Special Delivery

by Jingai

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Synopsis: When Sarah gets a special assignment from her delivery gig app, things start to get out of hand.

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Just as Sarah was cycling back from her last delivery, her phone chirped to announce the next.

She groaned in mild annoyance as she slowed down and stopped. Pulling the bike onto the pavement, Sarah fished out her phone and opened up the Spiral app. The legally mandated warning popped up as usual.

“WARNING: THIS APPLICATION IS FOR SPIRAL CONTRACTORS ONLY. GRADE VII HYPNOTIC AND SUBLIMINAL ALGORITHMS USE-”

Sarah blithely tapped through and, with a slightly unhealthy eagerness, pointedly looked right at the screen as the gently shifting patterns started. Like always, she tried to look away; at first it was effortless, but now her eyes didn’t even twitch. She tried again, same result. Sarah sighed huskily as she explored her total inability to resist. Consciously, she knew that the app had sideloaded a strong hypnofetish into her, but that didn’t make it any less real or pleasurable. Gradually, she found her eyes starting to obey her again, as the patterns wound down and were replaced by a more conventional app interface.

The new order was listed, along with her profile. Sarah tapped on it; the address was a penthouse not too far away, but the payload wasn’t on her bike. Nor was there a pickup address. “So what am I delivering?” she pondered. There was a prompt for the full briefing, but as it was done via induction it required her to take the job. She tapped out, and was met with a new prompt. “Declined contracts will be assigned to nearby company property. To reconsider, simply tap the order again.” Company property. Sarah shivered a little, less out of discomfort than of the enforced eroticism the phrase now had to her.

“I’m company property,” she whispered to herself; it was more titillating to say, to admit, than Sarah was comfortable with. “...I’m company property,” she repeated, this time unwillingly. Sarah frowned in confusion. She felt it coming, tried to sto- “I’m company property.” Her finger tapped the order. “I’m company property.” Her finger moved towards accept unstoppably. Sarah, internally panicking, tried to stop her rogue digit fruitlessly.

Failing, she looked away and shut her eyes to avoid the hypnotics, her eyes and neck still in her power. Sarah felt her finger press the button, knowing she was safe from the trance as long as she didn’t look. She knew the moment she looked, she’d be under. No escape. None.

Sarah turned her head towards the phone. No resisting the moment she looked. “...I’m so stupid,” she muttered. She slowly and deliberately opened an eye. The pattern stole it from her instantly; it only took a moment for it to pry the other eye open. Another few moments and Sarah had stopped existing, insensate, lost in deepest trance.

Sarah cycled to the penthouse, only dimly aware of her surroundings. Her body cycled on autopilot; she felt the exertion, the sweat and fatigue. Her ragged breathing. All completely outside her control. Sarah exulted in her alienation from her own body, her lack of agency. She was company property, involuntarily pedalling even harder at that thought. Her physical discomfort felt unnaturally good; no doubt part of the briefing.

Sarah’s only notice that she’d arrived was when she found her thoughts clearing, her body handed back to her. She stepped off the bike and walked it towards the building. There were two racks of bikes, one marked “RESIDENTS ONLY“; something told Sarah to park hers there, even though there was plenty of space in the delivery rack. She chained up the bike. Immediately the code vanished from Sarah’s mind. “Wait... this isn’t... my bike?” she said, confused. She thought she... remembered... wasn’t it her bike? But she didn’t know the code... so it couldn’t be. Sarah scratched her head before soemthing in her mind nudged her towards the entrance, into the reception.

The reception desk was empty save for a tablet to sign in on. Sarah instinctually tapped the sign in code for “delivery“, along with the address. The gate buzzed and opened, and she walked through. ...Sarah still didn’t know what she was actually delivering.

The elevator doors opened with a gentle beep, and Sarah dutifully walked out into a sterile white hall. At the end, a tastefully modern wooden door called to her.

As she approached it, it was hard not to notice a strange feeling of...inescapability, nor the gentle slapping of her sandals on the marble floor. Nevertheless, Sarah continued; it wasn’t entirely her choice, but she had to admit she was slightly and genuinely curious about this order.

