Life Among the Mailgirls Ch. 01

The fact that Mistress Zero's cold, utilitarian metal desk was the seat of power in the locker room, and the fact that it sat directly in front of the toilets the girls all used, always caused the girls to laugh in private. She herself used a more private women's room around the corner, in the lobby for the service elevators, but she was still forced to sit fifteen-maybe-twenty feet away as her girls emptied their bladders. Fifteen, in particular, seemed to delight in that fact, and viewed every opportunity to use the toilet when Mistress Zero was present as some small enactment of vengeance.

The German woman was sitting with her back to hallway, facing the locker room entrance, and flipping through files and statistics on her tablet as Thirteen tried to pass by. But Mistress Zero lifted her head, and Thirteen cringed when she caught her eye.

"Good morning, mistress," Thirteen offered, hoping that she could pass to toilets without anything more needing to be said.

"Thirteen," Mistress Zero responded, her lips offering a cruel smile, her eyes hinting a mischief. "Today's your last day with us here at the Plaza."

That's the plan, Thirteen thought to herself. She offered only, "Yes, mistress."

"You'll miss us," the woman stated. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, mistress."

She nodded to her tablet. "I see twenty-one demerits since Tuesday." Again, it wasn't a question. But, this time, a threat was implied.

"Yes, mistress," Thirteen replied, without committing to anything further. New punishments and humiliations were thought up and applied almost arbitrarily, but the one thing that any girl could count on was corporal punishment at every interval of twenty-five demerits. A good day -- for Thirteen, at least -- was four or five; she averaged probably closer to nine or ten. What that meant was that it was unlikely she'd make it through the day without one last visit to the leather bench, one last punishment at Mistress Zero's hand.

Her mistress looked her up and down, and then turned her attention back to the tablet. For a moment, Thirteen hoped that would be all, and she'd be allowed to pee without further comment. But it was unlike Mistress Zero to let her go with just that, and true to form, she said, "Let's try to be a good girl today, or I'll send you off with something to remember me by."

Thirteen swallowed hard. It was unlikely she'd be forgetting Mistress Zero anytime soon, regardless. But she understood, nodded, and offered one last, meek, "Yes, mistress."

So excused, Thirteen padded past the desk, and up into hallway. She took a seat on the toilet closest to her, directly across from where Number Six was relieving herself, still dressed but with her skirt hiked and panties at her ankles. Unfortunately, unlike those moments when a girl was masturbating and the others left her to herself, toilet etiquette provided for no such moments of unspoken-but-agreed-upon attempts to feign privacy. Six smiled at, softly greeted her with a "hi," and said, "I can't believe it's your last day."

As she peed, Thirteen shook her head and said, "Neither can I."

"You don't think she's going to try to keep you here for one last Saturday shift?" Six asked in a whisper, gesturing to Mistress Zero with her head. The older woman might have been able to hear the question, but she didn't look up from her work.

Thirteen wouldn't have put it past her. Fall Term didn't start until Tuesday of next week, and Thirteen could have conceivably worked one last Saturday before returning to New Haven -- even if it violated the contract she and Gillian had signed with USF. But, no, Mistress Zero posted the Saturday shift girls on Thursday afternoons, and Thirteen hadn't been on that list last night. And, besides, Thirteen had spent more than her fair of Saturdays here at the Plaza. "I don't think so," was all Thirteen offered in response.

"But you're still coming to the Bitch Session tonight?"

This made Thirteen smile. "I wouldn't dare miss it," she answered. This would be her last night out for drinks with the other girls, and she understood that Seven was making sure just about everyone would be there -- even Five and Eight, neither of whom usually participated.

It was Seven who had turned irregular nights out for drinks into the standing, Friday-night tradition that they'd become, but it was Fourteen who'd bequeathed upon that tradition the name. True, half the girls would be required to show up to the Plaza the following day, for the pared-down Saturday shift. But the end of the week felt freeing nonetheless to them all, and it had become an opportunity for them to go out, collectively, and blow off steam. Rare did the topic of conversation stray from their lives as mailgirls, and Mistress Zero received a good portion of the girls' ire in absentia. With a drink or two in their systems, and a weekend to look forward to, the girls were almost able to laugh at themselves, and joke about the misery they'd suffered that week.

