Mailgirls Get Off

Seventeen slid her black lycra armband down the length of her left arm, extracted the smart phone, and placed it in the charger inside her locker. As she did so, she glanced towards the middle of the locker room, where Mailgirls Number Fifteen and Twenty-One were sharing dinner from a single silver dog dish in front of Mistress Zero's desk. Both were still stark-naked, and Twenty-One was still in her collar. Both were on their hands and knees, and taking turns gobbling down the thick, gray gruel known semi-affectionately as "mailgirl chow." Seventeen couldn't help but gag.

"You're worried about me having a few drinks on an empty stomach?" she asked Fourteen. "Can't we stop and get a hot dog or something?"

Fourteen had turned back towards the shower head, and now her bare ass was what greeted Seventeen as she looked in that direction. "That shit's better for you hot dogs."

Seventeen scowled. "Does it taste any better coming up than it tastes going down?"

"You get used to it!" Fifteen shouted down to her, as Twenty-One took a turn with her head in the bowl.

"And then you end up craving it in the middle of the night," Sixteen laughed, joining in. She was in the midst of unlocking Nineteen's collar.

"You don't get used to it." This from Fourteen. "But it's fuel."

That part was true. Seventeen couldn't believe that there was a company in Northern California that produced this slop specifically for mailgirl programs, but perhaps that fact spoke to the growing prevalence of such programs nationwide. Loaded with vitamins and nutrients, it was literally everything the body needed for an exercise-heavy job like that of a mailgirl, which required a marathoner's stamina as they dashed from one delivery to the next. It looked disgusting, it smelled awful, and it tasted worse -- Seventeen had fought through her first meal yesterday at lunch while retching and heaving. Today had been a little easier, but it didn't help that Mistress Zero was assigning her double portions to bring her up to what she considered an acceptable weight.

The chow was all the mailgirls were given at lunch, and all they were allowed for snacks on breaks. But there were some girls, like Fourteen, who'd taken to eating it at the end of the day, for dinner, even though it wasn't necessarily a requirement, and even though she was free to eat literally anything else anywhere else in New York City. "Eh," Fourteen had shrugged yesterday when Seventeen had challenged her on this. "It's here. It's free. It's easy. It's healthy. And, fuck, I don't want to have to cook dinner when I get home."

But tonight, it seemed like just about all the girls were taking their turns at the bowls. Unlike lunch-time, serving size wasn't as tightly regulated. But also unlike lunch time, the girls were forced to share just two bowls in the center of the locker room, with Two and Sixteen forced to refill them when empty.

"We can't just get some appetizers or something?"

"Eat!" Fourteen ordered.

"Or a salad?"

"Eat!"

The thought of choking down another bowl of the awful, room-temperature sludge made Seventeen's stomach turn, but there was no denying she'd worked up an appetite that afternoon. And maybe Fourteen had a point. After the two days Seventeen had just had, she needed a drink like she'd never needed a drink before, and she suspected she wasn't alone in that regard. To hear them tell it, USF's mailgirls had been closing down the bar at the Imperial Hotel since sometime that summer. Seventeen wasn't going to be able to have more than one drink on an empty stomach.

She frowned, but decided to buckle and do as she was told. She didn't necessarily have to follow Fourteen's orders, the way she was required to do with literally everyone else who worked at USF Plaza. But she and Fourteen were attached at the hip for one more day of training, and Fourteen was -- in her way -- still looking out for her.

First, though, Seventeen had to pee.

***

Once upon a time, Mailgirl Number Seventeen had been a fast-rising financial reporting analyst within one of the most well-recognized and well-respected bulge bracket firms on Wall Street. She'd been Emily Evans then - a Maryland native with a diploma from Cornell, a Masters in Accounting from Stern, and a CPA. She'd spent her first few years in the workforce with Deloitte, but had made the jump to US Financial almost three years earlier. The company she'd joined way back then had disappeared, however, and in it's place now stood a forty-eight story fraternity house. The corporate culture had shifted and changed with the introduction of the mailgirls earlier in the year, and one Emily Evans had found herself caught up in the aftershocks.

