Naked Seasons

A collection by P.A. Choi

Copyright 2023 P.A. Choi

Cover design by P.A. Choi.

Table of Contents

Naked River

A Naked Wish

An Innocent Game

A Naked Winter

They Might Be Naked Angels

The Women of the Spring

About P.A. Choi:

Naked River

Helena surprised her friends when, standing by the jeep, she peeled off her t-shirt dramatically, stretching her thin torso to the sky as it came off, her pink floral bikini top rising, too, and revealing just the hint of an underboob. She could already see David and Linda's faces in her mind as the shirt passed over her face, and when she looked, they matched her imagination: pensive glances away, as if fearing what would happen next. She didn't know why it had to be so shocking. They were going tubing down the river, afterall. Linda wore a bikini top as well, which she had just revealed perhaps more modestly by meticulously unbuttoning the white shirt she wore over top, and she wore plain black swim trunks below, not teasing at all, except for the allure of her full thighs. She knew they were alluring for Nick, David and Linda's mutual friend, though he was now standing with his jaw on the floor as Helena tossed her shirt on the back seat and took down her shorts, revealing all that could be legally allowed: the cleft of a thigh, with a faint tanline visible, the clefts of her butt as she turned around and tossed her shorts in as well. David and Linda had invited Nick along no doubt because they were trying to set him up with Helena. She knew this very well, because that was what David and Linda did. They couldn't understand why others would choose to remain single, be it Helena, who was happy in her free life, or Nick, who was probably too shy to talk to girls. He would definitely be too shy now, with Helena revealed, but he would have no choice but to be in her company for the next couple of hours.

"That's some suit," Linda said, raising an eyebrow. "Didn't you want to wait until we got to the river?"

"Then I'd have to stash my clothes with me and they'd get wet," Helena explained. It was an odd thing to question her about, but obviously, they thought it weird that Helena would be okay with walking all the way to the shuttle, past the visitor's center and in front of everybody, the way she was dressed. But honestly, she would have done it naked if she could have. Swimsuits were uncomfortable, but she played along with society. It was funny how it was considered strange for her to be standing in the parking lot in a bikini, but if there was sand and an ocean, it would be okay. David already had his shirt peeled off, and was wearing baggy Hawaiian-patterned swim trunks, so what was the difference? Only Nick kept his shirt on. He was obviously self-conscious. He was a little pudgy, but not fat, and Helena understood. Not everybody was comfortable with their bodies. The meek kid managed to tear his eyes away from Helena standing there so exposed, and he had to be reminded by Linda to leave his glasses in the car. Then, with each of them carrying an inflated tube, they locked the car and headed off for the shuttle. Last-minute, Helena threw her sandals in the car, too, not wanting to lose them in the river.

"You're feet are gonna burn," David said.

"It's okay, we'll be on the water soon."

Plenty of eyes went Helena's way as they walked past the visitor's center to the shaded trail where the shuttle was waiting. Families, some with children who were quickly diverted from looking at Helena, husbands with wives who tugged their sleeves when their faces turned and contorted in amusement... It made Helena feel like she actually was walking through there naked. She was the only one with ninety percent of her skin exposed, despite the muggy heat. And despite that, she felt sweat gathering under her boobs as they steamed in the bikini top.

The man who drove the shuttle seemed taken aback by her appearance as well, and audibly stuttered as he told them to throw their tubes in the cage in the back and hop in. All the while, David and Linda were frowning, and Helena was smirking. They filed into the shuttle tram, David and then Linda, and Helena slid in on the seat facing them, with no other option for Nick but to slide in next to her. He was visibly tense, and Helena had to bite back her smile as she looked across at her frowning friends. Then the tram was moving.

Cruising through the lush wildlife refuge, with the swampy smell and the chorus of cicadas, Helena felt like she was on safari, and she felt even more naked than ever, sitting with half her cheeks warming the cool plastic seat, and the breeze brushing over her bare shoulders. The natural beauty of the scene made her want to tear off her bikini and run through the bush, like a wild woman. The idea seemed so pure; there was something obscene about the two meager pieces of nylon that she wore to cover her most sensitive parts. It seemed unnatural. And silly. It actually gnawed at her until she imagined drifting on the water, still not being fully comfortable if she wasn't nude. She told herself not to get into these circular trains of thought, for they hampered her enjoyment of normal-people things, but she couldn't help it. The best way to enjoy summer was nude. She knew David and Linda would not understand.

They rode for a few silent minutes and then were ready to disembark and get on the river. The driver of the shuttle handed them their tubes and they walked single file down the dirt trail, the ground soft under Helena's bare feet as she followed Lind and David, with Nick at her rear, no doubt staring at her rear. She didn't do it intentionally, but she walked with extra sway to her hips.

There were a few people at the concrete pier where they were to set off, another group of young people, men and women, and they didn't give Helena a second look. One of the women was dressed in a black two-piece, not as minuscule as Helena's swimsuit, but alluring nonetheless. She imagined Nick must be having the most tense day ever.

When the first group sailed off, David and the others sat their tubes in, plopped themselves down, and pushed off. Onwards they went down the slow current, and Helena outstretched her arms, baring her swaddled chest to the sun filtering through the tree branches above.

They floated in a loose formation, with Linda and David next to each other, then Helena, and Nick at the end of the row, uncomfortably with nobody to see or talk to except Helena in all her semi-bared glory. Each tube drifted ahead a bit at intervals until David announced that they should chain together, and hands were reached out to grab the straps hanging off the tubes' sides and hook them together with the plastic carabiners so they all formed a convoy, and from there they drifted like a snake, sometimes with David at the lead, sometimes Nick, and all the while, Helena tried to get comfortable in her tube. The more she shifted her body, the more her bikini bottom pinched in the crook of her thigh, flossed her butt, and the more she felt the heat gather underneath the coverings. She sighed, lifted her chest, and settled down again, and she knew that Nick was passing glances.

"Sure wish we had a cooler with beer out here," David announced. Helena could commiserate. They both had something they wished they could add to their enjoyment, but alcohol and any drink containers were not allowed on the river, since it was a wildlife refuge, and nudity of course wasn't allowed, because it was a clothed society. They all had to make do.

"How you doin' over there, Nick?" David then asked his friend (or more really, he was Linda's friend; they knew each other from work, and Helena was sure that Nick had a crush on Linda, despite her being married).

"Doin' alright," Nick piped back, as he was carried forward to the front of the convoy, forcing him to paddle furiously to avoid logs and rocks.

"Don't stress it," David advised. "Just let us drift. The current will carry us around the rough stuff."

"I don't think that's how it works," Linda countered. Helena, all the while, embraced the muggy air, the coolness of the water splashing up on her bare skin, the birds chirping, the occasional turtle perching on the end of a log, and she took a deep breath. Despite it all, she was still not comfortable. No matter how much she feebly adjusted herself in her tube, she could not settle so that her bikini did not dig into her skin, did not remind herself that she was bound by fabric and modesty to not be fully at ease. She didn't know how Linda and David put up with it. And they had an hour at least to go, slowly floating down the river. Eventually, they passed another concrete dock, as there were many drop-off and departure points along the river for those that didn't want to go the entire route, and there they saw the group that was ahead of them, now standing in the shallows near the dock, taking a break, or making a break for it. Helena and the others drifted slowly past, as they saw the black-swimsuit girl from before standing waist-deep, her bottom teasingly half above the water, her hair being thrown back, and her torso tensing and flexing as she moved. She looked magnificent in that brief moment in time, a half-naked girl in the swamp. As they drifted past, Helena looked over and saw Nick's gaze traveling to the girl, his eyes passing overtop Helena's even more revealed body, all a cornucopia of visual delight for his eyes. And then, one final gesture that stirred all the pent-up lust in Nick: the girl hooked her fingers underneath her bikini bottom, stretched it away from her tan butt to release water, and let it snap back into place with a slight jiggle. All that happened in a second, and went uncommented on by the others, but no doubt held in time in Nick's mind, and Helena's as well, for it made her think of the discomfort she allowed, and she finally broke past a threshold, as they passed by the group, and nobody was looking, and she just said: "ah, screw it." She pulled the string of her bikini bottom, and just like that, it fell loose, and she swiped it away, revealing her trim mound, and she lifted her hips to remove her bottom completely.

"Helena, what the hell? Linda said next to her, and on her other side, Nick's jaw fell open again. But Helena was unleashed now, and seeking her comfort. She pulled the string on her top as well, and plucked it off her body, sitting it to her side in the tube, and just like that, she was completely naked, floating down the river, just as she wanted to be.

"Nobody's around," Helena said over to Linda. "Who's gonna see? I'm just more comfortable this way."

"We'll get arrested as soon as we get back on shore!" Linda shot back.

"Then I'll put my swimsuit back on."

"Little difference that makes," David said with a laugh, brushing the whole thing off, but it was a knock against her for sure, Helena knew, for he didn't pass his eyes over her. He was criticizing current-day society's leniency towards baring the skin. He and Linda were very conservative in some of their viewpoints, and Helena knew they always cast a judgmental eye at girls who dressed as skimpy as her on the beach, or who bared themselves online. As they planned to have kids, Helena knew for sure they would instill these viewpoints in them, and she never was quite okay with it, but it was none of her business. As long as they didn't obstruct her now from conducting her own business. David's eyes did not linger. He just accepted their eccentric friend, though Linda was all frowns, paddling so that she would always be ahead, blocking the view of Helena in the nude from her husband, while Nick, at the end, had nowhere else to deter his eyes, and he gazed upon her supine form. Helena just looked to the sky.

Ah, she thought. Now she was at peace. Now the humid air and the birds chirping and the trickling water and the warmth of the sun that revealed itself in breaks in the tree cover all harmonized, and she was at one with nature. She splayed her arms out again, let her now-unburdened chest get some sunlight, and no longer did anything pinch or pull on her body, the uniform feeling of the air on her skin... This was what it should be like. She could feel every hair on her mound crisp in the sun's rays, and burn from the eyes of Nick in the tube next to her. It was exhibitionism, but it was naturism, both here, combined, and she relished it despite the potentially naughty thrill. This was just pure, and nobody was stopping her. Not that they could.

Linda seemed more and more uncomfortable with Helena naked in the tube next to her, and paddled herself so she would always be facing away from her. Nobody said a thing, and Helena was glad. Though on a turn in the current, she found herself facing Nick directly, with her legs partly spread, fur at their nexus, fire in Nick's eyes, and she just smiled. They were floating down in a line now, with David in the front and Nick helpless there in the rear. It felt like he and Helena were alone, just what David and Linda wanted, in a way. Nick didn't say anything. He just gaped. It lasted long enough that Helena was wondering when her tube would turn away again, but it seemed rooted in that one position, facing Nick, a never-ending peep show of her snatch. She thought of something clever to say. I hear there are lots of beavers on this river, or something like that, and she started to smile. That smile captivated Nick, and he slowly started to smile as well, and little goosebumps traveled down Helena's arms.

"Rocks!" David called from the front. "Start paddling!"

"I thought you said the current would carry us around them," Linda replied sarcastically. Helena began to splash her hand on one side, turning her tube so she could see, and she could see the disappointed look on Nick's face that their moment had ended.

