Mailgirls Get Off

She pulled back from the dog dish, but was caught by Two. "Uh...I'm sorry," the girl apologized, "but you've got to finish it all."

Seventeen looked up at the other girl blankly. She glanced down the length of the locker room, where Six was starting to get into the shower. "But, she..."

"We've got to keep the bowl clean," Two explained. "There's no one else waiting."

Seventeen groaned, but complied. At lunch, they were forced to lick the bowl clean, making sure they'd eaten every last drop of the so-called food given to them. For snacks over break -- and, it seemed, for dinner -- that responsibility fell to last girl to eat. Seventeen wasn't sure she'd be Two's last customer of the night; in fact, she doubted that she would be. But she was the last customer for now, and Two knew the rules better than Seventeen. She pressed her lips against the bowl itself and sucked down every last morsel, and then used her tongue to lick the bottom of the bowl. The bowl likely hadn't actually been washed since Evening Shift the night before, and it had likely been "cleaned" just like this at least two or three times since. If the mailgirls were expected to share communal deodorant and toothbrushes, Seventeen supposed this wasn't so bad.

As neat as she'd tried to be, Seventeen could feel mailgirl chow on her chin and above her lip. She used her hand to wipe her face, and -- with Two watching on -- she licked the last few bits of her dinner from her fingers. Without standing, she returned to the water bowl, and did her best to wash the taste from her mouth.

Seventeen did, after a drink, rise to her feet. She thanked Two for her hospitality, and then padded towards the shower block on her end of the locker room. She pulled her ponytail loose as she walked, and then ran her fingers through her hair too loosen it. The elastic was deposited with a handful of others on the edge of the sink counter, and Seventeen stepped up into the shower block without further ceremony.

Twenty-Four was still showering at the far end, but Thirteen, Fourteen, and Nine had all wrapped up, and Twenty-Two had cum and gone. It was now Fifteen's turn -- one shower from the left, directly beside Twenty-Four -- to get herself off under the frigid water. Under the shower head on the far right was Mailgirl Number Eleven, who was at present squatting over the shower drain and relieving herself; no performance anxieties there, Seventeen thought jealously. She took her place between Fifteen on her left and Eleven on her right.

When Fourteen had first dropped into a squat in the showers beside her yesterday afternoon, Seventeen had been unnerved. She hadn't said anything at the time, and kept her focus on her own reflection in front of her. But Fourteen had noticed the skittishness all the same, and explained that they all did it from time to time. Morning and afternoon breaks were just fifteen minutes long, inclusive of the time it took for a girl to get back down to the locker room. Once on the second floor, a girl's priorities were a brisk shower, a bathroom break, and maybe a quick climax; in the interest of time, all three could be accomplished in short order in the showers. "One-stop shopping," Fourteen had mused.

Seventeen had fully intended for her first act of public masturbation to be in the showers that afternoon, in the aftermath of the incident on the 13th Floor. But as turned on as she'd been then, as much she'd been drunk on her own libido, she hadn't been able to go through with it. The showerheads were affixed onto the mirror glass walls at the front of locker room, and Seventeen had quickly gotten into her head about the potential crowd on the other side. Unable to perform then, she'd gone back for the rest of her afternoon still buzzing on sexual excitement, and had found release only upon returning to the locker room that evening. But that bridge had been crossed, and the running water helped with another; even as Eleven stood, Seventeen squatted, and was finally able to pee.

The act did nothing to dissuade Fifteen from pursuing her passion. The girl had her back up against the wall, with her legs spread just enough to allow her hand access to the prize between them. She was still in the early stages of build, but lost in her own world, and paid no attention to Seventeen squatting next to her, right at crotch-height.

Pressure now relieved, Seventeen stood and caught Eleven's eyes. Unlike the shorter Mailgirl Number Five, Eleven was tall for an Asian-American girl. She was apparently half-Japanese on her father's side, with long dark hair and porcelain skin.

"Day two," Eleven offered with a smile.

"Day two," Seventeen confirmed. She caught eye contact with her own reflection, briefly, and immediately averted her eyes. This was less her mailgirl training, and more about Seventeen still unable to fully come to grips with how far she'd fallen in the last two days.

"So...what...seven hundred and some more days to go?"

