AgraRipe
TUESDAY
There had been one layoff.
Jack, the security guard. Honestly, Myra might not even have noticed except that chinos-blonde was the new front desk person, right inside the building. She wore a snug fleece jacket in pink with AGRA on one boob, an ID card on the other, and RIPE probably beneath that. She blew bubble gum, also pink.
Myra usually got in early. Single, commuting from nearby, she could be out of bed and at the office ten minutes later. Just throw on something dark and dour. She had spent the night before googling “Walter Rapaport” and drinking vodka. There were reassuring references to him as a financier in industry trade magazines.
“Can I see your ID?” the blonde asked. Myra looked down at the one on the blonde’s prominent chest. The name read, “Katie!” There was an actual exclamation mark.
“Company ID?” Myra asked.
Katie! nodded.
“I don’t have one. We’ve never had one,” Myra said.
“Oh. What’s your name?” Katie asked.
“Myra.”
“Hold on a sec Myra!” Katie said. She bent over and looked through a cardboard box. Her pants fought to keep her butt inside. They were J. Crew, it said so on the label, which, Myra thought, luckily meant quality stitching. It was way too porno a sight for 7:30 a.m. “Here, got it!”
Katie handed over an ID badge. It read “Myra!” with a picture Myra didn’t remember getting. She was smiling in it, which seemed unusual.
“Myra!” Myra said.
“Great!” Katie said, beaming. “Now, can I see your ID?”
Upstairs, Kay was being a pig.
An array of snacks in brands Myra didn’t recognize were piled around her low-slung secretarial table. The legal team had a small suite of offices on the third from the top floor of their building. Too small—opening the door all the way would smack the particle board.
“Kay, what are all these?” Myra said, eventually. Kay was halfway through a chocolate bar. Brown goo coated her lips. She had shaggy light-brown hair that could be blonde in the right light, and wore way too much bangly jewelry for a girl just out of high school. Myra figured she dabbled in 90s-era New Age but hadn’t cared enough to ask.
“Snacks,” Kay said, eventually.
“Yeah, I get that,” Myra said. She prodded at them. They were all in brightly-colored plastic bags, with cheap typography and graphics. Bottom row supermarket stuff. “Choco Balls? Big Lips? Roobs? The hell are these?” she asked, examining them.
“Do you want a cupcake?” Kay asked. “I’ve had like…. Um….” she searched for the number for way too long. “Four. I had four.”
She held out a pink box with a mix of fluorescent baked goods inside. Neon pink and neon blue, eight of the blue, four of the pink. They did smell good.
“Are they good?” Myra asked, eventually. God, she wanted one. The smell of buttercream was intoxicating.
“They’re fucking. Fantastic,” Kay said, solemnly.
Myra hesitated. Well. This had to be to celebrate new management. It seemed so gender-normative to take a pink but.. They seemed to smell… better. She knew they’d be the best ones.
“Todd! Eat cupcakes!” Kay shouted, as their paralegal walked in.
Todd walked over. The man was built on a larger scale, easily six foot two, his shoulders broad and wide and invariably in a rumpled polo. He took a blue cupcake without hesitation.
“Good morning,” he said. “Myra, Kay.”
He was the most solemn man Myra had ever met. He was younger then she was, with a big, honest face. He read philosophy books apparently—at least, he had them on his sparse bookcase. Not a single time had he ever asked about her weekend or her personal life. It was maddening.
“How was your weekend?” Myra tried. She was honest about her crush on him. He was the one man she saw on a regular basis. That was what it was.
“Fine,” he said, and headed off to his office, holding the cupcake. He sniffed it, then came back, and picked up a second one, without saying a word.
“I hate all men,” Myra said quietly, watching him go. “He could probably eat a dozen.” Myra was perhaps 5′ 4″. She had big eyes and long lashes, which she liked, and a fairly big nose, which she hated. Her body was designed to be squat, tough, resilient. When she looked herself in the mirror, naked, she could see the results of thousands of years of natural selection in the peasantry.
Lydia appeared at the entrance to her door. “Myra,” she said, and ghosted back in. Her version of a summons.
