A Very Merry Mailgirls Xmas

Erin O'Neill stepped into another world, and left the real one behind.

The lobby of US Financial's Park Place facility was large, open, and well lit. Little clusters of sofas and chairs stood guard to either side, along with the same sorts of potted plants and topiaries that graced corporate offices worldwide. Garland had been hung for the season, and an oversized Christmas tree had been tastefully decorated and placed by the door. Even the security desk had been done up, wrapped with a thick red ribbon and sporting an oversized bow.

It was a quarter to three on Christmas Eve, but the lobby was still busy. Most people were nodding to the two security guards and wishing them a Merry Christmas on their way out. Out to their cars, off to the ferry, or on to the commuter rail. Out into the lightly falling snow. Home to their families and loved ones, home for the holiday. There were a handful of little congregations of people, though, still milling about and conversing in loud, joyful voices. Most did their best to at least pretend to ignore the goings-on at the security desk, or the line-up to the left, or the show at the center of the lobby. But there was a mixed group - men and women both - whistling, cheering, and clapping; one of the women even had her phone out and was snapping pictures.

The exposed pussy that greeted Erin and Catherine as they entered the lobby, though, stole focus.

Two pillories had been placed halfway between the front entrance and the security desk. One was unoccupied. In the other, and facing away from them, was a girl without a stitch of clothes, bent at the midsection and fitted with a spreader bar at her ankles. Her neck and wrists had been secured into the pillory. And, as Erin and her stepmother rounded the display, they saw that the pillory itself wasn't the end of her suffering. Dangling beneath her, and held in place with nipple clamps, was a pair of red-and-green Christmas ornaments. These, plus the Santa hat, were apparently a nod to the holiday. The O-ring gag inserted into her mouth and secured behind her head, though, didn't appear to have anything to do with the season.

Catherine Ryan breathed an audible sigh of relief as they passed. Erin understood why - the naked girl was a redhead. Catherine's daughters, both blondes, weren't the victims of this particular exhibition. At least, not here and now. Not today.

To this side of the security desk, another girl stood trembling in just her bra and panties, with her back to the little party cheering and applauding her less than twenty feet away. She paid them no attention, but it was clear that their presence was affecting her. A pair of boots was on the floor beside her, and a crumpled-up pile of clothes had been placed on the desk. She looked to the African-American woman on the far side, as if expecting her to say something - to either scare the audience away, or to offer her a few words of support. The security guard did neither. Finding the courage to press forward anyway, the girl slid one bra strap off her shoulder, and then the other. She tugged the cups down at the same time, exposing her naked breasts, and twisted the bra three-quarters of the way around her body to unfasten the snap. Her admirers roared with laughter.

"Underwear, too," Erin heard the second security guard tell her. "Come on."

The girl nodded nervously, and wriggled out of her panties. Another cheer erupted from the audience.

The second security guard, a Hispanic man in his forties, accepted the girl's underthings with a smile, and took the girl in, in her entirety. Dark hair, done up a bun. Moderately-sized breasts. Good-looking, though not stunningly so - not nearly as attractive the redhead in the stocks behind her. There was a small patch of pubic hair between her legs that caught the guard's attention, and he called it out. "That's got to go when you get downstairs."

"Even just as a visitor?" the girl asked meekly. Her accent was hard to place. French?

"Yup," he answered. "It's in the agreement you signed. The girls will show you where to get a razor when you get down there."

As Catherine and Erin approached the security desk, the female guard peeled away and looked up in their direction. She recognized Catherine right away. She grinned. "One and Two."

Catherine smiled politely. "One and Two," she affirmed. "I left an impression?"

"I never forget a face," the security guard beamed. Her nametag identified her as "Andrews."

Gesturing towards the now-naked brunette to her left, Catherine pointed out, "We didn't have to do this here last time."

Andrews shook her head and apologized. "Downstairs, right? Outside the locker room?"

"Yes."

"New rule. Just in time for the holiday." She shrugged, indicating that she didn't have anything to do with the decision. She was just here to enforce it.

Catherine looked nervously over her shoulder at crowd. "Anything else new? Anything else we need to know?"

"Well, they moved the...er...equipment," she answered, searching for the right word. She meant the pillories behind them.

