Office Subjugation

Chapter 11 - The Eviction

Thursday. The day after the spanking.

She stood in the hallway at six and undressed the way she undressed every morning, blouse and skirt folded on top of the bag at her feet, heels on, hands at her sides. The welts pulled tight across her cheeks as she moved. She had rubbed the cream into them again before she left the apartment, a thin white layer that shone faintly where the fluorescent caught it, that caught on the mesh of the thong and stung where the raised ridges met the skin. The thong did not press as hard as it had on the Tuesday because the cream made the fabric slide. Small mercies.

He came through at seven twenty-five. Charcoal suit. The inspection did not linger on her cheeks. Resting. Bra. Back. The squat in Back was the worst of them, the arch pulling the welts open down the whole length of her bruised skin, and she kept her eyes on the blue thread on the rug and did not move until he told her to stand. Front. Hands behind her head, hips forward. He hooked the strip of mesh at her crotch and worked it between her lips the way he did every morning, then rubbed two fingers slowly back and forth across the bare outer lips on either side of the wedged strip. He stepped back.

"Back to work."

She made his coffee. Long black. No sugar. She set it on the leather coaster the way she set it every morning, stepped back, and went to her chair.

The welts met the leather and the heat climbed up through her and she sucked air through her teeth and held still.

I can do this. I can do this.

-

Nine. Filing. She knelt to the bottom drawer and the welts protested and she breathed through her teeth and filed.

Ten. Phones.Alexander Williams' office.

The rent question sat at the back of her throat. The eviction notice was due today. She did not know if it had been paid. She did not know how to ask without sounding demanding, so she just stayed quiet.

He said he would take care of it. He said it on the Monday.

Eleven. The Morrison correspondence. She cross-indexed it the way she had cross-indexed it yesterday, the way she would cross-index it tomorrow. She did not let her hand drift. She did not let her eyes drift. She did not let the stack tip.

Noon. She drank water.

The pulse of the welts moved with her heartbeat. She counted them sometimes the way she counted the strikes. One on the right where his palm had landed first. Two on the left, matching. Three across the centre. The split one at the bottom of the left cheek, the seam stinging where the cream had not reached. Ten welts she had earned. Ten she would not earn again.

Yesterday was my fault. I dropped the files. I was careless and he had no choice.

Two. A letter for a client. She mistyped a figure, ran the line again, mistyped it again, stopped. She put her hands flat on the desk. The cold of the desk under her palms and the heat of the welts under her skirt, two temperatures at the ends of her body. She started the paragraph over. The third time she got it right.

Don't drop anything. Don't spill anything. Don't make him do that again. Don't cause more trouble.

Four. Coffee. She knelt beside his chair to hand it up and her thighs pulled tight over the welts and she did not move until he took the cup. He did not say good girl. He did not say anything. She held the kneel a beat longer than usual in case he had not noticed her.

Six. Filing. Her back ached from bending at the waist, because crouching down stretched her skin across her rump, and the dull pain from her back was preferable to the sharp pain from her sore brutalized ass.

She thought about being fired. The word sat in her chest the way the rent number sat there.If I do this again he won't bother with the spanking. He'll just fire me. I'd have nothing. Nowhere.

Seven. He capped his pen. "You can go."

She dropped nothing. She spilled nothing.

She said goodnight, Sir, and he did not answer, and she gathered her bag and her coat from the chair near the door and she left.

The streetlights were on. The sidewalk was wet from rain. She walked to the bus stop.

---

The bus was half-empty. She stood because sitting hurt. The pencil skirt pulled tight across the welts and every jolt of the bus travelled through her bruised cheeks as a dull rolling heat, a pulse she could not turn off.

She held the overhead rail. She watched her reflection in the dark window. A girl in a blouse and a pencil skirt and heels, hair coming loose at the temples, mascara still on, eyes too tired to focus on her own face.

Her mind was blank, her weariness only allowing her to look passively out the window.

Her station. Her building. Third floor. Down the hall.

---

The key did not turn.

She tried it again. She pulled the key out and looked at it and put it back in. She tried the handle. She tried the key. The lock did not move.

