Life Among the Mailgirls Ch. 01

As she ran her fingers through her hair, Thirteen watched herself in the reflection. Given the way the locker room was exposed to the elevator lobby, the coffee cart, and the café tables, a good part of this was for her audience. The shower was still more utilitarian than for performance. The masturbation taking place at the far end of the shower block -- and Two was beginning to climax now -- was also more utilitarian than performance. Still, Thirteen found that she occasionally lingered a bit longer in the shower than she did at home, that she soaped up and washed her breasts and intimate areas a bit more than necessary, that she bent at the waist to pick up the shampoo instead of crouching and bending at the knees.

The thought of her audience sent a familiar tickle up her spine. Not today, she told herself. By tonight, she'd be free of ever having to shower in public again, and there was no need to give in and debase herself more than she had to. Even if she knew full well she'd be forced to touch herself later than morning. Even if she'd gotten off in the shower dozens of times in the past. Even if Two's orgasmic exhalations were turning her on.

Thirteen shook her head, and shampooed her hair. She made herself think of what she needed to do that night, back at her apartment, before leaving for New Haven in the morning. She knew that if she started down the path of justifying a morning session, she'd lose what little control she had. As she washed her hair, and soaped up her body, she instead went through a mental checklist of boxes she'd packed up last night and the few remaining items that needed to be packed. She was careful to avoid letting her fingers spend too much time washing her pussy, and careful to keep herself from gently pinching her straining-at-attention nipples as she rinsed herself off.

One was done, and turned the water off beside her. Twelve, like Thirteen, had managed to hold off any sort of intimate session with herself, and was ready to step from the shower. And Three, after letting out a deep, animal-like series of grunts - instead of the sexy, effeminate groans Two had just released - kissed her partner lovingly and was now ready to move on with her day. Thirteen hurried through the rest of her shower as new girls rotated in.

There was a small cubby on either end of the shower block -- four in total, in the locker room -- that held white, rough-to-the-touch bath towels, and Thirteen helped herself to one. None was big enough to be wrapped around even the smallest girl, but that was never intended to be their function. They were good enough for Thirteen to dry herself, and so she patted herself dry before depositing her towel the laundry. Thankfully, USF employed a laundry service that came weekly and kept the girls stocked with relatively clean towels; it was probably only USF's decision not to invest in on-site washers and dryers that kept this responsibility from the mailgirls themselves. Thirteen knew of a couple of girls who regularly deposited some of their own, personal laundry in with the towels; the clothes would usually come back, though sometimes they wouldn't. They'd learned not to include underwear, which was guaranteed to go missing, and be careful that they had a spare outfit available so they weren't relying on something for the commute home. Thirteen didn't care for the harsh, industrial detergents that were used, however, and she didn't trust the service even with the few pieces of laundry she wore to work that didn't need to be dry-cleaned. But when they were working upwards of seventy to eighty hours every week, Thirteen supposed she could understand the desire of some of the other girls not to spend free-time doing laundry at home, and their willingness to risk the fact that not all of it would be returned.

Thirteen heard Seven laugh before she saw her, and she couldn't help but feel a spike of jealousy when she turned and saw her giggling with Nineteen. Seven and Nineteen weren't a couple, not in the way that Two and Three were, certainly. But there was an intimacy there that had Thirteen feeling left out. The two girls were still fully dressed -- Nineteen in a full-on grey suit with matching blazer and skirt, Seven in a dark, work-appropriate chambray sheath dress -- and enjoying a quick conversation by Mistress Zero's desk. As she noticed Thirteen, and caught her eye, Seven smiled and waved hello, and Thirteen nearly melted.

Thirteen could have sworn she'd met Seven before starting at USF. Shoulder-length blonde hair, sharp chin, prominent-but-still-attractive nose defining her face, and a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear. Of course they hadn't, as Seven had been a mailgirl a week longer than Thirteen, and had been in USF's legal department before that. But there'd been something familiar about her, something that bothered Thirteen until she'd been able to put her finger on it. And it hadn't been until ESPN had been turned on above the bar, one Friday night when the girls were all out for their weekly "Bitch Session," that Thirteen had placed her -- Seven could have been a doppelganger for one of the anchors, a Lindsey Something-or-Other. Thirteen had never been big into sports, but she'd nonetheless been subjected to the daily routine of SportsCenter by a boyfriend early in graduate school, and being able to finally identify why Seven seemed so familiar had been a breakthrough.

