Chapter 4: The Purge
The last cardboard box sat open on her bed, its flaps yawning wide like a bland, brown mouth. Naomi stood before it, her fingers tracing the worn flannel of her favorite pajama shirt. A year. It had been one year since the taxi, since the trunk, since walking naked into that boardroom. She’d gotten the account. The humiliation, it seemed, had been part of the pitch.
She folded the shirt, the motion automatic, and placed it in the box. Then her jeans, the denim soft from a hundred washes. Her blouses, her dresses, the silky underwear she used to save for dates that never happened. Each piece was a memory she was burying. The law was clear. Women 21-40: clothing was contraband. The collar was enough.
The government ad played in her head, a syrupy jingle over bright, animated graphics. “You spoke, we listened! The Transit Safety Protocols have reduced incidents by eighty-two percent! For continued security and societal harmony, the Clothing Waiver Initiative is now in effect. Your collar is your convenience. Your body is your compliance. Thank you for your cooperation!” It had been followed by instructions for disposal. Non-compliance meant deduction from your social credit, which meant no work, no housing, no food.
Her apartment, once her sanctuary, felt like a crime scene. The closet stood empty, hangers naked. The dresser drawers were pulled out, void. All that remained was what she was wearing: a simple cotton t-shirt and a pair of loose linen trousers.
She unbuttoned the trousers first, letting them fall in a heap around her ankles. She stepped out, kicking them lightly toward the box. The air in the apartment, usually filled with the hum of her small fan and the scent of paper and ink, felt different on her skin. More present. She pulled the t-shirt over her head, her arms crossing instinctively over her chest as the fabric passed her face.
She forced her arms down. She had to look. They had to look. The Compliance scanners would, anyway.
Her body was slim, a painter’s line of subtle curves. Her breasts were full, the pale skin of her areolas wide and sensitive, the nipples a deep rosy brown that puckered immediately in the cool air. A year of mandated public nudity during transit had done nothing to ease the self-consciousness; if anything, it had heightened her awareness of every dip and swell. Her waist tapered in before flaring out to her hips, which carried a soft, feminine weight. A neat, dark triangle of hair sat at the junction of her thighs, trimmed short now as per the vague ‘hygiene advisories’.
She stood there, completely exposed in the middle of her own living room, the city’ jagged skyline visible through the blinds. A flush crept up her neck, warming the skin beneath the cold, ever-present band of her collar. The display glowed softly: NAOMI TANAKA | TIER-3 | CREDIT: 8,450. She picked up the discarded clothes, folded them with numb hands, and placed them in the box. The last of her wardrobe. She sealed the box with packing tape, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room.
She dragged the boxes—three of them—to her apartment door. Opening it, she glanced down the empty hallway before pushing them over the threshold. They sat there, anonymous brown cubes waiting for collection. For shredding, probably. She closed the door, locking it. The click of the bolt was meaningless. She had nothing left to steal.
Naomi walked to the bus stop. The ten-minute journey was an eternity of micro-aggressions. The pavement was gritty under her bare feet. A group of construction workers on a lunch break fell silent as she passed, their eyes like hot tar on her skin. One whistled, low and long. She kept her gaze fixed ahead, her back straight, the way the public advisories recommended. ‘Display confidence. You are contributing to a safer society.’ Her cheeks burned.
The bus stop had a new fixture: a tall, clear polymer column with a single scanner. She approached it. A beam of red light passed over her collar. A green light blinked. AUTHORIZED. The ordinary people waiting for the bus—older women, men, children—did not look at her. They were practiced now. Looking was an acknowledgement, and acknowledgement was uncomfortable. She was just another piece of urban furniture, a nude statue waiting for transport.
The bus arrived with a hydraulic sigh. It was a newer model, low-slung and white. The doors opened. The driver, a woman with a granite face, pointed a thumb toward the side of the bus. “Cargo hold.”
Naomi walked to the side, where a uniformed transit officer stood by an open hatch. It looked like a luggage compartment on a long-distance coach, but wider, deeper.
“Wrists,” the officer said, his tone bored. He held two thick, padded cuffs connected by a short chain.
She held out her hands. He snapped the cuffs on, the mechanism clicking tight but not painful. Then he knelt and did the same to her ankles, leaving just enough chain between them for a shuffling step. He took her by the upper arm, his grip impersonal and firm. “Step up.”
He guided her foot onto a small ledge, then placed a hand on the small of her back and pushed. She tumbled forward into the dimly lit hold. The floor was rubberized, the walls lined with a thin, scratchy carpet. And it was already occupied.
Other women. Three of them. All nude. All collared. All cuffed. They were arranged sitting up along the walls, legs bent. One was in her thirties, with a tired face and generous curves. Another was younger than Naomi, her eyes red-rimmed but dry. They made room without a word. The officer pushed Naomi down into a space beside the younger girl. He threaded a chain from a ring on the wall through the links between her wrist cuffs, securing her. Then he slammed the hatch shut.
Darkness, punctuated only by a slim ribbon of LED lighting along the floor. The engine rumbled to life, a deep vibration that thrummed through the metal floor and into their bare bodies. The bus moved, and they swayed together.
No one spoke. The resignation was a physical thing, thick as the humidity their bodies were already generating. The older woman let her head loll back against the wall and closed her eyes. The smell was intimate and inescapable: sweat, shampoo, the coppery hint of menstrual blood from one of them, the generic lavender of institutional soap.
As the bus took a sharp turn, Naomi was shoved hard against the younger girl. Their shoulders, breasts, and thighs pressed together in a slick, full-bodied contact. The girl’s skin was surprisingly soft. Naomi jerked back, mumbling a “sorry” that was swallowed by the engine’s roar.
But there was nowhere to go. The next stop started a chain reaction. Someone was loaded in—they heard the muffled instructions, the hatch opening, a blur of light, then darkness again. A new body, warm and smelling of sunscreen, was packed in front of Naomi. The woman had to sit between Naomi’s splayed legs, her back to Naomi’s front. The bus moved, and the woman’s bare back rubbed against Naomi’s collarbone, her buttocks pressed firmly into Naomi’s lower belly and thighs.
The heat was immense. The press of so much exposed flesh, the complete anonymity of it, the sheer, degrading intimacy of being packaged… a slow, unwelcome coil of heat began to tighten low in Naomi’s belly. It was shameful. It was automatic. The rough carpet abraded the back of her thighs. Every jolt of the bus shifted the woman in her lap, creating a soft, maddening friction against her pubic mound. She could feel herself growing damp, slickness gathering between her labia in a silent, traitorous betrayal.
She clenched her jaw, trying to think of anything else—her design project, the taste of green tea, the view from her now-empty apartment. But her body was a separate entity, humming with a perverse awareness. The swell of the older woman’s hip against her own. The tickle of hair. The rise and fall of breath all around her. It was a cage of living, breathing skin. Her nipples hardened into tight, aching points. She was grateful for the darkness, for the silence, for the fact that her cuffed hands prevented her from touching herself, from exploring the damp evidence of her own arousal. She simply sat in the rocking, rumbling dark, her body alight with a shameful need, another secret to hold tight inside as the city moved her, cargo, from one point to another.