Mailgirl Number Thirteen: Day 02

She'd never masturbated in the shower before. She'd never masturbated standing up, for that matter. But, once she'd started, it was impossible to stop. Bracing herself against the wall with her left hand, her right operated on autopilot. It knew what it was doing.

"Yes," she had whispered to herself, echoing One's cries from earlier in the day. "Yes. Yes. Yes."

Thirteen never would have described herself as a particularly "sexual" person. She liked sex. Well enough. It was fun. It was fine. No, seriously, it was fine. She hadn't really known was she was doing when she'd first lost her virginity to Mark Agnew in college. And it wasn't until two months into that particular relationship that she'd achieved her first real orgasm. Luke Gaffke, her next boyfriend of any significance, had repeatedly faulted her for never initiating. Even with Christopher, as hot and naughty as it had been to be sneaking around and dating one of the faculty, sex had always been more about intimacy and making him happy than anything physical Thirteen took away.

That said, she'd been masturbating more in the last few weeks, for sure. She chalked it up to the amount of "research" she was doing online. The spanking videos. The bondage and discipline stuff. The mailgirl accounts and confessions she'd been reading on the Post Office, on Mailgirls Exposed, on Mailgirl Submissions. Prior to exploring this narrow niche of academia, Thirteen's sessions of "self-love" had always had their peaks and valleys. She might masturbate two or three or four nights in a row, and then not even think about it for weeks at a time.

But the full weight of yesterday had come crashing down on her in the shower. Every look. Every embarrassment. Every name she'd been called. Stripping in Barrow's office. Being bent over Mistress Zero's bench. Having Alan Bagby ask her about oral and anal sex, and whether or not she'd ever been with another girl. Dealing with the number of times someone felt it necessary to point out just how hard her nipples were. Getting "inspected" by the twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old in his cubicle. Holding hands with Seven, and breathing her in.

She nearly collapsed when she came, getting weak in the knees as she rode that first orgasm to completion. But, as powerful as it had been -- and Thirteen wasn't sure she'd ever had a climax like that in her life -- one hadn't been enough. There was more there. The tank wasn't on empty just yet.

She thought about Mailgirl Number One at the sinks, about how confident and in control the girl had been. Laurie Rice, the girl had once been, a lawyer like Mailgirl Number Seven. Thirteen could imagine her in the middle of a court room, commanding the attention of the judge and jury both, owning them with her presence. Thirteen knew that One had been some type of Mergers and Acquisition specialist; she wasn't, however, sure that that meant she'd ever been inside an actual court room. But she liked the image of One in control like that, regardless. Nine had masturbated in front of her, as well, but she hadn't performed like One. Nine's session had been quick and dirty. Utilitarian. Hot, too, in its own way.

One, though, had put on a show.

Thirteen came a second time. And then a third. And then - unbelievably - a fourth. Sarah Scott was not the girl who had multiple orgasms. Thirteen, on the other hand, was another story, and she pushed off from one to the next with ease, chasing every last bit of sexual energy her body had built up over the course of the day and wringing orgasm after orgasm from her pussy.

When she was through, she cried.

Eyes still puffy and hair still wet, Thirteen crawled into bed wearing a pair of boxers and an oversized Pepperdine tee. She'd hoped she'd be able to fall right asleep, given how drained she felt, given how little she'd slept the night before. But sleep proved to be elusive, her mind racing -- replaying the day, and projecting more of the same onto tomorrow. She tried to distract herself with TV, but she got only a few minutes into a half dozen different shows on Netflix before she lost interest and went searching for something else. She'd flipped through the handbook she'd been issued, reading a little here and a little there. She'd read it before, in New Haven. But, it was only a matter of time before she'd gotten disgusted by it, by herself, by USF.

Pornography turned out to help some, though it hadn't exactly distracted Thirteen from her day. XXXTube, inspired by world events and sensing a demand, now had an entire "mailgirls" section. The videos were mostly of Japanese and Eastern European girls, and the clips were almost entirely staged and scripted. Wanting something more "real," Thirteen found herself on Mailgirls Exposed, perusing cell phone pics and grainy, low-quality videos. USF proved to be underrepresented here, and Thirteen found some comfort in that. Even if she was frustrated in the moment, as she'd kind of hoped to stumble across Mailgirl One or Mailgirl Seven in her searches.