Two black bin bags sat against the wall beside her door. Tied at the top. Lumpy with the shapes of things she owned. A folded paper was taped to the door at eye-level.

She didn't need to read it, but she did anyway.

Final notice of eviction. Failure to remit outstanding balance. Locks changed as per Section 12 of lease agreement. Personal effects bagged and placed in common area. Tenant has 48 hours to collect remaining items before disposal.

She leaned her forehead against the wood of her own door. The wood was cool. The hallway smelled like old carpet and someone's dinner and the cleaning product the super used on Tuesdays. Her legs hurt from the heels. Her ass hurt from yesterday. She pressed her forehead harder into the door and closed her eyes.

She was too tired to cry.

-

He said he would take care of it.

Something must not have gone through. Payments take time. Bank transfers, different accounts. Or the landlord did not wait the way he was supposed to. Either way it is not his fault. He said he would and he meant it. He always means what he says.

She stood there for a long time.

---

The elevator was broken again. She carried both bags down three flights, one in each hand, the plastic biting into her fingers, the weight dragging her shoulders forward. The bags knocked against every step. Something inside one of them rattled.

Outside the evening air hit her face and she stood on the sidewalk with her bags at her feet and nowhere to go.

She called her father first. It rang four times and went to voicemail. She did not leave a message. She already knew what he would say.Well. Look who it is. Big city not everything you thought it'd be, princess? I told them. Told them you'd be back with your tail between your legs before the first frost. Soft hands, soft head. Get on a bus. Don't expect anyone to clap when you get here.

She could not go home. Ohio was a dead end and she had promised herself she would never go back. She had made that promise at the Greyhound station with a one-way ticket and a stuffed rabbit and two hundred dollars in an envelope, and she had meant it.

She sat down on the curb. The concrete was cold through her skirt. The welts pressed flat against the hard surface; the pain climbed her spine and she sat very still.

She scrolled to his name in her phone. Paused. She had never called him outside working hours. She did not know if it was allowed. She pressed call.

Two rings.

"Yes?"

His voice was calm. Unhurried. Like he had been expecting the call.

"Sir, I - my apartment. They changed the locks. I don't have anywhere to -"

"Where are you?"

"Outside my building. On the street. I have my things in bags, but I -"

"Come to the office. Bring what you need."

"Sir, it's -" She looked at the time on the screen of her phone. 8:47. "It's late. I don't -"

"Take a taxi. I'm still there, I haven't left yet."

He hung up.

---

The taxi cost thirty-two dollars. She watched the meter climb the way she watched everything with numbers now. The advance. The outfits. The training cost deductions. The paycheque that had come out to two hundred and eleven dollars and forty cents. Thirty-two more dollars she owed him. She did not have thirty-two dollars.

She sat in the back with the bin bags at her feet and her hands in her lap and the city moving past the window. Orange streetlight. A bar on the corner of Seventh with people on the sidewalk in their coats, laughing, their voices thinning through the glass. A couple walking a small dog. A man on a bench eating out of a paper bag. A Thursday night city full of people doing ordinary Thursday-night things.

She was going to his office. With all her possessions in bin bags. Hoping for yet more generosity from the one person in her life who kept giving her chances, and who she kept letting down.

He did say he would take care of it.

The driver helped her get the bags out of the trunk. She stood in front of the building with them, one in each hand, the glass lobby lit and empty. The security desk was unmanned. She was grateful for that; she did not know what she would have said.

She swiped her pass at the door and the beep was loud across the marble. The elevator was quiet. The bags took up most of the floor. She caught her reflection in the brushed steel doors, blouse wrinkled, skirt creased where she had sat on the curb, mascara smudged in a small dark crescent below one eye. She looked like a girl with nowhere to go, because she was.

Fourteenth floor. The hallway lights were on a night dimmer, the wall sconces low and yellow, the carpet a deeper red than it was at six in the morning. The doors of the other rooms on the floor were dark, their glass panels black. The glass doors of his suite were lit from inside, a soft warm glow filling the outer office beyond them, the gold lettering of his name floating clean across the panel.

She dragged the bags down the carpet she knelt on every morning, past the same skirting, the same row of dark doors, until she was standing in front of his glass.

