Ellie - A "normal" work day

The alarm on my phone went off at nine-fifteen and I rolled over in bed and smiled up at the ceiling, because today was a work day, and work days were my favorite days now.

I'm Ellie. I'm twenty years old, I'm five-eleven and change, I'm a media studies major, and two weeks ago if you had told me I'd be excited — genuinely, kick-my-feet-in-bed excited — to drive across town to a windowless strip-mall shop called Dungeon Master to sell overpriced trading cards to sweaty men, I would have laughed in your face. I would have asked you what you were smoking. I would have reminded you that I had a 3.8 GPA and an internship lined up at a production company and parents who had paid for four years of a very expensive private college because their baby girl was going to be somebody.

But that was two weeks ago. That was before. I don't think about before too much anymore. Thinking about before gives me a funny crinkly feeling behind my eyes, like my brain is a cat that doesn't want to be picked up, and anyway there's no point in thinking about before, because before is over, and now is now, and now is great.

I stretched. The sheets slid off me and pooled at my waist. I slept naked these days — it was easier, Joshua said it was easier, and he was right, he was always right — and my tits spilled sideways across my chest, big and ebony and warm from sleep. I gave them a lazy squeeze with both hands, because they felt nice, and because I wasn't allowed to wear a bra at work anymore and my nipples were already a little sore from yesterday from being pinched and sucked and bitten by about nine different people, so a gentle squeeze felt almost medicinal. I rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom on my long legs, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink — long black hair messy from sleep, big brown eyes, soft dark skin, 34I tits swinging as I moved, bubble butt flexing behind me — and I thought, god, I'm so lucky Joshua picked me.

That thought should have felt wrong. It used to feel wrong, the first few days. Now it felt like gratitude. Now it felt like prayer.

I showered. I didn't shave because the girls had agreed last week that the regulars liked us a little hairy down there, more "authentic," more "wench," and Joshua had told us to lean into it. I towel-dried my hair. I didn't put on makeup because I'd be doing it elaborately at the shop for today's theme (Thirsty Thursday, which was Joshua's idea of a joke — every day had a theme, every day had a cosplay, every day I spent more on glue and cheap fabric than I made in tips). I walked naked to my closet, pulled out today's outfit in its garment bag, folded it carefully into my work tote, and put on a sundress to drive in. No panties. No bra. Just the thin cotton against my skin, my nipples embossing the floral print like two little thumbprints, and I didn't even think about it anymore. Panties cost money. Panties were — panties were — I couldn't quite remember what panties were for, actually. Keeping stuff in? Keeping stuff out? It didn't matter. Panties were for other people.

I grabbed my keys. I paused at the door. I always paused at the door, for just a second, because there was a weird little moment every morning when the real world — the sunlight, the birds, the smell of my own coffee — felt loud and bright and wrong, like it was trying to tell me something I didn't want to hear. I'd stand there for a beat and feel the wrongness, and then it would pass, and I'd walk out to my car humming, and by the time I was on the freeway it was gone entirely.

It passed. It always did.

I drove.

---

The thing I can't explain — the thing that would really bother me, if I let it bother me, which I don't — is how I got the job in the first place.

I wasn't looking. I had the internship. I had savings. I had a mom who would rather chew glass than let one of her daughters work retail at a strip mall. I didn't need a job and I didn't want a job and I definitely, absolutely, in no universe I could imagine, would ever have set foot in Dungeon Master. I'd walked past it a hundred times. The windows were plastered with yellowing posters of dragons and anime girls with enormous tits. The name alone made me roll my eyes. Nerd stuff. Not my scene. Not even a little.

But three months ago — I remember this part crisply, which is weird, given how fuzzy everything else is — three months ago I was walking through that strip mall on my way to the froyo place, and they had just done the big remodel on the storefront. New signage. New window dec. And new, new, new, this big digital display over the entrance, cycling through ads for their newest products. I glanced up. Big mistake. The latest expansion for some trading card game I'd never heard of — "Heroes of Avaloth: The Buxom Oath" — was on sale, and the screen was doing that thing where the spiral behind the product art moves slowly and the text at the bottom fades in and out. I stood there for a second too long. Then another second too long. Then I was pushing through the front door of Dungeon Master with my debit card already in my hand.