Up ahead, she could see the peril. Splitting the river right in the middle was a large gathering of rocks. They could go around to the left or to the right. With David paddling furiously on his right side, the head of the convoy was swerving to the left, but the tail end—Helena and Nick—were trailing behind, so that their line almost faced the oncoming danger broad-sided.

"Paddle, guys!" David called.

"I'm trying!" Helena called back, as she slapped her hand over and over again into the water on her right side, which didn't seem super-effective. She could hear Nick splashing behind her, so she knew he wasn't still held in a trance by her, but it didn't make a difference. David slipped around the rocks to the left, Linda close behind, but Helene slid right up onto them, and then her tube tipped.

"Whoops!" she cried with a helpless laugh, and she dumped face-first into the current. Her nostrils stung and she came up with a gasp, and Nick's end raft was just out of reach. He was turning to the side and stuck out his hand for her while David and Linda were shouting up front, trying to slow themselves against the current. Linda swam—the water was cold!—and stopped just in time to reach out her hand and brush Nick’s fingertips. There was a little, feathery electric thrill at the touch. Then Nick leaned as best he could from his reclined position and their fingers hooked. Helena was securely tethered to the group, and she pulled herself in and grasped at her tube, flipping it back over.

"Are you alright?" David called.

"Yeah, just a spill. That was refreshing!

The water was calm now and their tubes settled side-by-side. Nick watched with awe as Helena pulled herself out of the water—gleaming bare skin—and slid back into the tube. She squirmed in it like a fish until she turned herself around and was laying on her back again, breathing heavily, feeling heat and sweat begin, but refreshed by her wet skin.

"That was fun!" she announced, and Linda and David just looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Helena's bare breasts rose and fell with her breath. Nick tried to pretend to be interested in the other nature views alongside the river. As Helena rose her hips and let them fall again to get comfortable once more, she noticed an empty feeling in the nest of her innertube. Something was missing.

"Oh rats. I think I lost my swimsuit back there."

"You're fucking kidding," Linda said.

"Nope, I guess it dumped out when I flipped."

"We need to go back and get it."

"Babe, how are we going to do that?" David intervened.

"Well maybe it'll float by us," Linda said. "It can't be hard to miss."

They all scanned the water. Or at least, David and Linda did. Nick just let his view be taken up by Helena every time she drifted into his sights, and she just lay there with her arms outstretched again, finally feeling free, truly free.

"I don't see the big deal," she finally said.

"Don't see the big deal? You can't walk back like that."

"Sure can. Like David said, it's hardly a difference if I'm wearing two little straps of clothing or not, is it? I can hold my tube in front of me if you like."

"You'll get arrested."

"We'll see."

"No we won't. There are kids here. We gotta figure out something."

"I can lend you my shirt," Nick said in a small voice. David laughed.

"Is it even long enough? I doubt it'll reach past her hips."

It was true; Helena was tall. For a woman, anyway. She was taller than Linda. And Nick was short.

"It's better than nothing," Linda said. "I'm not walking back with some naked person."

"You don't have to," Helena said to Nick as her tube turned to face him again. She could see his cheeks glowing red.

"I-it's okay," he said, his eyes flitting all over her. "It's better than nothing."

"Nothing's better than nothing," Helena said, and she leaned her head back, enjoying having nothing. She heard Linda snort.

And so it was decided. But they had the rest of the river to float down first, and Helena savored every moment of it, wishing it wouldn't end. Though a slight chill chased up her body from having exited the cold water, she had no true discomfort, nothing compared to the discomfort of having to be restricted behind a swimsuit, and they came out into an open stretch with no trees, and her skin baked, harshly at times, making her ruminate on why exactly humans wore clothes in the first place. Sometimes it was needed for protection. As pleasant as it was to bake under the sun, if one lived with no shade, out in the desert, they would need something to protect themselves from prolonged exposure. But for now, in these brief moments, Helena embraced it. She needed to erase those faint tanlines she had, anyway. She almost wished she could roll over and bake her buns, too, though she was comfortable where she was.

In the open, calm water, a few faster tubers, and a couple of people on open-faced kayaks, passed them by, and when the first person noticed Helena, he shouted "right on!" Helena could hear Linda groan. But there was nothing they could do, and they floated on. They entered the shade again, and there was the soft trickle of the river, the sudden plop as a turtle dove into the water, the chirps of birds. A great heron landed and stood just on the shore, and Helena watched it, feeling the cool breeze come and caress her body, and in that one instant, she felt connected to the heron and to the whole scene around them. She felt part of everything, and all the more so because she knew there was no option to put clothes back on, nothing next to her to reach and grab and cover herself. She was vulnerable, but invulnerable, bold and brave; a part of nature. Everybody else was silent, though. they probably didn't feel the same things she was feeling.

The current picked up and soon the moment of truth was arriving: the final dock was up ahead. David called out for them to all paddle so they could swing to the left around a line of floating buoys, and Helena did her part, Nick splashing behind her, all of them working as a team, forgetting that one of them was naked. They barely made it. They swooped into the lane separated by the buoys and drifted to the dock, and there they were reminded again all over of the nudity of their guest, as Helena slipped out of her tube and touched her feet on the rocky bottom, standing with the water up to her sternum, her breasts just above the surface, and as the others climbed up onto the dock, she threw her tube up and then pushed herself out of the water. There she was a spectacle again, rising to full standing posture, her body wet and shining, and the others standing in a daze, not sure what to do. Luckily, there was nobody else with them. Yet. Looking upstream, they could see some other tubers floating down.

"Nick, hurry," Linda commanded, and Nick tore off his wet t-shirt, revealing a pale, pudgy chest and abdomen, and he handed the shirt out to Helena. She took it with a smile that freshened the red in his cheeks.

"If it makes y'all happy," she said, and she pulled the wet t-shirt on. It was dark grey, and seemed to immediately absorb the heat of the day, and it clung to her skin. She had to firmly pull it all the way down, and where it ended, it just rested above her pubic hair. No modesty was gained except for to cover her breasts. Otherwise, she was very visibly bottomless.

"Well, shall we go?" she asked. Linda sighed. "Yes, let's."

As they picked up their tubes, the other group arrived, and as they floated into place, some of them glanced up and saw Helena's partial nudity and froze and stared. She just laughed and carried her tube and followed Linda and David, with Nick once again at her rear, and no doubt once again staring at her rear as it peeked from underneath his shirt.

The wait for the shuttle at the top of the hill was an awkward one. At least for everybody except for Helena. She stood, unbothered, with her tube propped up on the ground against her, and the sensation of the t-shirt clinging to her skin, and the freedom below. And then the other group approached from down the trail. Linda was visibly nervous, tapping her foot, waiting for the shuttle to come and take them out of this mess.

When the others arrived, they came slowly, and one of them spoke.

"Well that's one way to enjoy the river," he said. Helena turned, presenting her bush to him, and thought of something to say, but the man was struck still, and she was too, and then the rumble of the shuttle approached.

The driver was equally as flustered as when he had first seen Helena in her revealing bikini, now glimpsing her in what would be—technically—a more modest outfit, but her teasing bush was more shocking than just bare skin alone.

"Ah, yeah... you know the drill. Get in."

They threw their tubes in the back and settled down into their seat, Helena now having the distinction of feeling her completely bare cheeks on the seat as contrasted from before, and she smiled across at Linda and David, who looked off elsewhere, while Nick squirmed next to her, uncomfortable with his chest and belly bared, and uncomfortable with what was left to bare next to him. They rode on in silence.

When they got to their destination, everybody quickly disembarked, and Helena walked shamelessly, as if she had nothing to hide, to accept her tube from the driver, and then they were off. Linda urged them on: "Hurry.” But Helena walked casually, calmly, taking in the sensation of being seen, and as they passed the visitor's center, hardly anyone turned an eye at fist, but by the time they neared the jeep, people began to realize that the russet cheeks presenting themselves below the t-shirt were not obstructed by any floss of a bathing suit bottom, but were completely bare. Helena found the cheeks on her face flushed— just as Nick's—with embarrassment and thrill.

"Hurry up," Linda repeated as they opened the back of the jeep and threw the tubes in. Her eyes were darting all around the parking lot, looking for people leering. Helena, however, couldn't care at all. She withdrew her towel from the back, dried herself off as best as she could, and then draped it on the back seat, where Nick shuffled in, awaiting her to join him. She soon did, and David and Linda climbed in the front, and Helena sat there, with her nest of pubic hairs visible for Nick to glance at, and David started the engine.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he said. They backed out of the parking space and Helena had the enjoyment of sitting there half-comfortable, at least with no bikini bottom pinching her skin, as they rode on to Linda and David's house, with nervous Nick beside her the whole way. Linda and David’s matchmaking scheme certainly didn’t pan out as they expected, but at least Nick had them to thank for an eyeful.

A Naked Wish

"Chase, come on, keep up."

Chester called over his son, who had stopped to stare at someone, as children do. Eventually, the child's attention to his father returned, and he rushed forward down the boardwalk to join him. Chester looked up and saw why he was staring: there was a remarkably beautiful woman in a flowy dandelion-yellow dress walking up the slope on the sand below. Even though her back was to him, she was an arresting sight with her slender figure and the way the dress swayed around her knees. Chester grinned and shook his head. He would really need to try to teach Chase not to stare when a woman caught his attention.

"Come on, scamp."

They walked through the throng of people going up and down past the shops, taking their time, Chase free at his side, walking with lively hops and swinging his arms. Chester didn't believe in holding his hand. He knew Chase didn't like it, and he believed in giving him at least the false sense of freedom. He was good about keeping his eye on him.

"Are we gonna get ice cream, Dad?" he asked as he skipped just a step or two ahead.

"I think we can. We got a while before dinner."

He had taken Chase out to see the sights at the boardwalk while his wife stayed at home, wanting one of her "me days." That was fine. Chester liked getting out in the fresh air and being away, and he liked spending time with his son, though at eight, his attention span was off the map, and was sometimes exhausting for Chester.

Another pretty girl came walking in their direction, appearing as other faceless people parted in front of her. She was like the woman in the red dress from The Matrix, surrounded by nobodies. She wore slim jeans which made mystifying objects of her thighs, which filled them out as she walked, and she wore a tank top that showed off a lot of skin but no cleavage, as she was bra-less. Chester watched his son gaze up at her as if she were an angel, and she actually glanced down and flashed him the most winning of smiles. She passed them without saying a word, and Chase turned his head, walking sideways to gaze at her as she left. Chester glanced back and felt a pang of guilt for his devotion to his wife as he saw the rhythmic, very animated and bouncy movements of her denim-wrapped rear end. He coughed and looked forward and patted his son to look forward as well.

"You shouldn't stare, son."

"Why not? She was astounding."

Chester laughed. Where did he learn that word?

"Because it's rude," he explained. "And one day it's going to get you slapped."

Or shot by Agent Smith when you're not looking.

"But didn't you just look?"

He laughed again.

"Caught me red-handed. But I only looked because you did, so it's your fault."

"Awwww."

"Say," Chester eyed a more innocent distraction up ahead. "How's about making a wish?"

