Life Among the Mailgirls Ch. 03

Thirteen's locker was mostly empty, with nothing inside but what she'd brought with her that day. Most of the other girls approached their lockers in a similar fashion, as anything they brought in with them could be used as a form of torment against them. Mistress Zero had proven she was not above cutting up a girl's clothes, or even pilfering a bra or set of panties (presumably on behalf of one of the analysts up in Human Capital). There were exceptions, though - Ten, for instance, had a half dozen pairs of shoes and five or six different outfits, and Twenty-Four had previously kept a picture of her boyfriend taped to the back of her locker.

But Thirteen did have her personal phone, with her purse, sitting her locker. And, as she returned from her spanking, she risked a glance at it. It wasn't against policy, per se, but Thirteen tried to avoid doing so as much as possible, as her life "out there" was a painful reminder of her life "in here." As if to drive that point home, she immediately regretted it - she had three missed calls and a pair of desperate sounding texts from her sister Sophie.

"I know you're at work, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call me!!"

Given that Thirteen had confessed to her sister what her work actually entailed that summer, she was glad that Sophie hadn't put quotes around "work."

And then the next message: "I'm freaking out! I need to talk to you NOW. It's IMPORTANT!!"

Both were from around eleven o'clock. But both would have to wait. Even if she were willing to pick up the phone and call, Thirteen couldn't have talked for long - she needed to eat. She could have shot a text back, sure, but there was something about trying to have a conversation with Sophie with clamps on her nipples that pierced the divide between worlds a bit too much for Thirteen's liking. And so, guiltily, she slid the phone back into her purse and the purse back into the locker.

More likely than not, Sophie's 911 emergency had to do with John, her fiancée. They had gotten engaged around Christmas the year before, and were planning a Fall wedding. Planning a wedding could be stressful, and Thirteen understood that. But, more and more, it was planning the marriage that had Sophie freaking out. She'd been with John since high school. She'd gone to Pomona; he'd gone to Harvey Mudd. They were both now at UCLA, entering their second year of dental school. And Sophie worried about her whole life being planned out so soon; she was just twenty-three, and overly concerned about having no new great adventures in front of her.

Sophie had had the audacity to make that complaint that summer while visiting, not long after Thirteen had walked through the door wearing a slave collar and recounted her own great summer adventure.

It could wait. Get through the day, Thirteen told herself, and talk Sophie off the ledge that night.

She glanced down the row of lockers. Fourteen wasn't beside her this time; apparently she'd had First Lunch. But Fifteen and Sixteen were both further down the line, as were Nineteen and Twenty-One. On the other side of the locker room, Thirteen cast about for Seven - but Seven, too, was nowhere to be seen, and Thirteen felt disappointed that she wasn't going to see her much today. Oh well, she thought to herself, knowing at least she'd be able to say her goodbyes that night at the Imperial.

A few of the other girls were still eating their lunches. Many of them had taken the opportunity to touch themselves earlier, while Thirteen and Twenty-One had been otherwise occupied by Mistress Zero. And so now they were trickling into the showers, a few minutes ahead of Thirteen, who was just now getting to her hands and knees for lunch.

She'd stepped over the bowl to check her phone, but Thirteen hadn't needed to confirm what was in her dish - the menu didn't change. For snack, for lunch, and for the occasional dinner, the girls were all fed a thick, protein-infused porridge that had all the consistency and taste of dog food. To hear Human Capital defend it, "mailgirl chow" had all of the vitamins, nutrients, sugars, and carbohydrates that they needed to maintain their weight and perform their job, stripped of all extraneous tastes, shapes, and textures of a normal meal. The taste and smell had been repulsive at first, but Thirteen could admit that such a strict, regulated diet, combined with the unprecedented amount of exercise and stress she put her body through daily at the Plaza, had her in the best shape of her life. She wasn't eating for taste or texture - she was eating for fuel. And besides, she had read of mailgirl programs that fed their girls actual dog food, so she knew she should be grateful for what was in her bowl.

There were only twelve bowls for twenty-four girls, and some of those very same bowls were left out over morning and afternoon breaks. They were washed by the Evening Shift girls at night, but by time that Thirteen stuck her face into the dog dish at her locker, it may have been eaten from by two, three, or any number of other girls over the course of the day. Their diet was tightly controlled, and any girl who tipped a bit too heavy on the scales was given a half-sized helping; any girl who was getting a bit too light was given a double. They were expected to eat all that given to them, and even to lick the bowl clean - a less than sanitary rule in practice, given that Thirteen could have been eating from the very same bowl Fourteen had eaten from earlier.

