How Bad Could It Be?

"How bad could it be? Right?" asked Mailgirl Number Seven.

Seventeen wasn't sure how to respond.

Crammed into a booth that had been designed for four were six off-duty mailgirls, done up and dressed for a night out, with one more in a chair on the end. Seventeen was shoehorned between Seven on her right, and Three on her left, with Seven's hand on her knee beneath the table. Across from them was Mailgirl Number Eighteen, as well as Mailgirls Number Seven and Two from Mountbatten Asset Management. USF's Number Fourteen sat at the end.

Seventeen wasn't sure what she'd expected out of Friday night "Bitch Sessions" at the Imperial. There were a handful of men in suits milling about, as well as a few women who clearly weren't a part of the mailgirl party. There were two male bartenders holding court on the far side of the bar, serving drinks at a breakneck pace, and a single female waitress making the rounds from table to table. For the most part, though, it was a largely mailgirl clientele, easily distinguished by their looks; any man lucky enough to stumble into the Imperial that night would have been greeted by forty or fifty of the most attractive women he'd ever seen, all in one place, all stuffed into little cocktail dresses and miniskirts.

It was loud and raucous, and not exactly the misery-filled group therapy session that such a gathering could have easily been. The USF girls were scattered about, mingling with the Mountbatten girls and Atlantic Life girls, rubbing elbows with the Hobson Morgan McNamara girls at the bar, and laughing with the Chiyoda America girls by the door. The Young & Unglaub girls, notable for the fact they were all bleach blonde, rounded out the party.

USF's Number Seven squeezed Seventeen's knee, and Seventeen was forced to respond to Mountbatten's Number Seven across from her.

"Sorry?" she asked, buying herself time.

"How bad could it be, right?" Mountbatten-Seven asked rhetorically.

"It's pretty bad, I guess," Seventeen replied.

"Not what I mean," Mountbatten-Seven shook her head. She had short, chin-length dark hair that she wore down, which bounced with the movement. "You signed because you couldn't imagine that it would be this bad."

Seventeen looked to Fourteen for guidance. Fourteen only shrugged.

Of course she hadn't fully expected for it to be as bad as her first two days had been. She wasn't naïve -- she'd known it was going to be awful. But there were twenty-three other girls all doing this already, day in and day out. Volunteers. How bad could it be?

"They would have fired me," Seventeen offered as a defense.

"And that would have been worse....how?" This from Three.

"They were going to go after my CPA designation," she explained. "I wouldn't be able to work..."

"And...again?" Again, Three.

Seventeen felt flustered. She was explaining it wrong. What didn't they understand?

She'd known Will Barrow by name and reputation, but yesterday morning in Joan's office had been the first time she'd ever set eyes on him. He couldn't have been more than forty, and was more attractive than the creepy, perverted old troll she had expected him to be. In fact, Seventeen might never had made the leap that this good-looking young executive was the one and only Will Barrow had it not been for the fact he was accompanied by Mistress Zero.

Mistress Zero was tall, like Seventeen, but carried herself with a confidence, a power, and a sexuality that Seventeen never could have pulled off. She wore her dark hair up in a neat bun, and was dressed in a professional -- albeit tight-fitting -- suit that would have been at home in boardrooms all over Wall Street. That professionalism and polish, though, belied that fact that Mistress Zero spent her days torturing, tormenting, and supervising a locker room full of naked mailgirls, bending them over her knee for spankings and performing periodic touch-tests to make sure they were free of any sort of pubic stubble. She struck terror not only into the mailgirls, but also into half the young women who worked for USF in any capacity.

Mistress Zero's presence in Joan's office meant only one thing: they'd come for Emily Evans.

There were moments of the meeting that followed that would be burned into Seventeen's memory forever -- such as Mistress Zero literally cutting Seventeen's bra from her body with a pair of scissors when she felt Seventeen was moving too slow. Or Mistress Zero tugging on Seventeen's pubic hair, and telling her it had to go. But much of the back-and-forth with Barrow was a blur, and she'd signed away the next two years of her life before the gravity of what that entailed had really-and-truly sunk in. Joan had called it a "special assignment" in her calendar invite, and Barrow had referred to it as a "transfer." She'd have been fired if she hadn't accepted, and the Division of Public Licensing Services upstate would hear of some made-up ethical and professional conduct concerns about her from USF. But she'd also been assured a significant spot bonus, a salary above-and-beyond what she was earning in her current role, and the promise of potential incentives down the line that could bump her up a tax bracket or two just on their own. And so, despite having promised herself that she'd never wind up among the mailgirls, the signature of Emily Evans was soon affixed to the bottom of an official contract, and Seventeen was being paraded naked through the 13th Floor.

After all, she'd told herself yesterday morning, how bad could it really be?