Thirteen was closer with Seven than she was with any of the other mailgirls, but she couldn't say that the relationship was exactly reciprocal. It was the inherent problem in Thirteen's summer study that she was "among" the mailgirls, but not entirely "of" them. She did the same job that they did, and suffered the same indignities, embarassments, and punishments as they did. But she was here only for three months, and she was here to study them and the culture that rose up among them and around them. She was a participant, but also an observer, and it meant that the camaraderie and commiseration only went so far.

Some of the girls had been outright hostile to Thirteen's presence when she first started, and that hostility had lent support to her faculty advisor's suggestion that she not make her study public. Thirteen hadn't wanted to keep anything from the other girls, though, and after weathering some initial wariness and skepticism, she felt she'd made the right decision. The mailgirls had accepted her as an equal, and began opening up to her slowly. Some hoped that her short stint would allow her to blow the whistle on just how many abuses they were suffering at the hands of their corporate masters. Others were hoping that she could help explain some of their conflicting emotions, as if she were a psychoanalyst and not an anthropologist.

There'd never been any hesitation from Seven, though. She was open and friendly right from the get-go, and embraced Thirteen right away. She wasn't the prettiest mailgirl, or the fastest, or the most obedient, or the most willing to accept new punishments -- all of which meant that, outside the mailgirls locker room, she was neither popular nor unpopular. Inside the locker room, however, Seven was easily the most well liked, able to get along with and be accepted by everyone in a way that seemed unlikely in a group full of women. For the most part, the girls all shared a bond, and supported one another, albeit with some cattiness and cliquishness along the way. But the first two classes of mailgirls even remarked that things had seemed to get better when Seven started, when Seven had turned the occasional "drinks night" into the regular, standing Friday-night Bitch Sessions that they were. She'd share a showerhead with a girl who'd had a particularly tough day, and she'd give new girls advice on whom they could trust in the building and whom they should avoid whenever possible. She was a big sister, a coach, and a confidante, more so than any of the girls who'd joined in the first or second cohorts; Mistress Zero kept the girls motivated, but it was Seven who kept them from being out-and-out miserable on a daily basis.

But Seven was still fully clothed and still engaged with Nineteen, so Thirteen passed the pair by, and headed to the sinks on her end of the locker room to do her hair, brush her teeth, and put on make-up.

Again, there were only eight sinks for twenty-four girls, but they made it work. Lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, with a row of naked and exposed tits from left to right and right to left, the girls squeezed in and got ready for their day. They shared hairbrushes and hair dryers, lipstick and eyeliner, and even -- god help them -- toothbrushes and deodorant. They talked and gossiped as they did so, in subdued tones that gave away how much they all still dreaded the day ahead, even if they'd been a mailgirl for months upon months at that point. Few of them had much of a life outside of USF now, as run-down and beaten up as they were at the end of each day, so the conversations often revolved around the world inside the building. And, increasingly, the girls' favorite topic of conversation was a catty dissection of what other women were wearing to work.

"I swear to god," Twenty-One was laughing to Seventeen. "Stocking tops!"

Seventeen, a redhead, laughed out loud as she brushed her hair. "Like, visible? Like, that was her intention?"

"So, full picture," Twenty-One began again, making eye contact with Thirteen to make sure she was included. "Skin-tight white blouse with a black bra underneath -- "

"See-through?" Thirteen asked playfully, happy to be included.

"Completely visible," Twenty-One answered. Gesturing with her hands, she started at her waist and dropped one to high on her thigh. "Miniskirt. Two or three inches of leg. Stocking top."

Seventeen let out a goofy wolf-whistle, and Thirteen responded with a fake gasp. It was Thirteen's turn to join in, offering, "...and heels, of course."

Twenty-One laughed. "Of course. Stilettos."

