You're Free

As if to drive that point home, a bold number seventeen was scrawled across her naked hip in black ink. She hadn't bothered trying to remove it at the end of her shift yesterday -- she just wanted to get out of the Plaza and get home. And she hadn't bothered to scrub it off during her morning shower here in the locker room; it just seemed pointless, given that Mistress Zero retraced the number again shortly thereafter. But she was going out to a bar tonight, and wanted it off. Or, thought she wanted it off. As she began to scrub with one of the communal pink washcloths, Eleven inserted herself.

"I have rubbing alcohol in my locker, if you want," she offered. "But...I don't know if I'd make the effort."

Seventeen looked at her quizzically.

"Most of us don't even bother anymore," she explained. "Maybe on special occasions, or if we're off all weekend. But you're here tomorrow?"

"I am," Seventeen answered. Fourteen had Saturday Shift tomorrow, which meant that Seventeen had Saturday Shift tomorrow. Half the girls were off until Monday, but the other half were scheduled to be back in tomorrow at their normal time. Actual deliveries were supposedly at a minimum, given the smaller number of regular employees who worked on Saturdays. But Mistress Zero apparently kept the girls busy with supply runs, custodial assignments, and other "special" projects as they came to her.

"Don't bother, then," Eleven advised. "Unless you're planning on wearing something tonight that exposes your hip?"

Seventeen shook her head. She glanced behind her, and confirmed that Fourteen was clearly still demarcated at such. Other girls who'd been in and out of the shower still wore their numbers, too. If anything, the girls who'd taken the time and effort to remove the ink -- likely those off for the weekend -- looked out-of-place and more naked and vulnerable than the girls who hadn't. Eleven was probably right; Seventeen gave up on the task, and assured herself that she'd scrub it off tomorrow night.

Maybe Seventeen would adjust to the mailgirl chow or maybe she wouldn't. But she couldn't imagine a point where she'd get used to the cold water emerging from the showerhead above her. She could appreciate it on occasion -- such as the quick rinse she and Fourteen had enjoyed together that morning after a particularly frenzied, frantic, and sweaty start to their day. But Seventeen certainly wasn't going to linger longer than she had to. By the time that Fifteen announced that she was cumming, to no one and everyone at the same time, Seventeen had soaped and rinsed her body, shampooed and conditioned her hair, and turned off the water. She stepped from showers at the same time as Eleven, and helped herself to a pair of the small, rough-to-the-touch hand towels the locker room stocked.

Communal shampoo and conditioner. Communal bars of soap. Communal washcloths. Communal razors, for intimate grooming and upkeep. Communal hairdryers. Communal lipstick, make-up, and nail polish. Communal deodorant and perfume. Communal toothpaste and toothbrushes. The girls themselves were interchangeable and nothing more than numbers, and so the locker room was stocked for communal use. Yesterday, Seventeen had gravitated towards the same end of the sink each time she'd returned to the locker room, in the hopes that she was minimizing the number of girls whose mouths the toothbrushes had been in, whose underarms to which the deodorant had been applied. Fourteen had noticed, and told her it was pointless; Evening Shift was instructed to collect, check, and redistribute products at random.

Still, though the girls shared a single shade of lipstick and a single scent of perfume while in-uniform, they were allowed to bring in more individualized products for the end of the day. So, as Seventeen joined Thirteen, Eighteen, and Twenty-Two at the mirror (and as Fourteen sidled up behind them), there were a half dozen tubes of lipstick and a smattering of nail polish options lined up around the sinks. Similarly, five different girls were dressed a handful of different ways: Eighteen was fully clothed in a cocktail dress. Thirteen was wearing a bra-and-panty set. Twenty-Two was in a thong. Seventeen and Fourteen were both still stark naked.

Seventeen wondered if she should go put something on.

She decided against it. She wanted to brush and dry her hair first. And, whether she was conscious of it or not, she found herself following Fourteen's lead.

Fourteen, teasingly and without boundaries, reach over and snapped the elastic of Thirteen's black lace panties.

"Stop!" Thirteen objected, though the tone indicated she'd taken the harassment as playfully as it had been offered.

"I thought you were going commando?" Fourteen asked.

Thirteen shook her head. "No. I did last week, and spent the whole night flashing all of you."

"Nothing we haven't seen before," Fourteen replied.

"I also don't want to leave them here," Thirteen explained. Clothes -- panties especially -- had a habit of disappearing from the mailgirls locker room. Human Capital proudly hung its trophies up on the 18th Floor. But it was also widely understood that Mistress Zero would help herself to a girl's things as a way of providing prizes and keepsakes for executives up on the higher-level floors.