Seventeen frowned. Seven hundred and some more days until she was free. Not including Sundays, and with maybe half of her Saturdays off, she could winnow it down to something like five hundred and seventy-something. Five hundred and seventy-something more days like this. To Eleven, she answered, "Something like that."

Eleven's intentions were, of course, not an attempt to rub salt in the wound. "Two down," she assured the brunette.

Seventeen smiled weakly. It struck her how little she knew the other girls. She'd been handcuffed to Fourteen since the previous morning -- figuratively, at least. And both Seven and Nineteen had pulled her aside yesterday to offer her some encouragement and share their own perspectives on what life was like as and among the mailgirls. But she hadn't had much of an opportunity to have more than a few words with the other girls.

Despite that, and despite that she couldn't say that she knew the other girls personally, she did still know quite a bit about them. Eleven's ethnicity, for example. Sixteen's birthplace. Nine's weight. Three's mother's maiden name. The last time Twenty-Two had masturbated at the Plaza. And, because of amount of data on the mailgirls app, the entire company now knew those very things about Seventeen, too. Justin didn't even know her that well.

She felt a pang of guilt.

Justin.

Justin Miller.

What was she going to do about Justin Miller?

Seventeen had had her share of longer-term relationships since she'd first moved to New York, but it had only been a few weeks since she'd first gone out with Justin. They'd been on five or six dates. They'd slept together. And prior to the events of the previous morning, Seventeen might have been able to see the relationship going somewhere. But she couldn't make life decisions around something so new, and yesterday's life decision had been a momentous one. Of course they needed to break up; once Justin found out what she'd signed herself up for, she expected him to dump her on the spot. Men may have fantasized about bedding a mailgirl, but no one wanted to build a life with one.

And, really, it would be for the best. Twenty-Four had reportedly been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her boyfriend of two-or-three years since she joined USF's stable of girls in July. She was back in an "on" now, and seemed utterly and completely miserable. She didn't touch herself. She barely socialized with the other girls. And every indignity she suffered seemed to sting that much more, as if it were inflicted upon her and her boyfriend both.

Justin Miller belonged to another life, another girl. Emily Evans may have had a future with Justin, but it was only Mailgirl Number Seventeen in her reflection now.

As if to drive that point home, a bold number seventeen was scrawled across her naked hip in black ink. She hadn't bothered trying to remove it at the end of her shift yesterday -- she just wanted to get out of the Plaza and get home. And she hadn't bothered to scrub it off during her morning shower here in the locker room; it just seemed pointless, given that Mistress Zero retraced the number again shortly thereafter. But she was going out to a bar tonight, and wanted it off. Or, thought she wanted it off. As she began to scrub with one of the communal pink washcloths, Eleven inserted herself.

"I have rubbing alcohol in my locker, if you want," she offered. "But...I don't know if I'd make the effort."

Seventeen looked at her quizzically.

"Most of us don't even bother anymore," she explained. "Maybe on special occasions, or if we're off all weekend. But you're here tomorrow?"

"I am," Seventeen answered. Fourteen had Saturday Shift tomorrow, which meant that Seventeen had Saturday Shift tomorrow. Half the girls were off until Monday, but the other half were scheduled to be back in tomorrow at their normal time. Actual deliveries were supposedly at a minimum, given the smaller number of regular employees who worked on Saturdays. But Mistress Zero apparently kept the girls busy with supply runs, custodial assignments, and other "special" projects as they came to her.

"Don't bother, then," Eleven advised. "Unless you're planning on wearing something tonight that exposes your hip?"

Seventeen shook her head. She glanced behind her, and confirmed that Fourteen was clearly still demarcated at such. Other girls who'd been in and out of the shower still wore their numbers, too. If anything, the girls who'd taken the time and effort to remove the ink -- likely those off for the weekend -- looked out-of-place and more naked and vulnerable than the girls who hadn't. Eleven was probably right; Seventeen gave up on the task, and assured herself that she'd scrub it off tomorrow night.

Maybe Seventeen would adjust to the mailgirl chow or maybe she wouldn't. But she couldn't imagine a point where she'd get used to the cold water emerging from the showerhead above her. She could appreciate it on occasion -- such as the quick rinse she and Fourteen had enjoyed together that morning after a particularly frenzied, frantic, and sweaty start to their day. But Seventeen certainly wasn't going to linger longer than she had to. By the time that Fifteen announced that she was cumming, to no one and everyone at the same time, Seventeen had soaped and rinsed her body, shampooed and conditioned her hair, and turned off the water. She stepped from showers at the same time as Eleven, and helped herself to a pair of the small, rough-to-the-touch hand towels the locker room stocked.

