A convenience store - The night shift clerk

My surroundings are boxed-in and littered with bright shelves of plastic and paper. The one window in this room looks out onto a pitch-black night with only the occasional street light for guidance. And the woman behind the counter John is standing at, whose nametag says "Hi! My name is SHARON" - Sharon looks very, very tired.

Not a bad specimen, either. Her ample breasts fill out her striped corporate livery of a uniform, the chest of her polo shirt hugging around and underneath her curves as if to accentuate her boobs' natural shape. What a waste, being trapped here to labor in a cell of retail horrors when she clearly has such bodily talents!

Sharon looks at me, blinks slowly, then says, "Oh, great. One of those cosplayers. When was there a con in town?"

I grin. I know exactly what's happening - my natural succubine form is a little inscrutable to the human eye, so the way I'm perceived differs between humans based on their expectations. Clearly, Sharon thinks of succubi as no more than things people dress up as. When she looks at me, I can only imagine she sees a woman with cheap headband horns, a barely-tightened corset, maybe a dangling velcro heart-tipped tail.

"How did you guess?" I chuckle at her before turning to John. "Why'd you pick her? Let me guess, her chest?"

Sharon folds her arms under her generous tits and frowns at hearing that. She seems about to object to the remark, though I wave at her with a snappy little hand gesture that allows John time to respond. "Yeah. Seemed like a waste to just leave her here."

I pull out my journalist's notebook and swiftly begin to scrawl. "Leave her stuck in this dead-end job, you mean?"

"I know how these pay. Graveyard shift sucks too." John turns to the clerk, who still has her arms crossed under her chest, frozen still with her mouth open. "Doesn't it?"

Returning to motion, Sharon's mouth falls shut. She blinks confusedly, then uncrosses her arms. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, it does. Uh, I'm not really meant to talk to the customers. Are you two gonna buy something, or..."

"Oh, ignore that! Nobody's watching," I say with a grin. "Actually, we have a beneficial proposition for you. A way to get you out of here!"

"You do?" she says.

"We do?" John asks me.

"Yes! It's very simple. You," and I point at John with my pen, then over to Sharon, "are going to buy her! Any questions?"

"Yes!" Sharon blurts, sounding more fed up by the second. "Yes?" John responds to me uncertainly.

"One at a time," I say, waving at Sharon again to delay her reactions. "Now, John, what's your concern?"

John rubs his head. "Usually I just turn women into plants and collect them for free... I'm not really interested in purchasing her. I know you're from Hell and all, but that's a pretty unethical thing to do."

"Oh, let me clarify then!" I say with a delighted clap of my hands. "You'll turn this convenience store clerk into a potted plant, and then I'll put a price tag on that potted plant and sell it to you. Won't that be fun?"

"Will it?"

"It's theming, theming! Haven't you ever heard of roleplay? We're in a store, John! I so rarely come to the human realm - let me have a little fun playing human customs! I'll give you the plant and tell you the price, and then you give me the money!"

"How much?"

"As much as, say..." I point to the shelf behind John. "That chocolate bar."

"Plus tax?"

"Of course not, John. I'm not a monster, I'm a succubus. Invisible costs aren't sexy without consent!"

"I get the feeling you just want to handle human money... Do you even have a use for it?"

"Enough from you. Remember, I'm the interviewer!" I spin around to the stock-still clerk. "Now, Sharon, what was your concern?"

Sharon unfreezes again, blinks in confusion once more, and takes a moment to remember what she was going to say. "Uh, what do you even mean by turning me into a plant? Buying me? How the hell is a wacky scenario like that beneficial to me?"

"One question at a time, darling," I grin. "My name's Lilith, by the way. Vice-subjournalist on dispatch to the human realm."

"Sure you are..." Sharon sighs, closes her eyes, and tilts her head up to stare through her eyelids at the grimy fluorescent lights on the convenience store ceiling. "Look, I don't wanna be here, that's true, but I gotta make rent somehow. Don't know if trafficking myself to some kinda... BDSM couple is gonna solve anything."

