Mailgirl Number Thirteen: Day 01

"I'm supposed to tell you something," Thirteen said to Fourteen, remembering. "When we got your things? Craig Nagle wanted us to tell you he was sorry."

"Pfft," Fourteen scoffed, shaking her head. Nagle's apology didn't mean much to her. "For the Susan thing? Or for all of it?"

"All of it, I think?"

"Yeah, well..." Fourteen replied. She turned a bar of soap over and over again in hands, built up a lather, and handed the bar to Thirteen. "You think he's sorry enough to switch places?"

Seven, to Thirteen's right, chuckled. "I don't think Human Capital would go for that," she opined.

"One or two mailboys couldn't hurt," Fourteen said dryly. "Equal representation and all that."

"You think he'd make a good candidate?" Thirteen laughed. She repeated the act of soaping up her hands, and looked to Seven to see if she was supposed to continue passing the bar down the line. Seven, though, had her own. Or, at least, one of the two on this end of the locker room.

"Fair," Fourteen replied. "He's not exactly someone I'd want to see naked."

Thirteen thought back to Nick Pagliaro. She wouldn't have minded having him here among them.

"Can I have the soap back?" Fourteen asked. "For a second?"

"Sure," Thirteen said, passing it back her way.

Cosmetics and toiletries, soap included, were communal property, items to be shared among the mailgirls. In addition to two bars of soap down this end of the locker room, there was a single, family-sized bottle of something simply labeled "Shampoo," and another marked "Conditioner." Nine had those down her end at the moment. Neither were what Thirteen might have bought for herself, if she were given the option, but they were sufficient. The shampoo did its job, and the conditioner smelled vaguely like coconut.

More disconcerting, however, were the other communal items. Toothpaste? Sure. Lipstick, eye-liner, blush? Fine. Nail polish? Whatever. The six sticks of deodorant, though, to be shared among eighteen girls, was a little gross. To say nothing of the toothbrush situation.

Thirteen had to catch Three before she left, however. Thinking of Pagliaro reminded her that he, too, had a message she and Seven were supposed to pass along, if Seven hadn't done so already. An evil part of her wanted Three to balk at the request, wanted Pagliaro and whoever "Rachel" was apart, so that the handsome young analyst would be single and all hers. It was nothing more than a fantasy, of course. Nick Pagliaro could never be hers, and she could never be his. USF forbade it. And probably for the best; Thirteen wouldn't have known what to do with him, anyways. She'd never been that girl.

"How'd you do?" Fourteen asked.

"It was..." Thirteen began, but trailed off. What was she supposed to say?

"Yeah," Fourteen agreed, filling in the blanks. "It's been a hell of a day."

Thirteen was thankful, at least, for the opportunity to be rid of number on her hip. When she got the soap back, she also reached for a pink washcloth that someone else had already used and discarded on the floor. No matter how much she scrubbed, however, she couldn't get the "13" entirely off. She succeeded only in getting it to fade a bit.

"You need something more abrasive," Seven pointed out, sensing the girl's frustration. "I've got a scrub at home that does the trick. Good old St. Ives. The apricot stuff, with the exfoliant."

Thirteen groaned. She might have been going home, but the thirteen was coming with her.

"Honestly, though?" Nine added, jumping into the conversation. "It's not worth it. You're just going to get it redone again tomorrow."

"Great," Thirteen lamented.

"I gave myself a rash trying to get it off that first week," Nine laughed.

"Eleven's got some rubbing alcohol in her locker, I think," Seven offered.

"No, it's...it's fine," Thirteen sighed. Nine was right. It wasn't worth the effort. Mistress Zero was just going to mark her up again in the morning. Between now and then, it wasn't as if anyone was going to see her bare hip.

Thirteen's fears that Nine might masturbate again proved to be unfounded. Hairdryers hummed in the distance. "Thwack!" Thirteen heard, followed by a "Six! Thank you, mistress!" The sounds of the showers themselves, the sinks, the toilets. Hushed conversation. There was a lack of moaning, however. No squeals, no shrieks, no victorious little whines. Perhaps the stories of "masturbating mailgirls" were overblown. As tempted as Thirteen may have been today, maybe self-control and self-restraint were not foreign concepts to USF's mailgirls, after all. Nine notwithstanding, none of the girls had gotten themselves off in front of the new recruits. Whether they had this morning, before line-up and inspection, or during morning breaks before Thirteen and Fifteen had been sent down -- well, that, Thirteen couldn't say.

She chose not to wash her hair. Of that, she hoped she could be forgiven. She wrung it out after the water was off, and padded over to the shelves of towels between the showers and the sinks. She dried herself off with one of the hand towels (as much as possible), tossed it in the laundry, and then took a second one to finish the job. The girls weren't given real bath towels. There was no chance of Thirteen wrapping one of these around her torso and covering up.

She opted out of drying her hair, too. The decision wasn't one she'd be allowed in the morning, or if she chose to take a quick shower during the day. But she could go home with damp hair. It wouldn't be the end of the world. And Thirteen just wanted to put some distance between herself and the Plaza, as quickly as possible.