She hoped it had been Seven.

The girls weren't allowed to use their hands, either, which meant there was a row of naked mailgirls, collared and on all fours, eating out of dog dishes like animals. Thirteen had found herself wondering, on more than one occasion, what sort of twisted pervert viewed this as turn-on.

As she ate, the silver nipple clamps hung from her breasts, swaying this way and that, and tugging gently at her. At one point they even clanged loudly against her dish, which caused a minor chuckle from Fifteen - a chuckle that Thirteen had to share in. Her whole situation was ridiculous, and the only thing she could do was laugh. The fact that her paddling would be obvious to anyone who saw her, at least for the next couple of hours, was almost funnier than embarrassing, almost more comical than painful.

Corporal punishment might have seemed a step too far for even the most understanding of mailgirl apologists, but it had been an important aspect of mailgirl programs since their inception. Sure, there were successful programs for which enough demerits earned a girl a longer shift, or a lost weekend, or a cut in pay, or some other non-physical punishment. But spankings and paddlings remained pervasive in mailgirl culture worldwide, and Thirteen had found that even those programs that loudly proclaimed to be above the practice often still had regular instances occurring behind closed doors.

For detractors, the abuse was symptomatic of the abuse of mailgirls overall, and the fact that such punishment was often delivered by a dominant male figure only further emboldened their push to have the practice of mailgirls done away with altogether. United American Women, or UAW, had led the protests when mailgirl programs began to pop up on the West Coast, but they'd been joined by all manners of feminist organizations both Stateside and abroad. American Association of Professional Women. Femininsts For Equality. People for the Ethical Treatment of Mailgirls. And so on. For these groups, corporal punishment was an anathema. But then, for them, every single aspect of the mailgirl phenomenon was an anathema.

More interesting to Thirteen was the number of women's rights groups and other feminist organizations that had risen up in defense of mailgirl programs. For these groups, the argument was framed almost in a freedom-of-choice, my-body/my-rights sort of way, a worldview that Thirteen found herself increasingly aligned to as she approached the end of her time as a mailgirl. Submission and subjugation may not have been for everyone, but they were all volunteers. They all signed daily confirmations that said that this was their choice. They could make decisions for themselves, without a powerful women's group deciding if it was right or wrong on the part of their entire gender.

Sure, many - if not most - were coerced or otherwise bullied into volunteering, and threatened with retribution if they dared to leave. But, interestingly, one of the findings that Thirteen had picked up in her research was how former mailgirls themselves had lined up on one side of the debate or the other. Mailgirls who quit during their contracts lined up overwhelmingly against mailgirl programs anywhere, while those mailgirls who'd completed their contracts and moved on tended to line up overwhelmingly in favor.

Thirteen couldn't be sure if this was a misery-loves-company sort of thing, but the experiences of former mailgirls - successful mailgirls, who'd gone in one side and come out the other - was a research area she planned to devote more time to. A shockingly high percentage of girls signed on for a second, third, or fourth contract, even when they weren't being coerced to do so. Many continued on as mailgirls without a contract, enduring their daily abuse and humiliation despite being free from retaliatory penalties. She read accounts of girls who'd received promised promotions and agreed-upon raises, only for them to find something missing, to find that they had been happier as a lowly, naked mailgirl than they were in Marketing or Human Resources or Operations. Girls who got out for a year or two, only to go back. There were groups of former mailgirls who met both formally and informally, often in the nude, to share experiences and find something in one another that non-mailgirls simply couldn't understand. There was a group of former mailgirls in Berlin, for whom talk and sharing and support hadn't been enough, which had devolved into a kinky, BDSM sex club with a mailgirl theme. Thirteen wondered what had made Mistress Zero (Mailgirl Funf From Frankfurt once upon a time) come to New York and play dominatrix to a new generation of mailgirls.