“It’s a good thing I’m here,” Myra muttered. Between taciturn Todd and Lydia and now Kay with her mouth glued shut, she was the only one able to talk.
She finished the cupcake before she got into the office.
Peter left Walter’s office. He closed the door behind him. He leaned against it, and thought.
He was well-dressed, especially for the area. Early in his career he had gone to a tech sales convention in a shit suit and Penneys shoes, and saw the “yokel” expectation on everyone’s register. From then on, day and night, it was at least Brooks Brothers. Pajamas too.
Seemed a bit pointless now, if Walter was right.
Probably a good idea to see if he was right.
Two girls in Walter’s entourage currently served as secretaries. They were dressed for the job in thin blazers and shiny white blouses with straining buttons. Peter had assumed they were secretly laughing at their ridiculous, horny boss. Apparently not.
“You’re… Mindy?” he said, to the closest one. “Could you come with me for a second?”
She rose immediately. Peter was on edge, alert for any sign that this was some sort of joke. That he was walking into some bizarre trap. How could he even phrase this to give him plausible deniability? “Can you….” he stumbled. “Help me…. Give relief?”
Mindy’s eyebrows crinkled daintily. She was nearly taller then him, on shiny red heels. She turned to her friend. “Is he asking for a handjob?” she said, puzzled.
Peter let out a deep breath. He laughed, involuntarily. Mindy took it the wrong way. “It’s just I haven’t given a handjob,” she said, with disdain “in AGES. I mean, I got these tits!” She hefted them.
“I’m sure he wants to cum on your tits,” the friend said, reassuringly.
“Do you want to cum on my tits?” Mindy asked, all seriousness. “No? Fuck? Fuck doggy? Me on top? Missionary? Blowjob? Blowjob with her? Do you want me to lick her while you jack off over us? Do you just want to jack off on my tits? Do you want to fuck my ass? Or I suck your balls?”
“Stop!” Peter said, eventually. He rubbed a hand down his face. Was he being… changed… or was his throbbing hard-on just the consequence of this big-titted girl talking dirty to him like it was a conversation on the weather? Offering each and every hole, making clear that she was nothing more than a toy at best, a bunch of holes at least, to be jizzed into and onto.
It was time to take control.
Peter unbuckled his belt. Yes. Control. Dominance. That had been the second half of Walter’s pep talk. He was a man, he needed to act like it. And that clearly meant jizzing gobs of cum all over two friendly faces until they were coated in sperm. He could feel a mighty load boiling up in his balls. This was going to be something.
“You,” he said, pointing to Mindy. “You’re going to get me undressed. You,” he pointed to the friend, who sprang up from her chair, pleased. “You’re going to suck me first. Then you’re going to trade off. Whoever gets me off first gets the first load of cum in their.. Uh…” he stumbled just a little, the unreality of it all just briefly asserting itself. But then Mindy had her hands down his pants, pulling out a cock ready for a sucking. “Face. In their face. Lets go, girls. Time is money. And when you’re done, we’re going for cupcakes.”
Under the circumstances, he felt like he had negotiated a pretty good deal.
Sometimes Myra wondered if Lydia drove her crazy just because of the sheer contradiction of it all. That if Lydia was an icy partner at some white-shoe firm in the very center of New York City, it would all seem right and just—like finding a tiger in the jungle. But instead, the blonde worked in the same shit-scented building as the rest of them, commuting from a midsized town with several streets, her desk scratched and ancient. Her window looked out over acres of pasturage and various crops.
Her boss sat at her desk. “Myra.” she said. She indicated that Myra take a seat with the slightest nod. Why did she even care if Myra sat down? And then she waited, patient, motionless, while she did.
“We’ve been tasked by Mr. Rapaport with a project,” she said, without preamble.
“That’s the new owner?” Myra said. Being deliberately obtuse was the only way to learn anything.
“Yes,” Lydia said. She was a snow blonde, her hair coiled and stiff. She favored white pearls. She was only, perhaps, a decade older than Myra, not that her birthday appeared on the company list. “Walter Rapaport. CEO of Agraripe.”
“Previously of..?” Myra said.