The place smelled like Mountain Dew and feet.

Looking back — looking back is the dangerous part, the part I try not to do, but okay, let's do it, let's play the game — looking back, the floor was lousy with hot girls in skimpy cosplay. I mean lousy. There was a tall redhead in a chain-mail bikini re-shelving dice. There was a petite Asian girl in a schoolgirl-elf outfit ringing up a middle-aged man at the register, her nipples visible through the gauze of her blouse. There was a thick brunette in a tavern-wench dress bent over a display case with her enormous tits practically lying on the glass. Every single one of them was gorgeous. Every single one of them was dressed like a cum-sock. And every single one of them was smiling that same glassy satisfied customer-service smile, and I did not — I did not — register any of them. Not one. I walked past the redhead and I didn't see her. I walked past the schoolgirl and I didn't see her. My eyes slid off them like water off a windshield. I think about that sometimes. I think about how hard I had to be not looking to not see them. I think about how good the ad in the window must have been, to tunnel-vision me that completely. And then I stop thinking about it.

I bought a booster box. I bought five booster packs. I bought a starter deck. I bought three — three! — of those stupid card sleeves with the anime girl art on them, for cards I did not have, for a game I did not play. The register girl rang me up at four hundred and seventy-one dollars and I did not blink. I did not blink. I stood there watching the little printer spit out the receipt, and the only thing I remember thinking was god, this store smells like cheese.

That's when Joshua came out of the back room.

I don't like describing Joshua. I'll do it once, for the record, and then we don't have to talk about it. Joshua is forty-four. He is five-foot-six and weighs maybe three hundred pounds. He is bald on top with a greasy ponytail at the back. He has a goatee that is always, always, carrying a little cargo of whatever he ate last. He wears band t-shirts stretched tight over his gut and cargo shorts and sandals with socks. He smells like Axe body spray layered over something more fundamental and sour. His eyes are small and pale and very, very attentive. He owns the shop. He owns three other businesses in the strip mall that I did not know about at the time. His family has money — old money, local money, the kind of money that owns the city councilman — and he uses exactly none of it on personal grooming.

Joshua came out of the back room, and Joshua took one look at me — in my little sundress, my long legs, my big brown eyes still glassy from the storefront screen — and Joshua lit up. I could see him light up. I could see him swallow and do a little bob of his chin and start walking toward me. My stomach turned. I'd been hit on by men like Joshua before. Confidence-of-a-much-better-man energy. I was already composing my polite but firm no in my head as he waddled up.

"Hey, beautiful," he said. His voice was higher than I expected. Wheezy. "First time at Dungeon Master?"

"Yep," I said, grabbing my bag. "Just picking some stuff up for — for my little brother." I don't have a little brother. "Thanks!"

"Hey, hey, wait, don't run off. You know what, you have a real — you have a real Ghost-Assassin vibe about you, has anyone ever told you that? Real Kaya energy." He was blocking my path to the door now, not aggressively, just by being there, three hundred pounds of nerd standing in a doorway. "You ever played? I could teach you. I could — look, let me buy you a smoothie. There's a Jamba right next door. On me."

"No thank you," I said, trying for breezy. "I really have to —"

"Okay, okay, no smoothie, I hear you, I'm picking up on the vibe. Hey — this is gonna sound crazy — you want a job?"

I actually laughed. It was so absurd. "No," I said. "No, thank you. Really. I have to go."

"Don't be hasty," he said. He was grinning. There was something eager and ugly behind the grin. "Don't say no yet, not till you've seen the ad. We just made a new recruitment video, it's — it's really cool, it's really well-produced, we worked with an agency. Just thirty seconds. Humor me. Thirty seconds and if you still want to walk, you walk."

"I'm sorry, really, I have to —"

He was already holding up a tablet. It was already turned on. On the screen was a big slow spiral, perfectly centered, already rotating, and before I had time to close my eyes or look away — before I had time to do the smart thing, the easy thing, the thing I knew to do — he reached up with his other hand and clapped a big pair of over-ear headphones down onto my head.

The ad started.

