Mailgirls: Three on One

"Up," the woman instructed them, and the girls all rose to their feet. "'Feet.'"

Three planted her bare feet flat on the white tile floor. Again, legs spread shoulder-width apart. Again, hands behind her back. Back arched and chest out. Head down. Eyes to the floor.

"This the is the 'Mailgirls Ready Position.' At USF, we will refer to this position as 'Feet.' When engaged, this will be your standard posture. As you wait for your package to be handed to you. As you wait for your next set of orders. As you wait to be dismissed."

"Now," she went on. "Up on your toes. Up. Up. Number Six – up! Number Four – legs further apart! Hands behind your head, with your elbows out. Lock your fingers. Eyes forward. All of you, arch your back. More. Breasts up and out."

Without warning or permission, Mistress Zero's hands were on Three's body. Cupping the underside of Three's right breast in her left hand, and putting her right upon the small of Three's back, Mistress Zero repeatedly herself impatiently. "Up and out!" She manhandled Three into the proper posture.

Three bristled at the violation, but said nothing.

Mistress Zero went on. "This is the 'Mailgirls Inspection Position.' At USF, will refer to this position as 'Toes.' You will be expected to take this position for me each morning, each afternoon following lunch, and after each of your breaks. You are to be shaved from the neck down, with no stubble. You are to be wearing lipstick and make-up – not too heavy, not like little tarts. Nail polish – fingers and toes – to be provided. Perfume, to be provided. Teeth brushed, with toothbrush and toothpaste to be provided. Hair clean and neat. Jewelry removed.

"You may be ordered to take this position by any superior here at Plaza, however, so long as you are not actively engaged in a pick-up, delivery, or another assignment. You are the whole company's account, and therefore are the whole company's responsibility. Deadlines will be tight and use of the elevators limited; you will most certainly break a sweat. Light perspiration during an inspection in permissible. Heavy sweating is not. Nor is body odor.

"Should you fail an inspection, that failure will be logged, and you will be issued demerits. You will be taken off-duty and sent immediately back here, to the locker room, to bring your 'uniform' up to the standards expected of you. You will then return to the site of your failure, and submit yourself for a second inspection. You are not to fail your second inspection."

With both the "Knees" and "Feet" postures, the girls had been instructed to stare submissively at the floor. "Toes," on the other hand, had Three staring straightforward. There was no avoiding the naked blonde staring back at her from the mirror across the locker room.

"Knees" had been humiliating enough. It was the posture of a submissive slave girl, perfect height for a master to unzip his pants and slip a cock into her mouth. There'd be none of that here at USF, thankfully; Barrow had promised. But up in "Toes" and submitting herself for inspection was something else altogether, and Three couldn't help but feel a new level of humiliation. It was going to be bad enough to be "inspected" by Mistress Zero. The idea that she'd be allowing herself to be examined and judged by anyone here at the Plaza was excruciating. Any superior. Which, as Barrow and Mistress Zero had previously informed her, was literally everyone at the Plaza but other mailgirls. Admins and interns. IT. Security. The custodial staff. Any one of them could order her to her toes and eyeball her whole body up and down in search of violations.

Any relief that Three felt in being let out of "Toes," however, was short-lived. No sooner had the girls been order back into "Feet," they were instructed to turn around, bend at the waist, and grab their ankles. They all complied. Slowly. Hesitatingly. Awkwardly. But they all complied, all the same.

"'Ankles,'" Mistress Zero informed them.

And so it went. "Hands-and-Knees" was next. "Elbows-and-Knees." "Forehead-and-Knees." One after another, position after position. There were enough positions that Three struggled to remember them all. She found herself making mental connections to yoga poses, in the hopes that she'd have an easier time remembering them all that way. Box Pose. Camel Pose. Lotus. Dolphin. Hero. Bridge. Three wasn't sure what any of this had to do with delivering the mail.

"We shall take a break," Mistress Zero announced finally, satisfied that the girls had at least mastered "Knees," "Feet," and "Toes" to her exacting standards. She promised they'd find each of the positions described in detail, in the instructional handbook they'd be taking home with them that evening. And she promised to run them through the full gamut again the following morning, before their shifts began. "Six, Five – with me. The rest of you: Knees."