"A little too cold in the courtyard this time of year?"

Andrews nodded. "All over the building now. Benches, cages, racks, suspension devices..." Shaking her head, but with a little chuckle, she added, "Can't escape 'em. They're all over the place. That and the ladies' underwear."

"Those were up when I was here last time," Catherine said. "A bold design choice."

"It's definitely different than when I started here a couple of years ago."

"A different world," Erin added. Andrews glanced in Erin's direction, and looked her up and down. "Hi," Erin cheeped, and offered a nervous wave.

Andrews offered a polite "hello" in response, but came back to Catherine. "Another daughter?"

"Stepdaughter," Catherine said. "Couldn't talk her out of it."

Andrews offered a grunt, and a disapproving look at Erin. To Erin, she asked, "Is that right?"

"It is," she answered. "I can do this for a couple of days."

To Catherine, Andrews warned, "You be careful with her. She's a looker. You don't want another one."

Catherine stared at Erin, as if to say, "See!" To Andrews, she responded, "I know, I know. Her father would disown me. If that happens, I might have to stay, myself."

Andrews laughed. "I'll put in a good word, if that happens," she said. Gesturing to the older woman's figure, despite being hidden beneath a coat, she offered, "Though, you be careful, yourself. These assholes? These little experiments they run here? You might be end up being a whole family of mailgirls."

Catherine waved off the concern. A little too casually, Erin felt. "Mail-Woman," the forty-nine-year-old corrected the security guard. "In my case."

"Mail-Woman, then," Andrews laughed. "Though, damn, if I looked as good as you..."

The security guard trailed off, and looked away. Andrews wasn't mailgirls material. She was more than a little heavy-set, and not exactly the sort of beauty USF had a reputation for targeting.

Catherine Ryan, on the other hand? If she'd been ten years younger, there'd have been no doubt the company would be pursuing her to turn its "sisters act" into a "mother-and-daughters show." Five-foot-three or maybe five-foot-four, with a figure that would have been the envy of women half her age, Catherine was nearly every bit the goddess that her daughters were. Maybe even more so, given that she had aged so gracefully that magic or witchcraft had to have been involved. It had been a decade since Erin's father had first introduced Catherine to her, and Catherine still looked like she could have passed for thirty-nine. Blonde hair, a chest to die for, and hips that no one would have believed had birthed two children; there was no question from whom Sarah and Sophie Scott had gotten their looks.

Not that Erin O'Neill was hard on the eyes. She'd grown into her height, after more than a few awkward teenage years towering over the boys her age. She'd been rail-thin, back then. Though she'd sprouted up early, her boobs had come in late. And, of course, there'd been the acne. But it had all come together in the end, and - aside from those times she was standing next to Catherine or beside the Scott girls - she was capable of turning heads in her own right. As she'd flipped through pictures of mailgirls online, she had convinced herself more and more that she wouldn't be embarrassing herself by inserting herself in among them. She'd be embarrassing herself, sure. Of that, there was no question - it was raison d'etre for a mailgirls program, overall. But she was tall and slender, and in reasonably good shape. She was thirty, but only just; her sorority days at Arizona State weren't that far removed. She might not have been the sort of high-end lingerie model that USF had a history of enlisting into their mailgirl ranks, but she was pretty, in a girl-next-door brunette sort of way.

"Alright, so..." Andrews began, as she handed a pair of clipboards to Erin and her stepmother, "I know you two signed these already, when you set this visit up. But, because of what you're volunteering yourself for, the lawyers like to make sure you're scrawling your signature here, there, and everywhere a few dozen times. Thumbprint, too. Just to make absolutely, one hundred percent sure you know what you're getting yourself into and what you're giving the company permission to do."

The document was eleven pages long, single-spaced, and in ten-point font. Erin knew it backwards and forwards. She'd spent hours poring over it at home, going line by line, paragraph by paragraph, clause by clause. It laid out the conditions of her visit, in detail - everything from the surrender of her clothes to the surrender of her very name. For the next forty-some hours, Erin O'Neill would be, for intents and purposes, a mailgirl.