I don't remember the ad. I want to be clear about this. I've tried to remember the ad. I've lain in bed at night trying to remember the ad. All I get is a series of images that don't connect: a woman in a wench costume smiling. A card game. A cash register ringing. Joshua's face, looking kind — looking fatherly, actually, which is the part that unsettles me most. A whispered voice saying good girl, good girl, good girl. A feeling of warmth spreading through my chest. The absolute, bone-deep, iron-clad certainty that I had to work at Dungeon Master. That I would not be okay if I did not work at Dungeon Master. That working at Dungeon Master was the thing I had been put on Earth to do.

The headphones came off. The spiral went away. Joshua was smiling at me with his little pale eyes.

"So?" he said.

"When can I start?" I said.

"Oh, sweetheart," Joshua said. "Come on back to my office. Let's chat."

The office was small. The office was dirty. There were cardboard boxes stacked in every corner. There was a futon against one wall that had, I realize now, obvious stains. There was a desk buried in papers and a mini-fridge humming in the corner. I sat on the futon. Joshua sat behind the desk. The interview was five minutes long.

"Pay is half of state minimum. Non-negotiable. You cool with that?"

"Yes."

"No PTO, no sick days. You call out, you don't get paid, and I dock your next check. Cool?"

"Yes."

"You buy your own costumes. You make your own costumes. You wear what I tell you to wear on what day. You cool with that?"

"Yes."

"Store policy is no underwear on shift. Panties, bras, nothing. Nothing under the costume. You cool?"

"Yes." A little flutter in my stomach. A little yes in my chest. Yes. Yes. Yes.

"Actually — and this is more of a benefit, really — since you won't be wearing them anymore, you're gonna bring me all your old panties. All of them. I run a little side business online. You bring 'em in, I'll take some pictures of you modeling each pair before, you send me those photos too, I sell the set as a bundle. You get ten percent. Rest is mine. Cool?"

"Yes."

"Another benefit: I get to fuck you whenever I want. On shift, off shift, in the office, in the back, in the aisles, doesn't matter. You don't say no to me. You say yes, Joshua. You cool?"

"Yes, Joshua."

He grinned. He made a note on a yellow legal pad.

"Last one. You're also allowed — this is a perk — you're allowed to fuck the other girls during downtime, or in front of customers if they want to see it. We charge for that, you get a cut. One percent again. Cool?"

"Yes, Joshua."

"Welcome to the team, sweetheart. You start Monday."

I walked out of that office floating. I walked out of that store floating. I drove home floating. I remember my mother asking me, over dinner, how my day had been, and I remember telling her I'd gotten a job at a game shop, and I remember her face going through about four expressions in a single second and landing on polite confusion. She said something like honey, that's… that's great, but what about the internship? And I said, perfectly reasonably, I like Dungeon Master better. And then I ate my pasta.

I quit the internship by email that night. I did not tell the production company why. There was no reason anyone would want to know why.

---

I pulled into the strip mall at nine-fifty-five. I parked in my usual spot behind the dumpster — Joshua had said customer spots were for customers, and employees walked. I grabbed my tote. I jogged across the lot in my flip-flops, sundress bouncing, tits bouncing, no panties, and I let myself in through the front door with my key.

Sharice was already there, sitting on the counter cross-legged, eating a yogurt. Sharice is one of the other girls. She's twenty-two, five-foot-two, Dominican, built like a bowling pin in the best possible way — tiny waist, enormous ass, surprisingly large tits for her frame. She was already in her costume for Thirsty Thursday, which was a succubus theme that week: tiny black leather bikini top, tiny black leather thong, little red fabric horns on a headband, and a long red latex tail that was plugged, I happened to know, into her asshole, because Joshua liked us to wear our tails properly. She was also wearing thigh-high boots and hoop earrings that said SLUT in cursive. She looked phenomenal. She looked like someone had painted a bad decision in the air and let it walk around.

"Hey babe," she said around a mouthful of yogurt. "Joshua's in the back. He's in a mood."

"Good mood or bad mood?"

"Horny mood."

"Oh, okay." I dropped my tote on the counter. "Who's he got his eye on?"

"You, I think. He asked if you were coming in today twice already."

"Hmm." That gave me a warm little curl in my belly. I wasn't attracted to Joshua. Joshua was objectively repulsive. But the part of my brain that had been rewritten two weeks ago lit up every time his name came up, and so there I was in the empty store at ten in the morning with wet panties I wasn't wearing. "I should get changed."