"Oh, we won't be human trafficking! That's not what I'm here for today," I chuckle. "No, John's entirely on the right side of the law. Let me put it this way: what if you didn't have to make rent? What if you didn't have to pay to eat, to wash, to upkeep your entire life one miserable stack of monthly bills at a time?"

"And how's that gonna happen?" Sharon says, rightfully dubious. "Sounds too good to be true."

"John here can make it come true!" I say, gesturing to my erstwhile interviewee, who's been watching our exchange with some mild befuddlement. "With a snap of his fingers, he can yoink you right out of your life - just like that!"

"Uh-huh." Sharon nods sardonically, her chest bobbing enticingly in her curvaceous store uniform. "So I'd be free?"

"Well, you'd be a potted plant," John explains. "That's my hobby, see. If I meet a woman I'd like to collect, I transform her into a plant to keep in my apartment."

"OK, dude. Creepy revelation about your home aside, here's an issue. I don't wanna be stuck as a plant."

"Well, you wouldn't sense the passage of time, since plants aren't sentient, so you wouldn't get bored or irritated. You'd also be free to be yourself if I restored you to human form. I wouldn't collect you if I didn't respect you, after all."

Sharon rolls her eyes. "Can I, like, signal I wanna be turned human?"

"Not really. I don't think any plants are capable of doing that," John says, applying a devastating dose of common sense. "There's no reason your human form would differ before or after transformation, though. Even if I didn't restore you until five years later, you wouldn't have aged a day."

"You're saying you'll leave me on a shelf for five years?!"

"That's only a hypothetical number," John amends. "It depends on how I feel, really. About half of my collection are women I've never felt the urge to untransform. I might turn you back pretty regularly, though, since I like looking at your chest."

"My..." Sharon looks down at her boobs. "Oh, so that's what this is about. Doesn't matter if I've got my own life going on--"

"Your dead-end, shitty life, I might add," I interject with a wicked smile and a wink. Sharon folds her arms again and grimaces at me, clearly not amused by the succubus 'cosplayer' reminding her about her present situation.

"--you just think I'm a nice-looking pair of tits and that's all the reason you need to dehumanize me."

"Well, yes," John says. "Exactly. Your boobs look really nice in that polo, and that's why I want to keep you around."

"They do look very nice," I add. "If you'll consider my vote as well. I know you humans do love to vote."

Once again, Sharon sighs, a retail worker's chronic weariness escaping her lungs. "How long do you usually... untransform women for, uh...?"

"John, the name's John. On average... a few minutes at a time, I'd say. But once again, you wouldn't sense time inbetween."

"So you'd just... I can't believe I'm going along with this." Sharon puts her fingers to her temples, as if trying to squeeze away a headache. "You'd grab me off the shelf every couple of, I dunno, days--"

"Months, probably."

"--Months? Fuck me. Every couple months, just to stare at my rack for a couple minutes before putting me back? That's my entire life?" The calculus seems to be whirring in the clerk's head. "I don't... do anything else?"

"I mean, if you have something you want to do while you're human, I can try to accommodate," John says. "It depends on how I'm feeling at the time, I suppose. I don't ask women to do anything they don't want, and frankly, I expect the same treatment in return. I consider it common human courtesy."

"And yet here you are trying to kidnap me."

"You can't kidnap a potted plant."

"You can if it used to be a human!"

"You can unwrap a chocolate bar you bought from a store, and it doesn't count as spoiling the product," I counter. "And you can take a potted plant you transformed from a woman, and it doesn't count as kidnapping. You're underestimating the power of being something else. It's a hellishly objective thing, if I do say so myself," I say, patting myself on the chest with pride.

("You really like that chocolate bar..." John mutters.)

Sharon simply stares at me, her mouth flapping open and shut (not because of my stasis charm this time)...

