For Want of a Mask

Chapter Six: The Office

Angela sat in the passenger seat on the way to Mark's office, feeling almost normal. Her feet were bare, which was a little weird, and obviously she wasn't wearing any underwear—that seemed especially hard to come by today—but she was covered now, and that was the main thing. Mark had to make a stop to enter the code written across her body into a computer, and then he said he'd drive her home.

"Do you wanna, maybe, uh, hang out some time?" Mark asked her, trying to sound cool and aloof. "I'll make sure my mother's not home."

Angela scowled internally, but kept her face neutral. So he wanted her to come back to his place. To "hang out". And he didn't say it, but she got the insinuation that the dress code, for her, would be the same as this first visit. Even now, Mark was probably thinking about how she felt under his pen hand and hoping to jab her with a different long instrument.

No wining and dining for the little naked whore. Straight to business.

She glanced at his crotch. Difficult to tell from this angle, but she didn't doubt her intuition. "I'll let you know," she said, cognizant of her need for him to drive her home later.

"Cool," Mark said. He probably thought she meant it.

Mark pulled into the lot of his empty office building, swiping a key card at the entrance boom gate. He parked right in front of the building, and once again got out to open the door for Angela.

"This'll be quick, in and out."

Marked swiped his key card to enter the main building, and led Angela up some stairs and then down a long, winding hallway. To both sides, she saw big open-plan office rooms with rows and rows of cheap desks, swivel chairs and computer screens. Her bare feet tread noiselessly on the gray carpet.

They came to an office at the end of the hall, which Mark had to use a fingerprint scanner to get into. The room contained a single computer with a large screen against one of the walls. Beneath a screen was a small, cheap keyboard on a rickety desk.

Mark walked up to the computer and tapped the space bar a few times to wake the screen up. Then he entered a password, and some commands. A minute or two later, the screen filled with a giant prompt, which read, "ENTER CODE".

"Okay, we need the code," Mark said, looking back at Angela.

Angela checked around the room. She didn't see any cameras, and Mark had assured her that his office didn't have CCTV when she'd asked. They were on the fourth floor, so it was unlikely that anyone would be peeking through the windows either. And in any case, the blinds were all drawn.

None of that made what she was about to do all that much easier. Slowly, with shaking hands, Angela undid the top button of the dress shirt. This was the longest she'd been fully covered since the start of this ordeal, and now she was taking her clothes off again. It was even worse than if she'd just been naked the whole time.

"This thing has a timer, Angela," Mark said, when she was halfway down the shirt. "We don't have all day."

Angela sniffed, suppressing a tear, and quickly undid the rest of the buttons. Then she shrugged the shirt off her shoulders, and let it fall with her wrists still in the sleeves, like a glamour model posing for a pin-up shot. She turned around so that Mark could see the writing on her back.

Mark thanked her, and started typing. She'd seen him type quite fast earlier, but now he was slowly pecking the keys between long looks at her.

"I thought there was a timer," she said.

"Gotta make sure I get this right. Take a step back."

She did so, and felt a finger on her back. Mark was tracing the lines. The pace of his keyboard tapping increased.