Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (51 page)

Imagine? Did I really need to imagine?

I sighed heavily again. This was how it had to be, clearly. Mindie was all I could handle emotionally. If she left me, it wouldn’t hurt. Eventually, I would only disappoint Wisper, and she would rip my heart out. So we were both better off with someone else. Me with Mindie, and Wisper with—anyone else. Even the rich man who had wanted her so badly, whose interest had made her flee Nikkid Bottoms in the first place would be a vast improvement over someone like…

I froze as my brain finally stopped moving like a limbless frog struggling to escape a bowl full of tapioca and began functioning as it was generally intended to. I turned to the woman behind the counter and looked at her intently. I could see no family resemblance, but…

“Mrs. Nuckeby?”

“Yes?”

My heart skipped a beat. I gasped for breath and must have looked like a goldfish that had gotten above its station and learned— drying out on the carpet—that he really
does
need water to breathe. I felt jolts of anger flash through me, and they made my testicles— Grinch-like—grow to three times their size that day.

Wisper was putting herself up for auction.

To
Washburne
.

Even in my mind, his name sounded like a multi-legged, garbage-dwelling creature that needed stepping on.

I was jealous. Ragingly so. And I couldn’t contain it. Sandy’s real genetic affiliation had changed
everything
.

“You just want your daughter to be happy, don’t you, Sandy.”

“Of course,” she said, as if it were self-evident.

“So do I,” I said and ran out the door.

With Morgan close behind, magazines flapping over his crotch, I raced to my hotel room and found a naked man with white hair, glasses and a satchel waiting outside with the equally naked Ms. Waboombas.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Hey, Corky,” Waboombas said. “Mindie’s in a snit.”

“Why?”

“I’m Doctor Wedgwood King,” Doctor Wedgwood King said, as if I’d been expecting him. He could see by my expression that I hadn’t. “Someone called me?”

Still nothing from me.

“Is this your room?” he asked me.

“It is, yes.”

“Someone rang my office. Said it was an emergency, but the woman inside won’t let me in.”

“Why does she need to?”

“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated, and pointed toward the door. “But she admitted she needs a doctor, and she won’t let me through. Should I just leave?”

“Mindie needs a doctor? Why?”

“I just said, I don’t know.”

My brain was finally beginning to catch up with the actual conversation in the hallway and disengage from the one in my head. Talking to naked people often meant needing an extra few sentences to stop the internal dialogue of ‘look at his dick’. ‘Stop looking at his dick’.’ ‘Look at his ass’. ‘Stop looking at his ass’. Before you could actually pay attention to the sound coming out of their mouths, far, far north of your unintended point of interest.

Rather than try any more actual attempts at speaking, I pulled the key-card out of my pants pocket and slipped it through the slot on the door. It beeped, and I pushed.

The room was dark, curtains pulled tight, and Mindie began screaming almost immediately.

“GET OUT!
GET OUT!”

“Mindie, it’s me! What’s the matter?”

“Corky?”

“Yes. And I’ve got the doctor here.”

“DON’T LET HIM IN! HE HASN’T GOT ANY PANTS ON! I SAW HIS THINGIE THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE!”

“Mindie, we’re in a nudist resort,” I said, honestly tired of saying it. “Even the
doctor
is a nudist.”

“I’m not going to have a man touching me while his thingie is out.”

“Why do you need a doctor anyway?”

“I’m sick,” she said pathetically.

I moved farther into the near-blackened room and tried to see where she was.

“Sick, how? What’s the matter with you?”

“STAY OUT!”

“Mindie, this is ridiculous,” I said.

I turned on the light and screamed myself. I was really going to have to take some vocal deepening lessons.

Mindie lay in bed, under the covers, and wearing someone’s pajamas. Every bit of her exposed flesh—and, one had to assume, her
un
exposed flesh, as well—was covered in boils, welts, and red splotches. Her head looked like a bubbly pomegranate with spiked hair. She was scratching like a dog trying to dig fleas from its internal organs.

“Dear, God,” I said.

“It itches!”
she wailed.

“Don’t scratch.”

“IT ITCHES!”

I moved over to her and grabbed her hands, but she struggled to get away.

“What are you doing? Let go of me!”

“Doctor!” I called. “Please come in!”

He moved quickly through the door, and Mindie yelped.
“Oh, dear God, doesn’t anybody hide their uglies in this vile little
town?”

“She rolled in some bushes,” I said. “It must be Poison Oak, or Poison Ivy, or poison…Oak,” I repeated, not able to think of another poisonous plant.

“Wow.
That’s
what Poison Ivy does?” Morgan asked, opening Mindie’s chocolates. “No wonder she’s evil.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant Mindie or Batman’s arch villainess. Evil could aptly apply to either.

“Oh, my heavens,” the doctor said with profound concern upon seeing his blistered patient. “I have some calamine lotion. But the best thing is a hot shower. As hot as she can manage. It releases the histamines.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I am a doctor.”

True. He even had a bag to prove it.

He moved to the other side of Mindie, her eyes following his loose penis everywhere it went, and we began to lift her from the bed. As he raised her, she leaned away from him and into me, whimpering and wailing.

“Oh, God.
Oh, God,
Oh, God
, don’t let it touch me. DON’T LET IT TOUCH ME!”

We restrained her as best we could and dragged her toward the bathroom. As we stumbled and struggled, Mindie noticed Waboombas and Morgan in the doorway, eating her chocolates while he read a comic.

“Oh, my GOD!

HIS
thingie is out,
TOO!”
Morgan quickly covered up. “
What is WRONG with you people?”

Inside the bathroom, the doctor pointed to the shower.