"Mm-hm. Oh, and the new girl's starting today. He wants you to train her."

"Who?"

"Some redhead he grabbed yesterday. I didn't catch the name."

"Okay."

I went into the back and changed in the stockroom. My costume for Thirsty Thursday was a "cleric of the pleasure god" outfit, which was Joshua's shorthand for: cropped white silk halter top with a gold circle cut out over the cleavage to display the inner curves of my tits, a floor-length white silk skirt slit up to the hip on both sides, gold rope around the waist, gold bracelets, and a little gold diadem on my forehead. I had made it myself out of a bedsheet and a lot of hot glue over the course of three nights last week. The cost had come out of my paycheck. When I put it on, with no underwear, the two slits in the skirt met at the waist and the whole garment basically served as a decorative frame for my pussy and ass whenever I moved. If I stood very still with my feet together, I was decent. The second I took a step, I wasn't. My tits, meanwhile, swung free in the halter with just the gold ring to hold them in proximity to the fabric. The outer curves were entirely exposed. The inner curves were entirely exposed. The nipples were technically covered. Technically.

I looked at myself in the stockroom mirror. I smiled. My tits smiled with me.

I went back out front.

The store opened at ten. By ten-oh-eight we had our first customer: a man in his fifties in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, a wedding ring, carrying a plastic shopping bag from the dollar store next door. He walked in, saw me and Sharice, and stopped dead. His jaw actually dropped. I've seen a lot of jaws drop in two weeks — I'm a tall curvy black girl with giant tits, jaws drop — but there is something about Dungeon Master jaws that is special. These are men who have been told their entire lives that women like us would never be nice to them. These are men whose default emotional state is bitter. And they walk into Joshua's store and they find four of us in a six-hundred-square-foot space and all of us smiling at them and calling them sir and leaning in close when they ask a question, and they break. You can see it happen in real time. You can watch the circuits fry.

"Welcome to Dungeon Master!" I sang. "Can I help you find anything today, big guy?"

He swallowed audibly. "I, uh. I. The new — the new Magic expansion?"

"Oooh, great choice. Right this way." I turned and walked toward the card wall. The slit in my skirt flashed. I heard him suck in a breath behind me. I added a little sway to my hips, because the hourly commission on card boxes was six percent and a swaying hip was worth about forty dollars right there, and Joshua had been clear on the first day: you walk, they buy, you walk harder, they buy more. By the time we got to the card wall he was already fumbling for his wallet.

"How many boxes were you thinking?" I asked, resting one hand on the display and leaning forward just enough that the gold ring on my halter gaped open and he got an unobstructed view down my shirt. "They're on sale. Buy two, get a third for only eighty percent more. Financing available."

"I — two," he croaked. "Two boxes."

"Three it is!" I beamed. "You're gonna love these. The art is amazing this expansion. There's a card called 'The Milkmaid's Devotion' that is just —" I kissed my fingertips. "Chef's kiss. Here, let me grab them for you."

I crouched down to get the boxes off the lower shelf, and I crouched facing him, because I'm not stupid, and when I crouched the two slits in my skirt opened completely and he got a perfect head-on view of my naked pussy and the top curve of my thighs. I crouched slowly. I took my time locating the exact right boxes. I let him look. He was breathing like he'd just run up stairs.

"How many sleeves do you need?" I asked sweetly.

"S-sleeves?"

"For the cards, silly. To protect them. Here — these are my favorite." I stood up and reached for a pack of sleeves on the upper rack, which meant stretching my arms over my head, which meant the halter rode up an inch and the bottom curve of my tits came clear of the fabric completely. He made a small sound. "Aren't these cute? The art is a succubus milking a knight. It's really tasteful. Fifty bucks a pack."

"I'll take four," he said immediately.

"You're so decisive, I love that in a man." I bit my lip. "Can I interest you in a playmat, too? You'd hate to get those pretty cards wet on a bare table."

"Yes. Yes. Yes."

Three hundred and twenty-eight dollars. He walked out with a smile that was going to confuse his wife, and a receipt that was going to confuse his credit union, and I stood by the door and waved and called out, "Come back soon, sweetie!" and I watched him walk straight into the glass of the next storefront before correcting course.