Reaching the door, Sarah was surprised to find it unlocked; another strange impulse compelled her to step inside.

The first thing that struck Sarah was the smell. It was thick and floral, almost heady... On cue, Sarah took a deep breath and felt her head swim a little, a wave of gentle warmth sweeping from her chest out over her body. What was left of her critical thinking worried about it being some kind of drug, but a nudge told her she had to follow it. As she walked, slowly and deliberately taking deep breaths, Sarah looked around lazily at the decor.

It was full of antiques, rugs and art; all of it spotless. In particular she couldn’t help but notice, even in her near-mindless state, the many marble statues. They were all of women, each on a small square pedestal. Sarah couldn’t keep from looking at them, the statues flanking her as she went.

One was kneeling, looking vaguely forlorn, as if wondering how it had come to this. The next was standing, head slightly bowed, holding an arm with a slightly glum expression. Yet another sitting crosslegged, hanging forward, looking resigned... Each statue she looked at had the air of a conquest, of being defeated. It took her sluggish, hazy mind a few moments, but then it hit Sarah why they kept catching her eye.

They were all the same build as her: averagely attractive, slightly heavy... Some had the same hairstyle, while other had shorter hair or bob cuts. All were topless. All were barefoot. Mustering some of her remaining will, Sarah slipped off a sandal. Noting the faded “11W” on the insole, she compared it to one of the statues’ feet. It matched perfectly.

This close, Sarah could also see the statue’s feet were resting in two perfectly shaped grooves on the pedestal. As she looked, a sudden, intense desire grew within her. Standing up, she weakly shook her head; the ache tingled within her firmly. The statues were so feminine, so... compelling. Something about them made being like them unnaturally appealing. Sarah shook her head again, but this time the failure to shake the feeling made it worse. At this thought Sarah couldn’t fight it. She slipped off her remaining sandal, wiggling her toes slowly and deliberately against the soft rug. She was now exactly as barefoot as the statues; she groaned as a crushing, uncomfortably erotic sensation of powerlessness hit her. Barefoot, controlled, helpless, feminine. Sarah idly wondered what taking her top off would feel like before hastily suppressing that train of thought. She wasn’t sure she liked how appealing it was to be even closer to the statues around her.

Just then she felt herself stop. In front of her was an empty pedestal; to the left, a small end table with an incense burner. This close the scent was overpoweringly, intoxicatingly strong; Sarah’s eyelids felt heavy, her tongue annoyingly hard to keep from lolling. The pedestal had two footprint grooves. Her vision swam. She wanted to put her big feet into them more than anything. As her arms clumsily started removing her t-shirt, the last spark of her conscious mind caught up with what was happening.

“...company property,” she breathed. The statues were once women just like her, turned to stone. She was going to join them. She was the delivery.

She finished taking her top off, and immediately took a slow, sleepy step up on the pedestal. Her left foot matched its groove perfectly; Sarah couldn’t even imagine moving it. Her right foot followed, each toe immobilised as it relaxed into place. As both her feet settled perfectly into the grooves, she felt a numbing weight start to settle into them.

Sarah didn’t need to look down; her feet were turning to stone. She knew that she should be panicing, trying to resist, but she was company property. Beyond that, somehow resistance felt impossibly exhausting. She was so tired. So barefoot. Topless. Defeated. She slowly held an arm, as her face adopted a tired, worn down expression.

Docility, meekness, being defeated. Company property. She was another topless, barefoot, curvy statue. The sense of numbness, weight, and solidity settling into Sarah’s body was overpowering. She tried shifting her pose and felt herself move a tiny fraction before stopping. Just like with the delivery app, it wasn’t really an escape attempt; it was to feel how helpless she was.

Already, her thoughts were slowing, her perception of time stretching out into infinity as her mind turned to stone. Stone thoughts, sluggish, weak. She was company property, forever. It was getting hard to think about anything but being topless and barefoot, stone, statue, docile, meek, feminine...

She was a statue of a defeated woman, topless and barefoot, utterly controlled; as far as Sarah was aware, eternally.