Up ahead, backed by the railing and looking towards the antique shop across from it, was a large glass booth with one of those animatronic mystic men inside, with the turban and wrists bedecked with jewels. Chase didn't seem to care until Chester took his wrist and gently led him over to it. His son eyed the dead-eyed mannequin with suspicion, as if he knew by instinct that it was a scam.

"What's it do?" he asked.

"You put a quarter in and you make a wish."

"Like a wishing well? That's stupid."

"Stupid, but fun. And who knows? Maybe your wish will come true. You won't know unless you try. My treat."

Chase narrowed his eyes and studied the man behind the glass as if to determine his honesty, and then said "okay" noncommittally.

"Maybe you can wish for free ice cream," Chester said, digging into his pockets for some coins and leaning forward to see where to put the money. There was no coin slot, only a debit card reader.

"Five dollars? What the hell..."

My treat, he thought cynically as he reached in his back pocket instead and took out his wallet. Chase stood there and tapped his foot impatiently, looking like a little parody of an adult, as Chester swiped his card and the reader beeped and the little turbaned man came to life. His arms jerked and beckoned to Chase, who jumped back, and the wobbly little plastic head turned on its neck joint and its dead eyes looked at him.

"Imagine what you desire," the tinny electronic voice said from the speaker box next to the card reader. "Do not say it aloud, or it will vanish. Close your eyes..."

Chester smiled and watched as his son played along and let his eyelids fall. He even raised his hands and touched his forefingers to his thumbs like he was meditating. Chester thought about pulling out his phone and taking a cute picture to show his wife later, but Chase quickly lowered his hands and opened his eyes.

"There. Done," he said with some purpose. Chester opened his mouth to ask him what he had wished for, but a scream suddenly pierced the background noise of people talking and walking, and Chester gripped his son's shoulders and looked to the source of the noise.

He was expecting death and dismemberment. He reflexively moved his hand to cover Chase's face, but then he saw what he saw, and Chase was clawing at his father's hand to free his eyes. Directly ahead, on the boardwalk, in a circle of people, stood a woman, completely naked from head to toe. Unbelievable, Chester thought at first. I can't believe someone would pull a stunt like this. But it was soon clear that the screams were coming from her. She bent down and flattened her palm over her privates, and her arm barely contained her full breasts pushing against them, and she looked at everybody in terror. Jesus, did somebody strip her? Chester thought, but the woman's wasn't the only scream, and her skin wasn't the only color added to the crowd. Another woman to the left shrunk in the same pose, and a few bare butts on the sidelines that Chester hadn't noticed now moved, as the girls they were attached to dashed into the nearest store.

"What in the..."

He realized he had let his hand drop from Chase's face, and lifted it up again, but his son swatted it away. Then there were screams from all around.

Curious, Chester stepped up to the railing and saw several women streaking across the sand. Some guys had stopped to watch, others running behind their significant others to try to calm them (or cover them). Everywhere, on the beach, on the boardwalk, there were naked women. What the hell is going on here? Chester wondered. Was it some kind of impromptu event?

Chase pressed himself against the railing and gripped the bars, peering through them. "Whoooa" his voice came, and Chester was assured that the boy was not terrified. He had not looked down at his son’s face since the first scream rang out.

"Alright son, let's go get that ice cream," Chester said, pretending that chaos wasn't unfolding around them. He had to get him off the boardwalk. Chase gripped the bars intently and Chester had to pry him away, and when they walked farther down the walk, Chase's feet tried to carry him in the opposite direction. But then Chester stopped, and his son ran into him.

There was danger up ahead as well. The crowd was parted and a young woman stood nude, not even covering herself. She looked dazed, but somewhat amused, and nothing was hidden from his son as he poked his head through Chester's arm. The girl had a smile on her face as she turned and met eyes with all her voyeurs. Her breasts were small and pointy and pivoted and pointed from one lucky onlooker to the next. Her hand slipped in front of her upper legs, then slipped away again, unsure if she cared to cover the thin strip of dark brown hair that cut in between her thighs. Chester’s hand moved up to his son's eyes, and his son grumbled in protest. Then there was the slamming of feet, and Chase managed to tear his father's hand away just as three other young women sprinted down the boardwalk at them. The two in front were laughing as they ran, covering their breasts with an arm and using the other to pump the air, leaving the rest of themselves, shaven, exposed. There was the distinct flash of labia before they were concealed by pumping thighs, and they rushed by with a draft. The girl in back looked more distressed, and ran at a shamble as she used both arms to cover herself. She was a little chubby, and her body shook as she caught up to her friends, her big, round glasses bumping on her nose and her tangly hair coming out of its bun and flying behind her. And then she was past, and Chester turned and saw, involuntary, her ample behind rippling as she ran. He squeezed his son against him and looked for a shop to dip into, and right in front of them was a second-hand clothing store, perhaps the most boring place for a child to be taken into, but the nearest option. Though he didn't move, considering people might be needing clothing soon for some reason, and there might be a rush of naked people into the store. As he stood there deciding, he jumped with a start, because there was a woman looking out at him through the window. No, not at him, but at all that was going on. She was older, heavyset, with tangly grey hair, and she pressed a dress against her chest, a dress she was not wearing, for her sun-spotted and pale shoulders peeked up above, and the fat cleavage, and a glimpse of pale hip at the side. She had not yet put it on. She was in need of clothes, too.

Chester was now narrowing his eyes and turned to look at his surroundings again. Many of the women had fled. A few people stood confused on the boardwalk. They were all men, Chester noted. Was this some sort of feminist protest? he thought. But he looked back at the clothing store for the old woman, and she had disappeared.

He looked down at his son, who was still staring down the boardwalk at the young woman who now started walking along, away from them, a shapely, naked butt swaying as she went. Chester tugged his son.

"Come on," he said. "Not that way."

"Aren't we getting ice cream?"

How could you think about ice cream now? The young woman, however, was walking towards where the ice cream shop would be. They would be behind her the whole way, with Chester fighting to keep his son's eyes protected. Not that it mattered at this point. In fact, Chester saw no inherent harm in seeing the human body, but this was uncomfortable, exhibitionist. Something was going on that his son shouldn't be witness to, and he tugged him along, the rule of not holding hands abandoned.

"We'll get some Bruster’s on the way back," he said. "Let's get out of here."

"But we can't leave yet."

"I think you've got your fill, don't you?" The passage up ahead was not entirely clear, anyway. A young woman, golden-haired and golden-skinned, crossed the boardwalk, exiting a store and heading for the railing, which she climbed, stood on triumphantly for a moment, arms out and butt flexed—a phone camera flashed—before she jumped onto the sand where it sloped up near the end of the boardwalk. "There's still plenty of naked girls to ogle at on our way back," he said, and he patted his son's head. Might as well let him get a peak here and there. Chase seemed to be okay with this, and willingly kept close to him as they walked. When they neared the end of the boardwalk, Chester looked to the left and saw the golden girl running towards the water, her hands outstretched, as if she were a dog whose owner left the gate open. Hmm. It was a charming sight.

Then they were at the parking lot, where in the distance, Chester saw the last of the three girls that had run past earlier climbing into the cab of a red pickup truck and slamming the world out with the closing of the door. Chase was looking behind them as Chester fished in his pocket for his keys and unlocked his sedan. He luckily didn't have to urge his son too much to get in; the spectacle had thinned out. Whatever had happened had happened, and all naked women, if they were indeed stripped involuntarily, were in hiding. Chester slid into the driver's seat and turned on the ignition while his son climbed into the passenger seat.

Before starting the engine, he had to take a moment to collect himself. He still couldn't figure out why seemingly every woman on the boardwalk had decided to strip off their clothes and run around. It made him feel unsafe in taking his son out anywhere. If at any time, people could just toss off their clothes and do a lewd display, what was the point of protecting his kid from such sights?

As if on queue, there was a new sight on the street bordering the parking lot. Chase definitely saw it, and stared, as did Chester. A pair of middle-aged women ran down the sidewalk, hair wildly streaming behind them, bared breasts bouncing furiously as neither of them attempted to cover themselves. They only seemed concerned with fleeing, which is what they were apparently doing, as their strides were quick and frantic. On instinct, Chester turned on the radio and adjusted the dial until he got to some news.

...a scene of chaos at Pearl Beach as hundreds of swimmers watched as half of their numbers suddenly lost their ever-important swimsuits. Nobody has been able to explain this event as it’s being reported, and reports are that every female beach-goer today has without explanation been robbed of their attire. And in the greater district of Michelin, people fled inside stores as…

Chester looked to his son as the radio reporter droned on, describing now-predictable scenes, scenes that Chester had already witnessed, and continued to witness as he looked up from his son and to his window, and saw other naked women making a dash for their cars, hurried fannies lifting up into the safety of their vehicles.

"Chase... what did you wish for?"

His son's look of guilt told the whole story, but it was a story that was unbelievable.

"I didn't think it would actually come true!" Chase pleaded. "You made it sound so fake."

Gee, thanks.

"So you wished that every woman suddenly had no clothes?" Chester asked his son. Chase avoided his eyes, but then said in a meek voice: "yeah."

"Well son, we have to fix this, or things are going to fall apart."

"Why? It's just skin."

The way he said that sounded like he was parroting it from somewhere, and Chester wondered from where.

"People aren't used to nudity, son," Chester explained. "Especially when it's them, without warning. You can understand that, right? You saw how afraid those women were."

"Yeah..."

"Well, maybe we'll get some ice cream here after all, but after we go back and reverse that wish of yours."

He couldn't believe he was actually proposing the idea. It was like a silly plot point out of a comedy movie, but he had no other explanation for what caused the mass female nudity today. He was just rolling with the punches, as he always did. Sometimes life revealed itself to be simply too crazy, and one had to make themselves crazy to survive in it.

Chase shut off the engine and opened the door.

"Come on, son. You've got a mess to correct."

"Awwww."

*****

"Good afternoon. Rachel Smith is out today, for what may be obvious reasons, so I, Phil Blankensmith, will fill in. As many of you know, a rash outbreak of nudity has seemed to sweep the region. And we here at Channel Four can now confirm it's not only the region, but the whole country, and reportedly, the world, as reports are coming in from London, Tokyo, Moscow... of absolute chaos in the streets, as people are suddenly finding themselves absent of clothes. I-I don't know how to explain it, folks, but I witnessed it here in the Channel Four Studio with my own eyes, as Miss Smith, well..."

The newscaster stopped and looked at something beyond the camera, and faintly nodded his head as if understanding some new directive.

"Well, you can guess what happened, as has happened no doubt to you. It seems that women are exclusively the victim of this instant and unexpected undressing. We have no explanations at the time for what could be causing this event. Is it a form of terrorism? Channel Four will keep you updated as developments come in. And now, the weather...

"It's pleasantly warm in the Northeast right now, Phil," The weatherman cut in. "Just pleasant enough to be outside without your clothes. Take a look at Buckroe...."

The screen transitioned from a weather map to a shot of the boardwalk, with clothed men scattering here and there as bare and blurred (for TV watchers' preserved decency) women walked here and there. There was no escaping what was happening...