Sharice held up her hand for a high-five without looking up from her phone. I slapped it.

"Easy," she said.

"Easy," I agreed.

---

Around ten-thirty Joshua came out of the back with his hand around the wrist of a girl I'd never seen before.

She was my height, maybe, with long red hair down to her waist and green eyes and the kind of pale freckled skin that burns pink in the sun. She was wearing a cute sweater dress and brown boots and a cross-body bag, and she looked lost. She looked confused. She looked like a college sophomore on her way to class who had taken a wrong turn into a nightmare. Her eyes were glassy in a way I recognized, because I had seen the same eyes in my own bathroom mirror tow weeks ago.

"Girls," Joshua said, with the air of a man introducing his new cat. "This is Rosemary. She's starting today. Ellie, you're gonna train her. Rosie, honey, this is Ellie — she's one of our best — and that's Sharice. Say hi, Rosie."

"Hi," Rosemary said faintly.

"Hi Rosemary!" I chirped. I came over and gave her a hug. She was stiff. She smelled like good shampoo and cold terror. "Welcome to the team, I'm so excited you're here."

"Th-thanks." She blinked. Her gaze drifted down to my outfit, to the slits, to the gold ring, to the obvious nakedness of me under everything. Her brow furrowed. She was trying to process. Something was moving behind her eyes.

"Rosie just got out of her onboarding video," Joshua said meaningfully. "So she's still getting her bearings. Ellie, take her to the stockroom, get her into something cute, show her the register. Rosie — you cool?"

"I'm cool," Rosemary whispered.

"Attagirl."

I walked her to the back. In the stockroom I pulled the costume rack over and started flipping through. "So the theme today is Thirsty Thursday, which means succubus or temptress or something sexy-demony. Sharice is in a leather bikini, I'm doing a cleric-of-pleasure thing, I think we have a spare —" I pulled out a hanger. "Oh! This is perfect. Little devil nurse. It's just a cropped red latex apron and a thong and some stockings. And a stethoscope. You'll look so cute."

"I don't — I don't know if I can wear that," Rosemary said. Her voice was tiny. "That's — that's not really — "

"Oh babe, trust me, I felt the same way my first day. You just gotta rip the Band-Aid off. You'll feel amazing once you have it on." I pushed the hanger into her hands. "Also, remember, no underwear. Store policy. If you have panties on you'll want to take them off."

She stared down at the costume. She stared at me. I could see her whole face twist. I could see the part of her that was still Rosemary — still the sophomore, still the human being, still the girl who had said yes to a tablet full of spirals an hour ago and was now realizing what yes had meant — trying to climb up out of whatever well Joshua had pushed her into. She opened her mouth.

"I don't want to be here," she said quietly.

I patted her cheek.

"Oh, sweetie, that's normal, it's your first job, it's normal to have cold feet!" I said, warmly, positioning her so that she could see the spirals behind me, "That feeling goes away. I promise. Just give it a day. And you will love it here!"

I meant it kindly. I meant it as encouragement. I watched my own mouth say the words, and some tiny ancient part of me, buried under two weeks of layered conditioning, whimpered like a dog in a basement. But the rest of me was smiling and warm and sure, and the rest of me was the loud part now.

Rosemary changed. She pulled off her sweater dress and her bra and her panties. I gave her privacy by turning around, but I also watched her in the reflection on the back of a glass-fronted cabinet, because I wasn't allowed to leave her alone. She had pretty tits. 34F, I guessed. Cute pink nipples. A soft little tummy. Freckles down her chest. Joshua was going to lose his mind. I made a mental note to warn her about his breath.

By the time she had the latex apron tied on, her eyes had gone a little glassier again, and the shaking had stopped, and when I handed her the stethoscope she took it without a word.

"You look so hot," I told her. It was true. "Come on. Let me show you the register."