The outer office was lit but empty. Reception counter, two waiting chairs, the corridor that led further in. The door to his inner office was closed at the far end, a thin strip of warmer light bleeding out underneath it onto the carpet.

She set the bags down. Knocked on the glass.

Nothing for a moment. Then the strip of light at the inner door broke, footsteps on carpet, and his shape moved out of the inner office into the outer one.

He opened the glass.

Button-up, open collar, no tie. A glass of scotch in his hand. He smelled like wool and the cologne she was now familiar with. He looked at her. At the bags. At the mascara under her eye.

"Come in."

He did not take the bags. He held the glass door open while she dragged them through, one at a time, past the reception counter and the empty waiting chairs and the closed door of the meeting room with its long table just visible through the slim panel of glass beside it. Past the kitchenette with the kettle on the counter and a single washed mug on the drainer. Down a short side-corridor she had never walked down before, the one that branched off the outer office before the entrance to his main room.

He opened a door and turned on the light.

---

The room was small. Eight by ten. No windows. A leather couch against one wall, dark brown, cracked at the armrests, the cushions sagging at the middle where people had sat over the years. A small side table with nothing on it. A metal waste bin in the corner. The overhead fluorescent buzzed when it came on and flattened the whole room into shadowless white.

She stood in the doorway with her bags.

"This is the spare room." His voice was matter-of-fact. "You'll sleep here."

She did not answer.

"It's not much. But it'll do until you get back on your feet." He looked at her. "This is what happens when you don't manage your money. Bad choices have consequences. But I'm not going to let you sleep on the street."

-

He didn't have to do this. Most bosses would have said that's your problem, figure it out, see you Monday. He stayed at nine o'clock at night. He opened the building. He's giving me a room.

"Thank you, Sir."

"Bring your things in. Only what you need."

He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms and watched.

---

She opened the first bag on the floor and started sorting.

The work outfits came out first. The five she had bought at the discount store the week of the contract, the skirts and the blouses cut to his specifications, mid-thigh and fitted and enough cleavage to pass. She folded each one the way he had taught her and stacked them on the couch.

Lingerie. Three sets. Cupless bras, mesh thongs, stockings, garter belts. On top of the work clothes.

Heels. Two pairs. Against the wall.

Toiletries. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, the razor he required, lotion, the makeup he had told her to wear, a thin towel stiff from too many washes, a box of pads, a small drugstore bottle of floral perfume, the tub of cream he had given her for the welts with the fingerprints already smeared across the lid. Phone charger.

Side table.

That was the keep pile.

She pulled out the rest piece by piece. A grey oversized hoodie, the sleeves so long she could pull them past her hands, the one she had worn every night on her couch with her legs tucked under her. It smelled like fabric softener and the person she had been before the interview. She set it aside.

Two paperbacks, both half-read. Set aside.

A framed photo of her parents at the county fair. Her mother squinting against the sun with one hand shading her eyes. Her father in a John Deere cap with one arm slung around her mother's shoulders, grinning the way he had grinned before she told them she was leaving. Set aside.

The stuffed rabbit was at the bottom of the second bag.

She held it in both hands. Small. Brown. Fur matted at the sides where she had gripped it as a kid. The missing eye was the left one; the right one was still there, black and flat and catching the fluorescent.

Her mother had bought it for her at a gas station on the way to her grandmother's funeral. It was the only time Chloe had ever seen her mother cry, the first time she understood that mothers could cry, and her mother had pushed the brown rabbit across the counter at her and said here, you can have this, and Chloe had kept it. She had slept with it in her bed for twelve years. She had carried it in her backpack on the Greyhound. She had put it on her pillow in the apartment. It was the one thing from Ohio she had not left behind on purpose.

You can't keep this. It's time to grow up.

She knew it, deep down. He wouldn't approve of her sleeping with it, she'd have to set it aside, stored but not forgotten.

She looked around the room. The couch was small. The side table was small. She was keeping what he had told her to bring, the work clothes and the lingerie and the heels and the toiletries, the things that let her be what he needed her to be. A stuffed rabbit was not on that list and she was a grown woman now and the grown woman she was going to be did not sleep with a brown rabbit missing one eye that her mother had bought at a gas station twelve years ago.