Fourteen shrugged, and said, "The rookie's going commando."

Meaning Seventeen. Again, she began to parrot back, "Ma'am, per Human Capital..." Seventeen trailed off.

"Slut, comma, stupid," Fourteen laughed, and pointed to herself with her hairbrush.

Seventeen laughed along with her, but said, "No chance. Zero. I'd put on three or four pairs of underwear, if I had them with me." She was half-joking; what she wanted to do tonight, more than anything, was put on every piece of clothing she owned, and then curl up and go to sleep in her own bed.

"Oh, come on," Fourteen replied, giving Seventeen a fake pout in the mirror. "Or, how about we switch? You wear mine, I wear yours?"

"Tempting," Seventeen offered.

"Don't fall for it," Eighteen advised. "I don't think she's worn underwear in years."

To this, Fourteen responded only by lifting the hemline on Eighteen's dress. Sure enough, Eighteen's own panties were conspicuously absent. The other four girls all had a good, quick laugh.

"They're in my purse," Eighteen explained, defending herself. She pulled her dress back down. "And, at least I wore them to work this morning."

"Why wouldn't you wear underwear?" Seventeen asked earnestly.

Eighteen seemed to shoot an accusing look at Fourteen's reflection, as if she were asking Fourteen how Seventeen's tutelage could be so incomplete. To Seventeen, however, she replied, "It's what they expect of us. So, why not? Why not embrace it?"

Seventeen reached for the hairdryer, and scrunched up her nose. "They think we're sluts, so we act like sluts?"

"Well..."

"...so, by that logic, what keeps up from blowing every guy at the bar tonight?"

"Some of us might," Thirteen butted in, with her own accusing look in Fourteen's direction.

Fourteen attacked the dark-haired girl with a playful mist of the floral-smelling mailgirl perfume.

"I don't know," Eighteen struggled to explain. "It's fun. This is who they think we are. It's like play-acting the part."

Seventeen still didn't follow. She asked, "By actually playing the part?"

"Let loose, you prude!" Fourteen admonished. "Your life is shit now. For the next two years, it's a shit day after a shit day after a shit day. So, own it."

"Flaunt it," Twenty-Two added.

"Flaunt it," Fourteen agreed. "Own it. If this is who you're supposed to be the next two years, be that person. The more you fight it, the more you run away from it, the more miserable you're going to be."

There was logic to it, Seventeen supposed. If she were better able to accept that this was her fate, maybe it wouldn't be so torturous undressing in the morning. If she were better able to put her head down and put up with every embarrassment that Mistress Zero and the 18th Floor threw at her, maybe she wouldn't feel quite so abused by their abuse. Fourteen and Eighteen, through the simple act of going commando out to the Imperial, were reclaiming choice and agency; they were giving the finger to Will Barrow, accepting and maybe even enjoying their new reputations.

Seventeen was still going to wear panties.

She found them where she'd left them that morning, folded neatly on the lower shelf of her locker, beneath her bra. She had felt ridiculous that morning, obediently arranging her clothes just so in her locker. The locker, in actuality, was more of a cubby -- no door, open and exposed to the locker room, and separated only by thin partitions from Sixteen's and Eighteen's. There was an upper shelf for her smartphone's charging station, as well as a simple metal cup that held any jewelry she might have worn that morning. There was a closet rod that ran from one side to the other, complete with hangars, as well as a sequence of hooks -- left, back, back, and right -- below that. There was a bottom shelf, where Seventeen had left her underthings, which protruded out from the wall and could be used as a seat, if necessary. Below that was an open space for shoes.

Oddly, Seventeen felt more naked as she got dressed than she had since getting undressed that morning. After a full day of running around her place of work in nothing but an armband, a collar, and a number, the act of dressing served as a painful reminder of just how naked she'd been. Self-consciously, and again acutely aware that she was doing so in front of a potential audience in the elevator lobby, she stepped into a pair of skin-tone bikini-cut panties and shimmied them up her thighs. Next was her bra, part of a matching set -- also skin-tone, also lace, and also sexily cut. Right arm first, then left, before she reached behind her and fumbled nervously with the clasp.

She'd struggled with what to wear that morning, when she'd gotten dressed at home. There were no rules and regulations as to what she was allowed to or expected to don to and from her new job -- only that she was to be "in uniform" in time for Mistress Zero's morning inspection. Seventeen had been tempted to just throw on a pair of jeans and a big, comfortable sweatshirt. But getting caught by her roommate in such an outfit would have required some sort of explanation or excuse; Seventeen wasn't ready -- not yet -- to come clean to Laura about what she'd been talked into yesterday. Instead, Seventeen got dressed for work as if that Friday morning were no different than any other, in a simple-but-stylish navy blue dress with short sleeves and a scooped back. Laura would still wonder what Seventeen was doing leaving the apartment before six, but at least her clothes wouldn't raise any suspicions.