Lydia conceded ever so slightly to the elephant in the room. “He had existing counsel work on the deal, of course. I assume our previous owner did the same.”
“You ASSUME?” Myra said, unable to contain herself. So the entire sale had cut out legal entirely? That was unheard of.
Lydia gave her a flat, unaffected look. Usually it was enough to cow Myra.
“You mean you didn’t know this was coming?” the attorney said.
“Myra.” Lydia said. She shifted in her seat. Her pearls shone in the sun. “We have an assignment. You have an assignment.”
Myra paused. There was an unexpected scent in here. Sugar-pastry. Had Lydia…?
“We are cross-checking personnel files. They’re a decade out of date. Next of kin, family, all that needs to be brought up to date. Please work promptly on it.”
There. Trash can. A cupcake wrapper! Partially obscured by an empty folder that had to be a way to hide it. So Lydia had succumbed to the cupcakes as well. It was gratifying. The woman closed her door between noon and 1. If she ate anything, Myra had never seen it.
“Can do,” Myra said.
She rewarded herself for the encounter with another cupcake. That cleaned out the box.
The disc came in a white plastic sleeve. It was unmarked, and a little unclear, at first glance, what side was up and what was down.
“What does it do?” the sales lady asked. She sucked on a lolipop, sitting cross-legged on her chair. Her skirt was a little short for it. Erin kept her eyes on the computer.
“I have no clue,” Erin was tempted to say. But as checked out as she was, it was part of the code of IT to appear omniscient. “It optimizes code as part of the company transition,” she said, instead. There.
But the reality was, she really had no clue. She and Cam and Paul had been handed the discs and were told to install them on every single computer in the company. Manually. The company was backwards but they did at least have basic networking capacity and the ability to push new applications remotely. They were a technology company, by god. But no.
The disc held an executable and nothing else. You ran it and nothing happened. Well, one thing, the wallpaper changed to a garish pink and blue AGRARIPE! pattern. That at least told you it was doing something.
The sales girl’s desk was littered with drinks, wrappers, half-eaten candies, chocolate puddles, napkins. Erin privately wondered how long the sales girl’s waistline would last under the new regime. Occasionally one of the ridiculous-looking sexbots wandered by, bearing new cases of calories. Somewhere out there a baker was getting really rich off cupcake profits.
The cubicle smelled like a Wonka factory. The only exception was one of the blue cupcakes, which had just a tiny bite taken out of it. The girl saw Erin eyeing it.
“Do you want it?” she said. The girl toyed with her hair. She shifted, and Erin got a clear view at the woman’s underwear. Erin rolled her eyes. “It’s not very good. The pink ones are the good ones. SO good. I’ve had, like... “ she trailed off. Erin waited, then got back to watching the install. It was true, the blue ones smelled like harsh black licorice. “How many?” Erin finally said, as she popped the disk out.
“Umm…” the girl said. She tilted her head and popped out some bubblegum. Erin was appalled. She had watched this girl shovel in sugars and baked goods, one after another, and she had gum in there the entire time? “A lot.” she finally finished. “A lot a lot.”
The IT group was too near the elevators, in an under-finished suite without ceiling panels. The endless whoosh of the elevator motors was somewhat masked by the hum of an enormous amount of old CRTs and power supplies. Both Cam and Paul ran at least five computers at all times, each of them simulating a sad little hacker den.
The boys stood up against the wall, working on something. One of the cupcake boxes had appeared. None of the blue ones were touched, but there was a single pink remaining. Erin stood motionless, then went for it. She had been smelling them all day. It was criminal not to try one.
“No, she has to go higher,” Cam said. “Blonde goes higher.”
“You are just obsessed with hair color,” Paul complained. “Hair color is bullshit. It’s dumb and it’s bullshit and you need to stop it. You can just dye hair.”
“You can get a boob job. And that’s stupid, rating based on how hard it is to change. That’s so dumb. Are you saying boobs get less weight because you can make them bigger?”
“No, I’m saying that you’re overweighting blondes,” Paul said. Both of them were short, prone to wearing shorts to work, and about to start balding. Cam, however, wore glasses. “Look, don’t make me play the race card.”