She put it on the discard pile and she did not linger, and then she put the framed photo on top of it, and the hoodie on top of that, and the paperbacks in the seam between the frame and the hoodie, and when she picked up the bin bag and opened it and started putting the discarded things inside one by one, the rabbit first, face down, she did not let herself look at any of it, and when the bag was full she tied it shut and sat back on her heels on the flat wool carpet of the small spare room and looked at the two piles that her life had become.

The girl who needed that rabbit couldn't pay rent. That girl had nothing. This version of me has a job and a room and someone who cared enough to teach me how to stand properly.

Williams had not moved. Arms crossed. Doorframe. Watching.

---

"Sir - the other bag. My things. Could you - is there somewhere I could store it? A cabinet, or -"

"Don't worry about it." He stepped forward and picked up the tied bag one-handed. "I'll take care of it."

A supply closet, a storage room. He takes care of things.

He produced a pillow and a thin grey blanket from somewhere out in the corridor. Storage-cupboard bedding; it smelled like nothing.

"Thank you, Sir."

He set the pillow and blanket on the arm of the couch. Looked at the room. At her things, sorted and stacked and folded. At her.

"Don't sleep in your uniform. You'll crease it."

She looked down at herself. Blouse. Skirt. Heels. The only thing between her body and the room.

He nodded toward the corner. A coat-rack she had not noticed. Dark wood. Brass hooks. A few wire hangers on it, empty. His spare suits usually hung there.

"Hang your uniforms there. I want them pressed and ready every morning." His eyes stayed on her. "Go on."

A crumpled blouse would reflect badly on him. He's thinking about the routine. About me.

---

She started with the heels. Stepped out of them and set them beside the wall.

She was shorter without them. The room was bigger and he was taller in the doorframe.

The blouse. She undid the buttons from the top, one at a time, working down. The fabric parted. The cupless bra held her breasts above the underwire, the pale skin lifted and squeezed together, the nipples bare and tightening in the cool of the room as the air found them. She slipped the blouse off her shoulders and folded it and set it on the side table.

The skirt. She reached behind for the zipper and pulled it down. The shimmy. The small roll of her hips to work the waistband past them. She had done it so many times now that it happened before she thought about doing it, the same small rocking motion she did every morning in the hallway outside his office, and the skirt slid down over the flare of her hips and caught on the fullest part of her ass and dropped. She stepped out of it, folded it, set it on top of the blouse.

She was down to the bra and the thong and the stockings and the garter belt.

She unclipped the garter belt. Four soft clicks. Front left, front right, back left, back right. She folded the belt and set it on the pile.

The stockings. She bent forward to roll the first one down, her fingers working the nylon over her knee, down her calf, over her ankle. The movement put her breasts into full view, heavy and swaying in the cupless bra, the nipples pointing down. She could feel him watching. She rolled the second stocking down. The air found her bare legs. Her welted ass jutted out in the pose, the full round cheeks pale and marked under the fluorescent. She folded the stockings together and added them to the pile.

The pile was neat. Blouse. Skirt. Garter belt. Stockings. Squared corners. His way.

She was in the cupless bra and the mesh thong.

She stood in the middle of the room. She held the hangers in her hand and crossed to the coat-rack and hung her uniform one garment to a hanger, the blouse on the top hook, the skirt below it, the belt and the stockings draped over the bar. Her hands were steady. She turned back to face him.

He looked at her. His eyes moved slowly, the way they moved in the office. Face. Throat. Chest. The breasts lifted on the underwire, the nipples bare and hard. Down over her stomach. The thong riding the points of her hips. The bare mound visible through the mesh. The pale skin of her thighs. The shape of the welts on her cheeks as she stood half-turned, the marks of his hand still violet against her paleness in the flat fluorescent light. Back up.

He was not hurrying.

He's checking. Making sure I know how to fold, how to store, how to hang. No wonder, with how often I mess up. He probably isn't even looking at my body. Why would he. I'm just the assistant he's stuck with. Too much everywhere. Nothing he'd want to see. Just like in the mornings, I'm just a chore.