Alicia has always been invisible to everyone around her. Desperate for attention, she dresses up secretly at night to satisfy her own desires and needs. However, things get out of control when she decides to dress up like a slut and venture deep into the industrial area in the end of Singapore.

Let me tell you what invisible looks like.

A pair of 59.90 jeans from Uniqlo, the straight cut ones that do absolutely nothing for your ass. A cotton blouse, usually white or light blue, always buttoned to the second one from the top. Flats, because heels in an office with vinyl floors sound like a horse escaped from the Turf Club.

Hair tied up in a claw clip. Glasses, the tortoiseshell frame ones from Owndays that cost me $198 after the blue light filter upgrade because apparently staring at Excel for nine hours a day is bad for your eyes.

Who knew.

That’s me. Monday to Friday. 8:45am to 6:15pm, sometimes later, never earlier.

A boring, admin executive at a mid-size logistics company in Jurong East.

My cubicle is at the most ulu part of the office. Bet you didn’t know there is a ulu corner in every office.

It’s near the old printer that jams every time you use it. Most of my colleagues are using the laser printer located in the ‘hip’ part of the office. The younger crowd, the more happening group. My part of the office is the ‘old’ portion. In front of offices that looked like they belong to another era. My boss is 75, he comes in like once a week to read newspaper. His son, at 45, comes in once a month to collect money.

I sit between a man named Bernard who eats hard-boiled eggs at his desk a woman named Pauline who clips her fingernails every day. I always wondered how fast does her nails grow.

The smell of Bernard’s eggs and the sound of Pauline’s clipping are the two constants in my life. Like sunrise and sunset, except both make me want to jump out the window.

My job is data entry, invoice processing, and answering emails from clients who cc fifteen people including the CEO to ask why their shipment is two hours late. Something is wrong with people nowadays. They forgot there is something call traffic, and the shit weather in Singapore that flash flood roads, and also the crazy people on the roads that make delivering stuff harder than before.

I am very good at my job. I know this because nobody has ever told me i’m good at my job, which in Singapore corporate culture means you’re doing fine. It also loosely translate to, ‘stay invisible and make sure shit gets done’.

I know, i’m not important enough in the organisation. I’m also not pretty, and i don’t wear the shortest skirt either, why should i be the centre of attention?

Most of my lunch, i eat alone. I’m too boring to eat with and i don’t really talk much either. Some of my colleagues think i am a special needs employee.

I am the background. I am the wallpaper in a room that nobody notices until it starts peeling.

You want to know what that does to a person? Being invisible eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty two weeks a year?

It makes you crave the opposite.

I discovered my thing, and yes, i’m calling it a thing because if not, i’ll need to pay for a therapist or start getting advice from erotic writers on the internet.

I heard there might be some who are willing to pay for a good story.

Anyway, it happened on a Friday evening.

I’d stayed late to fix a billing error that wasn’t even mine. The office emptied by 6 and i would have left too if not for the fucking printer jam. Yes, the one near me. Why can’t i use the laser printer?

Because i’m invisible enough to the IT rep that he left my terminal alone when configuring the printers for the whole office. I could have left by 6.30 if the printer worked but because of the paper jam, it was 7pm when i switched off the lights.

I was so tired and angry that i wanted to scream in the middle of the MRT, but doing so will mean me ending up on stomp and someone who posted that video gets a $50 KFC voucher.

I’m not letting anyone profit off my misery.

I didn’t scream.

Instead, i went home, showered, and stood in front of my wardrobe.

My wardrobe is small. It’s a two-door IKEA PAX in a rented room in Woodlands.

But it has a split personality.

The left side is Alicia from the office. Jeans. Blouses. Sensible bras. Cotton underwear in packs of three from OG.

Cardigans for the office aircon that’s always set to 16 degrees

The right side is someone else.

I don’t have a name for her. She doesn’t need one. She’s not a character. She’s not an alter ego. She’s just, another side of me.

That Friday night, i reached for the right side.

A black skirt. Short. The kind where you can feel the air on your thighs when you walk and every step reminds you it’s there, or rather, not there. A crop top in white, the kind that doesn’t leave much to the imagination and that’s the whole point.

Knee high boots, or come fuck me boots if you will.

The ones that change the way you walk, tilting your hips, lengthening your calves, turning every step into a sentence that says look at me.