Why hadn't she left in April? There'd been a mass exodus when Human Capital's pet project came online - most significantly among female employees, but well-represented by both genders all the same. There were women who feared they'd be on the hook for a nude role down on the 2nd Floor, of course, and still more who were understandably and justifiably outraged at the blatant misogyny USF was promoting. But while Seventeen had witnessed a noticeable uptick in exits within her department, that uptick was never as high as maybe it should have been. In the early days, the original six girls had been announced as "volunteers" - a party line that Human Capital continued to provide in defense of the program straight through the present. Why someone, anyone, would volunteer for such an assignment was mind-boggling, but at least the female employees at the Plaza could assure themselves that they'd never stoop to such a level and raise their own hands for the role. Seventeen had told herself that very thing in the Spring.

Rumors soon began to swirl around Mailgirl Number Six in the subsequent weeks. The fact that she'd badly flubbed a trade that had cost USF almost half a million dollars was well-known within Capital Markets, and people started connecting the dots to explain her new job. Even if it was true, Seventeen had reasoned at the time, Six had still volunteered as a mailgirl. Maybe she was going to get fired, and maybe she'd have a difficult time finding another capital markets job -- but she'd still made the decision to go the mailgirl route on her own.

Once the program got going, it was easy enough for empathy to begin to wane. If one truly believed that these girls were volunteers -- even if the alternatives to volunteering were less than optimal -- one couldn't help but write their suffering off as self-inflicted. Sure, they were under contract. And sure, there were penalties for breaking said contact. But no one had forced them to sign their names. And what sort of penalties could be so severe that these girls would subject themselves to eating out of dog bowls or getting paddled in front of an audience or squatting with legs wide open by the elevators? Maybe Seventeen could understand those first few girls in April not entirely knowing what they were signing on for. But by the time the next six girls volunteered - and then the next six, and then the six after that -- they had to know what the life of a mailgirl entailed.

When the masturbation started, everything began to click into place. Of course. Of course, of course. These girls were exhibitionists and masochists. They were the subs in the sub-dom paradigm, deriving sexual pleasure from their own debasement and degeneracy. They were sluts and whores! They put up with this because they were getting off on it. When the mailgirl terrarium in the elevator lobby devolved into a hedonistic temple of self-love, it was like a car crash that transformed the entire populace of Plaza into rubberneckers. Seventeen wasn't gay, but she'd stood outside the locker room that second or third week with Jessica Cochran and watched the show over coffee. What should have been digusting and repulsive was instead hilarious -- and Seventeen had felt the mockery and derision was earned, for the role that these girls had played in their own abasement.

It was surprising how quickly Seventeen and her coworkers had accepted the new normal. There was a naked girl showering in the elevator lobby as Seventeen arrived at work. There was a naked vagina waggling around in reception when she went to use the ladies' room. There was a pair of naked tits bouncing out of the stairwell with an urgent message for her. Sure, whatever.

But then, it was surprising how quickly the mailgirl phenomenon had exploded worldwide. It had been less than a decade since the first program had come online in Tokyo, and only within that last year or two that a gaming company out in Seattle had dared to first launch one Stateside. It had become a common enough occurrence in Southeast Asia and much of continental Europe, and even now appeared to be gaining momentum in New York. Seventeen had thought for sure that the government would step in and shut the practice down -- but good lawyers, private property, offices full of adults, and a pool of willing and consenting volunteers had stymied such attempts thus far. There was vociferous opposition from women's rights groups, as could be expected. But there had also been vociferous support from other women's rights groups, which was more unexpected. "The right to individual self-determination" and "individual life, individual choice" were not ideals Seventeen had ever thought would turn into rallying calls in defense of the mailgirl concept. But those very ideals had managed to unite a hodge-podge coalition of libertarians, sex-positive feminists, and liberal academics who, even if they didn't agree with the choices these mailgirls were making, were actively and passionately defending their right to make them.

And so Seventeen had stayed with USF; this was just the world she was living in now. She'd never opt to become a mailgirl, of course, but she was relieved all the same when the May class was launched and no one had come knocking at her cubicle. Same for June, even though word had leaked out about the "trophies" hanging in Human Capital, and Seventeen -- like Jessica, like Jen, like Ashley, like the other girls in Finance & Accounting -- had worn the sexiest pair of panties she owned...just in case she'd be called upon to undress in front of an audience. And then relief again in July, when USF reached a full roster of twenty-four mailgirls and announced future opportunities to volunteer would be limited to backfills.