For Thirteen, the Bitch Sessions had become an invaluable research tool. The girls opened up about their situation, about what they were feeling on a day-to-day basis, about what it meant to be a mailgirl. Thirteen, often a little buzzed, did her best to jot down notes and reconstruct confessions when she got home later that night, and then clean them up on Sundays prior to a weekly check-in call with Gillian.

No one really had a life outside of being a mailgirl; even fully dressed, even away from the Plaza, even on a night in which many of them had entire weekend ahead of them, they were still mailgirls. It was impossible to date and meet someone new; how did you explain what you did for a living? Most of the girls who volunteered for the program were single at the time, and those few girls who'd been seeing someone typically saw that relationship fall apart within a few weeks; Twenty-Four had only just broken up with her boyfriend -- of two years -- a week ago. Most nights, a mailgirl returned home exhausted both physically and emotionally, beaten up in every sense of the word. And even on weekends, and even if she wasn't working a Saturday shift, a good portion of a mailgirl's time was devoted to something mailgirl-related: tanning, grooming, or even bleaching (Thirteen's asshole puckered just at the thought of that new, fresh hell of her expected hygiene). Thirteen often went stir crazy without a long run on the treadmill in her building's gym -- barefoot, of course. There were the occasional nights and weekends where Thirteen found herself wondering why she ever bothered going home; she might have been better served sleeping at the Plaza.

So it wasn't surprising that they'd spend most of a Friday night telling each other stories about their week at work. At the start of night, the Bitch Sessions truly earned their name -- the girls were negative, angry, and miserable. But horror stories and fresh embarassments were recounted in such a way that they were often delivered with a "can-you-believe-it" style of storytelling, and a laughing commiseration began to lift their collective spirits. The girls shared stories of having their nipples tweaked or asses pinched; both were violations of company policy, but regularly overlooked when it came to the senior staff. They tried to one-up one another with accounts of such miserable things being said to them that it became funny (notably, by Paul Hooper in the actual mailroom), or interactions with colleagues with whom they'd worked in their prior jobs. And then inevitably, at some point, someone would confess to getting turned on by some humiliation or punishment that any one of them would have recoiled from prior to becoming a mailgirl; this, instead, would be met with laughs and nods, and another, more X-rated game of one-upsmanship.

Despite being objectified and sexualized at USF all week long, Friday nights were more than just an emotional release for many of the girls. Even the girls who showed up in sweats or jeans or yoga pants at USF tended to dress up for Friday's night out, and more than a few among them went out without underwear. Four, Fourteen, and Twenty each had a string of one-night-stands that they picked up on Friday nights, and most of the girls had at least one such night themselves; Thirteen was among this latter group, but had done it only once, finding it awkward, out-of-character, and unsatisfying. More common were the girls who went home with each other; jokingly referring to themselves as "letter-carrying lesbians," most had no experience with another girl or any bisexual leanings prior to becoming a mailgirl, but found in one another understanding, acceptance, and shared experience. Thirteen, for a time, had been part of this group, as well. And, finally, there was a particular booth at the Imperial Hotel's bar that was out-of-the-way and poorly lit. It was nicknamed by the girls -- wildly, inaccurately - the "kissing booth," and a girl (or two) could get herself off while a friend served as look-out. Thirteen had to admit that she'd participated in this particular exercise, too.

Earlier in the summer, Thirteen had hated herself for such behavior, hated that she'd that she'd descended into this level of depravity. It wasn't enough for her, apparently, that she had been stripped naked at USF, been subjected to spankings and paddlings and other such torments, and been humiliated time and time and time again. The eye-opening revelation of the summer had been how much she seemed to get off on it all, and how much she needed -- needed! -- to touch herself because of it.

