The supervisor left Flynn with Debbie, who gave the new girl a rather cool greeting. All the girls who worked in the fashion department at Roebuck's were attractive and well-dressed, and Flynn was no exception. But there was a style gap here; none of the other girls wore asymmetrical pigtails, or a top that was cut off to show off a navel piercing, or sneakers with two different bright-colored shoelaces. Flynn was dressing downtown at a very uptown department store. She was a tall, lavishly built brunette who always thought she should lose ten pounds, even though boys never complained. Though she fretted aloud about having a curvy belly instead of a flat one, she had a marked tendency to show that belly off with short tops and low-cut jeans.
Debbie, by contrast, was a cool, conservatively dressed blonde with a turned-up nose, waist-length straight hair, long slim legs, and finishing-school posture — much more the Roebuck's type.
As she walked Flynn around, Debbie said, "Our main duty up here is to fill requests for mannequins."
"Do we dress them?"
"Not only...We make them."
Roebuck's was known for its life-like mannequins with an attention to bodily detail that could be almost provocative. "Make them! So, then, is the rumor true that those are real people covered with plastic?"
"No, of course not." Debbie walked Flynn around to the side of a huge machine that occupied nearly an entire room. In a bin were a pile of mannequins, startlingly real but without coloring or hair, lying with limbs sprawled in all directions. Flynn was greatly amused at the lifelike genitals of the mannequins, but she kept it to herself, as Debbie didn't seem to be in a humorous mood. She picked up the arm of one mannequin and flexed it.
"Yikes!" said Flynn.
"They move at every joint."
They did indeed. Even the mannequins' toes bent in three places.
"So do we have to pose them?"
"No, it's all done by the computer. I'll show you."
Debbie went to another area and came back pulling a hand cart with a fully-dressed female mannequin, ready for display. Unlike the mannequins Flynn had just played with, this one was completely rigid like a normal mannequin. It also sported a full head of red hair, was made up to within an inch of its life, and wore a body-hugging black dress, stockings and high heels. It looked alarmingly like a real, motionless woman, though only a street whore or a fashion model would slather on that much makeup in real life.
"They're finished with this one, so I'll use it to show you how the system works." Debbie walked Flynn over to a computer console and started pressing buttons. "Most of the time, you can just use one of the preset buttons."
Debbie typed in a password and scrolled through a few screens. Flynn couldn't believe her eyes as Debbie scrolled through screens of pictures of mannequins in assorted poses.
"If you ever need to make one to specifications, go into this screen." On the custom screen, there were separate options for skin color, eye color, hair style, and a few other options.
"So the machine paints these things automatically."
"It does everything, automatically."
"It even paints the eyes?"
"No, for the eyes it inserts colored contact lenses under the eyelids."
"These things have movable eyelids?"
"Yes," said Debbie, irritated at all the questions.
"Holy crap," said Flynn. She pulled at the hair of the mannequin in the cart. "How is this wig attached?"
"It's embedded in a thin plastic film, and glued on."
"Wow. And then the glue is dissolved later?"
"No — the film is so thin that they don't bother removing it. The system just shaves the wig off and glues the next one on top."
"What's on the advanced options screen?"
"You don't need to worry about that for now," said Debbie coolly. But Flynn had already selected the option and was avidly poring over screens of small print.
"Oh my God! Pubic hair options? Trimmed, untrimmed, curled, styled?"
"That's only for the European stores," said Debbie, quite peeved.
"Breast size? You can change that?"
"Yes. It's done with suction. But you almost always use the presets...."
"Nipple erection? This is too far out."
"We have to stop this playing around — there are a lot of other things I need to show you."
Debbie brusquely took over the console from Flynn, who was still giggling. "Take this mannequin over and put her on that conveyor belt," Debbie said. Flynn obeyed while Debbie selected a preset option. "Now stand back," said Debbie, pressing a button. The machine came to life, activating the conveyor belt and drawing the mannequin inside. Much activity ensued, with clothes entering and exiting the system on belts, and streams of liquid venting from the sides of the machine. At the end, the mannequin emerged, in a new position, with a new head of hair and new clothes, looking almost like a real person that had somehow become totally motionless. "Whoa," said Flynn.