The mailgirl was the lowliest of the low at USF. She was stripped and collared. She was spanked and paddled and whipped. She was humiliated and debased over and over again. But the mailgirl, despite all that, could make the case that she was the most popular girl in the company. Everyone knew who she was. Everyone knew her inside and out. Everyone lusted after her and wanted to get a glimpse of her. Everyone knew that she was the cream-of-the-crop - one of prettiest, hottest, most attractive girls that USF Plaza had to offer.

And so it had stung a little when Seventeen hadn't been approached.

She would have said no, flat-out. But it would have been an honor -- Honor? Really? -- to get asked. Seventeen wasn't vain, by any measure, but she knew that she was attractive. Like any girl anywhere, she had her body issues and self-doubts. She was pretty, though maybe she wouldn't have described herself "hot" or "cute." She felt self-conscious about her height. She worried that she had chicken legs. And she didn't have much of an ass. But she'd been blessed with good skin, large-but-not-cumbersome breasts, and big brown eyes, and had gained a good amount of confidence in herself since high school. Confidence that was shaken when USF more-or-less told her, "No, thank you. We'd prefer that you stay in your dimly lit cubicle on the 13th Floor."

Jessica Cochran would have signed on in an instant. She wasn't so bold as to go knocking on Will Barrow's door up on the 18th, but she was the only one of Seventeen's colleagues in Finance & Accounting who admitted out loud that she fantasized about becoming a mailgirl. It wasn't a realistic fantasy for her, though -- she was too short, too little girl-ish, too...bespectacled...to fit in among the other mailgirls. So she continued on planning her wedding, but made the flimsiest of excuses to summon a mailgirl, just to soak a little of their lives in vicariously. She even befriended a few of them, as much as USF employees were allowed to befriend a mailgirl.

In fact, there'd been that evening at the tail-end of August, when Jessica had played lookout for two of the mailgirls in the conference room. Whether it was bisexuality or full-blown lesbianism, sex among the mailgirls was rumored to be rampant. Seventeen had brushed the rumors off as nothing more than the fantasies of her male coworkers, the product of overactive imaginations and undersexed accountants. But on that particular Friday, with the rest of the floor half-empty for the weekend, Seventeen had watched Jessica lead one mailgirl, and then another, into the conference room. Within minutes, one of them was singing out "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oooooh!!!" loud enough that Seventeen couldn't ignore it, apparently courtesy of the other. Jessica had returned to her cubicle blushing, wide-eyed and smiling wickedly.

She hadn't participated; sleeping with a mailgirl was cause for termination whether it happened at the Plaza or not, and Jessica never would have been so bold as to cheat on her fiancée regardless. But she'd stood guard and watched as one of them had gone down on the other, and then promptly recounted the whole thing to Seventeen and Jen Eckersley in the aftermath. Seventeen hadn't needed all the details, but she got them anyway, and found herself wondering how anyone could get off on getting off like that -- in a public place, in front of an audience.

Yes, Jessica Cochran would have inked her signature at the bottom of a Human Capital contract without hesitation. Seventeen, for her part, had just wanted to have been asked.

Mailgirl Number Twenty-Three had quit on a Monday morning in August and had been replaced later that afternoon. The blonde Mailgirl Number Thirteen had been shipped to USF's back office in Jersey City at the start of September, only for a new, dark-haired Mailgirl Number Thirteen to take her place immediately thereafter. By mid-November, Human Capital's roster of naked mailgirls had stabilized, with no new exits or arrivals since the changing of the Thirteens. And so there was no reason for Seventeen to have been suspicious that Wednesday night when she received a calendar invite from her boss, for 9 o'clock the following morning.

***

Masturbating at her locker should have been liberating in one sense, at least: it should have made it a little less embarrassing for Seventeen to pee in public. If she could the do the former in front of an audience, how embarrassing could the latter be?