Thirteen wasn't alone in hating herself. Almost all of the girls felt the same way. Which, in and of itself, was a way out of that very same anguish. Very few of them would have confessed to being exhibitionists coming into the program, but the exhibition was having the same effect on them all -- even on girls like Twenty-Four, who refused to act on that arousal (at least, in public). This realization, this shared experience, was freeing in its own way: Thirteen wasn't a pervert or a deviant, but rather reacting to her current situation in a very normal way, in a way that twenty-some other girls were reacting here at USF alone, in a way that countless other mailgirls were reacting worldwide. And it opened them all up to be honest about themselves, about what turned them on, and even about the individual kinks and quirks that were unique to them.

For instance, Six had confessed she now had a difficult time peeing when no one was watching. Thirteen, at that moment, was providing the audience that Six needed.

But Thirteen finished, nodded a "goodbye" in Six's direction, and headed back to her locker.

The locker room could be loud and rowdy at times - usually at the tail end of the day, when the amount of time between the end of a mailgirl shift and the start of a mailgirl shift the next day was at its greatest. Most mornings -- and this morning was no different, despite Thirteen's impending freedom -- were more subdued, especially with Mistress Zero present. There were whispers and quiet conversations, to be sure, and there was a soft murmur throughout the locker room that reminded Thirteen of one of the libraries back in New Haven. But as Thirteen reached for the smartphone that sat charging in her locker, she thought to herself that, despite the misery and negativity the accompanied most mornings, she was going to miss the particular and peculiar combination of excitement and dread that was central to life as a mailgirl.

Thirteen had input her arrival time into the unit with a simple thumbprint that morning, and she awoke the unit with her thumbprint again now. It was one of the few, rare times she was even allowed to touch the device, which she'd come to regard and respect as her "electronic leash"; most of the time, it sat in a lycra arm-band around her left bicep, and was available only so that those sending and receiving messages, mail, or interoffice deliveries could "bump" their own smart device against it for instructions or information. It proudly displayed the number thirteen for most of the day, but at the moment it was open for morning inputs.

The first screen that popped up was Thirteen's morning affirmation. "I swear, under the penalty of the law, that I submit under my own free will..." She clicked "accept" without scrolling further. She'd read it all before, and iterations of the same message in her research into other programs before. Essentially, it assured the company that her participation in the mailgirls program today was entirely of her own choosing, that she was a volunteer, that she could walk away at any time, that she was allowing herself to become subject to whatever USF threw at her that day, that she wasn't being blackmailed or coerced into this life, and yadda yadda yadda. It was mostly bullshit; of course she was being coerced, she thought to herself, as she remembered Gillian's runaround with Guy Dubuc. Just as any other girl was being coerced ("incentivized" was Human Capital's term for it) by onerous contracts that could cripple her financially and career-wise for years to come. But by signing and swearing each morning, Thirteen was creating a digital record of her acceptance and submission, one that USF was sure to throw back in face if challenged in court. Sure, any of the girls could theoretically click "decline," instead. But, five months into the program here at USF, few had yet dared to.

Next, Thirteen carried the unit over to one of two digital scales in front of Mistress Zero's desk, and patiently waited behind Fifteeen and Sixteen for her morning weigh-in. Mistress Zero barely glanced up as each girl stepped on the scale and offered a "Good morning, mistress." Thirteen, though, again got a devious smile when she took her turn and offered, "Good morning again, mistress." Maybe it was just in regards to the unavoidable spanking coming her way, or maybe Human Capital had one last humiliation to inflict upon her before she left today, but Thirteen knew that something cruel and unusual was coming her way. Whatever it was, she reassured herself that by that by tonight the entire ordeal would be behind her.

The smartphone chimed, indicating it had synched with the scale, and Thirteen glanced down at stepped off. She smiled to herself, as she was down half a pound since yesterday. Not so much for the negligible weight loss, but for the fact that she remained within the narrow band of "acceptable" weight fluctuation. Too heavy, and she'd be given half-rations at lunch, in addition to a demerit. Too light, and it was a demerit and a double ration.

Returning to her locker, Thirteen slipped the lycra armband over her left hand, up over her forearm, and snapped it snugly in place around her bicep. She then inserted the smartphone into the band, touching it for the last time until she needed to take another shower.