As she fumbled for the zipper on her back, she was interrupted by a call from down the line of lockers.

"Nope!" Ten called out. "Nope, nope, nope."

Seventeen was confused as to what she was doing wrong. The fact that Ten was approaching her with a wine-colored slip cleared that confusion up.

Ten herself was in red halter-top cocktail dress that didn't shy away from revealing her naked thighs. The spaghetti-strap dress she intended for Seventeen looked a little longer, at least, but not much. The danger for Seventeen would be the neckline; maybe a relatively smaller-chested girl like Ten could get away with something like that, but Seventeen's tits would be in danger of popping out all night.

Seventeen just wanted to wear her own dress, with its hemline that dropped below the knees and its high-collared neckline. She didn't want to spend all night on-guard for inadvertent exposure. But, surveying the locker room around her, the other girls -- those who weren't still half- or fully-naked -- were all wearing outfits more in-line with Ten's than Seventeen's. None of them were out-and-out slutty, exactly. But they were short and flirty, with plenty of skin exposed, and every last one of them was just ever-so-slightly on the classy side of the classy/whore-ish divide. None of them was seasonally appropriate; the walk to the Imperial was going to be chilly.

Seventeen conceded. Once more, she caved under pressure. Once more, she allowed herself to be talked into exposing herself. Once more, she'd accepted what it meant to a mailgirl -- even the parts not expressly written into her new contract.

She gave up trying to zip up her navy blue business dress, and instead pulled it down from her shoulders and let it pool at her ankles. Stepping from it, she took Ten's dress in-hand and pouted. "I don't think I'm going to be able to wear my bra with this."

Like Thirteen, Seventeen worried about leaving anything behind in the locker room. Mistress Zero was gone for the night, and Seventeen would be back here before her in the morning. Even still, she wasn't ready to risk losing her work outfit, or her bra, to the list of clothing items that had gone "mysteriously" missing from the locker room. Thankfully, Mailgirl Number Seven offered a solution in the form of an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

"We've got a room at the Imperial," Seven explained. "You're welcome to spend the night. Otherwise, I can get them back to you at some other point."

Seventeen nodded, and tugged at the hemline of her new dress. As she did so, the top of her right areola peeked into view. It was going to be a long night.

Seventeen's flats were tossed into Seven's bag, as well, along with shoes and clothes from a handful of other girls. Instead, Seventeen wore a pair of high-heeled ankle-wrap sandals lent to her by Eighteen, which fit surprisingly well, but were uncomfortable all the same. She borrowed a pair of silver hoops for earrings from Twenty, a bracelet from Sixteen, and a choker from Fourteen. Her purse didn't exactly match the rest of her ensemble, but she needed it for her phone, her wallet, and her own jewelry that she'd worn to work that morning.

The girls trickled out of the locker room in groups of twos or threes or fours. Five wasn't coming, Seventeen was told, and a neither was Twenty-Four. Two and Sixteen both promised to catch up after they'd picked up the locker room and Evening Shift duties had been completed. Seventeen lost track of Fourteen, but Seven took her hand and led her out through the front door with Ten and Nineteen trailing behind.

Seven didn't let go as they entered the elevator lobby, and Seventeen was thankful for it. There wasn't a big crowd, as she had feared, but there were still a dozen or so USF employees milling about as her particular little gaggle of mailgirls left for the day. Three young-looking men stood against the wall to the right, and gave each of the girls a good long look without ever breaking from their private conversation. Two middle-aged women sat at one of the café tables, cackling and snickering. A man in glasses, sitting alone, pretended to read his smart phone. An older man stared at them blatantly, with a dirty, wolfish grin, but turned his attention back to where Three and Four were still getting dressed on the other side of the glass.

The people were less unnerving than the glass itself. Seventeen had come through the lobby hundreds of times since the mailgirls program had been launched in April. But it was a different experience now that she had moved to the other side of the glass. Four was topless, wearing just a thong. Three was in her bra and panties. Two, still naked, was now overseeing Sixteen, still naked, on all fours and eating from the dog dish. Seventeen glanced at her locker and turned crimson red; she'd masturbated right there, on display and performing for an audience.

Seven didn't let her linger. Never letting go of Seventeen's hand, she quickly made her way to the top of the escalator, which led to the security desk and the public lobby below. "Don't look back," Seven whispered. "You're free."

For tonight.