After getting herself off one last time, she'd finally fallen asleep. But it had been late, and Thirteen was supposed to be up early. She'd been dragging that morning, and the only silver lining had been that she could just throw on whatever. She'd shower, shave, and run through her morning routines once she got to the Plaza.

Not that Thirteen needed to shave. She'd gotten waxed in preparation of her first day as a mailgirl, and there was not a single hair on her body below the neckline. Even still, she'd been forced to lather up and make a show of running a razor over her pubic area yesterday, so as to not disappoint the spectators in the elevator lobby. And, unsure of whether this step would be necessary every single day for the next thirteen weeks, Thirteen did so again now. She wasn't going to risk admonition from Mistress Zero when it came time for Inspection.

Thirteen and Twelve shared a razor. They passed the soap, shampoo, and conditioner back and forth between them. Twelve said "hello," and the pair made a few attempts at small talk, but the mood in the locker room that morning was somber, and made even more so by the arrival of their mistress.

Her heels clicked against the tile floor of the locker room as she entered, echoing off the walls and sending a communal chill up the spines of every girl there. She was tall. Statuesque. And, even in a room full of 10's, she was a thing apart. She wore a sleeveless white blouse, so thin that the black lace bra she was wearing under it was plainly visible right through. Her top few buttons were undone, and cleavage spilled out into the open. Her breasts were more exposed than they were covered. She had on a high-waisted black pencil skirt with delicate, feminine-looking pinstripes, and six little silver buttons -- three each to a side -- that flanked what would have been her belly button. No hose, as Mistress Zero could apparently get away with things that other women at the Plaza wouldn't have dared to dream of, a decision she'd be forgiven for when surrounded on all sides by naked mailgirls. Her heels were ridiculous, evil-looking things that only added to her already considerable height; she would have even towered over most of the men at USF, to say nothing of the barefooted mailgirls. Completing the ensemble was a pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses she might very well have plucked from a "sexy secretary" Halloween costume. Thirteen didn't think they were real. Mistress Zero hadn't been wearing them yesterday. Thirteen had the sense that they were for show.

Because Mistress Zero was every bit the part of the show that the mailgirls themselves were. Sure, she was their direct supervisor, and it was her duty to keep them in line. She was Will Barrow's lieutenant, his presence in the locker room, and the company's representative down here on the 2nd Floor. But she was also part of the fantasy, the one employee at the Plaza who was able to lay a hand on the girls and touch them as she saw fit. As she'd tweaked Thirteen's nipple yesterday, slapped her on the ass, and run a hand between her legs to supposedly check for "stubble," the men at USF lived vicariously through her. She'd been a mailgirl herself, back in the day, but she was all dominatrix now.

She screamed sex, and -- even under the ice-cold shower -- Thirteen felt aroused by her.

Mistress Zero paced, menacingly, back and forth behind her. Up and down the locker room, surveying the girls and taking stock of them. She couldn't move particularly fast. It would have been impossible to do so in those heels. Her skirt didn't help any, though, either -- it was so tight that it restricted her movement, other than the side-to-side way her hips sashayed as she stalked along among the mailgirls.

As she exited the shower, Thirteen was conscious of her own body language, her posture. Smile, she told herself. Shoulders back. Tits out. After all, "a mailgirl feels no embarrassment at her nudity."

As if.

Eighteen was waiting for her at the sinks. So too were Mailgirls Ten and One, the latter decidedly less distracted than she'd been here the previous evening, but still no less engrossed in her own reflection. She was applying eye-liner. Given that her locker was all the way down on the far end of the locker room, Thirteen wondered what kept bringing her up this way. Two, Three, Four, and Eight were all crowded around the sinks on the other side of the double doors. So maybe that was it? Or maybe One had been coming down this way all along, back when the locker room had been a little emptier, and this was her spot.

It was tempting to think that the communal cosmetics and toiletries the girls all used stayed in one place, and that -- coming back to the same spot over and over again -- one could minimize the number of girls who'd had a particular toothbrush in their mouths or stick of deodorant under their arms. That seemed unlikely, however. That seemed to miss the point.