A week later, working the night shift by herself, Flynn was naturally spending her plentiful spare time making odd mannequins, the weirder and more outrageous the better. Debbie, who followed her on the morning shift, had caught her a few times, but had done nothing more than stare coldly and walk on.
Tonight, Flynn had ordered Chinese food in and was eating at the computer console, sprawled back in a cushy chair, her clogs kicked off, daintily pecking out computer options with her big toes while she ate. She had executed all sorts of silly and lewd mannequin designs in the last week, but ever since her astonishing discovery that the penises of the male mannequins could be made erect, she had been pursuing the Holy Grail of her art: making two mannequins fuck. The system had given her errors every time she tried, but, as far as she could tell, the trick should work if she specified the distance between the male and female mannequins correctly. Her plan was to have the mannequins fuck doggy-style, and, inspired by one of the more laughable hairdos in the system's preset collection, she had fashioned the female mannequin to resemble a poodle, with poofed-up hair, rhinestone-studded collar and dangly earrings from the Roebuck's collection, and a wicked, near-impossible arch to her back. Flynn had even found the option to make the mannequin's tongue protrude as if she were panting.
Feeling pretty sure she'd succeed this time, Flynn carted her used mannequin to the machine's conveyor belt. But she fell backwards while hoisting the mannequin onto the belt, landing halfway inside the belt entrance herself. Instantly sensors detected her hands, locked her wrists into a set of clamps, and started pulling her into the system. Flynn's screams for help lasted only a few seconds — the system's first action was to drench her and her clothes in dry cleaning fluid, the vapors from which knocked her out. But Debbie, arriving early for her morning shift, heard Flynn's cries and rushed into the room, only to see Flynn's bare feet disappearing into the machine. Panicking, she rushed over and tried to pull Flynn out without disabling the system's sensors. She lost consciousness a few seconds from the cleaning fumes herself and ended up being pulled into the machine too.
Everything happened very quickly. First Flynn and Debbie's clothes, cleaned and automatically folded, emerged from the system on a small conveyor belt. (Almost none of Flynn's clothes were sold by Roebuck's — that, and a panty liner clinging to the inside of Debbie's panties, probably wound up saving the girls' lives.) A few seconds later, a sluice of water washed away Debbie's long blonde hair (15 years of growth), Flynn's shorter black locks, and a sprinkling of the girls' pubic hair, brown in both cases. Two male mannequins, automatically picked from a bin by mechanical arms, entered the system via a large conveyor belt on the far side of the system. Next, another sluice flowed with sticky yellow liquid as the girls and the mannequins were glued into their positions; then a brief, loud buzzing as infrared units hardened the girls' casings. This was the last possible moment for the girls to escape; Debbie, revived by the painful suctioning of her body, was conscious and struggling against her gluey prison while the system double-checked her positioning. A few seconds after the check, the girls had been given four more coats of glue, each followed by a burst of infrared heat. Their thin, transparent cocoons were complete. Escape was no longer an option.
Clothes from Roebuck's stock — here, only the diamond collars and earrings — were transported into the system on another conveyor belt. Another sluice from the system ran with a mixture of tan, red and black colorings, as the now-motionless mannequins were painted and made up. A few more bursts of heat to dry the paint, as well as newly-glued-on scalp and pubic wigs, and the finished mannequins emerged from the system on the main conveyor belt. The system motor shut off, and the room went silent.
Flynn's design had worked this time. She and Debbie, unrecognizable beneath layers of paint, knelt stark naked on hands and knees, tongues hanging out, eyes wide and mascaraed, backs arched, tits pointing up, heads sporting platinum-blonde, poodle-cut wigs. Behind the girls knelt two male mannequins, their erect members buried to the hilt in the girls' cunts.
Flynn and Debbie had some sense of what had happened to them, but they could neither see nor make the slightest move. Even their vocal cords had taken a coating of glue. The vise-like pressure on every square inch of skin made the girls even more aware that they were penetrated deeply from behind; each had the unnerving sensation that the hole between her legs had been stretched to a foot in diameter. Breathing was difficult, and most of the girls' attention was devoted to taking in as much oxygen as possible in the fast, tiny breaths they could manage.