Then my makeup. Not the office tinted moisturiser and lip balm. Real makeup. Foundation, contour, lashes, the red lipstick that i keep at the back of the drawer like a dirty secret.

I took off my glasses. Put in contacts. Let my hair down.

Then i looked in the mirror.

And the woman looking back was not Alicia from the boring office in Jurong anymore.

She was someone people would see.

…

Now, before you think i put on all of this and walked out the door like some main character in a Netflix drama, let me be clear.

I didn’t go anywhere.

I never go anywhere because come on la, i’m dressed like a slut. An absolute slut with skirt so short that it will make a sex worker blush. In fact, if i were to even bend a little, i would flash the whole world my underwear. I can’t step out of the room.

This is what i do. This is the routine. I dress up, i look at myself in the mirror, and i stay in my room.

That’s it. That’s the whole show. Audience of one.

Venue: 10 square metre rented room in Woodlands.

Ticket price: free, because who am i going to charge?

I’d stand in front of the mirror and pose. Turn sideways. Look over my shoulder. Tilt my head. Do the things i’ve seen influencers do on Instagram, the ones who get ten thousand likes for standing near a window in a crop top.

I take pictures and selfies of myself, i take videos that will tick all thirst trap checklist.

I’d walk around the room. Back and forth. Six steps one way, six steps back. The boots clicking on the floor tiles, my hips swaying, the skirt brushing my thighs. I’d imagine the room was bigger. I’d imagine there were people. Men at café tables looking up from their phones. Strangers on an escalator glancing at my legs. A guy across the MRT platform doing a double-take.

None of them real.

And then the heat would come.

Not suddenly la duh, it builds. Slowly. Like a kettle. Starting at my chest, spreading down through my stomach, settling somewhere lower between my hips. The fantasy feeds it. Every imagined pair of eyes, every fake double-take, every man i conjured from thin air to look at me, each one added a degree.

By the time i’d done three or four laps of my room, i’d be breathing harder. Not from the walking. From the wanting. Wanting to be seen. Wanting to be touched.

Wanting to be the object of desire to someone, even an imaginary someone for a few fucking seconds.

Then i’d sit on the edge of my bed. Sometimes i’d keep the boots on. Sometimes i’d already kicked them off. It didn’t matter. What mattered was what came next.

I’d close my eyes.

And i’d let my hands do what they needed to do.

It never took long. The fantasy was already built, the tension already wound tight. I could go on in this flowery fuck language about desires and shivers and shudders but i love it more when i just spit it out.

Yes i masturbated. I spread my legs on the bed and touched myself, moaning like a whore in my room.

Usually, when it’s over, i’ll feel better, everything goes back to normal. The Alicia in come fuck me boots, cropped top and skirt will be gone. The one in geeky glasses, jeans and a boring blouse come back to the office in Jurong East.

That was the cycle. Dress up, parade, release then go sleep. It worked. It was safe. Nobody got hurt.

The walls of my room kept the secret the way walls do.

I could have done this forever. Honestly. I could have spent the next five, ten, twenty years dressing up in a rented room.

But that Friday night was different.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was the printer jam. Maybe it was everyone leaving at on time while i stayed till 7.30 to fix someone else’s mistake. Maybe it was Pauline’s nail clipping, which that day seemed louder than usual.

Maybe it was the mirror. The woman in the mirror looking back at me, dressed to kill. And i thought,

Why am i wasting this on four walls?

I looked at myself. The skirt. The boots. The red lipstick.

I picked up my keys.

I picked up my bag.

I look so fucking hot, and i’m damm sure others feel the same way.

And for the first time, i opened the door.

My heart was beating so hard i could hear it in my ears as i walked down the corridor of my HDB block. My boots clicking on the concrete, echoing off the walls. A neighbour’s door was open and i i walked right past, not daring to look inside.

I pressed the lift button.

The lift took forever to arrive. I stood there in my short skirt and my come-fuck-me boots in a HDB corridor that smelled like someone’s dinner and i thought:

What the fuck am i doing?

The lift arrived.

I hesitated.

I could head my own voice screaming at me to go back.

‘Get the fuck back in the house you stupid slut!’

But my body was no longer my own.

I felt a shiver in my spine as i took a step forward into the lift.

Turning around, i took a deep breath as the door shut.

Coming soon