Confessions of a Mailgirl Ch. 14

HARSH TRUTHS

We entered Barbara's house through the garage door into her living room. I followed one step behind, naked as always except for the metal collar with the number nine on it. Once inside she turned to me and with a bright smile said, "Welcome to my home, Danica. I'm going to go change and then we'll have some wine and talk for a while. Feel free to explore the house. Mi casa es su casa." Then she turned and quickly strode out of the room as I stood there dumbfounded by her sudden transformation from the commanding business woman I'd been with for the past several hours to cheerful welcome hostess. It was as if she had simply slipped off one mask and put on another. It wasn't the first time I'd seen this kind of sudden transformation and sometimes I wondered which mask was the real Barbara, or if there even was a real Barbara.

I looked around the living room. It was immaculate and expensively furnished just as I'd have expected in a home owned by her, but it looked like it was a room that had been staged by a designer. It didn't have a lived-in feel to it. There was a large flat screen TV on the wall but somehow I doubted she hung out in here at night watching rom-coms on Netflix.

I wandered from there into a gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a large island with eat-in bar and stools. It was a beautiful kitchen but it had the same unused feel as the living room. I opened a few cabinets and the refrigerator and found little in the way of food or cooking ingredients. Barbara obviously either ordered in or ate out. She was no cook.

I continued my tour of the house. It was certainly lovely, filled with hardwood flooring, high ceilings, and tasteful furnishings, but it continued to feel like a model home. There were few personal touches in it that you'd normally find in a person's home.

I walked down a corridor and peeked into a partially opened door and discovered a large exercise room. The room held a number of exercise machines, a yoga mat, pilates equipment and the faint smell of sweat. Unlike what I'd seen so far I could tell this was a room that got a lot of use.

Across from the exercise room was another door. I turned the knob and opened it just far enough to poke my head inside and take a look. The shades were drawn so I flipped on the light switch to get a better look into the darkened room and immediately realized that this was where Barbara spent most of her time when she was here. I hesitated about entering but she had told me to feel free to explore the house so I swung the door open and stepped inside.

I found myself in a large den with a leather chair, a brass floor lamp used as a reading light, and a side table with several books and a pair of reading glasses resting on it. The chair faced a beautiful gas fireplace built into the wall while another wall was covered with a set of built-in bookshelves filled with books. In one corner stood a beautiful antique grandfather clock. It was the only room I'd seen so far that Barbara seemed to care about but it felt like a lonely room. This was her refuge, her sanctuary from the rest of the world.

I walked over to the bookshelves and skimmed the titles. They were hard-cover books on history, warfare, psychology, philosophy and classical literature. Not much here in the way of light reading, I thought to myself. I pulled a copy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" off the shelf and opened it up. It was well worn and heavily annotated and highlighted. Next I opened a large volume of Shakespeare's complete works and found the same. These books definitely weren't here as props or for show. Barbara was not only reading them she appeared to be devouring them trying to consume every ounce of knowledge held within.

A book title caught my eye and I pulled it off the shelf. It was an English version of an unauthorized biography of Mr. Hiromoto. It looked like a fairly new book but like the others it was heavily highlighted and annotated. She must have bought it prior to her first meeting with the man to negotiate on behalf of DDE to become his North American partners in the Mailgirls program. It illustrated to me how thoroughly prepared Barbara was in everything she did.

"I see you've found my hidey hole."

Startled, I turned to find Barbara standing in the doorway, a bottle of wine and two glasses in her hands. "I-I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to intrude." Barbara was wearing a purple bikini top with a colorful sarong wrapped around her waist. Her dark hair, which had earlier been tied up in a bun, was now spilling down over her shoulders. She looked stunning.

"No need to apologize, Danica. I told you that you could explore. And no 'ma'ams' for the rest of the evening. Tonight we're equals." She flashed a radiant smile at me then nodded her head in the direction of the doorway. "Come."

