Smells Like Teen Spirit

"You know what?" Ophelia said, springing to her feet. "I really think you're right." She darted across the room and grabbed the bottle of Void Blossom from the shelf. Before Erik could say a word, she sprayed three quick blasts of it onto her face and neck. The room thickened once again with the heady scent of flowers as Ophelia clutched the perfume like a talisman.

"What-what are you doing?" Erik asked, his face a picture of surprise. He looked almost comically stunned by her actions. Ophelia smiled grimly, enjoying the satisfaction of putting him on the wrong foot for a change.

"It's simple," she said, crossing back over to the door. "The antidote lasts what, ten minutes? Fifteen? But the door won't open for thirty. I've been thinking all this time that I needed to resist your drug until the door opens and I can wash it off, but that's wrong, and you knew it, didn't you? I just need to refresh the antidote. That's the key, the way out of your fucked up little trap. Hiding in plain sight while you laughed. I have an unlimited supply of the antidote, and you didn't even think I'd notice."

"Ophelia," Erik said, "please, think about this for a moment. I know you're upset right now-"

"Damn fucking straight I'm upset," she said, waiting with vulture-like patience in front of the door. She didn't know if it would really open in another fifteen minutes, and she felt sure that the woman who led her in here (another one of Erik's victims? Oh God, how many girls had he done this to? Was Hecate one of his drugged-up groupie slaves?) would be waiting outside. She needed to be ready to bull-rush her way past.

She raised her voice as she continued, drowning Erik out with her words. "And when I get out of this, Erik, you better be ready to get your ass to Venezuela or something, because I am going to tell everyone about this. You're going to be Buzzfeed's top headline. 'Woman Tells Gruesome Story of Perfume Designer's Drugged Sex Cult', how does that grab you?" She pulled out her phone again. Still no signal, but she only had another ten minutes to go before the door unlocked. She gave herself another half a spritz, just to be on the safe side.

"It's all going to come crashing down," she said, her body tense with anticipation. "You're going to jail, you're going to lose all your money, they're going to take away any of the other girls you've kidnapped-" It suddenly hit her just how few of the members of the SFAS forums talked about their life, how narrowly focused the discussions were on perfume and fashion and...oh fuck. There was a whole sub-forum on kink. How had she not even noticed?

Erik kept talking, giving her more of his pseudo-brainwashing bullshit about what a mistake she was making and how good she would feel when she just gave in and accepted the bliss of obedience and blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. She shut him out and stared at her phone, grateful that pulling it out was one of the first things she did. It gave her a good idea of how long she needed to wait. She sprayed herself again at the twenty-five minute mark, and began jiggling the door handle.

At twenty-nine minutes, it turned. Ophelia flipped off the screen without turning around and give it a huge push, putting her full weight behind it. She half-expected it to run into resistance, a barricade or a very surprised human being or something, but it swung wide easily and Ophelia was on the move before her brain could catch up to her adrenaline-fueled body.

When it did, though, she skidded to a dead stop. She wasn't in the warehouse anymore, or at least not in the same place she was when she came in. This was a long, narrow row of cubicles, each one with dividers taller than Ophelia could see over. Most of them were empty, but she could see that a few of them had comfortable office chairs and computers on the desks, and little placards on the walls with names like 'Isadore' and 'Moonshadow' and 'Raven'. She looked at the room behind her. The door closed again, and silently, two other doors slid into place behind it.

An elevator, she realized. It wasn't a room, it was an elevator. The weird lurches she felt earlier weren't in her head at all; the room moved, and it carried her with it. She was suddenly terrified by the thought that she almost set the antidote down before she made a run for it-if she had, she wouldn't have had any at all. She would have been lost down here, wherever she was, stuck waiting for the antidote to wear off and the drug to kick in...

"You're a lying sack of shit, Erik!" she shouted, as she started to run again.

The computer screens flickered to life around her as she passed them, each one showing Erik's face. "Not lying," he said, "just disingenuous. I told you that the doors would open in thirty minutes, and that you'd be free to go; I just didn't mention that you'd have a few additional complications to deal with. You weren't the first person to figure out that trick with the antidote, by the way. I didn't want to say anything, because, well...you seemed so proud of yourself."

Ophelia tried to shut him out as she came to a T-junction. She looked left, then right. Both directions seemed to end in more cubicles. She looked up, but the cavernous basement seemed to extend into darkness and shadows overhead. She picked a direction at random and ran.

She saw as she passed them that a few of the cubicles were occupied. The women in them were completely nude, helplessly masturbating to a looping cycle of images on the screen. Ophelia caught a glimpse of words flashing by, but she didn't stop to read them. Each and every woman had a small bottle at their desk. Periodically, one of them would reach out and spray her chest with it. The scent that came off of them was...absolutely heavenly. Ophelia hated to admit it, but it made their goddamn sweat smell better than sex.