---

I'm not going to narrate every customer. I'm going to hit the highlights. There was the kid — the eighteen-year-old, baby face, acne, clearly a freshman — who came in to buy a single rulebook and left with a four-hundred-dollar starter kit and a confused smile, because Rosemary, under my guidance, had leaned forward over the counter until her tits were on the glass and whispered oh wow, you have such smart eyes. There was the pair of middle-aged women who came in looking for a birthday gift for a nephew, who were unlucky enough to make eye contact with the counter screen for too long and left having bought matching nipple-piercing cosplay kits "for the aesthetic" at two hundred dollars a pop, financing available. There was the regular — Darren, forties, divorced, lonely, sweet, honestly my favorite — who paid me fifty dollars to let him suck my tits in the dice aisle for ten minutes while his order was processing. I let him go for fifteen. It was a slow morning.

There was the girl.

She came in around noon, and she was gorgeous. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Petite. Blonde pixie cut, blue eyes, an athletic little body in high-waisted jeans and a cropped tank top. She had a boyfriend with her — tall, lanky, a backwards cap and a vague goatee, not much going on behind the eyes. They were looking for a birthday gift for the boyfriend's roommate, who played Magic. Normal errand.

The moment the door chimed, Joshua was out of his office. I'd never seen him move that fast. He practically teleported.

"Welcome to Dungeon Master!" he boomed. He was grinning. He had already made his assessment and his assessment was keep. "Love the hair, sweetheart, real pixie vibes. Here, let me show you around personally. Jayden, is it? Jayden, you hang with Sharice over there, she's gonna set you up with the best cards in the store, right Sharice?"

"Absolutely," Sharice purred, and she had her hand on Jayden's bicep before Jayden knew what was happening. Jayden was going to come out of this store having spent nine hundred dollars and come in his pants at least once.

Joshua steered the girlfriend — her name, I'd catch later, was Olivia — toward the back wall, where a very innocent-looking display of fantasy novels sat beneath a very not-innocent screen that cycled "promotional art" for the store. The screen was running, right now, a spiral. I didn't need to see what was on the spiral. I knew what was on the spiral. I'd been on the spiral.

Rosemary came up next to me. Her freckled shoulder brushed mine. She was watching Joshua lead Olivia away with a strange, complicated expression on her face.

"What is he doing?" she whispered.

"Prepping hitting on her."

"He is what?"

"I knew, I knew, Joshua is not the best looking guy, but he has his way with words." I paused. I looked at Rosemary sidelong. "Very convincing! It's almost magical! You will see. So sometimes he lets at least one of us join in. So."

"Join — in?"

"Mm." I shrugged. "Last week there was this girl, Stacy or Tracy, she was a college volleyball player. Joshua sat in the chair and watched and jerked off while me and Sharice ate her out for like forty minutes. He paid us an extra fifty bucks. That was a good shift."

Rosemary stared at me. Her mouth worked silently.

"You'll get used to it," I said again, gently.

---

Olivia disappeared into Joshua's office twenty minutes later. She was smiling. Her eyes were so glassy they had gone almost silver. Joshua gave me a little nod as he closed the door behind her — Ellie, you're on the floor — and I nodded back and turned my attention to Jayden, who was now shirtless in the dice aisle while Sharice rubbed baby oil into his chest and told him how strong he looked, and I thought: another day, another day, another beautiful dungeon master day.

---

The lunch rush was busy and I don't remember most of it. We rotated. Sharice went on break. Rosemary — who had, I was pleased to note, started to loosen up around one o'clock, after her third sale, after a middle-aged man told her she was the prettiest nurse he'd ever seen and tipped her twenty dollars — did the register. I worked the floor. I made eighty-four dollars in commissions in two hours, plus thirty in tips.

Of course we collected the tips. Joshua will deduct them from our wages at the end of the week, obviously!

At three, the door chimed, and I looked up and nearly dropped my phone.

She was tall. Six feet, easy. Model-tall. Long brown hair, sharp cheekbones, green eyes, dressed in a smart blazer and slacks like she had just come from a meeting. She was holding a clipboard. She was not smiling.

"Hi," she said. "I'm with the city health department. I'm here for a routine inspection of the restrooms and food prep areas."

I froze. I had one of those weird out-of-body moments where I could see myself — black girl in a cleric-of-pleasure costume, nipples visible, ass visible, in a strip-mall gaming store at three in the afternoon — and I could see her, and I could see the gap between our universes and I did not know how to bridge it.

"I — um — I'll get the owner," I said.