I placed the Hiromoto bio back onto the shelf and followed her out of the room. She led me to the back of the house and through a sliding glass door onto a patio. She motioned for me to take a seat on a small sofa rather than kneel on the ground, a sign that she really was treating me like an equal tonight.

The sun was going down now and there was a chill in the air. Barbara placed the wine and glasses on a nearby table, then walked to a wall switch and ignited a large rectangular gas fire pit. I immediately felt the warmth of the flames and saw its reflection in the waters of a swimming pool beyond the patio.

Barbara poured two glasses of wine, handed one to me, then slid in beside me. "Thank you, ma'am...um, I mean Barbara." I'd been forced to speak deferentially to her for so long that it felt unnatural now to call her by name. She raised her wine glass toward me and I clinked mine against hers.

Barbara took a sip and smiled at me. "No quid pro quo tonight, Danica. We'll just talk. No restrictions." I nodded and took a sip of wine. "So what do you think of my house?" she asked.

"It's beautiful."

"Are you disappointed you didn't find my 'Fifty Shades of Grey' torture chamber?"

"Um, I don't..." I mumbled, unsure how to answer.

"I'm kidding," Barbara laughed. "I don't actually have one of those here. Or anywhere for that matter. The truth is I'm no dominatrix although I'm willing to play one on occasion."

"So who are you then, Barbara? Really?" The question jumped so quickly from my brain to my mouth that it bypassed the internal filter between them and I immediately wondered if I'd gone too far in asking it. Barbara didn't seem bothered by it though.

"That's a fair question," she replied as she stared into the fire. "I should probably start by telling you where I come from. I suppose you think I was a child of privilege?"

"Weren't you?"

She shook her head. "My parents both died in a car crash when I was six. I spent years being shuffled between relatives and foster homes. No one really wanted me."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "I didn't know."

Barbara shrugged. "It happened. You may not believe it now but I was actually a very shy, lonely girl when I was young. I took refuge in books and reading. Still do, as you can see from your discovery of my den."

"So what happened?"

"When I was a teenager I decided I hated my life and who I was so I started reading psychology and self-help books. A lot of it was crap and academic mumbo jumbo but I did find things that had practical value in the real world. Two things in particular."

"What were they?" I asked.

"The first was from a self-help book that said to simply start acting the way that you want people to see you even if you don't feel that way inside. So I began acting as if I was a confident, outgoing person even though I didn't feel that way at all. I was terrible at it at first," Barbara laughed. "People just thought I was weird. But I kept at it until I actually did start to feel that way."

"So you're saying your confidence is an act?"

Barbara shook her head. "Not anymore. It took years of acting confident before I truly felt that way, but it's who I am now. It's no longer an act."

"So what was the second thing you learned?"

"That thoughts and desires are only meaningful if they translate into action."

"Are you saying that what we think and feel inside aren't important?" I asked.

Barbara took a sip of wine and stared back into the fire before continuing. "I had a roommate in college who was an aspiring writer. That's actually how she would introduce herself to people, as an 'aspiring writer.' She used to read books on writing, take classes on writing, attend seminars on writing, but the whole time I knew her she never once sat down and wrote anything that wasn't required for her classes. Not a word. One day I asked her why she never wrote anything and she just gave me some bullshit excuse about waiting for her muse." Barbara laughed and shook her head. "I bet that silly bitch is still an aspiring writer today, still waiting for the Great American Novel to spring fully formed into her head so she can start putting it down on paper. I did learn an important lesson from her, though."

"What's that?"

"If you want to be a writer then sit your your goddamn ass down and start writing. Even if what you write is the sorriest prose anyone has ever read you keep doing it day after day until it's not. You may never become Shakespeare but eventually you will become a writer and not just aspire to it. That same principle can be applied to becoming a painter or a musician or a rodeo cowboy or a CEO. You are what you do, not what you dream about or what you desire or what you think you're like inside."

I thought about what she was saying. "I know that you have to work at something to become good at it but I don't agree that you're only the sum total of what you do. It is important what you're like inside."

"Why?" Barbara asked. "If what you're like inside doesn't ever produce anything of value to other people then what good is it?"

