Mailgirl Number Thirteen: Day 01

She'd been practicing. She'd run through all of the positions at home in New Haven, albeit while wearing her pajamas. "Knees," "Feet," and "Toes," were the important ones, she knew. But then there was "Hands-and-Knees." "Elbows-and-Knees." "Forehead-and-Knees." There was "Feet, Knees-Together," for those rare occasions when Thirteen would be allowed to close her legs. Similarly, there was "Knees, Knees-Together," when kneeling on the floor. There was "Squat," which was fairly self-explanatory, as well as the associated, "Squat, Knees-Together." Most of the positions Thirteen was expected to learn and perform were straightforwardly and simply named; it wouldn't take a PhD to understand how she'd be expected to stand, squat, and kneel.

USF had shied away from referring to "Knees" as "Resting," to "Feet" as "Ready" or "Waiting," to "Toes" as "Inspection," terminology that Thirteen had seen codified elsewhere. But USF had plenty of variations upon the standard poses that Thirteen wouldn't be able to figure out in the moment. Hearing "Knees, Third Position" or "Feet, Sixth Position" didn't tell Thirteen a whole lot. She'd need to know that the first required her to put her hands flat on the floor, between her legs, while otherwise continuing to stay kneeling. She'd need to know that the second was for those occasions when she was instructed to lean up against a nearby wall -- feet flat on the ground, upper body bending forward ever so slightly, with her wrists crossed and supporting herself against said wall. And so on.

Thirteen had practiced. She'd never been so bold as to practice fully in the nude, however. Or, even just in her underwear, as she was now.

"Almost," Barrow said, critiquing her form. "Straighten up. We can't have our mailgirls slouching."

As she did as he asked, she inadvertently looked up at him, and was immediately corrected.

"Eyes down," he told her sternly, and then repeated, "A mailgirl is not allowed eye contact unless authorized by a superior."

"Yes, Mr. Barrow," Thirteen mewed.

"But -- no! -- keep your back straight. In fact, arch your back a bit. Chest out. More."

"Yes, Mr. Barrow."

"More. More! 'A mailgirl feels no embarrassment at her nudity, and knows exposing herself is for the benefit of the company.'"

It was unnatural. It was uncomfortable. Her back was arched, as he'd instructed, and she was thrusting her chest out as much as she possibly could. "Look at my tits!" her body seemed to scream. "Look at my tits!" All the while, she kept her head down, and maintained focus upon an invisible, imaginary spot on Barrow's carpet.

"Your feet need to be further apart," he chided her. "Shoulder-width. More. More!"

Thirteen grimaced, and wondered just how broad-shouldered Barrow believed her to be. The point, though, was to expose her sex as much as possible; had she not been wearing panties -- and she most certainly wouldn't be, the next time -- her pussy would have been screaming for just as much attention as her breasts were. "Look at my pussy! Look at my pussy!"

Barrow sighed. "Better," he allowed, while making clear that Thirteen was still doing something wrong. That - despite four years of graduate level education - she wasn't quite smart enough to know how to stand properly, or to follow simple instructions.

This was the mailgirls's "ready" position. Upon arriving for a pick-up, Thirteen would be expected to stand in this manner -- chest out, legs apart -- to give whomever had summoned her a good, clear view of her body in its entirety. When she made a delivery, the same, until she was dismissed. As much as she may have been struggling to get it right here and now, Thirteen knew it would become more natural, more ingrained, with time. There were former mailgirls in Asia and Central Europe who, even months and years after leaving the program, found themselves standing this way almost on autopilot.

"Let's try 'Toes.'"

"Yes, Mr. Barrow."

Legs still parted, Thirteen rose to her tiptoes. She intertwined her fingers behind her head, her arms up and elbows jutting out from either side. More cautious this time in avoiding eye contact, she picked her chin up and looked straight ahead, staring out Barrow's window to the New York skyline beyond.

"Chest out," Barrow warned her. "Arch your back."

Thirteen did as she was told. "Yes, Mr. Barrow."

"And get your elbows back more, not forward like you have them. Perpendicular to your body. Ninety degrees."

Thirteen did her best to emulate the posture she'd seen Mailgirls Seven and Eight take that morning. She thought she was doing it right. She thought she had it.

"Good," Barrow said, finally. But then he quickly corrected himself. "Good enough for now, at least. Mistress Zero will help you get it right, eventually."