*****

Chester gripped his son's hand as he took him back down the boardwalk, which was now eerily deserted, except for a few men who stood at the railing and looked out at the beach, where some of the women who had been disrobed by Chase's wish now happily frolicked nude in the water, the sun making their bare wet skin glitter. Chester and his son both found themselves transfixed by the sight. As Chester thought earlier, it was a charming sight...

Soon they arrived at the wish-making machine, and Chester pulled out his wallet to give five more dollars to the thing.

"Alright son, this is your queue. Fix what you started."

Chester readied his card to swipe but gave his son time to collect his thoughts. The boy's eyes drifted up from the machine and the plastic man inside to the beach beyond the railing spokes, between which he observed women coming out of the water, magnificent and marvelous, happy in their nudity, with some men, some of them now nude as well, waiting on the sand as they approached.

"But they look happy with it," Chase muttered.

"That's irrelevant, son," Chester said. "It's a matter of consent. Maybe some girls are okay with how things turned out, but many others didn't ask for this. It's not right. Don't you see?"

Chase continued staring at the naked women on the beach, then nodded glumly and said "okay."

Seeing that his son was ready, Chester swiped his card and the animatronic mystic man came to life, repeating its words from before. "Imagine what you desire... Close your eyes..."

Chase repeated his gesture from before, raising his hands and touching fingers to thumbs, and he drank in the air through his nose audibly. Then there was a flash and Chester felt a sudden heat on his body, and then a sudden coolness, as the beach breeze blew against his bare skin. He blinked and looked down. There was Mr. Willy, looking up at him, or rather, at the ground, limp and impotent. And his son, standing in front of the machine, was suddenly nothing but light skin, and he wavered on his feet, looked around, and then down at himself, and he let out a small whelp. Both father's and son's hands shot to their privates as they stood completely exposed on the boardwalk, and the people nearby now repeated the same posture, as they were naked, too.

"Son, what did you do?"

"I-I just... I just reversed the wish. I wished for the opposite of what I wished before."

"Well the opposite of that is that all of us are naked!" Chester shouted, palming his crotch, his butt defenseless as people circled all around. He moved one of his hands from its secure spot and patted his bare butt. No wallet. He looked down. All the contents of his pockets seemed to have disappeared with his pants.

"Chase... we can’t get out of here. I don’t have my keys.”

That revelation made Chase panic; Chester could see the terror on his face.

"Let's get inside," he said, and he reached out for his son's hand. Chase took it and kept his other covering himself as they dipped into the antique store that sat across from the wish-granting machine. Others spilled in after them to get shelter. Once inside, Chase darted between the shelves to hide, and Chester, tethered to him by the hand, looked over his shoulder at the front counter, where the top of the old man cashier's grayed head was peeking out as he hid. Then other nude bodies spilled in and blocked his view. There were men and women. Absolutely everybody was naked.

"Excuse me!" he tried to pipe up over the chaos, but he was too far away. Some of the people stopped and stared up at the TV in the corner, which showed CNN, and a chaotic scene at Times Square, with crowds of people running naked, trying to find shelter.

"Oh my god..." a woman in the store muttered. "It's the end times."

Chester turned and leaned down to his son, letting go of his hand and holding his shoulders. Chase's hand instantly zipped down to join his other in covering himself. Chester had a moment of awkwardness as he realized he was standing there with the boy's eyes at an unfortunate elevation. He felt obscene, but he couldn't just walk around covering his crotch the whole time.

"Now Chase, I need to go talk to the front desk clerk. You can stay here if you want. I'll keep an eye on you."

"I'd rather you not," his son said, and Chester laughed.

"Well now you know how the women you stripped feel."

A person standing at the end of the aisle looked in their direction when Chester said that, but then shook his head.

"I'll be back."

He stood and let go of his son and uncomfortably shouldered his way through the people standing around in the store. He guarded his lesser self with his hands so it would not come into contact with someone else's skin, but once he reached the front, he freed his hands again and placed them on the counter.

"Excuse me, can you operate the wishing machine outside?"

The man's eyes darted up at him. Chester only saw the top half of his face.

"A fine time to be makin' a wish! Unless you want to wish us back our clothes."

"Well, as a matter of fact..."

How to explain this? It sounded crazy. But if he could convince the man to play along, the same way he had convinced his son...

"Go knock yourself out then, why should I stop ya?" the man said.

"Well, I don't have my wallet anymore. Can you override the card reader and let us wish for free?"

"Son, does it look like I'm in any shape to step around from behind this counter? I got enough to worry about here."

Chester sighed and looked over his shoulder to make sure Chase was still okay. In a world where everybody was naked, including his son, Chester felt even more nervous about him being out of his sight. The people had disappeared from the end of the aisle to hide, and Chase was clearly there, looking at rows of candy and looking more calm, but still covering himself. It was an oddly innocent sight, and reminded Chester of when his son was younger, just a toddler, with little awareness of his own self. Chester right then became briefly aware of his own self too, realizing that he was standing with his Willy hanging before all the store, free to look at for the few people whose heads passed by at the tops of the aisles. The fear was gone. Was he getting used to this already?

He turned back to the man at the counter.

"This is going to sound crazy, but my son made a wish on that machine just now, and well... look at the result."

The man had been looking up at the TV and turned his eyes back to Chester.

"Now that's the silliest thing I've ever heard."

"Do you have any other explanation?"

*****

Behind the news desk of Channel Four, Phil Blankensmith sat as before. Or almost as before. The only difference now was that his lean and dark chest was bared, and behind the desk, presumably, everything else was bared as well. They had tried to re-redress him, but the outfits in wardrobe had suddenly disappeared, as if they had never been there at all. The studio manager idiotically insinuated that someone had stolen them. Others ignored him and thought to themselves: the show must go on.

Phil sorted some papers in front of him and cleared his throat as the camera rolled.

"Good afternoon folks. I'd apologize for my appearance, but there is no need to, as I'm sure—"

His words stopped in his throat as his fellow news anchor, Rachel Smith, who had been absent for obvious reasons, now returned. She hurried in and settled down into her chair, smoothing out her hair and quickly sorting and holding a stack of fake papers of her own, their explicit purpose being to cover her ample chest.

"Hi Phil, I'm back. I see no reason to hide now at this point."

Phil's eyes blinked and widened at the bare and very large, dark breasts of his co-host. Then he shook his cobwebs loose and quarter-turned to the camera.

"Yes, well... as I'm sure all of you know—" he turned fully to the camera now. "The rash of sudden nudity has spread to seemingly every person in the entire world, regardless of gender and age, and it has been extremely distressing for many. We still don't have the cause of this seemingly random event..."

"Not quite, Phil," Rachel said, shifting her papers, which were in fact not entirely fake, but which had information on them. A brief glimpse of her dark chocolate-cherry areolas was flashed for the camera as she shifted the papers, and there was no ability to censor it, and no point.

"It appears this whole epidemic was caused by one lone child in Atlantic City," Rachel said, glancing down at her papers and then looking at Phil.

"This seems a lot for just one person to cause," Phil responded.

"Well it seems that a young Chase Liberty visited a wish-granting booth on the boardwalk of the famous town and made a wish... a wish for all women to lose their clothes."

Phil laughed and shook his head.

"Little scamp."

"And it seems his father requested he go back and reverse the wish and... well, this is where we are."

"Stay tuned to Channel Four for more updates on our little naked adventure," Phil said, and then he took up his stack of papers (which were fake) and tapped them on the desk with finality.

*****

The man from the desk reluctantly joined Chester by the wish-making machine, and Chase reluctantly tagged along. Both old man and young boy were self-conscious and wishing they could be anywhere else, Chester standing by patiently while still covering himself, an increasingly feeble exercise, and the old man bent down, told Chase to move out of his way (because it obviously made him uncomfortable to have a naked child in front of him), and he began turning screws to open the panel of the wishing machine. All the while, Chester stood by and folded his arms on his chest. He no longer cared about covering Mr. Willy. Everybody had seen it, anyway. His eyes scanned over the beach, where he was intrigued to see that some people still frolicked nude on its sands, men and women.

"Alright, should be good," the old man said. "You're up."

He got back to his feet with some difficulty and stepped back so that Chase could step forward. The man no longer tried to cover himself, and just watched the boy as he approached the machine and finally let his hands move from his crotch. Then the man looked away. Chester didn't, though; he observed his son as he was born into this world, and observed his demeanor. Instead of looking at the machine, Chase was gazing past the railing at the sight of people streaking across the beach. He stared out at the sight for so long that Chester urged his son.

"Chase... it's time."

"They still look so happy, though," Chase said.

Indeed, out there on the beach, a man and a woman ran along the sand, seemingly chasing each other until one caught up with the other and they tumbled on the ground. Farther out, a pair of girls walked into the water, side-by-side, their stark nudity and twin rear-ends not as captivating as the pure wholesomeness of the scene in general, as the water lapped up at their legs and they threw themselves into the surf.

Chester looked back down at his son and then took a knee.

"That may be, son, but not everybody is happy with what happened, and they deserve to be respected."

Chase continued to look out at the beach, and he didn't seem convinced.

"Remember, it's a matter of consent," Chester continued. "You wouldn't want someone randomly taking away your clothes without warning, right?"

Chase finally looked away from the beach and met Chester's eyes, glanced down at himself, and laughed. Chester laughed, too. The desk clerk, fed up with standing out there and feeling awkward, retreated inside, with the guts of the wishing machine still exposed. Chester just looked into the eyes of his son. There was a new, energetic spark in them.

"Okay," he said. "I'm ready."

"Alright. Well..."

He looked at the machine. The little mannequin was motionless. It had not been activated.

"Goddammit."

He glanced back for the man, but he had already fled inside. Patting his son on the back, Chester walked around him and examined the side of the machine that was open. Snakes of metal cables and switch boxes took up its innards. It looked way more complicated than he would have thought.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" He leaned in to peer deeper into the machine, knowing full and well that he was sticking his ass out for the whole boardwalk to see, his nuts hanging like an obscene, fleshy pair of fruit. Sure enough, he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey! Is that the kid who made the wish?"

It was a woman's voice. Chester looked over his shoulder and there was standing a blonde girl, remarkably pretty, and of course, remarkably nude, with very ripe, outwardly-pointing breasts, a small paunch, and no hair below to hide the line that separated her from Chester and Chase. And beside her was a friend, with black hair, chest equally endowed, and a shaggy bush below. She was a little chubby, but attractive. Neither of them was looking at Chester, though. They were looking down at his son, who, when Chester looked, had shrunk in on himself and pressed his hands firmly where he didn't want them to see. A fresh blush was coming up, too.

"Yeah, I saw him there earlier," the black-haired girl said. "Right before everybody got naked! Are you gonna wish it all away?" she asked Chase. He lowered his eyes, looked up from his brow, and in the tiniest of voices, said: "yeah..."

"That's what we're trying to do," Chester said, passing his eyes up the girl's fronts again to meet their eyes. "If I can get this damn machine working."

"Shame," the blonde one said.

"It's not like you can't just stay naked if you want to," her friend replied.

"Not if everything's back to normal!"

Chester shook his head and laughed, trying to distract himself from the attractiveness of the women. Please don't get aroused right now, like this, he told himself, and he looked back into the machine. Now where in the hell do I trip the card reader? Ah, this must be it.