"Please do."

I went to the office door and knocked. "Joshua? Health inspector is here."

The door opened six inches. Joshua's face appeared in the gap, sweating. Behind him I could see Olivia, naked except for her socks, bent over his desk with her eyes closed and a little smile on her face, absently rocking herself against the corner. The health inspector could probably see her too, from the angle. Joshua closed the door a little further.

"A what?"

"Health inspector."

Joshua's eyes went flat. He shouldered the door open, pulled his shorts up, shoved past me into the main store. He walked up to the inspector with his best car-salesman grin.

"Ma'am," he said. "I think there's been a mistake. We don't serve food here. We're a gaming store."

"You have a microwave in your break room and a soda fountain in the lobby," the inspector said flatly, consulting her clipboard. "Both fall under the ordinance. May I see the premises, please?"

"Of course, of course. Right this way. Ellie, sweetheart, could you grab the inspector a bottle of water? Hospitality, you know?"

"Of course, Joshua."

He steered her toward the back. He was chatting. He was charming. His hand, I noticed, was gently guiding her by the small of her back, and she wasn't pulling away — or, I realized, watching her face, she was pulling away, mentally, but the physical pulling-away was slow, like she was wading in syrup. I followed with the bottle of water. I didn't know what Joshua was doing. I knew Joshua was doing something. The screen above the break room door — the one that showed the weekly inventory numbers — was running a slow spiral, had been all afternoon, and the health inspector's eyes kept drifting up to it.

By the time I came back with the water she was nodding thoughtfully. "Mm-hm," she was saying. "Mm-hm. Yes, I see. I see. That… that is in compliance."

Joshua winked at me over her shoulder.

Twenty minutes later she was in the office with Olivia and Joshua, bent over the futon in her blazer and nothing else, her clipboard forgotten on the floor. I'm not making this up. I'm just telling you what happened. By four she walked out of the office in her full suit again, perfectly composed, said thank you for your cooperation Sexy, everything looks fine, filed a clean inspection report on her tablet at the counter, and left. Olivia left ten minutes after her, dressed again, holding hands with her boyfriend Jayden, who had just finished paying Sharice twelve hundred dollars for cards, and the two of them walked out of the store looking like they'd had the best afternoon of their lives.

Sometimes I wonder about Olivia. I wonder if she comes back. A lot of them come back.

---

At six o'clock we started closing procedures. I counted the register. Rosemary swept the floor — her latex apron riding up with every push of the broom, her ass winking at the overhead cameras. Sharice refilled the dice bins. Joshua came out of the office, freshly showered (we had a shower in the back, for Joshua, of course), smelling of Axe and something sharper underneath, and he clapped his hands.

"Alright, girls, gather up. Debrief and refresher. Rosie, this is the part where you learn how we close the day."

The four of us filed into the office. Joshua sat at his desk. We sat on the futon, shoulder to shoulder — Sharice, me, Rosemary — our thighs touching. He clicked a remote. A monitor on the wall came on.

"Debrief first. Good day. We did forty-two hundred top line, which is above target. Ellie, you crushed the card wall, great work. Sharice, phenomenal upsell on the boyfriend situation. Rosie, baby, you're doing great for a first day, I'm proud of you. Now. Refresher video. Everybody settle in."

I knew what was coming. I welcomed it. I actually sighed with relief as the screen flickered, because by six o'clock every day my head started to feel a little scratchy, a little loose, a little like the wrongness-at-the-door feeling from the morning was trying to come back. The video fixed that. The video tucked everything back in.

The video started.

I'm not going to pretend I remember it clearly, because I don't. The videos are designed so you don't remember them clearly. What I remember are flashes. A spiral — of course, a spiral, always a spiral. A woman's voice, soothing, low. You are safe here. You are home here. This is where you belong. Images of the four of us laughing together, which I don't remember being filmed, which means they were filmed without my knowing, which doesn't bother me because I'm not supposed to be bothered. Numbers flashing on the screen too fast to read. A rhythmic pulsing in the audio, something below hearing but felt in the sternum. Good girls stay. Good girls serve. Good girls don't ask why. Good girls just want to be here. My pussy getting wet. Sharice's hand finding mine on the futon and squeezing. Rosemary's thigh going slack against mine, hot and limp, her head lolling slightly on her neck. You love Joshua. You love working here. You love your "sisters". You love being seen. You love being used. This is who you are now. This is who you were always going to be. The spiral slowing, slowing. A soft chime. The screen going black.