“Do it, go ahead!” Cam said. Erin wandered over. It wasn’t accurate to say that they treated her like one of the boys. Cam and Paul barely noticed her at all. In a way it was like Myra’s situation, except that Erin didn’t care. She viewed them like involuntarily listening to a boring, sexist podcast. But this was curious.
The two had printed out snapshots of a number of the new, scantily-clad girls wandering the halls. All had apparently been all too happy to get their pictures taken, posing with wide smiles, and, frankly, pushing their tits out for admiration.
This was too much, even for Erin. She reached over to the wall of pictures, which had a blonde with gigantic boobs at the very top, and ripped them all down.
Cam and Paul regarded her with shock.
“Is this about you being asian?” Paul asked.
“There aren’t any asian ones,” Cam said. “We checked.”
“I finished this building off,” Erin reported. Ripped apart beauties wafted to her feet. Her move was undercut, a little, by still holding half a cupcake. Both of the boys also held pink cupcakes. It surprised Erin, even if she couldn’t really pinpoint why. “What’s the next job?”
“Uhh.. nothing,” Cam said. “There’s apparently some network stuff but it’s all being handled off-site by someone else.”
“Someone else,” Erin said. She glanced at the wall. She had missed the picture at the very bottom, a plenty-attractive redhead whose boobs just happened to be obscured by a bunch of cardboard boxes. “Someone else has free access to our network and is making a bunch of changes remotely, is that what you mean? And you don’t even know their name?”
Paul rolled his eyes. He finished off the cupcake, and talked with his mouth full. “Cam, we’re restarting the wall, and this time, we’re doing it holistically.”
Myra rubbed at her eyes. It had been a trying day. A long day of phone calls, updating personnel files that dated back into the 1990s. Twice she had reminded others of long-dead relatives, several had accused her of running a scam, there had been many, many divorces in the interim. Update e-mails had come in from a disturbingly small percentage of the workforce, which meant she was going to have to pound shoe leather and shake them down for answers.
The day was hot, and whatever innovations the new CEO was introducing, he couldn’t magically add better A/C overnight. So Myra sweated in clothes meant for January. The new girls walked by from time to time, carrying their boxes of candy and t-shirts and water bottles and calories and sweets. Myra had chugged probably four or five bottles herself, guzzling the stuff. It tasted just a bit sweet.
God, she had to pee again. She was like a firehose today. It was nearly four, and she had spent like an hour staring at the bathroom stall. At least it meant less work.
She passed Kay on the way out. The secretary had been a pig all day, slurping on suckers when she wasn’t wrist-deep in donuts. True, it was hard to stop when your desk was essentially a buffet. The girl had taken her glasses off and had her feet up. She rubbed gently at her stomach while working on a cupcake.
“How many have you had today, Kay?” Myra asked. She tried not to sound too condemnatory. Myra had scarfed down probably a half-dozen, herself. She had skipped lunch and was mainlining buttercream.
“Oh my god. How many is a baker’s dozen?” Kay said, groaning.
“13.”
“Ugh. Like a bunch of bakers. I don’t even know. I cannot stop with these,” she looked momentarily concerned, then grabbed another cupcake. Sugar haze wafted in the air. In one day they had gone from cow country to smelling like a bakery explosion. “Oh my god, Myra, help me stop. I’m going to be all butt. I’m going to be a big, walking, butt, with a face.”
It was tempting to hit another, but her bladder called. Myra made her way to the bathroom.
The door swung open.
There was the strangest buzzing noise, inside.
A razor? Something battery operated. But it stopped, immediately.
There was a pair of feet in the second stall. Wearing low-slung black heels. Legal practically had this floor to themselves, and she had just passed Kay, so…
Lydia? Her boss was in there?
Myra couldn’t remember ever seeing Lydia in something so coarse and common as the bathroom. She couldn’t imagine her boss ever peeing in front of a subordinate, certainly. It was unthinkable.
Lydia shaving something was just as unthinkable. Myra mouthed the word “vibrator” and barely had the guts to think it. But she had a plastic friend at home. The thin whine was pretty distinctive.
The shoes were motionless.