Communal shampoo and conditioner. Communal bars of soap. Communal washcloths. Communal razors, for intimate grooming and upkeep. Communal hairdryers. Communal lipstick, make-up, and nail polish. Communal deodorant and perfume. Communal toothpaste and toothbrushes. The girls themselves were interchangeable and nothing more than numbers, and so the locker room was stocked for communal use. Yesterday, Seventeen had gravitated towards the same end of the sink each time she'd returned to the locker room, in the hopes that she was minimizing the number of girls whose mouths the toothbrushes had been in, whose underarms to which the deodorant had been applied. Fourteen had noticed, and told her it was pointless; Evening Shift was instructed to collect, check, and redistribute products at random.

Still, though the girls shared a single shade of lipstick and a single scent of perfume while in-uniform, they were allowed to bring in more individualized products for the end of the day. So, as Seventeen joined Thirteen, Eighteen, and Twenty-Two at the mirror (and as Fourteen sidled up behind them), there were a half dozen tubes of lipstick and a smattering of nail polish options lined up around the sinks. Similarly, five different girls were dressed a handful of different ways: Eighteen was fully clothed in a cocktail dress. Thirteen was wearing a bra-and-panty set. Twenty-Two was in a thong. Seventeen and Fourteen were both still stark naked.

Seventeen wondered if she should go put something on.

She decided against it. She wanted to brush and dry her hair first. And, whether she was conscious of it or not, she found herself following Fourteen's lead.

Fourteen, teasingly and without boundaries, reach over and snapped the elastic of Thirteen's black lace panties.

"Stop!" Thirteen objected, though the tone indicated she'd taken the harassment as playfully as it had been offered.

"I thought you were going commando?" Fourteen asked.

Thirteen shook her head. "No. I did last week, and spent the whole night flashing all of you."

"Nothing we haven't seen before," Fourteen replied.

"I also don't want to leave them here," Thirteen explained. Clothes -- panties especially -- had a habit of disappearing from the mailgirls locker room. Human Capital proudly hung its trophies up on the 18th Floor. But it was also widely understood that Mistress Zero would help herself to a girl's things as a way of providing prizes and keepsakes for executives up on the higher-level floors.

Fourteen shrugged, and said, "The rookie's going commando."

Meaning Seventeen. Again, she began to parrot back, "Ma'am, per Human Capital..." Seventeen trailed off.

"Slut, comma, stupid," Fourteen laughed, and pointed to herself with her hairbrush.

Seventeen laughed along with her, but said, "No chance. Zero. I'd put on three or four pairs of underwear, if I had them with me." She was half-joking; what she wanted to do tonight, more than anything, was put on every piece of clothing she owned, and then curl up and go to sleep in her own bed.

"Oh, come on," Fourteen replied, giving Seventeen a fake pout in the mirror. "Or, how about we switch? You wear mine, I wear yours?"

"Tempting," Seventeen offered.

"Don't fall for it," Eighteen advised. "I don't think she's worn underwear in years."

To this, Fourteen responded only by lifting the hemline on Eighteen's dress. Sure enough, Eighteen's own panties were conspicuously absent. The other four girls all had a good, quick laugh.

"They're in my purse," Eighteen explained, defending herself. She pulled her dress back down. "And, at least I wore them to work this morning."

"Why wouldn't you wear underwear?" Seventeen asked earnestly.

Eighteen seemed to shoot an accusing look at Fourteen's reflection, as if she were asking Fourteen how Seventeen's tutelage could be so incomplete. To Seventeen, however, she replied, "It's what they expect of us. So, why not? Why not embrace it?"

Seventeen reached for the hairdryer, and scrunched up her nose. "They think we're sluts, so we act like sluts?"

"Well..."

"...so, by that logic, what keeps up from blowing every guy at the bar tonight?"

"Some of us might," Thirteen butted in, with her own accusing look in Fourteen's direction.

Fourteen attacked the dark-haired girl with a playful mist of the floral-smelling mailgirl perfume.