“Turn it on. As hot as she can handle, then a little hotter.” Mindie’s struggling had subsided. She was weak and tired, probably from her endless scratching and whining. So I could operate the faucets, we set her on the toilet where she sat still and calm, though continuing to scrape away with her nails.

“Stop itching,” the doctor warned. “You’re making it worse.”

He then began to undo her pajama buttons, and she slapped his hand away. He tried again, and she slapped again.

“Miss. You have to…”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

I had the water running—just the hot until it could warm up— and moved over to where Mindie sat, once again scratching madly. I reached for a pajama button. She stopped scratching and swatted me.

Reach. Swat. Itch. Reach Swat. Itch. Reach Swat. Itch.

I sighed and turned to the doctor. “Can she just shower like this?”

“The water needs to touch the skin, so it can open the pores and wash away the histamines.”

“What happens if we leave her alone?”

“She’ll continue to open her skin with all that scratching. This looks like a very serious case. It might even be in her lungs. Perhaps I should hospitalize her.”

“NO!” she said, horrified, then softened and looked at me pitifully. “They’re probably all naked there too.”

I sighed heavily and became angry.

“Whatever. It’s
your
skin, Mindie.”

“Which could scar, terribly,” the doctor said, trying a different tack, “if you damage the skin with all that itching.”

She looked at him with concern, still slowly scratching her stomach. She looked sad and defeated for a pomegranate. “I don’t want to be scarred,” she whined.

“No, you don’t,” I said.

“I’m young and pretty.”

I hesitated. “You’re young…” I said.

The doctor, apparently seeing an urgent need for the powers of his Hippocratic oath, dove in to salvage things. “… And
very
pretty. And you should stay that way.”

She looked at him, then at me. “He is a doctor.”

“As far as I know.”

Reluctantly, she acquiesced and moved her arms away.

“All right,” she said bravely. “Take them off. I’ll try the shower.”

We both reached for the pajama buttons, but Mindie pulled back from the doctor.

“Let Corky.” I felt momentarily touched. “He has pants on.” And I shouldn’t have been.

I slowly unbuttoned her shirt, and found the skin hidden behind the clothing to be far worse than anything we had seen so far. Her breasts were malformed, blistered melons, mottled with strange hues of inflamed red and pus yellow. She groaned as I slipped the light fabric from around her shoulders and off her arms, all of which were worse than her breasts. The cloth stuck to open sores in a few places, and she squealed a little with each tiny tearing of flesh and material. I reached for the pants, and she slapped me.

“Sorry,” she said, sheepish. “Instinct. Go ahead.”

She stood to allow me easier access, and I slipped the pants slowly down from her waist, trying to avoid sticking sores and split skin, for as with the shoulders, it had adhered in places where wounds had broken open and fluid had leaked. Mindie moaned a bit, and just as I got the pants down around her pubic area, she suddenly screamed, and slapped my face this time.

“
DON’T LOOK AT MY KITTEN!”

“Your what?”

“
JUST DON’T LOOK!”

“Mindie… ”

She stared at me for a long moment, then softened.

“I’m overreacting again,” she said.

“Somewhat.”

“I mean: we
are
going to be married.”

“No, we’re not,” I said firmly.

She looked like she’d been poked with a hot stick.

“What?”

“We’re not getting married, Mindie. But we can talk about that later.”

“But we have to get married. What will I do if we don’t get married?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Mindie.” And I pulled again, gently, at her pajama bottoms.

“I
won’t
be fine!”
she screamed.
“GET
OFF
OF ME!”

She cuffed me in the side of the head, and I went down, ripping her pajama bottoms with me.

“RAPE!” she howled. “
RAAAAAPE!”

She slap-slap-slapped at me, and grabbed the pajamas, still screaming, and trying to pull them back on. Tripping over the torn fabric, she fell onto the toilet seat, struggling, wriggling, and squirming, all while trying to hide her exposed private parts. Her body was hideous. Every inch of her flesh resembled photographs of Hiroshima bombing victims, only less attractive, and in full color. Things burst and oozed everywhere. The doctor and I tried to control our revulsion, and I fought the need to vomit.

“Eeeeewww,” Morgan said through a mouth full of chocolate, having walked down to stand in the bathroom door with his comic. Ms. Waboombas was looking over his shoulder.

Mindie stopped screaming and glared up at them with absolute horror, and absoluter fury.

“HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!”

An otherworldly growling sound launched itself from her, and she leaped off the toilet, slamming me backward into the shower and under its spray of scalding water. Rebounding off my flopping body, Mindie hopped over the doctor, plowed through Morgan, and knocked him flat, stepping on his face as she scrambled past Waboombas, scratching, clawing, and snarling her way out into the hall.

Screaming in my girlish way because of being boiled alive, I rolled in the tub, yanked down the shower curtain, and managed to scald myself fairly evenly on all sides. After hours, and hours of rolling and screaming which really lasted only seconds, I finally managed to pull myself out from under the murderous spray of death, leaped out of the tub, over Morgan and the doctor, and ran after Mindie.

Stopping near the bed in the hotel room, I could see my naked former fiancée through the doorway, out in the corridor, looking like some partially cooked animal trying to escape its own barbecue. She snorted and grunted, glaring up and down the hall, considering what to do next.

“Mindie,” I said calmly. “Come back inside. You need to…”

She snarled at me, scratching her stomach, baring her fangs and hissing like a cornered snake, before she bolted off toward the stairs.

I chased her, but was hampered by sticking, wet, clingy pants, and roasted skin. On top of that, Mindie was faster than she looked— a woman possessed—escaping in a blur, out through the exit and down the stairs.

By the time I got to the ground floor, she had disappeared somewhere, either into town or the surrounding foliage, completely naked and covered with boils, where she would likely become an urban legend.