On a little box that faced opposite the card reader on the other side, there was a metal tab. Chester reached in and tapped it with his finger.

"Yowch! Damn, that got me."

He retracted his hand and shook it from the light shock and the girls laughed, but the man behind the glass came to life.

"Imagine what you desire. Do not say it aloud, or it will vanish. Close your eyes..."

Chester stood and dusted off his hands and watched his son. The two girls crowded in, too. The poor kid; the pressure was intense. But he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and despite his nudity, raised his hands, leaving himself defenseless. It made Chester tense, but the girls did not react. There was nothing lewd about the scene in front of them. Rather, it was innocent. An innocent, nude boy, about to reverse a wish he had made in his own naivety.

Chester felt the flash of heat on his body again, and then, an unusual stuffiness, as his body heat became trapped under a layer of clothes. Chester looked down at himself and pinched a portion of his shirt between his fingers. Before him, Chase was as he had been before, in his jeans and t-shirt. But the girls, marveling at the magic, were still nude.

"Chase, you didn't do it right!"

The girls laughed, and Chase, opening his eyes, turned to the women and sheepishly smiled.

"Fine with me," the blonde one said, then to her friend: "Come on, let's go turn some heads."

They walked past, both of them flashing Chase a grin and reddening his blush. Chester turned his head and watched the two women—and their bountiful butts—depart quickly, and then he looked to the store, where the door opened and clothed citizens stepped out. Men and women. Everybody who had run into the store earlier now had their clothes again. He turned to the beach next, where nothing appeared to have changed, the people out there probably unaware of the change up on the boardwalk. A couple, man and woman, walked nude side-by-side down the sand, each's arm around the other, their nude forms, only different in subtle ways in the distance, somehow beautiful in motion. He then looked to his son.

"What..."

"I just wished that... everybody who doesn't want to be naked, doesn't have to be, but everybody who enjoys it, can stay that way."

Chester rocked back on his heels and regarded his son's remarkably mature wish.

"Wow... not bad, son."

Chase smiled and looked down at the planks.

"So I guess you weren't all that crazy about your little stint as a nudist, huh?"

Chase continued looking at the ground as he spoke.

"No... but it was kinda cool. It was just embarrassing."

Chester laughed and stepped forward to clap his son's shoulder.

"Well it's all over. How about some ice cream?"

The way Chase's eyes rose and lit up warmed Chester's heart. He patted his back pocket to make sure he wasn't making an empty promise, but his wallet was there, as it had been before.

"Amazing," he said aloud, just as another woman passed, also nude, and as she passed, and as Chester fought to keep his eyes from lowering, he recognized her face as the charming woman who had smiled at his son moments before he had made his first wish. The woman in the tank top and jeans, now with nothing on, and she flashed the same smile at his son, and Chase's eyes followed her with awe as she looked forward and continued marching down the boardwalk. Chester no longer made a move to cover his son's eyes. He didn't even think to. There was no point in it, now. And even though the woman was walking in the direction of the ice cream store, Chester put his hand on his son's shoulder and they began walking, trailing the naked girl, who grew smaller in the distance.

"Say, what do you think your mother thought during all of this?" Chester asked his son.

"She probably freaked out," Chase replied with a laugh, and Chester had to wonder, would she be naked or clothed when they got home?

*****

"Well folks, it appears that things have evened out."

"They certainly have, Phil."

Both Phil Blankensmith and Rachel Smith sat behind the news desk, and both of them were still nude. The studio head tried to stop them, but half his staff was nude as well.

"It appears that the young boy in Atlantic City made one final wish, and that one was the great equalizer," Rachel said, with her dark breasts clearly visible, no attempts to hide it anymore. Technicians in the other room argued about whether or not to use a video delay and crop or blur them out.

"Yes indeed, Rachel. It seems the final wish was that anybody who desires to remain nude can be so, but nobody will be forced to be nude."

"What a novel concept."

"Indeed. Though one has to ask: what about people who don't want to see nudity?"

"Well," Rachel replied. "I guess they can just social distance."

Phil laughed at this, and Rachel began laughing as well, and the image for those at home was either sympathetic or insulting: two naked news anchors having a jolly at the situation, and at some peoples’ prudishness, but at the end of the day, that was the world they had to live in now, for things were not going to change from there on out. In fact, the next news report concerned the destruction of the wish-granting machine that had apparently caused the whole mess, though some people wondered if the power came from the boy himself. Either way, it was a clothing-optional world from there on out...

An Innocent Game

It was certainly the most interesting call that Jocelyn, or "Josie Joy," as she went by in the call girl circuit, had gotten.

The guy's voice itself sounded confident, but his speech patterns betrayed unsureness, as with half the guys who called up a prostitute. But it was what he had requested that made the call interesting...

"What are you interested in, hun?" she asked him, like an old Southern belle, even though she herself was only twenty-three and not Southern at all. She wore glasses and wore the persona of a geek girl, which made her very popular with her clients. "Thirty minutes? Longer?"

"I, uh..." he stumbled on his words. "Do you do CIF?"

That was code for "cum in face." A facial. Not all call girls did it, but Jocelyn did. It was easy money to have a guy jack off on your face and then pay you a hundred dollars in five minutes.

"Sure, hon, I love it."

"Oh, actually, never mind..."

Geez, guy, make up your mind and your morals.

"You don't want to spend some time with me?"

She sat in her hotel room, twirling her hair in her finger and looking at the sketch she had made on her tablet, a simple character sketch of a cutesy cartoon girl in a superhero leotard, and wondered if she'd be finishing that in the next hour or handling a stranger's dick instead.

"I guess... I guess I just want some company, that's all," the guy on the other end of the line finally replied.

"So GFE then?" That was "girlfriend experience." Some guys just wanted company. Hang out with them, go to dinner, cuddle on the bed... the things that normal people in love did. She didn't mind that, either. Some guys just needed affection, and for some it was hard to come by in this world.

"Yeah, that sounds good... Hey, tell you what?"

Oh boy, she thought. Here comes the weird kink he wants to satisfy. She definitely had her limits.

"Yes?"

"What I really want... is for someone to come over and..."

Let me take a shit on them, Jocelyn thought. Or get pissed on.

"...Beat Super Mario Bros. with me."

Jocelyn blinked, staring at her little cutesy superhero girl character.

"You mean like the old Mario Bros.?"

"Super Mario Bros.," the guy corrected. "The old NES one. I have it here on my Switch. I've never beaten it before."

"You know what?" Jocelyn said. "I never have, either."

"You've played it?"

"Of course I've played it," she said. Her persona was a geek girl, but it was not a facade. Of course she'd played Super Mario Bros. Who hadn't?

"So you wanna come help me beat it?" the guy asked. "We can take turns. Do you do outcalls? I'm at my motel room."

"I am too, baby. Where are you at?"

"I'm at the Motel 6 off Pryor Street."

"Oh, I know that," Jocelyn said. "Pryor and Richard Pryor Street. I can be there, if you want me to come to you."

"Yeah, I do. I already have everything set up."

"Okay, sweetie. You know I charge by the hour, right?"

"Yeah, that's fine. I know a few tricks. We can beat this quick if we're good."

Jocelyn cut back her laugh. Was this really all she was going to do?

"Alright, sweetie, I'll text you when I'm there and then you give me the room number."

"Alright, thanks."

And then she ended the call, sighed, and shut off her tablet with her in-progress art piece. It was time to get to work.

*****

She didn't usually take outcalls. That's why she had paid for her hotel room for the night. But she made exceptions, and this one was so weird and interesting that she had to see what it was about. But, as always, she had to keep on her guard. One never knew what type of dangerous asshole one could come across in this type of work. She could at least get a feel for someone's character over the phone, and this guy just seemed in need of attention. Play Super Mario Bros... Okay, that would be easy money, she figured.

She wasn't sure what to expect as she pulled up to the Motel 6 and texted her client, who said his name was "Nick." In a few seconds, he replied back with his room number, and she was stepping out of her car and pulling her coat close around her neck against the chill night, feeling similar to how her clients probably felt when visiting her: on edge and unsure of what was to come. She had her pepper spray in her coat pocket, and her nerves were sharpened, as always, and she was ready. She went to the room that Nick had texted her and knocked.

What answered her was a very unassuming-looking young guy. Young in the scheme of things; older than her, but still in his extended youth, boyish in face, with chubby cheeks, and a lucky head of thick hair. Wire-framed glasses completed his square-shaped face, and his stocky body clothed in a tucked-in plaid shirt and jeans made him look like the quintessential dork. But he looked friendly enough, albeit shy.

"H-Hey," he said, marveling, no doubt, at Jocelyn’s actual appearance compared to her profile page, which she was proud enough of to feel that she satisfied expectations. "Come in."

"Hey," Jocelyn responded, and let herself into the overly-heated and stuffy motel room, the heater on the wall working overtime against the bitter cold outside. Inside was a well-kept motel room, hardly changed since its last changeover, a duffel bag in one corner, the sheets on the beds not even pulled back, and a little black game system sitting in front of the wide-screen television, with cables snaking from it to the back of the screen.

"Thanks for coming," Nick said. "Should I pay you now or..."

"You can just set the money on the end table," Jocelyn said, taking in the room and its faint stench of the man's odor, mixed with the clinical smell of the cleaning supplies. "So that's your Nintendo, huh?"

"Yeah," the man said, glancing at his game system hooked up to the motel TV. "I bring my Switch everywhere. I just got back from a convention up in Raleigh. That's why I'm in a motel. I'm on my way back home."

"Oh, where's home?" Jocelyn asked, letting her coat slide off as she tread around the edge of the bed, finding a spot to get comfortable and alluring. The coat went on one bed and she on the other, sitting on the end of the unused mattress as she watched Nick's stiff composure.

"F-lorida," he said. "It's a six-hour drive. I made it all myself."

"Which convention?" Jocelyn asked.

"M-Might of Magic and Mystery," Nick let out. "It's mostly a game convention."

"That's cool," Jocelyn said. "So you're a gamer, huh?"

"A little bit, I guess."

"Don't downplay it, I am too!" she said with a beaming face and her hand patting the firm mattress by her side. "So we're gonna play Mario, huh?"

"Y-yeah, if you want."

She watched him fish out a series of twenties from his jeans pocket and walk them over to the nightstand, and she just sat calmly, waiting for whatever he wanted to do, and feeling the need to get undressed soon, for that was what she was all about, and the heat in the room was a bit stifling.

"Well, if you wanna start..." Nick said, and he walked to the stand where the TV was set up and picked up the little controller for his Nintendo, pressing a button to bring up the home screen. He stood in front of the end of the bed as if too shy to sit down next to Jocelyn, and she reached out her hand and touched his back to tell him it was okay. His butt settled down on the mattress, and she massaged his shoulder. He was incredibly tense, and he ignored her and brought up the menu for the Nintendo Switch, navigating to the NES library and selecting Super Mario Bros, with its familiar art of the pixelated plumber jumping through an underground level. Nick handed the controller over.

"Did you want to start?" he asked. Jocelyn patted his hand and told him "no, you go ahead. I want to get comfortable first."