"I don't know," Eighteen struggled to explain. "It's fun. This is who they think we are. It's like play-acting the part."

Seventeen still didn't follow. She asked, "By actually playing the part?"

"Let loose, you prude!" Fourteen admonished. "Your life is shit now. For the next two years, it's a shit day after a shit day after a shit day. So, own it."

"Flaunt it," Twenty-Two added.

"Flaunt it," Fourteen agreed. "Own it. If this is who you're supposed to be the next two years, be that person. The more you fight it, the more you run away from it, the more miserable you're going to be."

There was logic to it, Seventeen supposed. If she were better able to accept that this was her fate, maybe it wouldn't be so torturous undressing in the morning. If she were better able to put her head down and put up with every embarrassment that Mistress Zero and the 18th Floor threw at her, maybe she wouldn't feel quite so abused by their abuse. Fourteen and Eighteen, through the simple act of going commando out to the Imperial, were reclaiming choice and agency; they were giving the finger to Will Barrow, accepting and maybe even enjoying their new reputations.

Seventeen was still going to wear panties.

She found them where she'd left them that morning, folded neatly on the lower shelf of her locker, beneath her bra. She had felt ridiculous that morning, obediently arranging her clothes just so in her locker. The locker, in actuality, was more of a cubby -- no door, open and exposed to the locker room, and separated only by thin partitions from Sixteen's and Eighteen's. There was an upper shelf for her smartphone's charging station, as well as a simple metal cup that held any jewelry she might have worn that morning. There was a closet rod that ran from one side to the other, complete with hangars, as well as a sequence of hooks -- left, back, back, and right -- below that. There was a bottom shelf, where Seventeen had left her underthings, which protruded out from the wall and could be used as a seat, if necessary. Below that was an open space for shoes.

Oddly, Seventeen felt more naked as she got dressed than she had since getting undressed that morning. After a full day of running around her place of work in nothing but an armband, a collar, and a number, the act of dressing served as a painful reminder of just how naked she'd been. Self-consciously, and again acutely aware that she was doing so in front of a potential audience in the elevator lobby, she stepped into a pair of skin-tone bikini-cut panties and shimmied them up her thighs. Next was her bra, part of a matching set -- also skin-tone, also lace, and also sexily cut. Right arm first, then left, before she reached behind her and fumbled nervously with the clasp.

She'd struggled with what to wear that morning, when she'd gotten dressed at home. There were no rules and regulations as to what she was allowed to or expected to don to and from her new job -- only that she was to be "in uniform" in time for Mistress Zero's morning inspection. Seventeen had been tempted to just throw on a pair of jeans and a big, comfortable sweatshirt. But getting caught by her roommate in such an outfit would have required some sort of explanation or excuse; Seventeen wasn't ready -- not yet -- to come clean to Laura about what she'd been talked into yesterday. Instead, Seventeen got dressed for work as if that Friday morning were no different than any other, in a simple-but-stylish navy blue dress with short sleeves and a scooped back. Laura would still wonder what Seventeen was doing leaving the apartment before six, but at least her clothes wouldn't raise any suspicions.

As she fumbled for the zipper on her back, she was interrupted by a call from down the line of lockers.

"Nope!" Ten called out. "Nope, nope, nope."

Seventeen was confused as to what she was doing wrong. The fact that Ten was approaching her with a wine-colored slip cleared that confusion up.

Ten herself was in red halter-top cocktail dress that didn't shy away from revealing her naked thighs. The spaghetti-strap dress she intended for Seventeen looked a little longer, at least, but not much. The danger for Seventeen would be the neckline; maybe a relatively smaller-chested girl like Ten could get away with something like that, but Seventeen's tits would be in danger of popping out all night.

Seventeen just wanted to wear her own dress, with its hemline that dropped below the knees and its high-collared neckline. She didn't want to spend all night on-guard for inadvertent exposure. But, surveying the locker room around her, the other girls -- those who weren't still half- or fully-naked -- were all wearing outfits more in-line with Ten's than Seventeen's. None of them were out-and-out slutty, exactly. But they were short and flirty, with plenty of skin exposed, and every last one of them was just ever-so-slightly on the classy side of the classy/whore-ish divide. None of them was seasonally appropriate; the walk to the Imperial was going to be chilly.