Six and Five dutifully followed behind Mistress Zero, up to and around her desk, and disappeared with her down the corridor towards the service elevators. The remaining girls got to their knees, as instructed, and suffered silently in misery and fear over what was coming next. From the around the corner, they heard one of the storage room doors swing open.

"I can't..." Two whispered. "I can't do this."

"What choice do you have?" This from Mailgirl Number One.

"They...they...they promised me the West Coast," Two whimpered. The girl came from some sort of sales department, Three surmised. "A transfer. A promotion. Money. Relo. Everything I could have wanted."

"...or else," Four added, bitterly.

"Or else," Two agreed.

"The same," Three said softly. "Or else."

"Did anyone say no?" Two asked.

"There was an issue with someone," One joined in. "In Emerging Markets, I overheard. They just moved to the next girl on the list."

"I should have said no," Two muttered.

"You can still say no," Four offered.

"We can all still say no," Three added. It was true. Mistress Zero had shown them where the door was. The logistics of getting back up to the 26th Floor and of getting her clothes back were frightening, but that had to be the lesser evil when compared to four more weeks of this.

"No, we can't," One spat. She quoted, "'Or else.'"

Or else. Or else they'd be ruined. Finances. Careers. Job prospects. Whoever the girl was in Emerging Markets who'd gotten free, her whole life would be ruined. Barrow would see to it. He'd promised Three the same.

As mailgirls, it was more like their lives were on "pause." At some point down the road, Amanda Dobson, Portfolio Manager, would strut confidently into the building, fully dressed, and this little detour as Mailgirl Number Three would be behind her. Tit-for-tat. Quid pro quo. You wash my back, I'll wash yours. So long as Three played along, and took whatever abuses were thrown at her, USF would reward her in the end; she was sacrificing herself for the company.

She wasn't sure how much she could trust Will Barrow, but – god help her – she trusted Joe Hoblitzel and Charlie Farrell. She'd been assured that USF would be enforcing a strict "look-but-don't-touch" policy when it came to the mailgirls, and that anyone who dared to cross that line would be dealt with harshly – termination, certainly, with the potential of both criminal and civil penalties to be explored, depending on the offense. But she'd also been assured that nothing was off the table up to that line – humiliation, verbal abuse, and even corporal punishment. She'd be expected to put up with it all for the length of her contract. In exchange, she'd have the job of her dreams and a sum of money that might have otherwise taken her years to amass.

There was a good distance between here and there, however, and a good deal of nonsense Three would be forced to endure to get there. As Mistress Three had pointed out to Number Two earlier, delivering the mail was the least of it.

And, as if to underline that particular point, Three was treated to her "lunch."

Five placed it down in front of her, and then set another bowl down in front of Four. They were being served in dog dishes similar to those filled with water at Mistress Zero's desk. And what they were being served might well have been actual dog food. Or, at the very least, a close approximation to dog food. Even before she leaned down over the bowl, Three could smell it. She stifled a gag.

It was "mailgirl chow," Mistress Zero explained. Perfectly formulated with all of the vitamins and nutrients they required for their new "lifestyle," with no room for unneeded fat, salt, or empty calories. She assured them that programs on the West Coast had been utilizing this particular brand of food almost since the beginning, and that programs in Germany and Eastern Europe fed their girls something almost identical. If they wanted their bodies to operate at peak performance – and USF wanted their bodies to operate at peak performance – the girls would eat this morning, noon, and night. Mornings and nights still belonged to the girls, Mistress Zero admitted. But so long as they were here at the Plaza, this is what they'd be fed.

Three looked to her bowl with disgust. Grey. Chunky. And more than a little runny. She wasn't sure she had much of an appetite.

"Eat up," Mistress Zero instructed them. "I want to see clean bowls."

As she had with the water bowl, Three got to her hands and her knees. The fact that she wasn't allowed to pick up the bowl, and the fact that she wouldn't be allowed to use her hands, went unsaid. She tucked her hair behind her ears, and leaned in for her first, stomach-churning mouthful. The food was room temperature, and tasted no better than it smelled. There was no chance that Three was going to be able to choke it all down.