"O-oh okay," Nick said, and he started the game. Now that he was seated and seemingly comfortable with her next to him, Jocelyn leaned away and did what she usually did: she pulled off her blouse. Nick's posture stiffened as she got undressed next to him, while the game started and diminutive little Mario stood with the all-too-familiar music starting up, just as she dropped her blouse to the floor and unclipped her bra. Nick was navigating Mario through the first obstacles, jumping over a Goomba and hitting a block to get a power-up mushroom, just as the cups of Jocelyn's bra fell away and she was topless next to the man. It happened right as he powered up; tits flash, and Mario gets big. Quite the metaphor, Jocelyn thought, and she laughed quietly as she then stood to take off the rest.

She always liked getting naked, even for a client. It was a relieving thing. She felt instantly more comfortable, and in the context of a job, it cut the tension. Or ramped it up, in Nick's case, as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye when her jeans dropped, and her panties did, too, and her lightly-haired mound was free to breathe and was bathed in the humid motel air. There was an exciting aspect to getting naked right away, too, announcing, wordlessly, that all reservations were gone, that it was okay to embrace one's desires, but Nick's desire appeared to be to play Mario, as Jocelyn settled back down on the bed next to him and cuddled up her bare skin against his flannel shirt, causing him to almost careen into a Koopa, before he deftly jumped over it. He corrected himself and quickly finished the first, easy level, grabbing the flag and running into the castle, and as the screen for the next stage flashed, she massaged her hand on his crotch. He sucked in his breath and concentrated as he was dropped into the next level, the underground level, again with the familiar music. He quickly stomped a few Goombas and picked up a fire flower, as Jocelyn tried to urge up his own fire flower. She could feel him constricting in his pants, but he was laser-focused, plowing through the level like he was in a hurry, and eventually, Jocelyn just slid off the bed and settled her chin on his thigh and watched.

"So when do I take over... when you die? Or do we switch off at every level?" she asked.

"I figure when I die. I dunno. I'm pretty good at this game, but not that good. I'm gonna die at some point."

He said this as a naked girl was resting her head on his lap like an affectionate kitten, and his breath suddenly came shuddery as he navigated through the tricky rising and falling platforms of the level.

"Don't forget the trick," Jocelyn said, her head raising from his lap as a flash of a childhood memory came back.

"Of course," he said, jumping on a rising platform and then leaping over the whole level. "Who doesn't know about the warp zone?"

He ran all the way to the end to where the three pipes presented themselves, offering to warp to worlds two, three, or four.

"Which one?" Nick asked.

"We're trying to beat the game, right?" Jocelyn said, sitting all the way up and resting her back on the end of the bed. "Four, of course. And remember, I charge by the hour."

"Right," Nick said, and quickly ran to the farthest pipe, leading to world four. That was halfway through the game already. She had played it plenty of frustrating times in her youth, over at her cousin's house, whose parents were rich enough to have a Nintendo system. She rested her hands on her bare knees and recalled plunging through each world one at a time before her cousin found out about the warp secret. Back then, games were designed to keep you playing over and over, to get your money's worth, so they were always hard, but there were cheats for those who were clever or good enough.

"You know, for the real authentic experience, we should be playing on an old NES," she said.

As Nick quickly dodged a Spiny launched by the enemy in the cloud—Lakitu, it was called—he hazarded a quick glance down at his companion, who he suddenly seemed to remember was nude.

"Well, this is all I have, since I'm traveling."

"Authenticity, you know?" Jocelyn said, tracing the length of Nick's fly and almost making him die.

"Well, we'll be as authentic as we can. Which means no rewind function. Right?"

"Rewind function?" Jocelyn asked.

"Yeah, on the Switch, when you die, you can just rewind a few seconds back and try again. But that's not really beating the game."

"Oh, yes, let's not do that," Jocelyn said. "For the authentic experience."

"Right."

"Just remember I charge by the hour."

"Right."

Nick got through the moderately more challenging level and jumped on the flag while Jocelyn leaned back against the bed, feeling the dingy carpet on her butt, wondering when she would get to play, wondering what she was even doing here. But as long as she was making money, she thought. Nick entered the next underground level and made his way through it, and Jocelyn adjusted herself and watched, curious to see if he was going to take advantage of the next secret. Surprisingly, he didn't, charging past an area where he could have hit some invisible blocks, but Jocelyn said nothing, and Nick eventually found much peril, and made one wrong move, and Mario was sent careening off the screen.

"Shit," he said.

"My turn."

"Yeah."

Nick handed the controller to his naked companion, who straightened up against the bed, She found the sensations of holding a nostalgic plaything while being completely naked, the moist air on her skin, to be quite distinctive. Not even arousing, as much as she wanted to be by the situation. She just felt liberated, and limber, as if being naked would help her traverse the level that Nick had failed to do, but video games were all about finger dexterity. She took a breath and prepared to go through this challenging level, her first try, and already halfway through the game, but sitting there naked, in contrast to her companion, she looked up and made a suggestion

"You know... oh crap."

"What?"

"You're at a checkpoint. I can't get to the next warp area."

"It's at the end of the level like the last one."

She turned her head up to him and smiled knowingly, which of course caused him to sweat from the temples.

"There's another one. I could have saved you some money here."

"Well that's better for you, right?"

"True. But anyway..."

She swiftly hopped over a series of narrow platforms, avoiding a piranha plant and nearing the exit.

"....I was gonna say, you're allowed to get naked, too."

"Wow, uh...."

"It's just that it feels a little weird if it's just me. I kinda thought... you know."

"Yeah. I-I didn't know if I was ready for that yet."

He watched Jocelyn hop up on a rising platform and ride to the ledge where the next secret warp area was.

"Here we are, world five," she said. As if witnessing his potential time with her was quickly vanishing, Nick stood and obviously had come to a decision.

"Well I guess I will... it'll be like those Naked Smash tournies."

"Oh yeah, I always wanted to go to one,[i]" Jocelyn said, glancing up to see his pudgy and pale abdomen revealed under his shirt. Actually, he wasn't that unappealing. "Dad bod" definitely applied to him. His belly wasn't that big, it was just there, with a  peppering of hair. A little sun and he would be David Hasselhoff. Speaking of little, she was surprised he wasn't erect. She had felt him underneath his fly, but maybe his nervousness at being requested to get nude or his concentration on the game distracted his arousal, which now was thinned out and wobbling at eye level as he stepped out of his pant legs. Jocelyn jumped to avoid a rushing cartoon bullet.

"There," he said with an escaped breath, and he stood over her, as if unsure whether to sit or not, and his half-erect penis slightly climbed next to jumping Mario. Jocelyn didn't know if he was going to step closer and put his dick in her face or not. She wouldn't mind if he did. It was whatever he wanted, within reason, and as long as he was willing to pay for it. Finally he settled down next to her on the floor. The bare skin of their hips faintly touched, and his arousal was almost fully there, bobbing its way upward just as Jocelyn regained a power-up state with a magic mushroom. She hissed air out of her nostrils trying to suppress the laugh that came with the sound effect and his bobbing penis.

"They actually had a small little Naked Smash tournament where I was at," he said, trying to become comfortable. That got Jocelyn's attention right away, and she had to skid Mario to avoid running into an enemy.

"Really? No way!"

"Yeah. I was too shy to go."

"Aw, you should have! I hear they're real fun. No pressure there. it's more like a nudist thing than a kink thing."

"Yeah, I guess. But I also guess I'm a little self-conscious."

"Well you're certainly getting practice now, aren't you?" she joked, and nudged her naked shoulder against his, causing him to take his eyes off the screen where he was actually paying attention to how she was doing, only to be rocked by the bare-naked girl beside him. His penis finished its transformation and was twitching, rigid. It was almost as distracting for Jocelyn as her naked body was distracting for him. But she managed to finish the level, 5-1, and go onwards to the next one. They had two lives remaining. Nobody had collected a one-up yet.

"I don't know how're we're gonna make it all the way to the end on just two lives," Jocelyn commented as she opened up the level right away dodging Bullet Bills (that's what they were called, she remembered. They weren't in that funny movie with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo... just the cute little bombs... Bob-ombs, they were called. And those weren't even in this game).

"You should be collecting as many coins as we can," Nick said. "You'll get a one-up. And we'll definitely need them."

"Right."

"Like you'll wanna go down that pipe there," he instructed.

"Oh, right." She did as she was advised and went down the pipe and collected a pocketful of coins, but not enough to get a one-up yet. They were at seventy-eight. Then she immediately came out of the exit pipe and met a turtle throwing hammers. She lost her power-up, and in an attempt to rush past him before her invincibility frames ran out, she lost a life as well.

"Aw, shit."

"My turn," Nick said, sticking out his hand, placed just inches above her bare thighs but with no intention to lower and touch her, just an innocent gesture to pass the controller, and she did, her hand coming just inches above his bare penis, which she observed was beginning to cant to the side, like the leaning tower of Pisa from Mario's homeland. Her hand hesitated there after the controller was taken from her, but she returned it to her lap and observed. She didn't see Nick starting from the level's checkpoint, about to face off against the hammer-throwing enemies again, and she didn't see his success in skirting past one, even knocking it out. She didn't see that he had made progress until her hand was gently around his slackening erection, and only then did her eyes glance to the screen to see Mario falter, the plumber skidding to a halt as Jocelyn heard a sharp intake of breath from Nick, and then Mario began to advance, albeit slowly, and Nick grew in her palm, a little more quickly. She wondered how to charge for this. Should she announce that getting off manually would be extra, or would he get cold feet? She ended up saying: "If this is what you want..."

"It isn't. I mean it was, but... well, this is nice, anyway," he said as he took in a breath and tried to control his character. Jocelyn let him stiffen in her fingers’ embrace and tested his dick back and forth, as if she were using a joystick to control her own game. She decided not to bring up an upcharge. It didn't seem like the right moment, and Nick seemed like an honest guy. He would pay her whatever he could, even if it meant going to an ATM. She could sense it.

And it was nice; she should have been relieved that he wasn't interested in doing the nasty, that all he wanted to do was play a video game, not even get naked, not even have her get naked. That would have been easy money (or so it seemed; the game was becoming challenging, and the goal was to beat it, wasn't it?). But she was so used to clients wanting to get their rocks off, so she was going through the motions. And, though Nick wasn't conventionally attractive to her, there was something lazily enjoyable about just playing with a dick, feeling it alternate between worm-like flaccidity and monument—like rigidity, just a simple organ in her hand, a simple organ that connected all the nerves in its owner's body to her palm, and made him breathe deeper. An innocent thing that couldn't help when its tip grew moist with the preview of a bursting offense, a dick that couldn't control what it did. She was the one in control, and she quite liked it. It also presented a challenge for Nick. She said as much.

"This'll make it a little more tough, won't it?" she said, running her thumb over his head. Nick breathed out a "y-yeah," as he was about to confront another Hammer Bro. Jocelyn, meanwhile, was more interested in how she would affect his gameplay, and she leaned over and let her head lower, lower until she could feel the heat emanating off of his penis. She rarely did an uncovered blowjob, but she had a feeling, a knack, that Nick had never had a set of lips, oral or vaginal, touch his dick, so she let hers purse against the side of his crown in a sappy Disney-style kiss, with an audible smack and another hissing of breath from Nick, right as he ran into the enemy and lost a life.