"Is that all you think other people are good for? For what they can do for you?"

"Danica, after my parents died many people told me that I would be in their thoughts and prayers but very few of them actually did anything to help me. Ultimately all of their thoughts and prayers never produced anything tangible in the real world. It only served to make them feel better about themselves without having to put out any real effort. So to answer your question, yes, I only care about what people do, not what they think."

"I believe people are more than just what they do, Barbara," I replied after a few moments. "I mean look at me, I'm a fucking mailgirl! Do you think that's all I am?"

Barbara turned and looked me directly in the eyes. "I don't think that's all you are, Danica, but I do think being a mailgirl is exactly what you want to be."

"Why?"

"Because you're an exhibitionist and a submissive so this is the perfect life for you. Because every action you've taken since our first meeting has led you down this path despite being given every opportunity to change course. You still could if you wanted."

"How the hell could I change course now?" I asked bitterly. "I have no clothes, no car, no access to my money. You've locked up my driver's license, passport, and credit cards."

Barbara shook her head. "No, Danica, I didn't lock those things up. You did. You're the one who took that action. You're the one who took her clothes off in Tokyo when you weren't required to. You're the one who lets me keep you naked and collared twenty-four hours a day even though there's nothing in your contract that allows me to do that. You're the one who has twice voluntarily submitted to whippings even though you know damn well I'm not allowed to do that either. Danica, you keep granting me power I don't really have to force you to do things you claim you don't want to do. You think you're a different person inside than the naked mailgirl the world sees? That's not what your actions are telling me."

I sat there sulking, my face burning in shame. I wanted to toss the wine in her face and tell her off, to tell her that she was full of shit and all wrong about me. I wanted to but I couldn't. Every word she had spoken was a harsh truth. "So that's all I am then? Just a naked delivery girl?"

"I never said that. You're so much more than that, Danica, and you don't even see it."

"See what?"

"Since becoming a mailgirl you've taken in and helped an abused girl who has grown in leaps and bounds in the short time she's been with you. And your work has more purpose now. You've gone from helping market a violent, misogynistic video game to adding extraordinary beauty and grace to a previously vanilla work environment."

"You mean I've been eye candy for the geeks making the violent, misogynistic video game."

"Touché," Barbara laughed. "But you're so much more than that. You're a moving work of art. I see a lot of Mariko in you in the fluid grace in which you do your job."

It's true that I'd been trying to emulate the simple elegance and refinement of movement that Mariko had brought to being a mailgirl so I guess I was flattered that Barbara had noticed. "But it's still such a demeaning job," I argued. "I had aspirations of having my own office on the tenth floor one day."

"The tenth floor," Barbara snorted dismissively. "You know there are probably a dozen executives on that floor that I still don't know what they really do. Oh, they attend meetings and churn out memos and play golf with Dan Evans but I've yet to see them produce anything of real value to the company. Don't be fooled by their big offices and expensive suits, many of them are nothing but show ponies. One day when I'm running DDE there will be a purging."

Barbara turned her attention back to the dancing flames of the fire. "You know, I've gotten a lot of shit from some of those empty suits in the tower about how much we're paying mailgirls even though productivity is way up since we started the program and the flow of information throughout the complex has improved tenfold. It's already paid for itself many times over. I'd gladly trade all of those worthless execs for one good mailgirl." Barbara turned back to me now and looked me in the eyes with such intensity that I had to force myself not to look away. "And you, Danica, are the most valuable of mailgirls. Don't ever sell yourself short and don't ever think for a moment that I do either."

"You say you value me yet you've taken everything away from me," I protested weakly, not really sure how to respond to the things she was telling me.

I haven't taken anything from you that you really wanted or needed, Danica. If I'd tried you would have bolted."

"You're going to try to take Anna away from me aren't you? If I don't sign a new contract?"

"I've never said that, Danica."

"You're going to threaten to make Anna's life miserable or force her out of my life if I don't sign on to be a mailgirl for two more years. That's your leverage to make me do it, isn't it?" I was certain that would be her play when the time came.