And yet, she did. The taste, the smell, the texture, the consistency – all of it was terrible. But she fought through it, and forced herself to take larger and larger bites to get to the bottom of the bowl. Again, what choice did she have? She could undress in Hoblitzel's office, or she could find the door. She could grab her ankles for her new boss, or she could find the door. She could choke down her serving of mailgirl chow, or she could find the door. Mistress Zero was wrong about the decision to become a mailgirl being her last; being a mailgirl was a decision she'd be forced to make over and over and over again.

Pags teased her that she had the palate of a thirteen-year-old boy. Hamburgers and French fries. Hot dogs from one of the street vendors. Pizza. She dutifully ate a salad for lunch a few times a week, and she was enough of a grown-up that vegetables were a part of her normal routine, whether she was out for dinner or cooking for herself. But she didn't like them all that much. She didn't love them, the way that Leslie seemed to. She knew they were good for her, they were good for her body, they were good for her figure – and so she ate them. Three approached lunch that afternoon with the same mindset. By the end of her meal, she'd grown numb the overall nastiness of the contents of her bowl.

Three glanced up, and confirmed that she was the first to be done. Three wasn't sure if this was an accomplishment she should have been proud of. Beside her, Two made a retching sound.

"Clean," Mistress Zero barked in her direction. "You should be able to see your reflection."

Three had eaten her meal. What remained might have generously been referred to as "gravy."

Three licked the bowl clean. She then fought the urge to vomit.

She sat back on her haunches, and risked a look in her supervisor's direction. "Water?" she croaked. "May I get some water, mistress?"

Three was once again on all fours, once again with her face in a dog bowl, when the door to the locker room swung open to her right. Three couldn't see the lobby beyond, as there was apparently an inner door and an outer door. That much was reassuring, given that the row of toilets on the far side of the desk was straight in the line-of-sight of the entrance. But Three had only just begun to get accustomed to being naked in front of Mistress Zero and her five new coworkers. The presence of the locker room's new guests brought a new wave of embarrassment over her – a combination of her state of dress and the position they found her in.

First through the door was a tall, skinny blonde of some sort of Scandinavian descent. On any other day, Three might have described her as attractive. Pretty, maybe. In a generic, tall blonde sort of way. But the girl suffered in comparison to the six naked beauties already assembled in the locker room. She carried a large, heavy toolbox in one hand, and thanked the man coming in behind her for carrying what appeared to be a massage table.

Three could have been forgiven for thinking of the mailgirls' locker room as a women's locker room. The showers, the sinks, the lockers – were it not for the open toilets and the line of girls eating their lunches from dog bowls on the floor, this could very well have been a women's locker room anywhere. Therefore, it was jarring when the first man joined them all. His eyes immediately locked onto the body of the naked blonde directly in front of him, on all fours on the floor. He was maybe in his early forties, and a little round at the mid-section. Glasses. Nerdy. IT, Three thought to herself. Some sort of computer guy or technical support.

Behind him was a figure that shot an instinctual shiver up Three's spine. Will Barrow, smiling from ear to ear.

"Are we early?" Barrow asked of Mistress Zero, nodding to the five girls still eating their lunches.

"We are a little slow," Mistress Zero replied.

Three was unsure of how to react to the newcomers in their midst. Should she stay where she was? Should she stand? Should she say hello? Barrow glanced her up and down casually, without pretending he wasn't. The other man seemed to be a bit more circumspect, at least after that first moment through the door. Three wanted more water, but couldn't bring herself to do so; somehow, being caught with her face in the bowl seemed that much more humiliating now. Instead, the taste of her lunch still in her teeth, Three stood and returned to her locker.

The early afternoon was a blur, with one new humiliation being piled on top of the last. The girls were divided into pairs – One and Two, Three and Four, Five and Six – and then handed off to Barrow and his friends to continue their training, set up their profiles, and prep themselves for being released back out into the Plaza. As Three was in no way looking forward to being sent on her first delivery, she suffered the indignities thrust upon her without complaint – hoping they'd run long, and that that particular hell could be put off until tomorrow.

For Three and Four, Barrow was first. Or, rather, Barrow and Mistress Zero; Barrow seated at the metal desk in the center of the locker room, with Mistress Zero standing in "Feet" position a few feet behind him. The two nude girls stood in the same position on the far side of the desk, backs to the door.