That the mailgirls had the nerve to ridicule anyone's outfit was ridiculous. But while they were all technically volunteers, almost none of the girls would ever have confessed to volunteering freely; in their own minds, and to hear any of them recount how they'd landed in their current predicament, each of them had been tricked, misled, and coerced. For some of them, Thirteen knew this to be true, as she'd had access to their HR files early in her own tenure as a mailgirl. Number Four was here because she'd suffered three consecutive "poor" performance reviews, and would have been let go otherwise. Number Six had worked in the Capital Markets group, and had badly botched a trade that had cost USF close to $500K. Number Fourteen had been caught having an affair with the husband of a more senior executive in the building. For others, though, Thirteen suspected that this was a revisionist attempt to protect their own egos -- they'd been tempted by the money, or by promises of future career advancement, and had signed on not fully understanding just how bad the program could be.

Still, this victimhood freed them up to pass judgment on their former colleagues elsewhere in the building. After all, these other women were free to dress as they chose. And, despite this freedom, USF's female employees had been dressing increasingly provocatively and risqué since the mailgirl program first began.

Given what Thirteen had been wearing even just to-and-from work lately, she knew full well that she was in no position to mock others. But, she laughed along with Twenty-One and Seventeen. What she wore on her commute wasn't held to the same scrutiny among her peers; she was a mailgirl.

And, of course this woman had been wearing stilettos. Of course. The height of the footwear, as much as the inappropriateness ("Knee-high boots!" "Five-inch heels!"), was a favorite topic of derision among the mailgirls.

"Secretary? Receptionist?" Thirteen asked, knowing full well that it hadn't been. The stories were funnier and less mean-spirited when they weren't picking on one of the support staff.

"Marketing executive," Twenty-One laughed.

The trend was not unique to USF, and fairly common among companies who'd rolled out mailgirl programs of their own, regardless of nationality or culture. In fact, a good portion of Thirteen's research that summer had centered not on the mailgirls themselves, but on USF's non-mailgirl female employees. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, the launch of a mailgirl initiative always, always set off competitive behavior in other women in the workplace. From an anthropological, mate-selection standpoint, Thirteen supposed this made sense; in a world in which young, attractive co-workers were bounding about the building with tits and ass on display, the fact that an arms race had kicked off between the mailgirls and non-mailgirls was perhaps unsurprising. It didn't seem to matter if these non-mailgirls were married or not, were in a relationship or not, or even if they were consciously aware of the change in their wardrobe or not -- the end result, regardless, was that hemlines had gotten shorter, necklines had gotten lower, and heels had gotten higher. It wasn't each and every woman within USF, certainly -- but, on average, the female population of USF, even excluding the mailgirls -- was dressing sexier and more risqué as the program went on. Thirteen had even pulled security footage of the building's lobby as far back as February and March, and had begun rating women on a scale from 1-10 of how much skin they were showing when they arrived at work. She needed to do more vigorous analysis, needed to adjust for seasonality, and she supposed she could even try to measure hems and necklines caught on tape with the right resources -- but the data, as qualitative as it was, backed up her expectations.

On the security tapes, Thirteen had watched her own transformation. In June, she'd dressed down, and entered the building looking meek, timid, and terrified. By August, she was regularly hitting a "7" or an "8" on her own admittedly less-than-scientific "skin scale," and even her gait seemed different -- more confidence, more swagger, more presence. It was all for show -- maybe Thirteen dreaded undressing a little less each day she did so, but she still dreaded it all the same. She wondered to herself what she had looked like on the security footage today, though -- had there been a skip in her step? Had she seemed happier? Had her pace been quicker than usual? The sooner she undressed, the sooner she could get about her day, and the sooner she could put this entire ordeal behind her.

Any amount of confidence, swagger, and presence that Thirteen had felt that morning, though, dissipated the moment Mistress Zero entered the locker room. Standing at the mirror with the other girls, mascara brush in hand, Thirteen didn't see or hear her mistress enter the room, so much as she felt a cold shiver run up her spine. Any amount of laughter fell silent, any conversation dropped to a near-inaudible whisper. The few girls still dressed, and dawdling before getting undressed, were immediately set into motion by the invisible hand of fear. And even if Mistress Zero paid them no mind, each and every girl in that locker room was acutely aware that she was now among them.

