much I liked the smell of the perfume you were wearing. I wish you were wearing it now. Truly a wonderful aroma. Where in the world did you get it?”
“Uh…”
This was definitely too much, too fast. I didn’t know what to say. I stumbled back a step.
“Whenever I see someone to my liking in town, I ask them to join my company, but you were my very best find. I knew the moment I saw you. That lean frame. That youth. That pale skin. All of it looked so very, very, very…delicious!”
“Delici-huh?!”
The president closed in on me, his breath coming hard. I took another step back, then another, until I felt the wall behind me.
“Put on the perfume. I know you have it with you. Just a spritz, and everything will be perfect. Impeccable. The smell—I love it! Argh, I need it! The perfect seasoning! Come now, put it on already!”
“Uh, um, Mr. President? What’s happening? You’re…you’re joking, right?”
“I know the women in the office speak ill of me behind my back. They poured poison in your ear, didn’t they? Told you I go around trying to pick them up?”
“Well, I mean… I guess they did say something about you hitting on them…”
“The agony! They’ve got it all wrong!”
“Oh, they, uh, they do, sir?”
“Out of the kindness of my heart, I only invited them out to eat!”
“You are a piece of trash!”
“No, no, you misunderstand! There’s nothing sexual about any of this!”
“Oh?”
“I speak of the physical appetite—I want food!”
“That’s not any better…”
“Until this moment, I have resisted. I know I mustn’t let my true feelings show. My ethics, my morals, have allowed me to keep a lid on all that. That’s why I’ve never laid hands on anyone!”
“Um, most people haven’t done that, sir…”
“And then you come along! You come along and spoil it all! You have the most perfect body of anyone I’ve ever brought into my fold! The aroma surrounding you has unleashed the desires I formerly suppressed! I can stand it no longer… I must eat you! I will!”
He was panting, and in his eyes there was no trace of the kindness and compassion I’d seen on the day he’d recruited me.
“All this time I’ve found attractive young ladies and hired them for my office, and I’ve always resisted eating them. Yet this past month, I’ve wanted nothing so bad as to consume one. The urge has haunted me every hour! I can’t take it anymore!”
He was crazed; he didn’t look like a beastkin any longer, but merely like a beast, salivating over his prey.
“I-I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not into that kind of thing! I don’t think I can help you!”
“One bite! Just one bite, I beg you!”
“No, don’t! Please stop!”
“You might like to know, I’m a thigh man. Give me one of those luscious legs!”
“Why are we still talking about eating me?!” I cried, tears in my eyes. Didn’t I say no?! I edged along the wall, looking for some way to escape.
Incidentally, are you familiar with the “wall-slam”? It’s what all the boys seem to do to the girls in this sort of situation in the books I read these days. If an inexperienced young maiden like me may be so bold, let me explain it to you just in case you don’t know. It’s when there’s a wall, and the guy plants his hand firmly against it, like, slam! Then he stares straight at the girl. That’s the wall-slam.
The president must have known the heart of a young maiden, because he obligingly slammed the wall so hard that his paw took a chunk out of it.
“Don’t you run from me!”
“Yes, sir! I mean, no, sir!” I said, briefly cowed by the extraordinary force of his wall-slam.
From so close that I could feel the heat of his breath, the president growled, “Put the perfume on.”
How did we get here? How had I wound up in this situation?
I’d gone through job after job, I got let go every time, and my subsequent search had yielded no new employers. When someone finally asked me to join their business, I only ended up despised by my coworkers and tricked into putting on some weird perfume, and to top it all off, now I was about to be eaten!
Perfume of Destiny, my ass! I didn’t meet a single destined partner this entire time. All that waiting and hoping, and for what?
“U-um… Are you really going to eat me? Could we just stop now? I promise I won’t tell the police.” My voice was shaking, but I somehow managed to at least pretend not to be out of my mind with fear. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t give up. He hadn’t eaten me yet.
“I don’t care what you promise. Put on the damn perfume.”
“But—”
“Do it already!” He slammed the wall again, taking out another chunk.
“Y-yessir! Sorry, sir!”
If I didn’t do what he said, he looked like he might just swallow me whole. I dug through my bag until I came up with the perfume. I applied a spritz to my wrist.
A faint smell of roses enveloped us, and even as I watched, the president’s terrifying expression softened. “Ahh! Yes, that’s the stuff! That’s the smell I’ve been waiting for!” He was on cloud nine. He breathed deep, his shoulders rising and falling, looking as satisfied as if he’d already had his meal. But he hadn’t—and he pressed closer to me.
“H-hey, um! I really wish… I wish you wouldn’t! Could you stop? If you get any closer, Mr. President, I mean, it…it would be criminal!”
“Me, a criminal…? Yes, that would be a problem.”
“S-so you’ll stop?”
“What I’ll do is eat my fill tonight and consider it my last meal!”
He crouched down and grabbed my leg with both hands. I heard him gulp. He looked ecstatic as the breath rushed from his nostrils. He opened his mouth to reveal a row of perfectly sharp fangs, which gradually advanced toward my leg…
My mind went blank.
“Roses are such a lovely aroma, aren’t they?”
What? When had she gotten there? She was facing him where he crouched in front of me.
“Wha—?” I said.
It was the red-haired woman, the owner of Riviere Antiques, holding a closed umbrella…
She didn’t seem too worried that I obviously had no idea what was going on. She brought the umbrella down on the president; it whistled through the air and cracked him on the forehead. It didn’t look like much of a hit, but in the space of a second, the president had flown down the street.
“Wha—ghhaaaa!” he cried as he tumbled head over heels.
Wait… What just happened?
I must have had question marks floating over my head—my brain couldn’t keep up. The woman had helped me? Why? Hadn’t she been out to get me?
“Stay behind me,” the woman said, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. Then she moved so she was between me and the president.