Chapters Dollhood: A Woman's Choice Book 1 Chapter 9
As I mentioned before, our neck corsets arrived a few days later, and by then we were in the thick of classes, and quite relieved to be untied from each other. I love my sister dearly, and we are obviously very close after years with no friends but each other, but bumping shoulders and feeling her every movement tug upon my neck was a little too close for comfort.
After that change, our morning preparations became quite similar to back home, if earlier. At seven o’clock the automaids would come in, batteries freshly charged for the day, uniforms impeccable as always, though we would only hear the clicks of their heels on the wooden floors until they removed our blindfolds. Our wrists and ankles would be unclipped soon afterwards, motion and feeling returning quickly once the special golden bracelets were removed. Still, I would refrain from moving my arms, for I knew the more I did then, the more I would want to later in the day.
Best not.
Of course with our night stays we needed help sitting up and getting out of bed. I don’t know about the others, but there was always a moment before having our slippers put on, when I would just hate sitting on the edge there, dressed in nothing but my stays, panel gag, and nappy, hands limp at my sides, toes on the cold floor, feeling the used nappy between my legs lose heat to the open air. I remember always wanting to be freshened up quicker, much quicker: swaddled, held, bound once again in purity, because — if I’m being honest with you, dear Reader — I was concerned that if left unrestrained like this for very long, I may get a taste for it. But I always strove to ignore this feeling, before I was stood up and guided to the powder room for my cleaning.
The rest was always a blur. Lean over the padded bench, straps tied down, nappy off and a scented wipe to clean my liquid waste off my skin, my rear plug removed and replaced with the enema hose, left for fifteen minutes for numerous cycles before a fizzing pessary was placed deep inside — ginger mint today, oh dear! — tiny plug back in, untied, back up to our feet, corset off, into one of ten baths in this wing, a deep cleaning by my maid, a shave if needed, a shampoo. Of my own accord I moved not an inch, save to look at the other girls in their own routine.
Some girls had vastly different schedules, being made into different kinds of Dolls than I, than the Society Standard Enhancement Suite, as it’s called. I never saw them there in the baths, or anytime other than meals, really. They must have had very different routines, but truly I don’t know. I will try to illustrate their various stories in a forthcoming chapter if I can.
Regardless, those girls I shared my morning with would sometimes look at me from behind their gags, or I at them. Some would be practicing their doll-gaze, trying to see me without looking directly or focusing. Some saw my nudity with indifference, others less so. We didn’t try to speak. Not only had the reflex been weaned out of us, the vibrations uncomfortable, the sound of any vocalization when not explicitly permitted was an easy way to get a visit from a Teacher and her maid. I don’t know how they heard us, but whenever one of the three-year troublemakers struggled, or even one of the brattier Society daughters, there would be but moments before help arrived. Well, help and punishment.
So we would sit in silence, in a mute building, feeling our maids massage as they wash us, lift here, scrub there. I would often find myself wishing my automaid would focus on certain places, but even then I always did my best to dispel the thought. We should not want, all is provided for! I would tell myself, but I have to be honest, my piety was usually ineffective. I would close my eyes, let a deep, silent sigh escape through my nose, and then sometimes even open my eyes to see Althea across the room in her own clawfoot tub, looking at me intently. I didn’t always avert my gaze.
Out of the bath, we would be dried and perfumed, powdered below, another flavoured pessary inserted before our plugs, and swaddled in new nappies, ones we would wear until our pre-luncheon check. Then the lot of us would inevitably be fitted back into our standard corsets before being placed in front of the auto-lacer, which I can assure you, being the cohabitant of one even these days, is a cruel marvel. The speed it works at makes the fitting less of an ordeal, but rarely is there a morning (even these days) that I am not slumping into my maid’s arms and being brought back to God’s green earth with smelling salts.
Not long after this, we would don our rigid neck corset, always matching the stays below, and farther down thigh-high socks, a requirement for not all the girls but for Chastity and I and a few others a must, which were securely attached to our hips with garter clips. I later found out that the girls who didn’t wear socks (all the three-year sponsored wards and then some) were restricted in a different way: strong surgical adhesive between the toes to keep from slipping heels off and grabbing anything. Nanny had threatened such a treatment if we ever wrote the devil’s way, and we had worried it would be done after the Patty-Cake incident, but I had no idea it was the default for so many. Well, purity has a cost.
Back up we would step into our heels for the day, which would be buckled tightly closed. Then would come the loose stockings, camisole, and our uniform dress. Soon afterwards our arms would be guided into their proper hiding place, our gloves tied behind us until our elbows touched, covered with the dress’s rear sleeve, and sweet numbness would soon set in for the day. Some girls from other Society families wore their arms in strict reverse prayer, hands tucked up behind their necks and elbows touching, but Pappa and Nanny had never deemed it necessary, since we were only going to lose them and that effortful trained skill eventually. After all this, nothing would be left save for hair and light makeup, which would keep us all from the breakfast table for a long while, until everything was just perfect, as it should be.
I remember looking in the mirror, at the details of the face God gave me, as my maid would comb and curl my sandy blonde hair, just as she does now with my platinum blonde wig. I still miss that face, there is no denying it, but it would not have aged as well as my plastic one has, and for that I am grateful.
After a silent breakfast inhabited only by the soft clinks of silverware on porcelain as our help fed us, our classes would begin: Living with Grace; Embracing Nothing; Restricted Charm and Manners; Doll Theory, History, and Philosophy; Automatic Functions and Bedroom Affairs.
Dame Henderson taught that last one herself, and I think that is what you’re most curious about, so I will leave the rest as largely self-explanatory.