She was tall -- maybe not as tall as Fifteen or Four, but above average height and taller than Thirteen, at least. She was a few years older than any of the mailgirls at USF; but even if she was closing in on forty, she was every bit as attractive as any girl in the room, and perhaps moreso than half. Dark brown hair that had pulled up in bun and high, angular cheekbones gave her an appearance of discipline and severity, which was only further underlined by her thick German accent. Human Capital, up on the 18th Floor, may have designed the mailgirl program here at USF, may have owned the metrics and analyses, and may have recruited the girls into the program, but it was Mistress Zero that made it work in practice.

Whereas Thirteen had HR files on each and every one of her fellow mailgirls, and while she'd been able to pull files on other employees who caught her interest or whom she thought might be relevant to her research, Will Barrow and his Human Capital team had given her nothing on the dominatrix who so terrorized the girls. Thirteen understood the logic; as "apart" as she might have been from the other mailgirls, Thirteen was still a mailgirl herself, and Mistress Zero's authority and discipline was fundamental in understanding the mindset of the girls.

Still, Thirteen's research in other mailgirl programs throughout the country and abroad had been extensive, and it hadn't taken much digging for her to identify Mistress Zero as none other than "Mailgirl Funf" at an Investment Bank in Frankfurt; most companies kept extensive files, complete with photographs, of their mailgirls. Her name had, at least at one time, been Mila Bluhm. But Mistress Zero's real name seemed as important as Thirteen's; which was to say, not at all. The fact that she had herself been a mailgirl had humanized her a bit to Thirteen, but it also made her transition to dungeon master that much more perplexing; given that she had faced many of the same trials and humiliations as the girls at USF, shouldn't that have made her more sympathetic to their plight? There was no documentation around Funf's transition to Zero, about whether the role had been lined up between the companies, or if USF had hired her directly. But, over time, Thirteen came to realize that despite the torment, despite the punishments, despite the discipline, Mistress Zero was almost every bit as important to the mailgirl program as the mailgirls themselves; she was every bit a part of the show as the girls.

There were countless mailgirl programs that were run on a day-to-day basis by men. Some had been selected by higher-ups to run the daily operations, some had been rewarded with the role, and more than a few just happened to be working their company's mailroom when the program rolled out. Thirteen laughed at the idea that any mailgirl program could be respectable, per se, but most of the more "respectable" programs had tapped women to oversee and keep order. It made sense to Thirteen; given the paddlings and spankings, the intimate inspections, and the escalation of psychological torment, it made the abuse -- lower-case "a" -- seem less like Abuse -- capital "a" -- to the audience. Even at USF, most of the rules and regulations were established by the small team of men up on the 18th Floor, but it was Mistress Zero who carried them out. No doubt she had improvised a punishment or two over the course of the summer, or meted out a penalty when Human Capital might have advised her to let it go, but Thirteen suspected that her Mistress grasped a central truth about the mailgirls concept that still continued to elude a small handful of Thirteen's fellow mailgirls: they weren't here to deliver the mail. No, rather, it was the debasement of the girls themselves that was the true service their department was providing the company.

"Good morning, mistress," Thirteen finally heard, as Number Fourteen entered the locker room.

If Mistress Zero had so much as grunted a response in Fourteen's direction, Thirteen didn't hear it.

As Fourteen, behind her, began undressing at her locker, Thirteen focused on her own reflection in the mirror, and what she had to do to get ready for the day. Seventeen and Twenty-One continued to giggle and whisper back and forth, but it was with nowhere near the same volume or glee as it had been before.

Hair dried, brushed, and pulled back into a ponytail. Teeth brushed with a purple toothbrush that had been handed to her by Fifteen, barely rinsed. Deodorant applied with a stick that had been handed to her by Seventeen, still warm from Seventeen's own body. Cheap, flowery "mailgirl perfume" misted over her bare body. A subtle, barely noticeable amount of make-up applied. Thirteen puckered her lips, offered a subdued-but-playful kiss in the direction of Twenty-One's reflection, and excused herself to the row of toilets in the hallway next to her locker.