Not only was this the position she'd be taking each morning, as Mistress Zero made her rounds and made sure that her "uniform" was up to code, but Thirteen would be expected to get up on her toes like this whenever anyone -- literally anyone -- told her to do so. Mistress Zero didn't have a monopoly on inspections. In fact, it was the responsibility of all USF employees to ensure mailgirls were presenting the best versions of themselves at all times. The instructional materials USF had distributed throughout the Plaza made that clear. She couldn't be too sweaty. Her hair couldn't be disheveled. Her make-up had to be done just so. The reason her arms were up? Or, one of the reasons, anyways? She needed to pass the "sniff test" -- there couldn't be even a whiff of body odor, or she'd fail the inspection. If she did, there were automatic demerits, and she'd be sent back down to locker room on the 2nd Floor for a shower. A shave, if necessary. Reapplication of make-up and deodorant. And then back up to whomever had failed her in the first place, for a follow-up inspection. All the while she'd be racking up demerits for lack of productivity, encouraging her to get back into tip-top shape as quickly as humanly possible.

Thirteen lost her balance a bit, wobbled, but stayed on her toes. She heard a grunt from Barrow, but no comment or reprimand followed. Thirteen wasn't sure how long she could stay up like this, in this ridiculous position. But Barrow was in no hurry to release her. Instead, with Thirteen watching out of the corner of her eye, he reached for her purse and began rooting through it.

It was hard to explain why, but this felt like the worst of his violations so far. As a mailgirl, she had no right to privacy of any kind while she was here at USF Plaza. "A mailgirl shall have no privacy nor expectations of privacy so long as she is under contract," read the handbook. Generally, this meant clothes; Thirteen's "private parts" were now, effectively, "public parts." But the restriction was all-encompassing, and it covered everything from bathroom breaks to the sacred and secretive contents of a girl's handbag.

Thirteen swallowed hard, and prayed she didn't have anything too embarrassing in there.

Even Gillian seemed to be uncomfortable with this particular trespass, shifting in her chair and clearing her throat softly. "What are you looking for?"

"Ah, here we go," Barrow responded. Thirteen, eyes forward, couldn't immediately tell what he'd unearthed.

"Lipstick?" Gillian asked.

"Lipstick," Barrow affirmed. "Mistress Zero is usually the one who provides the girls their numbers. I don't think I even have a black marker here in my office, funnily enough."

He stood, rounded the desk, and stepped towards Thirteen. As naked as she was, Thirteen felt a shiver up her spine as he approached.

"Now, she's going to have redo this anyways, down in the locker room. But at least I can check off of few of the boxes here and now, at the outset."

Thirteen -- or, Sarah Scott, as it were -- didn't usually wear make-up. Maybe if she were out on a date, or headed to some sort of event. But she was a graduate student, and she didn't need to be all dolled up as part of her normal, daily routine. She knew that, as a mailgirl, that was about to change. She'd be expected to apply lipstick and eyeliner, among other things, at the start of her shift. These things were to be provided to her in the locker room. But, that morning, Thirteen had gone through the motions -- lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, and blush -- and the coral red lipstick had been stashed in her purse on the way out the door.

"Now, of course, this is where your waistband is going to get in the way," Barrow observed, as if regretting the leniency he'd shown in allowing Thirteen to keep her panties on. Hesitating, perhaps for show, he asked, "Do you mind if I..."

He trailed off, and Thirteen was left to guess at what he was asking permission to do.

"I...er...I...," she stammered.

"'This mailgirl,'" Barrow corrected her. "Third person only, from here on out."

"Really?" Gillian asked.

Barrow shrugged. "It reminds them of what they are, first and foremost. They're not special. They're not unique. They're not individuals. They're mailgirls. Interchangeable. Replaceable. They're a function, not a person."

Not a person. Thirteen cringed.

"This mailgirl was too slow and too lazy to get here on time," went the chant. "This mailgirl was too stupid to follow simple instructions," went another. Not every program Thirteen had looked into required this sort of idiotic patter, this constant, pathetic self-abasement. But USF had adopted the practice, codifying it in the handbook. The company never missed an opportunity to make the mailgirls low.

Gillian knew this. She and Thirteen had both openly mocked how ridiculous and over-the-top it was, back when Thirteen had brought it up during one of her naked one-on-ones in May. "Is this girl allowed to sit down?" Thirteen had asked, tone dripping with sarcasm, and the pair had had a good laugh. But, maybe Gillian had forgotten? Maybe she'd just assumed it was something in the handbook, but not actually enforced? Or, maybe -- just maybe -- she was challenging Barrow now, forcing him to explain himself.