Myra couldn’t leave, abruptly. She forced herself into the other stall, sat down quietly. The shoes stood up, banged open the door, and closed the door. Without washing her hands, Myra noted.
“Oh my god,” Myra said out loud.
Lydia had been masturbating.
Myra looked for Lydia’s door as soon as she walked back in to the office. The door was closed. That was kind of a relief.
But there was an e-mail from Lydia waiting for her.
It read, “Please enter these new employees into the personnel files, thanks.”
There were twenty of them, and they were all girls.
It took Myra no time at all, because every single field was unpopulated. No phone numbers. No relatives. Names, birthdates, social security numbers. That was it. For an address, they all had written down the same location. That turned out to be a big house on the outskirts of town. Were they all dorming it there, part of the transition team? No point in putting the rest of the information because of an expected brief tenure?
Myra tried to talk herself into it. Meanwhile, the buzzing played over and over in her head. In her mind the vibrator changed from a small button to a sensible buzzer to a veiny, oversized plastic cock ten inches long. Black. Rubber, not plastic.
Myra straightened.
Wait, she DID hear it. She shared a wall with Lydia. She held her breath and put her ear to the adjoining wall. There it was again, just on the edge of hearing. Oh, god.
It was so HOT in here. Images of vibrators danced in her head. Myra grabbed another bottle of water and chugged, and didn’t stop until it was empty. Didn’t spill a drop.
Then she went to see Todd.
It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to talk to Todd. It was hard to talk to Todd. The man was just… laconic. Either he was born that way or something about his boss’ chilly work ethic had rubbed off on him. No matter the case, it was disconcerting to have a six foot three man with light blue eyes look back at her, and not say anything.
“Todd. Lets talk,” Myra said. Todd kept his office as empty and impersonal as Lydia’s, too. And it lacked a window.
The man raised his eyebrows at her. It was so much like Lydia that any thought of discussing important work gossip re: masturbating blondes went out the window.
“What..’s going on with this buyout, anyway?” Myra said. She fidgeted. It was tough to go from daydreaming about fingering and hitachi magic wands, to a penetrating male gaze. She felt like a schoolgirl, about to be disciplined.
“Yeah,” Todd said. He tapped his fingers on his desk. “It’s been bothering me, too. I’ve been going through corporate formation documents and looking at entity databases.” Myra felt unaccountable disappointment when he looked back at his computer. “I’m not surprised this is a shell but I am surprised that it doesn’t have any securities listings. It’s… strange.”
It was the longest speech that Todd had ever delivered, to her knowledge. Myra blinked. “Right!” she added, lamely.
“I’m going backwards through Walter’s public persona but it’s not helping. I’ll just have to try something new,” Todd rose, abruptly. He towered over Myra. He was rail-thin, and dressed like an urbane scarecrow. Erin liked to call him Mantis. “Anyway, it’s past six. I’m going home. Walk you out?”
“Oh, uh, okay,” Myra said. Where did the time go? “Lazing in your chair, thinking about dildos,” an inner voice told her.
“Want the last one?” Todd said. He handed out a cupcake. A blue cupcake. Myra reached towards it almost automatically, and stopped.
“I’ve only had the pink ones,” she admitted.
“That’s a little sexist,” Todd said.
“Yeah. Well, what’s a sixteenth cupcake,” Myra said. She pulled it close. The licorice scent was overpowering. She took a single bite.
The wad she spit up landed square on Todd’s desk. It was like biting into a cow hide, raw leather and old boots. The cream was the worst part. She could feel it swishing around her nose.
“Didn’t like it?” Todd said. He ate the rest in a single bite. Myra gagged. How could he stand it?
They left together. Kay was still at her desk, feet up, gently dozing, crumbs littering her shirt.
Peter wasn’t taking any particular chances. Sarah was a junior salesgirl, anxious to please, happy to go out on an important call. He had been plying her with cupcakes and bottled water and snacks and whatever the entire way.
“Can we make another pit stop?” the girl said, shifting in her seat. She was a very dark brunette. Well, she was. Walter had given him a special something to speed up the whole process. The key tell that it was working was that the girl would go stark blonde.
Ash-white curls tapped Sarah’s chin.