There were six metal toilets that stood behind Mistress Zero's desk, standing like sentries -- three to a side -- in the narrow corridor between the locker room proper and the service elevators. There were no partitions or privacy screens, and they sat closer together than any reasonable person would have placed them. So close, in fact, that Seventeen's naked thigh couldn't help but brush up against Mailgirl Number Three's own as she sat down.

Seventeen grimaced. "Safety in numbers," she thought to herself. And then, echoing Sixteen's assurances, "Together."

The fact of the matter of was, Three's body served as a privacy screen of sorts for Seventeen, as she sat on the toilet closest to their mistress's desk, and therefore closer to the wall of mirror glass, and to the elevator lobby on the other side. Three was in the middle of a conversation with Twelve, one that wasn't interrupted by Seventeen's presence, one that wasn't interrupted when Seventeen's bare skin rubbed up against Three's, one that wasn't interrupted as Three and Twelve finished at the same time and stood to leave. So casual had this become to the two veteran mailgirls that they approached this act of public elimination with no more fear or attention than if they'd been having that very conversation over lattes in a crowded coffee shop.

"...he made me rub hot sauce on my nipples. And then Twenty had to lick it off..."

Well, Seventeen thought to herself as Twelve continued on, maybe not that particular conversation...

Seventeen glanced over Mistress Zero's desk, towards the double doors leading to the elevator lobby. She could see only her own reflection, wide-eyed and nervous, staring back at her. Maybe peeing like this had become casual and commonplace to the other girls, but Seventeen was still painfully aware that she was being watched. Or, at least, that there was a chance she was being watched; it was after seven on the Friday, after all. On the other side of that mirror were chairs and café tables, a coffee cart and a shoe shine service (both likely closed now), and the elevators that USF's non-mailgirl employees took up and down to their floors. She'd just fingered herself for whomever was out there, but her bladder was less cooperative than her pussy had been, and she was forced to abandon the attempt for now.

It still felt odd to just walk away, without having to pull up her underwear or fix her skirt. But Seventeen rounded the desk in the center of the locker room, and joined Mailgirl Number Six at the far dog dish. Twenty-One had finished at the other, and been replaced by Twelve. Mailgirl Number Two hovered nearby with a can opener and a few spare cans of dinner, waiting to refill the bowls upon request. Seventeen dutifully dropped to her hands and knees, but was patient enough for Six to finish her meal before inserting her own face into the bowl. Instead, she went to the water bowl beside her, comfortable enough now at the end of the day to drink as much as she wanted; no need to have bathroom breaks chaperoned out at the bar. She lapped away at the cloudy water thirstily.

"One can or two?" Two asked her politely, as Six pulled back and wiped her face with her hand. Six, a brunette, possessed an enormous set of tits, and Seventeen couldn't help but be distracted as they bounced into line-of-sight. USF's mailgirls all had the same general, tall-and-slender build, and most -- like Seventeen herself -- had breasts in the vicinity of C's. But there was some minimal variation when it came to chest size, with Thirteen and Ten on one end of the spectrum, and Six unchallenged on the other. Seventeen's own breasts had a dull ache from bouncing bra-less up and down stairs all day; she couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like to be Six.

"Uh...just one," Seventeen replied, re-focusing herself. There was still a little food in the bowl, and she had no interest in eating more than she absolutely had to.

"Bon appetit," Two offered sarcastically but good-naturedly. The thick, foul-smelling mush oozed forth from the can.

Seventeen held her breath and dove in.

She gagged once, at her first bite. But the overpowering urge to vomit was not as powerful this time around as it had been during her first two meals of this sludge. Maybe Fifteen had been right, and she'd slowly get used to it. Or maybe, as Seventeen accidentally breathed in the accompanying bouquet, she never would -- as Fourteen had suggested. Either way, she labored away at the bowl, doing her best to avoid remembering that this particular meal was undertaken by choice. Unlike lunch, where she'd be downing bowl after bowl of mailgirl chow for the next two years.

Two years. Two years! Two fucking years! It was difficult to conceptualize, given that today was only her second day. And given how hard the past two days had been, two years seemed like a lifetime from now. She'd be thirty by the time she was out from under her contract. She wondered about how mailgirl chow would taste then. She wondered if it'd be easier to pee in public then. She wondered if she'd even be able to recognize herself then.