Not only did the device synch with the scale, but it also uploaded to the mailgirls app accessible to every USF employee in the building. Anyone who logged in from their own laptop, desktop, or smart device would see how much Thirteen weighed that morning, and could pull up historic data about how much she had weighed yesterday, the day before, or three months prior. Thanks to a pedometer in the device, it tracked how many steps Thirteen made on a daily basis. Height. BMI. Hair color. Eye color. Measurements. Cup-size. Dress size. Shoe size. Birthday. Age. Sexual preference (confusing as that might have been for Thirteen at the time). Place of birth. She had to have someone log every bathroom break between 7am and 7pm. She had to confess every masturbation session here at USF with Mistress Zero, who logged it and made it available to anyone and everyone with the app. If she were on her period, Mistress Zero needed to know; and, rather than being taken out of circulation, she was given a tampon and "red-flagged" in the system for everyone to see. Even though she was required to correct anyone who used it, and forbidden from using it herself, her given name was on there. And, for no reason other than pure cruelty, the girls were forced to provide their mother's full name, as well.

Thirteen's mother, Catherine Ruth Ryan, knew nothing about the part she played in this little game.

The lycra armband and the smartphone weren't the entirety of Thirteen's mailgirl "uniform," however. No, her get-up wasn't complete until she'd heard the soul-crushing click of the metal collar around her neck. One part dog-collar, one part choker, and one part lifted directly from some of the deepest, darkest corners of the Internet, Thirteen's collar seemed to hammer home the fact that she was enslaving herself to USF. The nudity, apparently, wasn't enough; the collar took her current enforced nudity and exhibitionist predicament and sent it careening down the path towards bondage and discipline, with a bit of sadomasochism mixed in for good measure. It could only be unlocked at the end of the day by Mistress Zero, or some lucky designee she assigned responsibility to for a particular night. But, it was left unlocked in each girl's locker every night, and every morning they'd be required to put it back on before they got into position. The keyhole was hardly noticeable; instead, it was the #13 dog tag, and the D-rings affixed around the circumference of the collar, that caught one's eye.

Thirteen had been forced to wear the collar home one Thursday night in late July, a punishment for some minor, trumped-up offense that she could no longer recall. Had it been any other night, she might have been able to just hide in her apartment until the next morning. But the fact that her little sister Sophie had been visiting from LA at the time turned just another day-in-the-life embarrassment of a mailgirl into something even more deeply humiliating.

Thirteen shivered at the memory.

The collar, naturally, came with a leash. Like the collar, it was metal, ugly, and medieval-looking, with thick, heavy links. One end was affixed, permanently, to the floor of Thirteen's open locker. The other? Thirteen had the honor of hooking it through the D-ring on the back of her own collar. She listened for the next click, indicating that it, too, had been locked, and that she'd only be freed when Mistress Zero decided it was time for her to be freed. The chain leash had only enough slack that Thirteen could stand directly in front of her locker, and stray no further.

But Thirteen didn't need to stay standing; she could "rest" until Mistress Zero came by for her inspection. And so, the blonde girl got her knees, with her back to her open locker and the clothes she'd shed that morning. She sat back upon her haunches, in what would be her standard position of the day. Per her training, it was simply referred to as "Knees" here at USF, but she knew that other programs referred to it as "Resting Position" or "Mailgirl Kneeling Position" or even "Nadu" (something apparently lifted from Gorean sub-culture). Both arms behind her back, with the back of her right hand resting against the very top her ass, and her right hand grasping her left wrist. Legs at the very least shoulder-length apart, with her shaven pussy so prominently on display that she imagined her swollen clit was practically throbbing and glowing for all to see. Back ever-so-slightly arched, pushing her breasts out. Eyes cast downward, focused on an imaginary spot four feet in front of her, in a show of submission.

It had taken Thirteen, for some reason, longer than most to learn her positions; or, at the very least to get them right. She had thought that Mistress Zero was picking on her initially, putting the PhD candidate among the mailgirls in her place, driving home just how stupid Thirteen really was. She wasn't arching her back just right. She wasn't spreading her knees far enough apart. She was making too much eye contact. By the time she'd finally gotten "Knees" correct, her ass had been spanked raw, and she swore she'd never be able to sit down in a chair again. Maybe that had been the point.