"F-fucking Hammer Bro," he muttered, as Jocelyn's lips left himJosie

. His penis twitched on her retreat.

"Well, my turn," she said, casting a sly grin at him and waiting for him to hand the controller over, his eyes rising to the ceiling in a state of euphoria. He seemed to hardly believe that any of this could be real, and that was Jocelyn's—or Josie Joy's—job, afterall.

He paused and watched her hands grasping the controls, and Jocelyn realized maybe he was unsure about her touching them after having her hands on his dick, but he didn't say anything as her moist fingertips touched the buttons and left a faint, filmy trail as she pressed them and jammed her thumb to make Mario jump, dodge, and run from the checkpoint. She caught a second wind where Nick had faltered; she managed to get past the Hammer Bro unscathed, without needing a power-up, and was plowing through the rest of the level, running on a flow state, that magical state where everything worked, as if she were Neo in the Matrix. And she was still aware of her outer surroundings enough to register Nick beside her, stiff in posture both major and minor. She glanced over at him.

"You can touch me if you like," she said, and she watched his demeanor—above and below—stiffen even more. Then she jumped over a Bullet Bill. She had only one life remaining, and about ninety coins. She could get this. But there were still three more worlds to go through. As she concentrated, a warm palm engulfed her right breast, and she smiled. Nick breathed heavily as if he were already in the throws of love, and his palm closed on her tender flesh a little more firmly, causing Jocelyn to falter, and then Nick let out a sharp breath suddenly, a pointed exclamation, and she felt warmth on her thigh. The surprise was enough to let her careen headlong into a simple Goomba, and Mario fell off the screen in a game over.

"Oh man," she said, looking down at her lap, where a stripe of semen had rocketed across, the rest of it pooled around Nick's surrendering flag, still twitching and bubbling out its last at the tip.

"I-I'm sorry!"

"That's okay," Jocelyn said, setting down the controller and placing her hand on the mess, making Nick take another sharp intake of breath in his sensitivity as she milked out one last dollop. The game was over, anyway.

"We lost," she said. "Let me go get some tissues." And with that, she scrambled off the floor, her finger slick with him, and she walked over to the bathroom, aware suddenly of her complete nudity, feeling her naked butt shift with her steps and wondering if Nick was watching, but she had a feeling he was still in a weird aura. She searched the bathroom for a tissue dispenser and found it, cleaned the viscous discharge off her thighs, and returned with a handful of more tissues, to Nick's suddenly ashamed face.

"Here," she said, lowering her hands and enveloping his limpening dick in the fistful of tissues and issuing another hiss of air at the raw sensitivity of the contact. She loosened her grip, then squeezed the last bit out of his tip, and then dabbed his thighs, as she had hers. She was used to this part of the job.

"Well, it's your turn, I think," she said as she cleaned him up, but Nick shook his head in shame, and covered up his chest, humorously, as if he were a girl with boobs to cover up.

"Never mind, you might as well take your money and leave."

"No way," Jocelyn said defiantly, defiantly nude before him, leaning back on her knees with one hand balled up on her naked hip where her pubic hair stared back at him. "We came too far to give up. Let's try again. After all, I know the super-secret shortcut, remember? We can beat this thing in five minutes."

The look on Nick's face as he met her eyes was almost hopeful.

"Really?"

"I saw it on Youtube," she confirmed.

Nick managed to laugh. He let his arms fall from his chest and relax on his lap as Jocelyn held out the controller for him.

"Let's do it then," he said with newfound confidence. Jocelyn almost felt like cheering out, and she didn't know why; this was all really silly, wasn't it? She bit back her grin as she scooched back next to Nick on the floor at the end of the bed. Neither of them bothered to get dressed, and unless Nick turned off the heat anytime soon, Jocelyn was more comfortable naked. Nick started a new game.

"Okay, so tell me what to do when I get to the part you're talking about," he instructed.

"Will do."

And so they played, or rather, he played and she watched, as the first two levels were obviously easy by now for anybody that had already played the game, and Jocelyn felt transported back to her childhood, where she and her cousin would sit on the itchy centerpiece rug in front of the big tube TV with its elaborate faux wood grain dressings and watch a giant pixelated but somehow incredibly vibrant Mario rush across the screen. The only difference is that they weren't naked back then, but Jocelyn supposed there were some households where that would be a memory. Everybody handled nudity differently; she didn't become comfortable with it until she decided to be a sex worker, which was probably not the preferred way to become comfortable with one's body, but then again... why not? Suddenly another image popped into her head, one of other guys like Nick, and many, many girls like Jocelyn, all naked, or at least the girls, as they played video games like at the Naked Smash tournaments...

"Oh, so don't go any farther after you pass those rising platforms," she said, realizing that Nick had already warped to world four and was at the second stage.

"Gotcha."

"And make sure not to jump unless I say so."

"When you say so, I'll say 'how high?' right?"

Jocelyn laughed at his easy transfer into effortless humor. Was getting off all it took? Did popping the sexual pressure like a pimple remove all the awkwardness? That again got her mind stirring, and returning to that faint image that had sprung up, of bared skin and bared-teeth smiles, and she crossed her arms over her chest and felt the soft cradle of her breasts, but did not do so to hide them, more just to feel them. She liked feeling her skin suddenly and felt supremely comfortable in the moment, as she was certain Nick did as well, for he was staring straight ahead, and she caught him just in time.

"Ooh, right there!"

"Here?"

He had just jumped over a small gap and stood before a tall pipe not too far ahead, with two smashable blocks way high up, impossible to reach.

"Keep going to the right. Just a square."

"I got a square to spare."

Okay, Jocelyn thought. That joke was pretty fucking lame.

"Now jump."

Nick complied, and an invisible block made itself visible above his [Mario's] head.

"No fucking way."

"Yes way. Now take one more step forward and jump again."

Nick carefully jumped and materialized another hitherto-unseen block, one step lower than the other one, making a stair-step to the two smashable blocks up above.

"Now smash the first one and then creep forward and try to smash the next one," she instructed.

Nick hit the block and vine climbed up from it past the top of the stage.

"No way..."

"That'll take you to our next warp point."

"I never knew about this."

"I didn't either, until recently," Jocelyn said. "I saw some speedrunner do it."

Nick let Mario climb into the next area, full of mushroom platforms, and he navigated through them with caution, as if afraid of what new danger would jump out at him, but soon he was at the selection of warp points six, seven and eight, and naturally, he rushed to the highest one.

"Well this'll make it a piece of cake," he beamed. He sat up straight, He was energized and into it, and he seemed to forget he was naked, and that Jocelyn was naked beside her. His dick seemed to forget, too, now reduced to a normal, small, innocent state, and Jocelyn only glanced at it for a second, for the next world was indeed the last world: world eight.

"I've never been this far," Nick said as he entered the stage, as if he were a character in a movie in awe of a new land they've discovered, as if he were Neo first gazing eyes upon the machine city, or Little Foot finding the Great Valley. Jocelyn had to share in his awe; she really hadn't gotten that far, either. Not that there was much to the stage, visually. There were other stages that had snow and night features, but this one just looked like a normal stage, just like the very first stage. Deceptively so, as halfway through (or seemingly halfway through) Nick was running into some trouble.

"Goddamn, does this stage ever end?" he asked aloud as he hopped over a long row of blocks and jumped into an identical area, landing below them this time.

"Oh, start hitting them!"

They were rewarded with an invincibility star, which Nick grabbed and used to plow through the enemies.

"Now that's what I'm talking about."

It didn’t take long for his invincibility to run out, and he soon found himself landing on a piranha plant pipe, right as the carnivorous flower was coming up to chomp him.

"Ah shit."

"My turn," Jocelyn said with pep in her voice. She had to admit she was getting into this. They still had three lives. Nick handed her the controller and she shared a warm glance with him, just brief, hardly enough to make her pause, but just enough to make her thoughts linger, and again she thought of that image that had sprung up. But there was no time; the level presented itself.

"Aww bullshit, no checkpoint?"

Little did she know, this was one of the longest levels and one that notoriously had no midway point. Welcome to world eight, motherfucker. Jocelyn did the best she could, but she fell into a pit long before she caught up to where Nick had been. Now they were at two lives. Could they really do this? Nick seemed to dread taking back the controller. "Oh man," he said. "We're totally gonna die."

"Die trying."

And try he did. And he almost succeeded. But the first level of world eight was proving to be too challenging, and soon Jocelyn was being passed back the controller again, and she felt the dread, and the frustration, when she leaped mightily over a wide gap and missed the tiny piece of land that was no bigger than Mario himself.

"How in the fuck are you supposed to make that jump?" she yelled, slapping her thigh. Her breasts shook lightly, and she was somewhat conscious of it.

"I think I know how," Nick said, and she passed the controller. Not that it mattered. If he beat that stage, how could they possibly get through the next three with only one life?

One life.

Nick cruised through the stage as if he knew it by heart, which he practically did at this point, and after a minute, got to the part where Jocelyn died, made the leap of faith, and managed to touch the tiny piece of land and immediately bounce off it. Then he was on dry land again. He had made it. The only thing left was a risky series of jumps on a pyramid structure and across some gaps, where he most definitely could have died, but he made it and jumped into the end flagpole. Jocelyn threw up her fists and cheered. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, Nick glance over to her and smile warmly, glad that she was having fun, and his look lingered. As he played through 8-2, he seemed slightly more distracted, and Jocelyn's ass was sore from sitting on the floor. But she was too focused to move from her spot. She was determined that when she left that motel room, she would have the entire game under her proverbial belt. Her hopes got high when Nick bumped a nondescript block in a long row and unveiled a one-up mushroom, which he had to pace over a series of gaps and enemies to get. "Alright!" she shouted when he grabbed it. "Now we got two lives! We can do this!"

"Fuck yeah," Nick smiled.

There were near-pitfalls and moments of doubt, such as when Nick reached an impossible-looking jump: two tiny earthen platforms and a giant gap beyond, once again making Jocelyn wonder aloud "how the fuck are you supposed to make that?"

"You can run across the gaps," Nick said, and began a sprint across the two tiny platforms and then did a long jump to get to the other side. Jocelyn was impressed. She hoped that that was the last truly difficult part, and as much as she was itching to have the controller again, she didn't want them to lose their freshly-earned life.

"Make sure to get plenty of coins," she said.

But the level ahead proved to be too challenging. Nick was beset by Hammer Bros, on top of dodging Bullet Bills, and was cut down in short order. Jocelyn took the controls, knowing it was all on her. This was her chance to prove herself, to prove that she could really beat it and that her gamer girl persona wasn't just a facade. But a hammer was hard to dodge, and she quickly looked solemnly at a "Game Over" screen.

"Goddammit."

"We were so close," Nick said, shaking his head, his eyes still on the dark screen.

"Now I know why they have the rewind feature nowadays," she remarked.

"And why we stayed up late as kids trying to beat this shit."

"So you wanna go again?"

Again his eyes went to her, and they smiled.

"Yeah, until we beat it or give up."

"Awesome."

"Though..."

"Yeah?"