...before slumping her shoulders in defeat.

"Man, I can't believe I'm agreeing to this. Can I at least say goodbye to my friends first?" she says, pulling out her phone from a pocket tucked away fully out of sight beneath the wide balloon of her ample tits wrapped in cloth.

"I'm sure they won't mind you vanishing. That's just how my power works," John says.

Sharon looks up from her phone, mid-type. "What, I'll just stop existing to them?"

"I mean, they'll remember you - my power doesn't randomly cause amnesia in other people or anything. They might be confused that you're a plant now, but they won't be offended about it. Why anyone would be, after all? Would you be offended if I was suddenly a plant?"

"Alright, alright, fine, fine. Damn, I'll miss them, though," she says. "Keep in touch with them for me, maybe? We're just a group chat of four people. Unlock code's 4114," she casually reveals to John as he passes her the single point of contact she has to her (very narrow) wider life.

"I might forget that if I don't note it down..." John mutters, glancing briefly at his soon-to-be-acquired woman's phone before pocketing it.

"Ooh, you could collect them too!" I say, clapping him on the back with glee at the organic opportunity that's just sprung up. "Wouldn't that be special? The whole set!"

He grimaces. "Depends on how I feel. And I don't exactly feel like going on their friend's account and asking for their addresses, anyway..."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll figure something out for you," I reassure him. "This'll make a great article! Human clerk - Sharon - anything else before we scoop you up?"

"What are you gonna do with my ID, I guess? I'm guessing my apartment and bills and stuff are gonna stop being mine since I won't be around and, uh, companies can't bill plants for things, but when I'm untransformed..."

"Well, you don't own what you don't own. You'll have whatever's on you when you were transformed, and I keep any loose possessions stored safely if I'm asked..." John says.

"Oh, good," Sharon replies, casually fishing her wallet out from an ass pocket and tossing that at John too. "That's my cash, my card, my license. They'd better be around when I'm back."

"...Well, that's the thing. I store them safely if I'm asked, but I clean my apartment out pretty regularly. Things don't really belong to plants, and plants don't have a need for things, so any orphaned belongings I've accrued from whatever recent women I've collected tend to go out in the trash around that time. ID, cash, keys, so on. It'll probably happen to your phone, too."

"After I'm done with it!" I say, plucking it from John's pocket and slipping it into my own dimensional pocket to ensure it only meets a timely demise.

"Well, shit. Maybe I shouldn't have given you my wallet after all..." Sharon says. "Eh, whatever, fuck it. Never liked looking at my ID anyway," she shrugs, assenting surprisingly lightly to the soon-to-be disposal of her life belonging and valuables, treated as worthlessly as everything else that goes in garbage cans, bound for the landfill and incinerator. I like this human!

"Is that all?" I say, poised to snap my notebook shut and wrap this stage of the interview.

Sharon looks around at her imminently former workplace. "Uh, don't rob the store, I guess. Not that there's much in here to rob, and I guess you're taking me legally. Man, I guess this is my life now. No more job, no more friends, some random dude's just gonna turn me into an ornament and dump me on his shelf... Wait, actually, you mentioned something about buying--"

But before she can finish her sentence, Sharon the convenience store clerk with a gorgeous rack pocketed inside her unrealistically curve-hugging shirt is no longer present to finish her sentence, or talk to us at all, or even think of talking to us - because in her place, as John and I lean over the counter and peer down at the stool behind, is an anonymous little green shrub resting on top in an anonymous ceramic jar, holding the dim, invisible glow of a soul. A soul unnaturally stowed into a vessel that can't animate it to its fullest capacity, someone that used to be human. Well, no more walking, talking, living, breathing, thinking her own thoughts, having her own opinions, expressing herself as her own person. None of that while a human woman is a mere, simple plant.

At least, that's my reaction as a reporter. John's reaction is a little different.

"She got to sit on a stool? The store I worked at made everyone stand..."