“Another?” Peter said, mock serious. “We stopped, what, an hour ago?”
He smiled at her. Sarah smiled back, wanly. There was a bead of sweat on her forehead. Well, her metabolism was working pretty hard, Peter figured. She had gone through a dozen snack cakes, a bunch of sugar donuts, who knows how many cupcakes, and all while smacking an ever-growing glob of gum. They were off to meet with one of their few remaining clients, an agricultural concern with a doddering IT head. Even so, he had been making noises about switching, finally conscious to being five years behind the times.
Peter pulled off and over at a gas station. Sarah waddled off and inside, practically sloshing. She was dressed practically but not unpleasantly in a knee-length skirt, and it was starting to pull hard over her ass. There was something cheap but nice about straining polyester on top of a thick ass.
Peter took the chance to readjust his hardon, again. It was already noticeably larger, and swung between his legs pleasantly while he walked. Little chirps of morality and concern occasionally bothered him. But it was like Walter had said—it felt really, really good.
He wondered, from time to time, if Walter had made him this way, if he had been doped and rewired to be a calculating cocksman. Had he been willing all along to drug a co-worker into a murmuring fucktoy, given the means?
He was getting his balls drained four times a day, now, servicing females from the bimbo corps as they crossed his path. It made it hard to care about ethics.
“Welcome back,” he said, cheerfully, when Sarah got back. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing hot and hard. Peter sniffed when she got in the car; no doubt she was wet and dripping. Her tits had thickened. She returned automatically to stuffing her face.
“So Sarah, lets talk about this meeting,” Peter said. He casually rested his hand on her leg. Sarah looked at it. It’d be interesting to know what was going on in her head, besieged by his very male scent, the chemical overload of salty and sweet snacks, the more subtle reprogramming materials. It was to her credit that she could focus her eyes.
“I’m gonna do the talking,” Peter said. He put his hand between her legs. He had to push just slightly to get her to move her thighs apart. He smiled. There was just something about that subtle move, giving him access to her body. It marked the line between coworker and a body that he could fuck as he pleased. He rubbed gently at her slit. That had been easy.
Sarah moaned. She made some feeble attempts at words. “Peter… I … ummm… this is…. Uhhhmmmm..” her head lolled back. Her lips were coated with pink icing. Peter withdrew his hand, already wet, and scooped up the sugar flecks with his finger. Then he put it in her mouth.
There was something special about frosting and lubricant, together. Sarah’s eyes bulged, and she sucked, suddenly needy, against his fingers. Her gaze dulled, gazed at the ceiling without any recognition. Walter had said that that was the signal.
“You’re gonna do what I say,” Peter said, letting her nuzzle. He longed to pull over. But there really wasn’t time, and Sarah needed to be at a fever pitch. Frankly, even with a sex toy as a bargaining chip, this was going to be a tough sale. “I want you to act pretty for this, to start. We’ll get that bra off. And your underwear.”
He paused. It wouldn’t work to walk in with a girl wearing a soaking wet skirt. Damn, he should’ve thought of this ahead of time.
“There’s a pretty good chance I’m just gonna give you to Nathaniel, that’s the IT guy there. He’s married so that might complicate things. Well, maybe you can be onsite staff,” Peter considered. “Anyway, I want you to blow the hell out of him. Blowjobs blowjobs blowjobs.” It was weird, sort of, the way she was treating his index finger like a pacifier. The sugar and sex mixture had to be long dissolved. Oh well.
He pulled his fingers free. Sarah whined, disappointed. They sat for a second, soaked in sin, coursing with hormones and going 90. Sarah’s stomach rumbled, and she resumed snacking, unwrapping a lollipop with shaking fingers. Her hair had gone fully bleached blonde.
Eventually she started to drool.
“Sarah?” Peter said, eventually.
She was able to look towards him, raise her eyebrows, while her tongue worked over the neon rainbow of the sucker surface. Walter had mentioned, casually, that the fast-acting stuff was a “little rough”.
It was hard to feel bad. She was just a female, albeit one of breeding age.
They sat in silence, quietly transforming, except that after awhile Sarah started to finger herself.