She flipped through it, counting the pages and glancing it over to make sure that USF hadn't slipped something else into the agreement since its last iteration. Nothing appeared to be any different from the document she'd signed, scanned, and emailed back to Human Capital - but in a perfect world, she'd have gone through it again, in detail, to make absolutely sure. Being tricked into signing her life away was practically a rite of passage for a mailgirl.

Erin cringed, bit her lip, and signed her name on the last page. She was here for the "mailgirls experience," after all.

Catherine gave the contract no such scrutiny. She'd done this before, and come out the other side. Not for this long, and not overnight. But she was here to see her daughters, and likely would have signed anything USF shoved in front of her to see them again.

"Alright, girls," Andrews said to them both in a friendly tone, after they'd run their thumbs over an electronic reader. "It's time."

The moment of truth. After all her research, all her preparation and planning, the moment had arrived. Erin was going to strip down in USF's lobby and join her stepsisters in the nude.

She glanced nervously at Catherine, and Catherine offered a reassuring look. To Andrews, the older woman asked, "Can we put our things in our suitcases?"

Andrews answered in the affirmative. "That works," she said.

"Now or never," Catherine sighed, and shrugged off her coat.

"Now or never," Erin answered timidly, and did the same.

The girl who'd been at the desk when Erin and Catherine had arrived was a few feet away, and was being tended to by the male security guard. "Ramirez," his nametag read. The girl, on the other hand, was to be known as "VC." So said the black ink Ramirez had just applied to her right hip. "Visitor C," Erin surmised. She and Catherine were to be "Visitor D" and "Visitor E."

She hoped she wouldn't be the one forced to sport "VD" scrawled upon her naked body for the couple of days.

She knew she would be.

"Mistress Rei may need to re-do this," Ramirez was telling the girl. "After a shower and a shave."

"Uh...okay," was the response. What else was she going to say?

Erin folded her coat neatly, got into a crouch, and opened her suitcase. She risked a glance in the direction of the group laughing and cheering only twenty feet away, but chose to look through them and pretend they weren't there.

The redhead in the pillory was watching, too; beneath her, the Christmas ornaments hanging from her nipples bounced comically with each breath.

Against the far wall, on their knees, were two naked girls - "VA" and "VB," presumably. Both were in the standard mailgirls "resting" position, called simply "Knees" here at USF. Knees apart, left wrist clutched in the right hand behind the back. They were facing the wall, with their bare behinds exposed to open lobby, but - piling insult on top of insult - they'd been fitted with black leather blindfolds. Neither had yet received collars, but Erin knew they were coming in the near future.

Erin placed her coat on top of her other clothes in the suitcase. What they'd wear to Park Place that afternoon had been a hand-wringing exercise in and of itself. Given that they had fully expected to strip soon after arriving, and would remain naked until the day after Christmas, choosing an outfit for the trip from their hotel to the building might have seemed unimportant. Had she had her way, Erin would have arrived in a pair of sweatpants and a tee-shirt. Hell, there was something to be said for the cheap-looking shifts the Fabrikam girls wore to-and-from work back in LA. Simple. Easy. Straightforward. On-and-off. No fuss.

Catherine, though, had insisted they dress up, and Erin had given in. When Sarah had been in-town, at USF Plaza, she'd come to and from work dressed as if she held a normal job on Wall Street. Despite the presence of the mailgirls, USF still maintained a formal dress code, one that seemed like a throwback to yesteryear. Women wore skirts and dresses, stockings and hose, pumps and heels. When Erin and Sarah had chatted that Sunday, Sarah had backed Catherine and suggested Erin might come in a skirt and a blouse. She could be forgiven the pantyhose, but she should dress in something nice. Whether it was outside the mailgirls locker room - as Erin, Catherine, and Sarah had expected - or here in the lobby, Erin was going to have to get naked in front of an audience. She didn't want to get things started off looking like a slob, did she?

Erin stood, and kicked off her high-heeled boots. She'd given in to her stepmother's insistence, and wore a simple, tight-fitting, button-down white blouse, tucked neatly into a flouncy black A-line skirt entirely inappropriate for the weather outside. Beside her, Catherine wore a muted, black-and-white leopard-print faux wrap dress that tied at the waist and hung to her knees. Both of them could have passed for secretaries, or accountants, or lawyers, or any other variety of the office drones who populated Park Place. For the moment, at least.