Height. Weight. Hair color. Eye color. Birthday. Barrow went one-by-one down his list, and the two girls chirped back their responses. The Director of Human Capital recorded them all on his tablet. Measurements. Dress size. Shoe size. Cup size. And then things got personal.

"Sexual orientation?" Barrow asked.

"Straight, sir," Three answered.

"Straight, sir," Four answered, as well.

"Are you a virgin?"

"No."

"No."

"How many partners have you been with?"

"Six," Three lied. It was actually ten.

"Four," Four answered. Was she lying, too? How many was too many for a twenty-something-year-old single girl in New York City?

"Have you had had vaginal intercourse?"

How else would she have lost her virginity? "Yes, sir."

"Yes."

"Oral?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"How many partners?"

"Six," Three lied again.

"Twelve," Four answered. Whoa.

"Anal?"

"No," Three replied quickly. Perhaps too quickly? There'd been that time in business school, when she and Greg had both gotten a little too drunk, and he'd slipped a thumb into her ass while taking her doggy-style. They hadn't talked about it beforehand, and he hadn't asked permission – but she hadn't stopped him, either. She hadn't objected. They never talked about it the next morning, and he'd never done anything like that again. She wondered if he even remembered doing it. She herself had been conflicted as to whether she had wanted him to do it again.

"No," Four offered.

"Have you ever been with a woman?"

"No," Three answered, but hesitated. "I kissed a girl." Why had she offered that?

"Kissed?" Barrow asked, probing.

"Made out with?" Three responded, not sure what he was fishing for. She'd been a sophomore at Princeton. Again, she'd had maybe a little too much to drink. She and Colleen Duffy, back in Colleen's room in Campbell Hall. It had been innocent enough. Kissing. No more. They were both straight. Colleen had a husband now. Three had seen the updates on Facebook.

"Okay," Barrow said, nodding. "Maybe we'll probe that one a bit more, up on the 18th Floor. Some other time." To Four: "And you?"

"No," Four responded, succinctly.

And so on. The last time Three had had her period? Was she on birth control? What sort of birth control? How often did she masturbate? When the last time she masturbated? Did she watch pornography? Movies? Internet? Print?

After Barrow and his endless list of humiliating questions, it was off to Matt Doyle. Doyle was, as Three has suspected, technical support. With Three and Four again standing in "Feet" position at their lockers, Doyle walked them through everything they needed to know about the smartphones they were being issued for their official mailgirl duties, as well as the mailgirls app USF would be running. The two girls may have been forbidden from making eye contact, but Doyle seemed incapable of it himself; he spent the entire time they were with him with his eyes on their breasts.

While on duty, the girls would each be outfitted with a black lycra armband, to be worn around their left bicep. In the armband was a pocket, where the smartphone would sit. The girls would be expected to clock in and re-affirm the voluntary nature of their participation in the program each and every morning, signing with a thumbprint. After that, however, they would be forbidden from touching the unit until the end of the day, when they clocked out. They could remove it only to shower.

Three slid the armband on, as instructed. As the phone booted up, she was greeted by a digital clock, and she was asked to record a time stamp. Next, it was the affirmation Doyle had promised. "I swear, under the penalty of law," it read, "that I submit under my own free will to the terms and conditions of the 'Fixed Term Mailgirls Contract' entered into with United States Financial Group, Inc. I consent to, and confirm that I have read, all clauses in this contract, and understand all clauses to the fullest." It went on. Three scrolled through – it was the same contract she had signed that morning.

"You can sign with your thumbprint at the bottom," Doyle offered helpfully. "With the touch ID function."

Three very much needed to read this contract through, in its entirety. She knew the big ticket items: forfeiture of clothes and forfeiture of privacy, submission to her new supervisor for the purposes of deliveries and any other duties as assigned, the surrendering of her name and agreement to be referred to only by her mailroom number, the relinquishing of Power-of-Attorney to Human Capital, and even the bit about agreeing to corporal punishment should her performance not be up to expected standards. But she hadn't had the opportunity to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, line-by-line. She hoped she'd find some sort of loophole that would free her. She feared there were indignities she'd skipped over.