Maybe not for Thirteen's benefit. But for the benefit of her research, at least.

"Um...this mailgirl..." Thirteen began, but then trailed off, herself.

"Good girl," Barrow interjected.

She steeled herself, and started again. "This mailgirl doesn't know what you're asking."

Barrow clucked his tongue. "That'll work for now. But if you don't understand something, or something isn't clear, or someone's mumbling or has an accent, or -- hell -- if one of our employees is just a complete and total moron, you still need to take the blame. Own it. Take the blame. The fault is yours. The fault is yours for not being smart enough to follow along, for being too much of a ditz to understand something so clearly intelligible and well-thought-through.

"This isn't just to diminish and demean you. Your job here -- and I'd argue that it's your most important job here -- is to build these people up. Your inferiority is their superiority."

She wasn't person, just a function. And her function wasn't just to deliver the mail. Her function was to suffer, and her suffering was a tool to instill authority and self-esteem in all those employees lucky enough to avoid being tapped to join the mailgirl ranks. It made Thirteen want to gag.

"This mailgirl is sorry," Thirteen said, her voice breaking in the middle. "This mailgirl was too...was too stupid to understand what you were asking."

"There we go," Barrow chuckled.

Gillian again said nothing. She wasn't coming to her student's rescue. She sat back, quietly, and listened as Thirteen whimpered her way through this self-denigration.

"I need to just slide the waistband of your underwear down a bit, just at your hip there on the right-hand side, so I can give you your number. You can keep them on for a little longer -- we don't need to go full monty just yet. But I'm going to need to tug a little, and since I'm violating my own 'look-but-don't-touch' policy...?"

"Uh...okay," Thirteen said softly. "Yes, Mr. Barrow."

It was intimate. It was intimate in a way that Thirteen hadn't been intimate with anyone in months. Barrow was gentle, careful, in the way that he slipped Thirteen's thong ever-so-slightly down her hip. His fingers ran along her bare skin in a way that shot electricity up Thirteen's spine. The contact was clinical and incidental, unromantic in nature -- but the effect it had on her was affecting, all the same.

She hoped he hadn't noticed her catch her breath. She hoped he hadn't caught her wobbling, ever-so-imperceptibly, on her toes.

When Barrow had exposed just enough to skin to accomplish what he'd sought out to accomplish, he touched her again. This time, not with his fingertips, but with the warm, sticky tip of her coral red lipstick. First, the "1," top to bottom. Then, the "3," with slow, purposeful curves. She'd been branded with her number.

The pearl white thong, light and lacy, was now askew about her midsection. The left was still in place, the elastic working doubly hard to hold the rest of her underwear up. The right, stretched around the top her right thigh, exposing her new number 13 to the room. From behind, she could feel how crooked it was at the top off her buttocks, and she knew the top of her ass crack would greet anyone new who entered Barrow's office from behind. Yes, her pussy itself was still covered; that was a "dignity" that Barrow seemed be granting her as a show of his benevolence. But the covering was really just covering for her slit itself. If this had been a week or two earlier, her unkempt pubic hair would have been spilling over the top of the thong. Today, this morning, it was just more bare skin.

"Mr. Barrow," she coughed. "Can I...can this mailgirl take her underwear off?"

He'd seen everything already. So had Gillian. It felt weird and desperate to cling to this last vestige of her clothes, half-on and half-off already. They'd get there anyway. They'd get there eventually. Maybe Barrow, after this feet-and-toes-and-knees-and-ankles exercise, intended to let her sit back down in the chair across from his desk, a generosity she was perhaps forgoing by making this request now. But Thirteen had gotten the point where she was done with it, and wanted get on with it already.

Her eyes still straight-forward, she heard the smile in Barrow's voice instead of seeing it. "See?" he laughed to Gillian. "Eager."

Thirteen blushed.

"I don't know if that's the right word," Gillian responded. "But she's been preparing for today for weeks now. She's ready."

Barrow wasn't ready to concede, however. "Maybe," was all he permitted the professor.

To Thirteen, "Go ahead. I'll take them. You can get down off your toes."

Thirteen breathed a sigh of relief. She'd half-expected him to deny her request, for no other reason than he could, for no other purpose that it was something she wanted -- apparently -- for herself. Back on her heels, she slid the thong down her thighs. Bending forward, she stepped out of her underwear -- first one leg, then the next -- and gathered the lacy material in her right hand. Dutifully, she held it out for the dark-haired man to take. He took the gift with a grin on his face.