She came to a right turn, then another T-junction. She took a left and kept running. She didn't need to find a way out, she told herself. She just needed to find a bathroom. She could wipe this shit off, get out from under the countdown Erik had her trapped in and-shit! She spritzed herself liberally from the perfume bottle, suddenly terrified at how close she'd come to forgetting. It was the air in here, she told herself. It was filled with that heady, musky aroma that distracted her, made her cunt throb with need. But Erik told her that the scent wasn't enough, right? It was the drug that did it. And she had the antidote.

"I told you that you were making a mistake," Erik said, his voice echoing from one empty cubicle after another. "If you'd only decided to tough it out, you could maybe, just maybe have resisted. It would have been difficult-maybe even impossible-but you're a very strong-willed woman, Ophelia. You had a chance."

She ran down another row of cubicles, then another, her sense of direction now hopelessly confused. Her nostrils were filled with the scent of Void Blossom, making her ache for a moment to herself, just a few minutes to relieve the tingling in her pussy. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and gave herself another spray of the antidote. It seemed like it was wearing off quicker and quicker now.

"But you tried to cheat," Erik said in tones of mild rebuke. "You gave yourself extra doses of the antidote and hoped you could wash yourself off before it all caught up with you. Which, fair enough, you didn't make the rules...but if you'd only asked me, I could have told you why that was a bad idea."

Ophelia felt herself slowing down, her stride becoming a walk and then a lazy amble. She gave herself another spray of the antidote, trying to keep herself awake, but thoughts of escape fled as she passed a cubicle with a nameplate that read 'Hecate'. Ophelia stopped dead, staring for a long moment at the woman sitting at the desk. It was bizarre-she'd imagined meeting Hecate someday, thought about all the ways they could bump into each other or set up a time to hang out, but the other woman had always been busy. And now Ophelia knew why.

Hecate had henna-red hair and hazel eyes that had long ago stopped seeing anything but the endless loop of sexual images on the computer screen. Ophelia watched her friend play with her soaking pussy as the words embedded into each image programmed her. 'Obey Master Erik'. 'Surrender to Obedience'. 'Sink Into Bliss'. 'Go Blank'. 'You Need to Submit'. Ophelia felt a strange sense of timelessness steal over her as she watched her friend watch screen after screen of women kneeling, collared, naked and obedient for Erik Midnight. She felt like she could watch forever. She felt like she had watched forever.

She heard Erik's voice behind her, and a flush of arousal passed through her at the sound of it. "Every time you sprayed yourself," he said, "you added a new dose of the antidote. But you also added a new dose of the drug. The old doses of the antidote wore off...but the old doses of the drug stayed with you. Growing stronger. Overwhelming the antidote. Overwhelming your resistance. Until it was impossible to resist at all."

A woman walked past her, stopping at a cubicle and taking her clothes off before sitting down at the empty chair and beginning to masturbate. Ophelia barely noticed. She was staring at the screen, watching the way Hecate looked so absorbed in the cycle of hypnotic images. So blissful. She seemed perfectly happy to 'Obey Master Erik'. She seemed so fulfilled by her 'Surrender to Obedience'. She seemed so overjoyed to 'Sink Into Bliss' and 'Go Blank'. She...she...

"You understand now, don't you?" Erik asked. "You understand how good it feels, how absurd the thought of resistance truly is?" His voice sounded different, more present, and she felt fingers hooking into her clothing and pulling it off. She nodded, the perfume bottle slipping from her nerveless fingers to clunk onto the carpet. She didn't care anymore. All she wanted to do was surrender to obedience. All she wanted to do was go blank. All she needed to do was submit and obey Master Erik.

"Very good," he said, taking her by the hand. He led her to the cubicle next to Hecate. She was unsurprised to see that it was prepared with her name on it. She had never truly been free, she realized. All this time, Erik had been guiding her to this spot, steering her through the maze with his voice until she reached her true destination. She sat down in the chair, and the screen flickered to life.

"Just watch for a while, pretty pet," he said, carefully caressing her. "Just let the words sink in until they feel like truth." She felt the touch of latex and smiled absently-of course Master couldn't touch her now, not while she was still wet with his hypnotic drugs. She would have to be programmed before he could caress her freely. She wanted that so much now. Her hand drifted down between her legs almost of its own volition.

"And when you're ready," Erik continued, "we'll get your things and you can join us here permanently. Doesn't that sound nice? A bed of your own, a place to reinforce your programming whenever you need to-you'll still need to go to your job, of course. But I think you'll find that time will drift by quite pleasantly. Like a dream. A dream of obedience to me."

Ophelia sighed softly, the pleasure saturating her drowsy brain. The images looped over and over, sinking into the back of her head. She felt herself stop thinking, like letting go of a heavy weight she didn't even notice she was carrying. Her stare became fixed and glassy. "That's it," Erik said, stroking her hair. He set a small bottle on the desk in front of her. "Good girl."

As her first orgasm hit, Ophelia reached out and sprayed herself again.

THE END