Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (54 page)

The thing in my brain finally took a bite. Ms. Nuckeby kept saying ‘your world’ as if it were an entirely different planet. None of us had ever heard of this place, in spite of the fact that it should be legendary. An entire town of nudists just south of the city…

A chill ran through me.

I dropped the comics and magazines onto the bed, and grabbed the television remote, clicking on the TV.

As it warmed up, we heard the president giving a typical speech. It was our president, no doubt. I would recognize that arrogant voice and lack of linguistic skill anywhere.

Then the picture emerged, and Waboombas gasped.

The President of the United States of America was naked.

Standing at a podium, positioned so we could see only his torso, stood George W. Bush. Naked. Behind him, all the loyal partisans clapped, and cheered, and smiled, nakedly.

Very, very, nakedly.

I nearly fell over onto the bed. Ms. Waboombas sat beside me, and we both continued watching with wide-eyes and open mouths.

“We are facin’ our greatest enemy!” the president said. “People who don’t like our way of life! Bad people! People with clothes, who want to see us in ‘em. Who want to see our
women
in ‘em. Bad people. Not good people. And God made it clear when He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden and said—basically, He said—don’t come back till you’re naked! So we need to bring democracy and freedom to the world, and make those people take off their clothes!”

The group behind him cheered, clapped, and held up signs that said ‘THE NAKED WAY IS THE AMERICAN WAY!’

“It’s another dimension,” I said.

“You mean the whole country is like this?” Waboombas asked.

“I think so.”

“
Nobody
wears clothes.”

“Apparently.”

“I’m out of a job.”

We sat silently for a moment, absorbed by the immensity of it. Morgan looked up from his magazines.

“Hey,” he said, pointing to the television. “That looks like the president.” He squinted at the tube. “Is he naked?”

Waboombas and I sat for over an hour clicking through stations, checking channels, watching movies, and taking it all in.

Sporting events, reality shows, cooking shows, newscasts, soap operas. All the people wore little or no clothing. Though politicians wore ties.

There were some ‘adult’ channels where people put
on
clothing and had sex. But you couldn’t see it. It was always hidden under the folds of fabric.

I kept flipping through the stations, hoping that at any minute the channels would right themselves, and we’d be back to normal television—like Oprah.

Then I found Oprah, and she was naked. Tom Cruise was jumping on her couch, and
he
was naked.

“Wow,” I said. “Who knew Oprah was so hot?”

“Just turn it off,” said Waboombas.

She lay on the bed, massaging her head as if Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter were having a massive slam-dance party inside her skull, and her fingertips were trying, Zeus-like, to squeeze them all out.

Morgan had gone back to reading.

“Ha! Spiderman had a little dick,” he laughed, and chewed on a muffin. “Then he got bit by the spider, and it swelled.” He took another bite, and said more to himself. “Man, I gotta get bit by a spider.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” I said, shaking it off and gathering myself. “It just explains a few things. Let’s still go to the Festival and the auction.”

“But…“ Waboombas wondered, “…are we
stuck
here?”

“I don’t think so. Wisper came to our world. There’s got to be a way for us to get back too.” I was amazed at how calm I was. Years of Star Trek and comic book reading had obviously well-prepared me for just such a trauma as this.

“But what am I gonna do if we
can’t
get back, Corky?” Waboombas moaned.

It was unsettling to see her off-balance this way. I was used to the confident Waboombas who controlled everything and everyone with a word, and a bend, and a strut. Apparently this turning upside down of the rules had left her—like all of us—a bit lost. Even
her
crazy sense of reality no longer applied.

“I make my living off people who want me to take my clothes
off
. No one’s gonna
care
here.”

“We’ll get back,” I assured her. “Even my Aunt Helena did, when she dropped off Ms. Nuckeby.”

“Hey. That’s the same name as the restaurant,” Morgan said between chews.

“What a weird coincidence,” I said flatly.

“Yeah.”

He looked at me for a moment, as if waiting for something more. Then the hamster lay down and went to sleep again, and Morgan returned to his comics.

Waboombas sighed, heavily. “All right. If you really think so. But I’m gonna be pissed off if we get stuck here and I have to put clothes
on
to make a living. I
like
getting naked.”

Then a light seemed to go off in her head, and she smiled suddenly. I frowned at her, curious as to what she was thinking.

“What?” I asked.

She thought for a moment more.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Then—you’ll still do this?”

“Absolutely,” she said and smiled, a little menacingly. The Great Black Shark, Waboombimus Maximus Dominatricus, scented fresh blood in the water, and was circling her prey.

A little bird was telling me I should be worried, but other than in cartoons, who listens to little birds?

Mindie ran through the bushes for what seemed like hours. Breathing hard and terrified beyond words, she couldn’t manage to bring herself to stop no matter how much her legs ached.

She was slashed, cut, bruised, and boiled, and her skin itched insanely. Once or twice she thought she had seen or heard animals in the undergrowth, but fortunately, they always seemed to scamper off in a direction other than toward her, and nothing had yet attempted to dine on Butterwycke a la Poissone Oake.

The sun was going down in the late evening summer sky, and through the shadows of the foliage it was difficult to see farther than a few feet in front of her. Eventually, she decided she could no longer tolerate the leaves and branches abrading her skin, so she staggered out of the local plant-life and onto the beach, moaning loudly. She nearly collided with a nude young man, and nuder young woman walking along the shore. They screamed at the sight, and sound, of my former fiancée and ran away back toward the village.

Slowly, steadily, Mindie shuffled in the opposite direction, away from them, me, and naked civilization in general, and was minimally comforted when the going became much easier over the damp sand. Not, of course, as easy as it might have been had she spent less time trying to cover her various exposed naughty-bits, but far quicker than rumbling, bumbling, and stumbling through the darkest jungles of Nikkid Bottoms had been.

She came to a large mound of rocks that resembled the droppings of some long-dead, Brontosaurus-sized horse, which had likely sat there for centuries, petrified near the waterline. Deciding she needed a rest, she ran around the pile of stones to squat and hide, and nearly fell over an elderly, naked couple making love in the sand. The pair was considerably older, though fit (if a bit worn), and had apparently decided to take full advantage of a beach that was supposed to be deserted while everyone made their way to the first night of the Summertime Soiree.

All three of the surprised individuals in question, Mindie the Monster, Old Naked Man, and Old Naked Lady, shrieked in horror. Scared and revolted, Mindie whimpered pathetic sounds of anguish, disapproval, and disgust, grabbed tightly to her crotch and boobs, and hurried away as if terrified the aged nudists might leap up from the sand at any moment in an attempt to have old-people sex with her. She lurched off, far into the distance, crying, stiff-legged, and faltering now, due to massive influxes of lactic acid. The aged couple watched her go, panting heavily with their own rush of adrenaline.

As Mindie receded down the beach, staggering, groaning, and moaning, the old man and old woman looked at one another, shocked and confused, each shaking their head ‘no’ to indicate that neither of them knew what the hell that was. After a moment of staring into each other’s eyes fearfully, they suddenly leaped on one another again, and began kissing passionately, returning, undeterred, to nature’s timeless, siren song of lust.

Farther along the beach, Mindie saw the stone bridge leading off the Island, and—breathing a sigh of relief—hurried that way.

At last she could get away from this crazy place and make it back to the real world where people had the common courtesy to keep their nudity hidden under clothes.