"Let's try 'Knees,'" he said next, and stepped back behind his desk.

Thirteen lowered herself to the floor, and Gillian spoke up. Pointing in the direction of Thirteen's now-discarded panties, she asked, "For the 'artwork' in the hall?"

Barrow nodded in the affirmative. "A thing we do on a mailgirl's first day. A 'trophy' for the Human Capital staff."

Thirteen wanted to retch. Instead, she got herself into the "Mailgirl Kneeling Position," a particular posture alternately referred to as "Resting Position," "Knees," or even -- in the case of eVendr.com in a nerdy nod to work of John Norman -- "Nadu." Down onto her knees, which were spread wide open -- wider, even, than shoulder-width, having internalized Barrow's correction while in "Feet." Hands behind her, with the back of her right hand pressed flat against the top of her ass and clutching her left wrist. Eyes cast downwards, but her back straight -- arched ever so -- with her chest thrust out and calling attention to her breasts.

Had her nipples been hard this whole time? She hadn't noticed. At present, however, they were practically adamantine, giving away just how terrified and excited she was in the moment. She wondered if either Gillian or Barrow noticed, and if they might write it off as nothing more than being naked in a chilly room. It was only a little cold in Barrow's office, though -- probably perfectly "room temperature" for someone wearing clothes -- so she wasn't sure if that line of defense had much merit. They'd been hard, on-and-off, back in Gillian's office on Hillhouse Avenue, but her professor had thankfully never made a comment. She hoped that Barrow would show similar restraint.

Barrow flattened Thirteen's panties out on top of a file folder on his desk, closed the file folder up, and then slipped it under another, the one containing the contract she'd just inked her thumbprint on. That was the last she'd ever see of them, she thought to herself, before remembering just how wrong she was; they'd be hung here on the 18th Floor in perpetuity. She'd see them again every time she was summoned Human Capital.

She was uncomfortable on her knees. Psychologically, emotionally -- of course. That was a given. Had Barrow come back over from his side of the desk, unzipped his fly, and fed her his cock, she was already in position. But she was physically uncomfortable, too, and had long been worried that this was how she was supposed to "rest" while on-duty here at the Plaza. No naked pussies on the office furniture, thank you very much. When not actively engaged in a delivery or some other assignment in the building, Thirteen was to find a designated spot for mailgirls located on each floor and wait there, on her knees, until the smartphone she was assigned called her to her next destination. Literally the only time she'd be allowed to sit down -- outside the locker room, that is -- was when she was peeing. And, given that she'd be peeing in front of a chaperone, Thirteen didn't think she'd be lingering.

Again, like with "Feet," there were former mailgirls for whom this position became so natural and so comfortable that it was ingrained in them long after their contracts had ended. Thirteen had read one account of a girl insisting that getting down on her knees -- at home, in the office -- had a calming effect on her, that she was able to attain a zen-like peace. Thirteen wasn't so sure. She couldn't imagine a scenario where this actually became comfortable, where she wouldn't have to go home at the end of the day and ice her knees.

Barrow glanced in her direction and sighed audibly, but didn't offer her any comments or corrections. It was clear that, in his opinion, she hadn't gotten her "Knees" stance exactly right, either. But it was also apparent that he was tossing in the towel for now, and that it would be up to Mistress Zero to drill precision into Thirteen.

Instead, Thirteen heard him rummaging through a box behind his desk, and heard her professor laugh uncomfortably when he produced what he was looking for.

Her collar.

There were some companies that collared their girls. There were others that didn't. Off-hand, Thirteen couldn't remember whether collars had been standard-issue when DDE had launched their program out in Seattle. But, though the basics of the mailgirl world were more-or-less consistent company to company, country to country, continent to continent, there was infinite variety when it came to the little things -- even among those firms rolling out programs "officially licensed" by Hiromoto in Japan. The "Hall of Panties," for example; Thirteen had yet to read of another company displaying their mailgirls' underthings in the way that USF had. There were companies who'd ditched the lycra armbands and smartphones in favor of mailgirl-specific monitoring units, and others who'd simply issued their girls smartwatches. There were companies who insisted all mailgirls were to dye their hair bleach blonde, and others who'd gone so far as to ask girls to go under the knife and get breast implants.