But with her own release upon her, Thirteen found herself understanding the difficult-to-escape nature of being a mailgirl. She certainly wasn't proud of everything she'd done that summer, and there were more than a few things that caused her to cringe just thinking about them. But she was proud of herself that she'd seen it through, and proud that she'd been strong enough to survive everything that USF had thrown at her. She felt that she knew herself better than she had coming into the summer, even if some of that introspection left her feeling uncomfortable about what she'd found. And, of course, she was now more sexually alive, sexually experienced, and sexually realized than she ever could have imagined.

No, it wasn't an experience that she looked forward to confessing to her mother. But, despite all of the abuse and exposure and humiliation that came with being a mailgirl, it felt wrong to deny another girl that opportunity for self-realization and self-discovery, that sense of freedom in submission, that sexual awakening. Her sister had complained of a lack of adventure in her life; Thirteen would never be able to make that same complaint.

Thirteen dutifully licked her silver dog dish clean, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and then proceeded to lick the back her hand clean, as well.

She stood, brought her bowl to Mistress Zero's desk, and added it to the stack on the floor. As she walked back to her locker, she slid off her lycra armband, and placed the smartphone into its charger. She turned, crossed the room, and joined Nineteen and Twenty-One on the shower block to the near side of the locker room.

Nineteen, a stunning, dark-haired girl of obvious Italian descent, was seated on the tiled floor beneath one of the shower heads, her legs splayed wide open and her pussy covered in the white lather of shaving cream. She had a razor in one hand, and was entirely focused on making sure that her pussy was meticulously devoid of any hint of pubic hair. If she'd passed inspection that morning, Thirteen doubted that Nineteen could have anything like a "twelve o'clock shadow," and suspected that this was being done only at Mistress Zero's instruction. It was probably entirely pettiness on the part of their supervisor. But as the cold water splashed against Thirteen's nipples, she was forced to recognize that she hadn't escaped Mistress Zero's pettiness herself.

She wondered if nipple clamps rusted.

Thirteen hadn't bothered to take her hair out, the pigtails bouncing mockingly in her reflection. This wasn't a full, top-to-bottom shower like she'd taken first thing that morning, like she'd take again that evening, but rather a quick rinse - enough to wash the sweat and grime of the morning away, enough to at least offer a temporary reprieve from the smell of body odor and the musky, feminine stink of pussy. She soaped herself up, rinsed herself down, and did her best to ignore the tiny little aftershocks of her most recent orgasm as her hands ran over her naked skin. She paid particular attention to the soles of her feet, which had the tendency to turn dark and dirty from the poorly-cleaned stairs between floors.

While all the girls delivered mail barefoot, Thirteen had actually been allowed to wear shoes on her deliveries one day in late July. No, "allowed" was probably the wrong word. It had been a punishment, dreamt up by Mistress Zero, and her footwear had consisted of a ridiculous pair of stiletto heels. Her delivery deadlines had been adjusted accordingly, but by the end of the day Thirteen's feet had ached like never before. No thank you, she thought herself; she'd take any number of paddlings or any amount of time in these nipples clamps over that particular hell again.

Once she was toweled off - with deodorant, perfume, and make-up re-applied, with her teeth brushed, and with the smartphone and armband back in their rightful place around her arm - Thirteen glanced at the clock, and confirmed she still had a few minutes before she had to take her place at her locker. She snuck behind her mistress and peed at one of the open toilets, and then crossed the locker room to Ten's open locker. Ten had apparently been on First Lunch - with Seven, Thirteen recognized jealously - but the cocktail dress she'd promised was hanging in her locker. There were two, in fact, and Thirteen couldn't have been sure which dress Ten had intended to loan her, and which dress was for Ten herself. Neither, though, were anything that Thirteen would have picked out on her own - one had a neckline that guaranteed Thirteen's cleavage would be spilling out of, and both had hemlines so short that she'd be tugging them down all night, and on-guard to keep from inadvertently flashing everyone at the Imperial's bar. There were any number of girls who went out to Friday night Bitch Sessions without panties, and Thirteen had joined in on this trend more than once. But, tonight, no matter which dress Ten let her borrow, Thirteen knew they'd be a necessity.