As it turned out, there was another reason Thirteen didn't want to linger by the sinks. Mailgirl Number One had taken up position there, at the far end, with her legs spread and one hand working furiously between them. She was bracing herself up against the edge of the counter with her free hand, and she stared directly into the eyes of her own reflection. Self-control and self-restraint, apparently, was a foreign concept to the veteran mailgirls, after all.

One was in spitting distance of where Mistress Zero was paddling Mailgirls Six and Seventeen. Mailgirl Nine had taken up position uncomfortably close to the masturbating mailgirl, brushing her hair as if she were oblivious to what was happening there beside her. She couldn't have been, of course, as One wasn't exactly being quiet. But as Nine was ignoring One, so too did One ignore Nine. Mistress Zero wasn't a concern. The rest of the locker room might as well have been empty. And whether or not One remembered that there was an audience out on the other side of the mirror, she didn't let it affect her.

Unless it was, in fact, affecting her? She was locked in on her duplicate in the mirror. But she might very well have been looking through her counterpart at the men and women seated out in the café area beyond, daring them to watch her. She was confident. Defiant. She wasn't running from this.

"Yes...," One whined, her voice high-pitched and girlish. "Yes. Yes! Yes!"

Thirteen wasn't sticking around for the climax. No make-up. No perfume. No brushing of her teeth. The single item she dared to retrieve from the sinks was underarm deodorant, and she probably could have made it home without that, even. Mistress Zero had commented on her stink, though, and Thirteen wasn't willing to take any chances in that particular department.

One's cries, sharp and raw, cut through her as she returned to her locker. She was thankful, then, for a distraction; she laughed at herself, making the realization that she still had one of her earrings in. It had been in, alone, for however long her punishment and shower had lasted. Before putting her clothes back on, she rescued its counterpart from the tin cup in her locker, and inserted it into her lobe. Her necklace? Her rings? These were deposited directly into her purse. She'd carry them home.

If she'd have been able to get out the door before Mistress Zero had arrived back down in the locker room, Thirteen would have missed the opportunity to connect with Fourteen and deliver Nagle's apology (Seven, for her part, promised she'd grab Three and tell her what Nick Pagliaro had asked). But she would have also missed picking up a copy of her official mailgirl handbook and her employee ID. Eight -- presumably the other girl on Evening Shift tonight, with Twelve -- had distributed thick, professionally-bound manuals to each of the new girls. Thirteen found hers in her locker, with a naked brunette -- wearing an armband and a collar -- on the cover, viewed from behind. The model didn't appear to be anyone here at USF. Thirteen didn't recognize her, though it wasn't as if she could see the girl's face.

She did, however, recognize the other naked mailgirl, the one staring up at her from a small, rectangular piece of plastic. Her employee ID. It was vertical. A whole-body shot. Thirteen was on her knees, with her hands behind her back. She'd been led up atop Mistress Zero's desk for the photograph, though the inoffensive blue backdrop behind her made it look like the picture had been taken in a studio somewhere. The sole deviation from her standard "Knees" position was that she was looking straight ahead, directly in the camera, with a big, toothy grin and a come-hither look on her face. At the time, she'd worried that her eyes were going to give her away, that they'd show just how much she wanted to be anywhere but there. She needn't have been concerned. This girl, this naked mailgirl, screamed "sex." Thirteen barely recognized herself.

The ID went immediately into Thirteen's purse. She couldn't bear to look at it.

Skirt. Bra. Tank-top. Blazer. Sandals. Thirteen didn't wait around for Seven. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to.

"Nine!" Seventeen yelped from behind her. It was the redhead's turn. "Thank you, mistress!"

"Yes! Yes! Yeeeeeessssss!!!" One shrieked, signaling to all her fellow mailgirls that she was cumming.

Thirteen approached the first set of double-doors leading out the elevator lobby. The girl looking back at her in the reflection looked like Sarah Scott again. Wet hair. Tank untucked. Blazer slightly askew. A little disheveled, yes. A little worse for the wear. But she was herself again.

Through the first set of doors, and then the second. So eager had she been to get out of the locker room, she was unprepared for what waited beyond.

As Sarah emerged, there was a crowd of people who greeted her with big, knowing, accusatory smiles. Twenty. Maybe thirty. Some, alone. Others, in groups of two's and three's and four's.

There was a smattering of applause. Someone yelled out, "Yeah!!!" She heard, "See you tomorrow, beautiful!" from someone else. A woman called out, "How's your bum?" Others just whispered amongst themselves, and it wasn't being paranoid to think they were talking about her.

Sarah didn't dare look back. She'd been on this side of the glass this morning. She didn't need a reminder of just how much people out here could see could see in there. Seventeen and Six were likely still bent over the spanking bench. There were others likely still in the shower. Maybe even someone peeing in the hallway on those godawful, prison-issue metal toilets.

Instead, employing her training as a mailgirl, Sarah kept her head down, avoided eye contact, and hurried through the crowd. And, because she wasn't quite looking where she was going, Sarah almost walked right into Gillian Schang.

"Let's get a bite to eat back at the hotel," Gillian said warmly. She wrapped her arms around the girl. "Tell me about your day."