Debbie was suffering considerably from Flynn having configured the maximum breast size and nipple erection that the system allowed: her pretty B-cup breasts had been suctioned up to size D, a process that had involved lifting and pushing nearly every ounce of body fat on her upper torso. Even more painfully, her small nipples had been suctioned and glued until they protruded two centimeters from her breasts. The system was expert at producing visual appeal, however, and Debbie's remodeled tits compared quite favorably to Flynn's naturally plump, long-nippled pair, hanging prettily next to hers.
Flynn and Debbie remained in this exact position, wedged tightly onto their inanimate sex partners, for 45 minutes. Phones began ringing a half-hour into their imprisonment; then they heard increasingly angry intercom messages: "Is anyone in Display? We're waiting for that Mexico City order." Finally the supervisor entered the room in a huff, calling the girls' names. Flynn and Debbie, tongues out and tits up, waited desperately to be discovered. But when the supervisor found them on the conveyor belt, she simply rolled her eyes in disgust and continued calling out their names. Flynn was certainly not the first employee to play games with the mannequin system, and the supervisor had found such salacious surprises many times before. And she couldn't be blamed for not recognizing her plastic-coated employees: given how completely different Flynn and Debbie had looked before they became mannequins, it was amazing how alike they now looked, and how like all the other immobile figures in the store.
Finally, the exasperated supervisor gave up searching for the girls and filled the order herself. After quickly punching a few buttons on the console and starting production, she toppled the girls and their mannequin lovers onto a cart and wheeled them back to the input belt to recycle them. The terrified girls reentered the system and were knocked out instantly by the fumes.
Flynn and Debbie emerged, painted a shade darker than before, as part of a set of naked mannequins heading to Roebuck's Mexico City store. Their poses were a bit more provocative than if they'd been designed for an American store, but a model of propriety compared with Flynn's creations. Flynn had become a brunette with bobbed hair and was posed Betty Grable-style, peeking over her shoulder, her ass cocked saucily to one side. Debbie was a dark-skinned blonde, hands raised as if interrupted in the middle of a beach volleyball game, her now normal-sized breasts jutting upward from her exertion. This time, Flynn suffered most from the body design, as the system had successfully reconfigured her lovely large tits down to a modest B cup.
Within 15 minutes, Flynn and Debbie were crated and loaded into a private helicopter. Within 12 hours, the girls were set up in a display window in downtown Mexico City, Flynn modeling a sarong skirt, Debbie a thong bikini bottom. Flynn's bare breasts were turned to the wall, but Debbie's were strategically exposed to the street. The girls knew they were in a Spanish-speaking place, but understood little else about their predicament. Debbie had had some high-school Spanish, and eventually pieced together that she was in a Mexico department store, and that her breasts and ass were naked.
Fortunately, the staff at Roebuck's in New York had discovered Debbie's telltale panty liner and Flynn's thrift-shop clothes among the stock, and quickly deduced that the girls had mistakenly become mannequins. Before day's end, the girls were shipped back to New York by private jet, where a team of both doctors and scientists had to be assembled to free them. Those in attendance had the memorable, strangely erotic experience of seeing Flynn's breasts and belly slowly expand through the disintegrating film of glue, as if she were dough rising in an oven.
Flynn and Debbie were hospitalized for a week after their ordeal. When Flynn was released, she returned to work at Roebuck's and seemed oddly unaffected by the experience, settling into her job and making a place for herself at the company. Her shaved head became her latest fashion statement, and she did little variations on her new look for many months, not growing her hair out until she had exhausted the possibilities.
Debbie was considerably more shaken by what had happened to her, and availed herself of the free psychotherapy that Roebuck's offered after her hospitalization. When she finally returned to work, she took some time getting her bearings, and within the year she left Roebuck's to take a job in a fashion boutique in St. Louis. Around the same time that she moved, she underwent breast enhancement surgery, going from a B cup to a DD. She became a valued employee at the boutique, but six months after her arrival in St. Louis she had taken a second job, dancing in a suburban strip club under an assumed name. A year later, she was working full time as a call girl for an expensive escort agency. At the age of 30, Debbie married a well-known St. Louis mobster and retired to suburban life.