Leaving the cocktail dresses be, Thirteen crossed back to her side of the locker room, and clipped herself back onto her leash. She took her position on her knees, and waited for the clock to reach the bottom of the hour, for Mistress Zero to release her back into the wilds of USF Plaza. Her mind drifted back to her cell phone, and back to her sister, and she cursed herself for having even glanced at it. Sophie's drama threatened the zen-like peace Thirteen sought - the blank, empty-headed mindset and pure Point-A-to-Point-B functionality of a mailgirl. So, instead, she chose to focus on her nipples, still being pinched and squeezed, and her buttocks, still stinging from the attention they'd received. This was Thirteen's life - not the quarter-life crisis of a second-year dental student stressing over her upcoming nuptials.

And, as she focused on her own sore and aching body, she felt another familiar ache. She knew that she was already wet again.

***

As much as Thirteen kept trying to refocus herself on her life as Mailgirl Number Thirteen, her other life (her real life?) kept intruding. Perhaps it was simply a result of the fact that she was now only a few hours short of being set free. Perhaps it was the pain of not being able to get back to her sister when she needed her. The fact that her next delivery was to Kim Kinney in Investment Banking on the 41st Floor, where she'd inevitably run into Drew Wagner, certainly didn't help.

Her first call after lunch was down the stairs to the actual mailroom on B-2. In earlier iterations of mailgirls, the mailroom and the girls' locker room had been one and the same; in fact, the term "mailroom girls" pre-dated the now much more common "mailgirls." Oftentimes it had been a simple garden hose, or a janitor's closet and mop sink, which had served the purposes of making sure they girls were all showered and shaved. And the girls had gotten undressed and lined up in the mailroom itself, under the supervision of whoever just happened to be in charge of the actual mailroom at the time. And, while there were still plenty of companies that continued to follow that model, a new generation of programs had built specific facilities for their girls - palatial, by comparison. USF had adopted this later model, converting an underutilized fitness center into something akin to mailgirl terrarium, with lockers, showers, sinks, and even bathroom facilities (such as they were) all visible through a wall of mirror glass on the 2nd Floor.

The separation made sense. The girls often managed to make the rounds and deliver all of the day's regular mail by mid-morning, and maybe seventy-five percent of Thirteen's time was otherwise devoted to running interoffice envelopes from one floor to another, or carrying electronic messages on her smartphone from place to place, or restocking supplies. Hiding the girls away in the basement, moreover, missed the very point of the girls' presence entirely - they needed to be visible, they needed to be out in the open, they needed to be something everyone was reminded of as much as possible.

But, in taking over the bulk of the regular mail duties, the mailgirls had displaced a number of previously employed mailroom staff members. Which was perhaps why Paul Hooper, the nominal head of the mail room, didn't seem to enjoy the opportunity to rub elbows with the girls as much as one might have expected; he'd been forced to let a good number of his friends and employees go, and seen his span of control shrink accordingly.

"Look at those fucking pigtails," Hooper said aloud, to no one in particular. "They're like fucking handles. I bet someone upstairs is holding on to them while he jams his dick down her throat."

Thirteen took the abuse with a smile - a smile Hooper couldn't see. She was in her "Feet" position, standing with her arms behind her and her legs spread, but with her back to the rest of the mailroom and her face only a few inches from the wall. As a general rule, USF advised their employees against such direct, verbal abuse of the mailgirls - though it still happened regularly. Hooper, though, had reasoned he could get away with it if that abuse wasn't specifically directed at a mailgirl, but rather spoken aloud, to himself, while the mailgirl faced away from him in the corner of the room. It was likely only a loophole in Hooper's own mind; but the girls hadn't reported him, and Hooper knew enough to knock it off if Mistress Zero or someone else was around.

He was a mean son of a bitch, too. There were twenty-four mailgirls at USF, plus a few more that had come and gone, and every single one of them was drop-dead gorgeous, plucked from the cream-of-the-crop here at the Plaza. And, still, Hooper always managed to identify that one particular body issue that managed to get under a girl's skin - Five's teeth were uneven, Seven's nose was too big, Nine's hips were too wide, Fifteen's ass was too high. And so on, and so on. He'd managed to tease Thirteen for "not belonging," for the idea that USF was just letting "anyone" become a mailgirl - insinuating that Thirteen wasn't quite as pretty as the rest of the girls, something that she'd been anxious about ever since she'd first volunteered. It was a ridiculous assertion; even in her least confident moments, one would have argued that Thirteen was objectively more attractive than at least eight or nine of the other girls. But Hooper had nonetheless managed to sniff out her particular neurosis, and needle her accordingly.