Erin's hands trembled as she undid the first button of her shirt. And then the next. And then the next. And then the next. As she did so, she revealed a white, guipure lace bra, with sheer cups through which her nipples would be plainly visible. The bra, as well as the matching white lace tanga, had been a recent purchase, and - outside of trying them on - today was the first time she'd worn either. She'd spent more on the set than she'd originally intended to; Catherine had warned her that USF had kept her underwear when she'd come out in September. But Erin had felt sexier and more confident in her body when she'd picked them out, a feeling that seemed important when undressing in public.

The younger girl was still untucking her blouse when a roar went up behind her. Catherine, determined and focused, had simply found the hemline of her dress and pulled it up over her head. The group watching cheered.

Erin had seen her stepmother in a two-piece bikini on more than one occasion, but she found herself marveling at the other woman's body now all the same. Despite being forty-nine, and despite having been pregnant twice, Catherine was a beauty, and set unrealistic expectations for Erin about what to expect from the aging process. Today, she wore a black, full-coverage satin bra, and a matching black thong. She was still in her heels.

Erin followed Catherine's lead, and took off her shirt. She slid her thumbs into the waistline of her skirt, and wriggled free. Both items were deposited in a heap into her suitcase. She wanted to get this over with. She wasn't going to stand here in her underwear, folding her clothes, and stalling. Wasting no time, she unhooked her bra behind her back, slipped it off, and then went for her panties. Erin O'Neill was now naked in the lobby of US Financial, naked in public, naked in front of her stepmother and a good number of total strangers.

Her tattoo caught the attention of the little group openly watching and applauding, as Erin had expected it to; tattoos weren't allowed among the actual roster of USF mailgirls. Just above her bikini line were six blue stylized little fish swimming one way, and a single little red one swimming the other. When she'd gotten it in Tempe, eight or nine years earlier, she'd liked the idea that she was the single red fish, swimming in her own direction. The fact that she had willingly and knowingly agreed to be a de facto mailgirl for the next day and a half, and that she'd just gotten naked while being watched, perhaps underlined that sentiment.

She crouched back down, overly cautious about exposing her sex to the room. Her back to Andrews, she snuck her tanga into one of the pockets of the jeans she'd brought with her, and then buried the jeans themselves beneath her coat, her skirt, and her blouse. Human Capital, or the Scott girls' mistress, or maybe even Andrews and Ramirez themselves, would likely be rifling through her things and pilfering the panties at some point that very afternoon. Erin doubted her little hiding spot would keep them safe, but she felt the need to try all the same.

For that same reason, Erin had left her engagement ring and wedding band at home. It had hurt her husband Ben, she knew, but he hadn't said so out loud. Given what she was already doing to him with this little trip, it had pained her to hurt him again like that. Catherine had worn her rings, and was at that very moment tucking her jewelry into her toiletries bag. But then, Catherine hadn't come clean to Erin's father Patrick about what trips to USF required of female visitors, as Erin had to Ben. Erin could deal with the company snatching her underwear; she couldn't bear the thought of losing her rings.

Still, though, Erin did have on a few other pieces. Her earrings, her necklace, her bracelet, and a simple sterling silver ring were all slipped into her clutch, and placed carefully in her suitcase. Mailgirls, and therefore the mailgirls' visitors, were not allowed jewelry of any kind - save that which was given to them by the company. There was an ugly black collar waiting for Erin in the near future.

Both her suitcase and Catherine's were placed up on the security desk, and Andrews smiled as she took possession of them. Ramirez, meanwhile, had finished with Visitor C for the moment, though the girl stood waiting, awkwardly, for her next set of instructions. "Wow," he offered, as he took in Catherine. "Wow, wow, wow," he said to Erin.

Erin blushed instinctively.

Ramirez fixated on Erin's crotch. He pointed at it, and called Visitor C's attention to it. "Hey, 'Hairy Cunt'! That's how it's done."

Erin had gotten waxed that weekend. She and Catherine had both dutifully complied with their agreements' restrictions on hair below the neckline.

"Emilio!" Andrews scolded him. "What have I said about the fucking nicknames?"