The office environment could be a stressful one. This wasn't exactly the boiler room, so to speak, but this office handed out complimentary stress balls with the company logo on them when they knew they'd be entering crunch time. Perhaps they wouldn't have needed to if they hadn't shed fifteen 'redundant' staff members last month.
Holly had maintained her position at this company during this latest culling, but forty hours of phone calls and grinding office work... one stubborn client caused her to take that complimentary stress ball and chuck it against the wall of her office with a loud thud.
Gloria, her office neighbor and friend, peeked around the corner and through the open doorway into Holly's office. This office had a slightly obnoxious layout where the only doors were in the lavatory. It was meant to increase 'office cohesion' and encourage something the consultants called 'flow.' All it really did was make it that everyone had to listen to whatever Janet was listening to on the radio that day, in the hopes of winning that one thousand dollar trivia contest.
"You knocked?" Gloria teased. She was a shapely woman with a mop of curly black hair that always looked perfect. Her favorite color was red, as she was most commonly seen wearing somewhere on her, even if it was just her lipstick.
Holly turned to the doorway. She relaxed a bit, her shoulders sinking a bit. "Sorry about that. I'm just so stressed out right now."
"You look a little tense." Gloria slid in closer. "You want me to rub your shoulders?"
"No, they said no more massages." Holly shook her head. "Even between two consenting women, it can create an atmosphere of sexual tension. That's what they said at that seminar."
"Yeah, that was super lame." Gloria shrugged.
Holly spun in her wheeled chair and faced Gloria. Holly was a sandy blonde with a slim figure. Her hair was wound into a bun, but it never seemed to stay in place, lots of single strands worming their way around and giving her a distinctly sleep-deprived appearance.
"How do you do it?" Holly begged. "How can you come in here and be so calm all the time?"
"I'm not always, but... there are two ways stress can come out. Either during work, or after work. If it comes out during work, then the client's mad and you get a write-up." Gloria explained. "All you need to do is maximize your enjoyment of your off-time so you can come back here fresh."
Images of Holly's last vacation popped into her mind. The stress of traveling, cramming into an economy seat with a carry-on as close to twenty-five pounds as she could manage, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, trying to meet every little thing in her itinerary, finding someone she could trust to feed her cat... she came home more stressed than she left. She DID have lots of beautiful photos, but what were they worth if the experience of the vacation was so negative?
"What do you recommend?" Holly said. "I tried giving up caffeine and I was calmer, but that's because I almost fell asleep standing up like a cow."
"Well, it's Friday, so... tonight, I'm going to the place I always go on Fridays to unwind." Gloria said. "If you want to come with me, I'm sure you'll have fun."
"Sure. At this point, I'm willing to try anything."
"That's the spirit. Now just go the next two hours without killing anyone."
"I make no promises."
--
Holly arrived at her apartment twenty minutes later than normal, due to the traffic. Evidently, a simple fender bender was such a fascinating sight that everyone had to slow down and make sure it wasn't, in fact, a UFO. Holly felt a vein in her eye pulsing.
With her shorter time frame, she could only shower, dress, eat a few cookies and lovingly tussle the head of her cat before she got the text from Gloria that she was outside.
Holly had chosen a blue dress for the occasion, not sure how formal the venue they would go to was. She was surprised to see Gloria dressed in a beige trench coat, evidently keeping her dress safe from the elements. But if she was worried about rain, maybe she could have put the top up on her awesome candy apple red convertible.
"Nice car." Holly said, taking a seat beside Gloria. "Am I dressed alright?"
"You look fabulous." Gloria smiled. "Let's hit the road."
Gloria drove them into the city, and to a featureless building across the street from a church, and beside a walk-in seafood restaurant. Gloria took Holly's hand and led her behind the building, walking up the handicapped ramp and up to a large man, evidently a bouncer. The man opened the door once he saw Gloria. A beauty like Gloria's really can open doors, Holly thought.
The room they entered looked... unfinished. Steel girders and an old fashioned lighting grid were plainly visible from the ceiling. A stage sat at the back, but looked to not have been used in a very long time, based on it now being used as some form of storage. Some cafe tables and other seats were occupied with patrons... all of them women. At the opposite side was a bar, stocked with hundreds of colorful bottles. The woman at the bar had a pink pompadour shaved into her hair and fishnet stockings.
"There you are." The woman called out to Gloria.
"Sorry I'm a little late." Gloria put her hand to her heart. "I had to pick up a friend."
"Any friend of yours is a friend of mine." The pompadoured woman smiled. "We ready?"
"Ready for..." Holly looked about, and saw as two other women pulled black tarpaulins off two structures in the center of the room. Beneath the tarps were two sets of stocks, one to hold the head and hands in place like the medieval stocks, and one positioned behind it, theoretically to hold the hips still. These stocks were slightly more civilized than their medieval precursors, as each hole in the stocks was lined with black padding. There was a cushion between them for resting on, and two belts attached to steel rings on the floor.
As it turns out, Holly was not ready for it.
"What on Earth is..." Holly turned to Gloria, who shed her trench coat as nonchalantly as taking off a hat. Gloria's nude body beneath would be enough to shock Holly, but Gloria had taken the time to write obscene instructions and graffiti on her torso and upper legs, including helpful instructions like 'dicks go here' and identification possibly required by government mandate, like 'slut.'
"I didn't realize you liked reading that much." Gloria smiled broadly, gently caressing one hand down her body, past the helpful instructions. She turned around, revealing more graffiti and a large arrow pointing into her crack. A price had been written, presumably for the use of the indicated orifices, but had been crossed out in black ink and "free" had been written there instead.
Gloria stepped inside the stocks, two other women lifting the top half of the front stocks up so she could get her head inside. They closed the stock around her neck and hands, and locked them together with a padlock. Two more padlocks locked her wrist to the stocks, but loosely enough that they could be moved about within the hole.
The second half of the stock was lifted like the blade of a guillotine, and lowered over her hips, holding them still. Her rear hung out of the back stock like a hunting trophy from the Mirror universe. Two more helpful ladies wrapped her ankles in padded restraints and locked them to the immovable rings on the ground, her legs held apart at a 50 degree angle.
Holly hustled around to see Gloria's face from behind the stocks. Her smile had not faded. She was as comfortable as she was sitting in her living room watching TV. The pompadoured woman handed her a wireless remote with a single button on the top, attaching it to her wrist with a lanyard.
"Testing." The pompadoured woman shouted. Gloria pressed the button. A sudden alarm sounded, like the buzzer at the end of a basketball game. Unseen red lights turned activated and filled the room with an ominous feeling. Gloria released the button, and the lights deactivated.
"What is the safe word?"
"Do that again, but three times as hard."
"Gloria..."
Her smile faded, if only because her joke went unappreciated. "The Da Vinci Code."
"There we go." The pompadoured woman touched Gloria's chin tenderly. Two more women (holy cow, there's a lot of women here) pulled out a microphone stand with a special cup at the end of it. An egg-shaped ice ball was placed in the cup.
"You sure you want to do Ice tonight?" The pompadoured woman, evidently in charge here, asked Gloria. "I can always break the key out."
