Smells like Success by Kris P. Kreme
Jason always wanted to be a success. Unfortunately he finds himself out of work, soon to be out of a marriage due to his corporate wife’s anger and teenage daughter’s disrespect.
From having everything to feeling like he has nothing, Jason is frustrated by more than just a lack of job prospects. But when a man selling colognes door to door talks him into trying a scent called Success, Jason’s life may change forever.
Soon his wife Natalie and daughter Bella are breathing in the pungent odor, attitudes about everything evolving during the coming days and weeks. Are these changes normal or has Jason been using too much of this apparently potent cologne?
Over 15,000 Words of Kreme!
Out of work just a month, Jason knows that his marriage has been slipping for far longer. He’s been steadily losing his wife Natalie and their headstrong destined for success daughter, Bella, for years now.
Ever since Natalie went back to work, obtained much more than a job but a career, and then rapidly advanced that corporate career in a big tower downtown, Jason has been slowly losing his stereotypical happy household.
In fact, a stereotype is largely the fantasy he wishes he had, or at least some similarity to. A life he remembers seeing as a child in old black and white rerun TV shows, where the man goes off to work, briefcase in hand, happy wife at home, kiss on the cheek from his daughter, but mostly where the man is the man, and respected and cherished.
The days of respect are very much gone, a month out of work and the marriage more than strained. Jason knows that beyond the endless search for employment he faces the definite possibility that any day now his wife will have divorce papers drawn up, will finally send him packing instead of just lecturing him about being unshaven at noon on a weekday in their home.
But what Natalie just doesn’t seem to want to understand, what Jason has unfortunately quickly discovered in his job search, is that companies these days just don’t go for the face to face, meet and greet with a handshake job interviews anymore. They all do online, or at the most a phone interview, and really what is the point of looking his best if he isn’t getting a foot out the door, much less inside their office?
Of course Natalie is one who has always gone out and aggressively gotten what she wanted, proven herself a success, and her thoughts are that the man she married should be padding the pavement, making connections, networking, and generally doing everything she sees Jason not doing.
There was a time when he’d had everything, Jason thought, but now it has come to this, lectured on the couch with his beautiful wife angry and folding her arms, their equally beautiful daughter, a young woman now… seething with disrespect at the loser her father has become.
According to Natalie, success breeds success, attitude is everything, but after hitting what had to be rock bottom that morning lectured about his appearance, Jason will quickly discover exactly what the smell of success is like.
Cold calling companies never worked out well, and it hasn’t been working out well at all for Jason on the fateful day the doorbell rung… but little could he suspect that the quirky little salesman on the other side of that door is about to change his life and his career forever.
Dwelling on thoughts of Natalie, the one he married, the one who was barely in the limo before she was all over him after the wedding, the passionate wild woman that made his oldest buddies jealous, Jason isn’t at all ready for a fast talking door to door salesman.
In fact, Jason hadn’t even thought door to door salesmen even still existed, everything online, like all his job interviews. That is until Simon stopped by, a very odd little man with a definite penchant for aggressively selling the product he peddles.
Launching into an obviously practiced sales pitch, Simon rambles on about the modern man’s ever active quest for success, about achieving greatness and what a man always thought he couldn’t have through what he calls ‘the sweet scent of success’.
Before Jason can even interrupt to get a word in, Simon has spoken more words to him about this supposed miracle product he offers than any of the phone calls he’s been making about finding work. But just what is that miracle product that Simon claims will solve all his problems and make life what he always dreamed it could be… a cologne called Success.
Sighing, Jason does his best to explain that Simon is seriously selling to the wrong guy. He’s at home on a work day unshaven and in jeans, so clearly he’s not putting too much worry into how he looks, certainly not how he smells. But then Simon seems to leap right over logic and says that a few spritzes of Success every morning can change everything for Jason. He assures him that taking the chance, trying out a few spritzes of Success each morning, just a few… everything will change for him. Like a true salesman, Simon practically guarantees that Jason will have all the success he dreamed of, and seems oddly intense in his warning that should he overdue it with the cologne, he might get more success than he can handle.
Amused, almost as much as he is annoyed by Simon’s persistence, Jason finds himself handing over twenty bucks and taking two bottles of Success. But it isn’t until after Simon leaves that Jason really gives some thought to how the day has gone.
Maybe Natalie had a point and attitude is everything, so Jason decides to clean himself up, shave, put on one of his nicest suits, and maybe… just maybe, if he looks like a success he’ll be able to shape his future into one, find the job he wants, but not just a job, a career. And after shaving, getting dressed nice, why not try on a little cologne he thinks?
Rolling his eyes at the actual warning label on the bottle of Success, never to overdo it, Jason does as he has many times done with the body spray and spritzes a half dozen sprays all over himself. And his confidence is finally soaring… until Natalie and Bella arrive home and get a whiff of the stinkiest pungent scent they’ve ever breathed in.
If it was bad enough to start out the day with a lecture of doing too little, Jason ends his day with a lecture about too much of a bad smell. And yet that night Jason sleeps better than he has in months, waking to an actual smile on his wife’s face, something so rare he just has to stare. Having slept well he’s definitely ready for the day, just not quite for Natalie saying he should spray on a little Success, that maybe it will help.
And so begins a most unexpected upward trend in Jason’s life, each day spraying on a little Success, probably a bit more than a little but that was never Jason’s skill set, and saying goodbye as Natalie went off to work, taking Bella with her for the summer internship she’s enrolled in at her mother’s workplace. But each day Jason finds his wife definitely changing her opinion of the smell of Success, going from hating it to liking it to actually thriving on it.
He’s having the best sleep of his life, the best dreams in years, and Natalie is beginning to smile and be downright flirty with him. As the days pass, everything seems to be changing and Jason can’t help but wonder if it really is the smell of Success that is setting his life on such a positive upswing.
Even though he’s having no luck with any career leads, he soon can’t say the same about his marriage, going from mornings where Natalie wouldn’t even face him or be remotely near him on their bed to mornings where Natalie is waking him by stroking his morning erection, sucking him off for her breakfast, and the nights are getting better than ever too after Natalie comes home from work.
But just how powerful is this new scent in his life, and has his liberal use of the cologne perhaps overdone the intended effects, particularly since his daughter has been smelling it as well? It definitely soon seems like his wife is giving most unusual if not downright inappropriate motherly advice to help Bella with her work internship, ways of appeasing if not just pleasing her pig of a boss.
Will Jason finally have the wife and daughter he always dreamed of, or will Success ironically lead to their failure as decent respectful women? Just who exactly does that door to door salesman work for? And beyond attitude does Success really breed quite a bit more than Success?
Find out in the all new Kustom tale guaranteed to have readers breathing in deep, because this one Smells like Success.
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