Barbara shook her head. "No, it's not. That wouldn't work even if I wanted to do it. It would only drive you away and I don't want to do that."

"Then why are you so certain I'll sign another Mailgirls contract after this one expires?"

Barbara smiled and took a sip of wine. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

I stared into the fire thinking of everything she had told me. "Okay, let's say I decided tomorrow to move out of the condo, take this collar off and start wearing clothes away from work, you're saying there's nothing you could do about it?"

"That's right."

"And you wouldn't try to punish me if I did?"

"I didn't say that," Barbara laughed. "I would make it as hard for you as possible. But if you were determined to do those things there's nothing I could do to stop you. But if that's truly what you want then your desires need to translate into action. Otherwise you're just 'aspiring' to live a normal life."

"Why are you telling me these things anyway? Are you so sure I won't take you up on that? Aren't you afraid that I might decide to sever the cord and start living my own life again outside of work?"

"I am afraid of that, Danica," Barbara said quietly. "But I know you're smart enough to have already realized everything I've told you anyway. You've known it all along. I'm just hoping that occasionally reminding you that the cage door will always be open will help bind you closer to me." In Barbara's face I saw a rare glimpse of vulnerability as she stared into the fire. I wondered if it was real or just an act.

"You say the cage door is open yet you keep telling me that you'll make me sign another oppressive contract when this one is up?"

"Yes. It will make it easier for you to tell yourself that you have to follow the path I've laid out for you even though I know in your heart of hearts that you really want to. Your actions keep telling me so. You just need time to get beyond the cognitive dissonance of leaving behind the image you once had of yourself. Once the second contract is over there will be no more confusion about what you want and who you are and there won't be a need for a third contract."

"So what you really mean is the brainwashing will be complete by then, right?" I replied snarkily.

Barbara smiled and shook her head. "There's no brainwashing, Danica. I'm merely allowing you to experience a world you didn't know existed or even could exist." Barbara reached up with her right hand and gently caressed my cheek. "It's a world I'm building for you, sweet girl. But it's a work in progress and I need time to finish it. I need time so you can experience that world in full."

Barbara leaned in and pressed her lips against mine and in that moment my defenses collapsed. The warm moistness of the kiss made me ache with sudden desire and I gasped when she pulled away.

Barbara flashed a bright smile at me and as I looked into her face the demanding, uncompromising woman I'd known for so long had been replaced by a beautiful seductress. She stood and took me by the hand and pulled me to my feet. She put her arms around me and pressed her body against mine. "Let's go inside, sweetheart," she whispered in my ear.

I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. "Y-yes ma'am," was all I could manage to say.

SEDUCTION AND POWER

Barbara led me by the hand through the house and when we entered her bedroom I was surprised to discover a dozen candles burning. She could have just thrown a pair of handcuffs on me and ordered me to go down on her and I would have done it, but the fact that she was using wine and candles to seduce me seemed almost...sweet. That's a word I never would have associated with Barbara before but the woman continued to be an unpredictable enigma.

Barbara turned to me, pressed her body against mine and gave me a long, slow, wet kiss as her fingernails lightly scraped my back. She withdrew her lips and whispered quietly, "Do you want to be my lover or my slave tonight, Danica? It's your choice."

"I want to be your slave, ma'am," I replied without hesitation.

"I thought so," Barbara smiled. She gave me another long kiss and then pulled away. As the two of us faced each other the romantic seductress suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the dominating mistress. It happened in an instant as if a switch had been thrown. "Undress me, Nine," she ordered. She's put on a new mask, I thought to myself.

I walked around behind her and my hands trembled slightly as I untied the bikini top and slipped it off her breasts. I dropped it to the floor and walked back around to face her. I was seeing her topless for the first time and I couldn't help but stare at her firm, round breasts topped with pinkish, quarter-sized aureolas and hard nipples. They hung beautifully over her taut stomach. ''They're perfect, ma'am," I said to her.