donnylaja heroines, Mailgirls edition

        Xifeng turned over, and because she was hugging Ngo-kwang, that girl turned over too, then all the girls repositioned.  There was no danger of falling off the mattress.  It was twelve feet across, with a little wooden table in the middle that the girls used as a nightstand.  At present it held the five decafs that Tami had made for them after foot-stretching.  For any Mailgirl taking good care of her feet was of first importance.  Every night and every morning they stretched each other, usually in a big circle, massaging the muscles and tendons, spreading the toes with intertwined fingers, and at the end rubbing in the lotion that kept their feet supple yet tough.  Their bare feet spent all day pounding over tile, carpet, that bristly fake grass in the lobby, and the cold gritty corrugated iron of the “Mailgirl stairs”, and had to be carefully taken care of.

        Once again they all looked up at the stars, through that skylight 26 floors above them.  From hearing snatches of conversation the girls had learned that it was modeled on the Bligh Tower in Syndey, Australia, designed by one RJ Tayler, an elegant man in a three-piece suit who occasionally visited.  Along each of the eight sides were the darkened windows of the offices.  There was no one else in the building; Harbin, like all Chinese cities, was very safe and there was no need for nighttime security.  All was quiet except for the girls’ voices reverberating in the darkness, and the occasional faint whirring of the HVAC system.

        The four novices had dedicated themselves to nine months of Mailgirls service and despite being denied clothes or shoes they knew they were lucky.  They were winners of a lottery for those who had applied to the highly prestigious Beijing Technical University but didn’t have grades quite high enough for automatic admission.  They were from diverse backgrounds, and though as Chinese girls they were to various degrees shy, modest and deferential to authority, they had different personalities. Huiqing (whose number “2” was printed over her left breast, on each hip, and on the small of her back), energetic, assertive, a sponge when it came to absorbing information, was from a suburb of Shanghai.  Her father was an engineer; at BTU she would be following a family tradition.  Her mother was a teacher.  Xifeng (3) was a quiet, religious type, not surprising because her mother tended the local Buddhist shrine.  Her father was a farmer.  Ngo-kwang (4), the emerging lesbian, was a sophisticated girl from Beijing, whose parents worked for the state TV network.  Yingtai (5), smiling, fun-loving, was from Zhengzhou.  Her father, a widower, was an auto mechanic.

        Their first few nights on the mattress were not comfortable.  Unlike Tami they were not used to sleeping in the nude, and moreover without blankets.  Xifeng admitted to being scared in the cavernous darkness, which was interrupted only by the stars above and the little red emergency lights up on the 12th and 24th floors.  Tami reminded her, “There’s no one here but us.  And things don’t suddenly pop into existence when they turn off the lights.”  Then she startled them all by shouting “HELLO!!”  It echoed up and down the atrium.  After their initial shock the girls giggled, and soon they were shouting little “boops” so as to maximize the number of echoes.  Then Ngo-kwang shouted “I want to lick Ms. Sun!!” and continued to more obscene declarations.  Yingtai shouted “Huiqing has different size nipples!”  Huiqing: “Yingtai has a puffy belly!”  “I do not!”  “Ngo-kwang’s butthole has three freckles!”  “Yifeng has a stretch mark on her left boob!”  Body issues, the bane of any teenaged girl, melted away like unwanted fat as the girls got used to being naked 24/7, every inch of their bodies being on full display for the world of clothed adults.

        With fear of darkness overcome, a few nights ago the girls started playing hide and seek in the enormous structure, running or sneaking up and down the stairs, prowling the pitch-black corridors, and trying to surprise each other around corners, though it was hard to muffle the approaching thud of bare feet on carpet.  They were getting into the habit of wandering the 26 floors, to the point where they felt they knew every byway, every flower-stand in every alcove, every painting on every wall, the feel of every section of carpet under their sensitive soles.  And every office that was left open, not that they dare touch anything.  They would call out across the space above the atrium and try to guess what floors the others were on.  “Yingtai!  Guess what floor!” one voice would echo out.  “13!”  “Wrong, 15!”  They were giddy as kids, the huge deserted dark building their own playground, to run around naked in.  The girls were not allowed to leave the building, except during the day on Saturdays and Sundays.  But it was so extensive that they did not feel confined.

        After the first few days sleep became easier, partly because they were exhausted as their duties were revved up, partly because Tami helped out by serving warm milk before the suggested 10:30 p.m. bedtime.  Soon the girls found themselves waking up spontaneously a minute or two before the 6:30 a.m. alarm, ready for another day.

        The milk was from the well-stocked fridge next to the mattress, not on the platform but on floor level.  The mattress was five feet up, which not so coincidentally put the girls’ bodies at eye level for passers by.  The mattress was where they typically returned for lunch and for their 15-minute breaks.  It was their home, exposed though it was.  A set of four stairs to the side led down to the floor level, though they could jump down too, breasts bouncing, bare soles slapping onto the terrazzo.  The fridge was part of a little kitchenette, with no walls of course.  Everything the girls did was on unobstructed view.  To the other side was a shower with clear glass sides and a toilet.  Next to the toilet were the enema bags; a Mailgirl’s anus is often on display and has to be clean inside and out.  Another little table had a sink and toothbrushes and cosmetics and a little mirror, and the drawer where the Mailgirl Monitoring Units (MMU’s) were kept off hours.  Such was the layout of their “dorm”.

        During the day the atrium was filled with official people going here and there.  Most gave the girls a glance.  A few stopped to look for a moment or two, particularly if one of the girls was relieving herself. The toilet (like everything else) was set up so that the girls were always facing outward.  They had to face the public as they pooped.  Still, extended gawking was frowned upon.  The only exception was an artist named Slice Reality, who set up an easel every week or so and would study them as long as needed for his work.  They guessed he was creating publicity materials for the worldwide Mailgirls operation.  The girls were not allowed to talk to him.  In fact aside from reporting on deliveries, they were not allowed to talk to anyone, technically not even each other, except during breaks or after hours, though they often engaged in their naked-girl-talk when they passed each other on the stairs during deliveries, amid the echo in the stairwell caused by near and distant thumping of tough Mailgirls soles on rough non-slip stairs.

        Being a Mailgirl, as one might imagine, put one in perfect physical condition.  Even after only two weeks the novices noticed their waists getting smaller, their bodies more muscular, with more spring in their step.  The food they were provided was vegan and also low-calorie, high-fiber, and high-protein.  Despite all these prerequisites it was also delicious.  In fact the mattress, the platform, the nightstand, the kitchenette -- it was well thought-out and obviously very expensive.  It seemed that whatever Hsa saved by not giving them clothing or private quarters, it spent on them in other ways; their bodies had been stripped but were also being taken very good care of.  There was even a set of shiny dumbbells so that the girls could compensate for all the exercise their legs were getting by developing upper body mass.  They took turns on them after breakfast.  Huiqing was proud of being able to heft the 5-kilo weights.