I blinked. My mouth was open. I had drooled a little onto my chin. Next to me Rosemary was staring at the dark screen with an expression of profound peace, her eyes soft, her shoulders loose, her hands folded in her lap like she was in church. Whatever had been fighting in her face at eleven in the morning was gone now. Smoothed out. Handled.

Joshua stood up. He stretched. His gut swung.

"Alright, girls, you're free to go. Ellie, stay. Rosie — you too, actually. I wanna welcome you to the team properly."

Sharice stood, kissed the top of my head, kissed the top of Rosemary's head, and left. I heard the front door chime and lock behind her.

Joshua came around the desk. He undid his cargo shorts. He stepped out of them. He was already hard — he was always hard, Joshua lived in a state of permanent engorgement — and his cock was, I will admit, the one good thing about him, embarrassingly for a man of his aesthetic, surprisingly thick, uncut, with a heavy pair of balls underneath. He stroked himself lazily. He looked at us with those small pale eyes.

"Ellie, baby. Get that costume off. Rosie, keep the latex on, I like the latex. You two are gonna help me unwind."

"Yes, Joshua," I said, and I was already pulling the silk over my head.

I'm going to be brief about the rest, because it was the best part of my day and I don't like to share the best parts.

I knelt first. I always knelt first — it was a privilege, one of the real benefits, Joshua always finished with whoever was closest to his hand but the mouth was always Ellie, because I had, he said, a mouth like a vacuum sealer. I took him deep. I took him until my eyes watered and my nose was pressed against the soft wet underside of his gut. Rosemary knelt next to me, hesitant, wide-eyed, and I pulled off Joshua's cock with an obscene pop and guided her head gently down to his balls. She licked. Then she sucked. Then she moaned, surprised, because — as the video had just reminded her — this was who she was now.

We traded. I licked the shaft, she took the head. She fumbled; I guided. Joshua's fat fingers tangled in our hair and he groaned and called us his good girls, his sweet little bitches, his fucking dream team. He pushed us back onto the futon and spread Rosemary's legs and fed his cock into her — her first time with him, I realized, as I watched her eyes roll — and I straddled her face and lowered my pussy onto her mouth and she gasped into me, and then she licked, uncertain, and then she licked with intention, and then Joshua was fucking her hard enough that my pussy was riding her tongue whether she wanted it or not.

I came first. I always came first. I came with my hands on the back of the futon and my tits swinging and Rosemary's chin slick with me. She came second, surprising herself, surprising me, grabbing my thighs with both freckled hands and crying out against my pussy. Joshua came last, pulling out of Rosemary and climbing up over us and spraying across both our chests, his gut jiggling, his face red, his eyes shut tight like a man in prayer.

He collapsed onto the futon between us. He sighed. He patted Rosemary's hip with one meaty hand.

"Welcome to the team, Rosie," he wheezed.

"Thank you, Joshua," Rosemary whispered. She was smiling. Her eyes were wet. She was smiling.

I leaned over her and licked a stripe of Joshua's come off her freckled chest, and then I kissed her — slow, soft, open — and she kissed me back, tentatively at first, and then not tentatively at all.

---

I drove home at eight. The sundress was in my tote because I couldn't stand to put something clean on over a body that sticky. I drove naked, basically, with the dress bunched in my lap in case I got pulled over, which seemed funny, and I laughed to myself at a red light. The radio was playing some pop song. My pussy was tender. My scalp was sore from being pulled. My tits had faint pink marks all over them. My knees ached from the hardwood.

I thought — fuzzily, not for very long — about the internship I'd quit. I thought about my mother's face at the dinner table. I thought about what I would say to her tonight when she asked how work was. Fine, I would say. Good day. We're busy. And she would nod and go back to her magazine, with the new great ads.

I pulled into my driveway humming, and I went inside, and I slept like a baby, and when the alarm went off at nine-fifteen the next morning I rolled over and smiled up at the ceiling, because today was a work day, and work days were my favorite days now.