Thirteen tossed her hand towel in the laundry, brushed and dried her hair, attended to her teeth, and spritzed herself with perfume. While it wasn't a scent Thirteen might have chosen for herself -- and Thirteen rarely wore perfume, anyways -- it wasn't terrible, either. A little sweet, maybe. Floral. It wasn't a perfume that Thirteen recognized. But, given the nondescript bottles of "shampoo" and "conditioner," the cheap-looking bars of soap, and the cans of food labeled simply "Mailgirl Chow," Thirteen doubted that the perfume was anything expensive. It had a function to perform, she knew, in masking the funk of sweat and pussy she'd put out yesterday, the scent that followed her around like a cloud.

She put on make-up and puckered up to apply lipstick. Eye-liner, blush, and lipstick, like the perfume, weren't a part of her normal routine back in New Haven, and Thirteen had to be careful not to go too heavy on any of it. She looked to Ten and One for guidance, to get the "mailgirl look" just so. She did, however, hold back from following One's lead in applying blush to her nipples. Ten didn't do it. Mistress Zero hadn't made mention of doing so yesterday. Thirteen assumed One had added this step on her own.

Thirteen left her hair down. Surprisingly, neither the handbook nor Mistress Zero had had much to say on the subject. There were girls in ponytails, girls in buns. Two and Three, disturbingly, had opted for pigtails, and looked like schoolgirls. Jailbait. Seven had worn her hair down yesterday, though, and Thirteen just wanted to do whatever Seven was doing and fit in.

She got a drink of water from the bowl beside Mistress Zero's desk, down on her hands and knees with her hair pulled back. She positioned herself just so, so that she was parallel to mirror glass, so that her backside was pointed in the direction of Eighteen's end of the locker room. Maybe she'd get over this in time, but she felt self-conscious about "presenting" her backside to the people out in the elevator lobby. They'd get only the side view this morning, thank you very much.

She peed. As unnerving as it was to set herself down so close to where Six was doing the same -- and, the toilets were so close together that their thighs touched and their arms grazed against one another -- the other girl's body provided a sort of shield between Thirteen and the locker room's entrance. A mailgirl partition, as it were.

"It'll get easier," Six whispered, commenting on the fact that it took Thirteen a minute or two to get the stream going. "I used to have a hard time peeing in front of an audience, too..."

There was one more toilet around the corner, tucked inside what had likely once been a more traditional, single-occupant bathroom in the service lobby. It was relatively more private. Relative, in the sense that there was no line-of-sight direct from the far side of the mirror glass. But at some point, USF had decided to remove the door, and anyone coming and going through the doors from the stairwell or out of the three service elevators would be treated to an eyeful. The girls were told that they could use this one for "solid waste," should the need arise. Thirteen had vowed to never take a shit at the Plaza.

"Mailgirls don't poop," Seven laughed when Thirteen had shared this promise with her the previous afternoon. "I've made it this far, knock on wood. Apparently, it's one fetish too far for Human Capital. Hence, the private one."

Thirteen washed her hands and returned to her locker. She slipped on the black lycra armband that comprised the full extent of the "clothing" she'd be allowed to wear today at the Plaza, and deposited the smartphone into its sleeve. She then eyed her collar with a sick feeling in her stomach.

She hated it. She hated everything that it represented.

It was an ugly thing. Vicious. Medieval. It was something that belonged on a Rottweiler, not a human being. A mean-looking Rottweiler, at that -- the sort of dog that guarded a rundown junkyard somewhere. Thick. Black. Metal. Adorned with D-rings so that she could be leashed in the front, in the back, on the sides. The single touch of femininity to the thing was a silver "#13" that hung, like a dog tag, from the front. She was delivering the mail in her birthday suit. Shouldn't that have been enough? The collar represented something deeper, something darker, about her new station in life. She was slavegirl, not a mailgirl. She was a piece of property.

She hated it. So why did it turn her on so?

Swallowing, Thirteen clicked the collar into place, and panicked for a brief moment. She'd complained to Will Barrow yesterday that it was too tight, too restrictive. She'd worried that something was wrong. But she'd been assured that it fit properly, and -- as tight as it may have been -- she'd gotten used to it as the day had progressed.

The locker beside hers was still empty. Fourteen hadn't yet arrived. Thirteen wondered how Mistress Zero would react if the dark-haired girl was late on just her second day as a mailgirl. Probably poorly. Or, maybe Fourteen wasn't coming back? Whatever indignities Thirteen had suffered yesterday -- and she'd suffered more than her share -- Fourteen had gotten it worse. It wasn't unreasonable to think Fourteen wasn't coming in that morning, or that there'd be a new Number Fourteen by day's end. Thirteen, certainly, had been tempted to stay home, to call up Gillian and tell her that she couldn't possibly go through with this for the entire summer.

Collar on, Thirteen joined a handful of other girls waiting their turns to weigh in. Matt Doyle -- "Mr. Doyle" to the girls -- had demonstrated how it worked the previous afternoon. The girls didn't have to do much. They needed only to step on one of the two available scales, and the scale itself would synch with their smartphones and log their weights accordingly. Each girl was assigned their own narrow band in which their weight was allowed to fluctuate. Too heavy or too light, and they'd be issued a demerit, in addition to having their servings of mailgirl chow adjusted accordingly. Thirteen had been told she needed to lose weight. Being given a smaller amount of the disgusting grey porridge they were fed at lunch and for snacks didn't seem like all that much of a punishment to her, however.

"Rookie mistake," Seven whispered to her. The other girl had just stepped on the far scale. She was now naked, like Thirteen, from head to toe, save for her armband and phone. She wasn't, though, wearing her collar, and it was this that she was teasing Thirteen about. "This thing registers down to a tenth of a pound. Your collar's not helping."

Stupid, Thirteen thought to herself. Stupid, even for a mailgirl.

Not that it really mattered. The scale spat back her weight, and her smartphone chimed that it had been recorded. She would have been over her prescribed number no matter what, and -- as heavy as the collar may have been -- its absence wouldn't have changed that fact.

There was still time before inspections began, before the girls were expected to line up and subject themselves to Mistress Zero's scrutiny. A few girls milled about, having hushed conversations. A few others lingered by the sinks longer than was probably necessary. A couple -- Mailgirl Five, most notably -- were already at their lockers, already on their knees, already leashed in. More carefully following Seven's instructions this time, Thirteen left her own leash coiled where it was, but got down into "Knees" in front of her locker and waited the remaining few minutes out.

It was at this moment that Fourteen burst through the double doors, the last of the mailgirls to arrive. She shot a fake-looking smile at Thirteen and said, "Good morning," but got right down to business in stripping off her clothes. Flip-flops. Jeans. Lightweight jacket. Tank-top. Bra and panties. She wasted no time, and hustled back across the locker room to the showers. She'd be cutting it close.

Thirteen, though, was still mostly fixated on Mailgirl Number Five. Chi Yong Cho. She'd been a quantitative analyst before this, with a PhD in Applied Mathematics from MIT. Mailgirl Number Eleven was half-Asian, Thirteen knew, but Five was full-blooded Korean-American, from Houston. And she looked utterly miserable. It hung over her. Mailgirls Four and Six barely acknowledged her as they, too, got to their knees beside her. Thirteen assumed this had more to do with Five than any unfriendliness on the part of the other two girls.

What was Five doing here? Thirteen hated all this, too. Only Mailgirl One seemed to be actually enjoying herself. The others put on brave faces, and smiled as they were supposed to, but none of them really and truly wanted to be a mailgirl. Seven, as much as she'd made clear that she'd volunteered, and as much as she'd come close to outright acknowledging some complex emotions about her participation in the program, had let her regrets and second-guessing slip through to the surface a few times yesterday. Did USF really have that much on Five? Did she have that much hanging over her, that she'd show up day-in and day-out and be that depressed and outwardly pathetic?

Thirteen felt sorry for Mailgirl Number Sixteen, that the African-American girl would be paired with such a downtrodden partner. She felt lucky to have been assigned to Seven. Eleven wouldn't have been so bad; she and Eighteen appeared to be getting along fine. Nine, teamed with Fifteen, seemed nice enough. Seventeen looked to be struggling, but Six had been there to encourage her along, and Six's massive chest would have been enough to pull attention away from whomever she'd been assigned. Thirteen was intimidated by Mailgirl Number One, but -- from what little Thirteen had observed of her so far -- Mailgirl Number Fourteen had enough personality and backbone that that pairing sort of made sense.