This was the longest time in the past twenty minutes that they had held eye contact, that they had been aware of each other's bare skin just a hair's width away.

"You still charge by the hour, don't you?"

Something about that comment soured the festivities. Since she was naked, Jocelyn had no phone or watch to check the time.

"I'll be honest, I almost forgot about that. But here..."

She pressed the home button on the Switch controller to go to the main screen and saw the time. It was eight fifty-five. It had been only thirty minutes.

"We'll see how it tallies up when we're done."

"F-fair enough."

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Let's order a fuckin’ pizza."

"R-really?"

"Yeah, I think this is gonna be an all-nighter, and I'm hungry."

"Alright, then," Nick said, and he stood, rising lumpy and nude before her, but no longer self-conscious about his body as he bent down to retrieve his phone from the pants he had once discarded.

"I have cash," Jocelyn said. "I can pay," knowing very well where that cash had come from that night.

"Oh, you don't have to."

"You're paying me tonight anyway," she said, glancing over at the twenties resting by the nightstand, a grim reminder that their time together was only contractual.

"Well, alright. ...What do you like on your pizza?"

They ended up ordering a feta and spinach pizza from the nearby local joint, no Domino's or Pizza Hut for them. Something about eating greasy pepperoni while naked seemed unappealing, like eating something fat and greasy and being able to witness its effect on the body immediately. Not that any pizza was "healthy," but feta and spinach it was. And while they waited, they moved to sitting on the end of the bed again and started a new game, with Nick at the helm, repeating his steps from earlier. Jocelyn sat by his side, their bodies suddenly a little closer, the skin of his hip tickling hers, and his body heat traveling to her as he sweated over ledges and enemies. In hardly more than a minute, he had traversed all the secret warp points, and they were at world eight again, and then the pizza arrived.

Nick paused the game with the little familiar four-note jingle when he heard the knock at the door, but it was Jocelyn who stood first, rushing to pick up her discarded coat on the other bed and take out her pocketbook. She fished out some bills, and with those in hand, she marched towards the door.

"What are you doi—"

Nick was horrified to watch as Jocelyn, without putting on her clothes, grasped the door handle and opened it. She didn't know exactly why she did it. She hadn't completely forgotten that she was naked. She supposed she was just having so much fun that she didn't want to bother putting clothes back on, and maybe, deep down, she wanted to give the delivery guy a little thrill. And a thrill he got when she opened the door and stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding out the money.

He was a young man, thin, handsome, more handsome than Nick, a little rugged-looking with stubble on his face, as well as shock. He almost dropped the pizza box.

"W-wow."

"Spinach and feta for Nick?" she asked, but the man had no words. His eyes traveled up and saw Nick sitting naked on the end of the bed, where he had doubled over to cover himself. Jocelyn smiled and looked back at the delivery man. She felt an invisible gaze on her exposed pubic hair, the outside air cool on her breasts, but his eyes only just then returned to her. It was the thrill she was feeling. Why didn't she feel this way getting naked in front of clients?

"Y-Yeah," the guy said. "Here." She took the box and exchanged it for the bills, their fingertips lightly touching, making the guy visibly tremble for a second. Jocelyn just thanked him, stepped back so he could get a full, wide view, and then shut the door.

She was laughing when she returned to the center of the room and cleared space on the nightstand to set down the pizza box, taking her bills that Nick had sat there and putting them on the other bed for the time being.

"I can't believe you did that," he said. He was turning on the bed to look towards her, and was still reflexively covering himself although the danger was gone.

"Just thought I'd have a little fun," Jocelyn said. "Let's eat."

Nick stood and came over, and it was obviously a little weird for him to be diving into a pizza while naked, with his penis almost hanging over the carton where it sat open on the nightstand, but he shrugged and took a piece, trailing strings of cheeses, and Jocelyn went to the bathroom and pulled out handfuls of paper towels to use as plates. They sat on the end of the bed, eating and wiping grease on their knees, staring at the paused game with Mario ready to confront world eight, and the sound of their chewing was drowned out by the heater on the wall. Jocelyn felt electrified to be sitting so close to Nick naked. Getting up and greeting the delivery guy had re-introduced the weird feeling of casual nakedness that she had gotten so used to when sitting still. Nick appeared the same way, though when he finished his first slice, he wiped his fingers on the paper towel in his lap, where his penis was growing erect again, and he picked up the controller and resumed the game while Jocelyn ate and watched.

She got back into it as Nick swiftly went through the world's first level without dying. They had a full four lives, with another coming from collecting enough coins. She reminded him to collect the one-up they had found on 8-2, and shouted "get that motherfucker!" when he was at the top of a stack of blocks and high enough to bop the Lakitu that threw down spiny enemies and made the level so hard. Soon they were on 8-3, and they still had plenty of lives. They were going to do this. For some reason, it filled Jocelyn with excited energy, and she stood to get another slice of pizza.

"Pause for a second," she said. "I don't want to screw you up," and she passed in front of him, between him and the TV, very close to him, her bare hips before his face, and she snagged another slice. When she plopped back down on the bed, he resumed, but halfway through, died to a Hammer Bro. Jocelyn sat aside her pizza on the bed (it was probably the least dirty thing that had been on it) and took the controls, her fingers slick on the buttons from the grease. She remembered that she had not washed her hands after cleaning up Nick, too, but she brushed that realization aside. As she played the level, she kept having that image again, of guys and girls playing video games together, with ample nudity. That and her slick fingers made her falter against the endless hammers thrown by the Hammer Bros, and she died, and passed the controller back, and so they spent the next few minutes, gradually progressing through the level. When Jocelyn watched, she thought distractedly of her mental image, and when it was her turn, she tried to focus, and then they were at the final level, the first actual Bowser castle that they had entered all night. The ominous music set the tone, and Jocelyn did her best, except when she got to a point where the game hinted that they should take a certain path or risk going back to the beginning of the level. It was a period of trial and error, and her stomach, her bare stomach, grumbled because she wanted more pizza. Nick was too involved to get up and get another piece for himself. Eventually Jocelyn fell to a sudden appearance of a fish enemy, and she handed the controller back. After the coins they collected and the lives they had lost, they were at four lives, one more than if they would have started the game fresh. They were going to do it. She didn't want to get up and get any more pizza now and distract Nick.

With bated breath, she watched as he got nearer and nearer to the end. The suspense was palpable, and their nudity somehow enhanced it, or at least it did for Jocelyn. She gripped her knees and watched as Nick faced the penultimate threat: another Hammer Bro, and fell to him. She took the controls. She went through the same trials that Nick did, and when she came to the Hammer Bro, she miraculously dodged his weapons and soon was face-to-face with Bowser, knowing that this was the final enemy, and with no power-ups, as little Mario, she could not afford one hit. She charged through a hammer barrage, jumped a fireball, jumped the monstrous turtle, and landed on the other side, dumping him into lava. They had done it. Holy shit, she thought. That was kind of a rush. Nick pumped a fist and cheered, his chubby body shaking, and Jocelyn watched as Bowser was dumped into the lava and Mario went over to the next screen to rescue Princess Toadstool. It was all so surreal; she had never seen this game-end screen when she was a kid.

"Thank you, Mario. Your quest is over. We present you a new quest."

"We did it," Nick finally said.

"We sure did."

Jocelyn set the little Switch controller down on her bare thighs. The Switch controller owned by Nick blessed with her skin. Would he be cherishing it later? He seemed to regret that their time now was at an end. The game went back to the main screen, and Nick was the one to stand. He went over to where the pizza sat and finally got himself another piece and glanced over at the money sitting on the other bed.

"So how much was that?" he asked, taking a bite, and standing there with his lesser self dangling, un-erect, unashamed. He seemed to feel quite normal. "We played for... an hour?"

Jocelyn hit the home screen button and confirmed the time. It was nine-thirty.

"About," she said. "That's not bad. I told you we could beat it quick."

"You said it would be five minutes," Nick replied, taking another bite of spinach and feta.

"We had some setbacks."

"It seemed longer when we were kids."

"It might have been. We weren't as good then."

She let the controller slide off of her thighs and fall onto the mattress, and she stood. Now they were both facing each other at full posture, aware of their bodies again, and an awkward energy filled the void.

"So I guess that's enough?" Nick said with a full mouth, glancing at the loose bills lying on the other bed.

"Let me see..."

Jocelyn walked over and picked up the loose wad of twenties, counted them, and then handed two back to Nick.

"Sixty is fine. I had fun."

He fumbled and took the two twenties with one free hand, the other holding his half-eaten slice, and he looked humbled and thankful. Jocelyn sighed, and then regarded her clothes strewn around the bed. It was time to get dressed.

"Maybe we should try this again sometime, maybe with Super Mario Bros. 2," she said as she picked up her shirt and put that on first, soon standing before Nick bottomless, while he remained naked as a baby.

"Well, if I'm ever back here. I'm going, home, remember?"

She found her pants and pulled them on.

"Well, you have my number. If you're ever back up here," she said, and as she pulled up her pants, she felt strange, felt her body underneath her clothes, and Nick's body was still exposed before her. It was rare that she was clothed and her client was naked. She shrugged it off and picked up her coat and put it on, feeling that her pocketbook was still inside.

"Well, I guess I'll be off. Thanks for calling me out. This was actually fun."

"S-sure," Nick said, setting down his remaining crust in the box and stepping forward to see Jocelyn out. With him naked, and her not, it was suddenly awkward. He had raised his hands as if to hug her, and she opened her arms and accepted him. His warm body pressed into hers, and she squeezed and smiled and felt a strange, unfamiliar warmth, and then they released, and Nick seemed humiliated to be standing before her as he was. She walked to the door and he didn't follow immediately. When she opened the door, Nick made sure to stand plenty to the side so that he would not be seen by anybody outside, while Jocelyn faced the night fearlessly, still imagining that she was naked.

"Until next time," she said. Nick nodded his head and she stepped out into the night, instantly feeling like she was stepping out of her youth and into adulthood, and then the door shut, and she had one last glimpse of Nick's wide-eyed face and his pudgy body.

*****

She drove back to her motel room, came in, and then checked her phone, and saw a dozen messages and voicemails, almost all of them requests for appointments that night, but she didn't feel like entertaining any of them. The night was still technically young, but she was spent, and she packed up her room, grabbing her artist's tablet and looking forlornly at the dark screen before stuffing it in her bag, and she left. When she got home thirty minutes later, she unpacked everything, stripped off her clothes, and took a shower, and when she got out, she took out her tablet, sat in her comfy chair, in front of which was her old NES that she had told Nick about, which was plugged into an old CRT television, and she booted her tablet up and minimized the superhero girl sketch she had been working on. Instead she started a new file, and began to sketch with her stylus which she unclipped from the side, and what she sketched was a wide room, with many TVs, and the outlines of heads that were seated in front of them, and the faint outline of breasts hovering nearby, of a venue where people could come play games in the company of naked girls. It wasn't just a sketch, maybe this could be a future she could help bring about, and as she sketched, she thought about how she might change her business model…

A Naked Winter

It was a lot of house. Miranda would have to get used to it, all by herself. It had been a lot of house for her late father, too. She didn't know how he had kept the place clean. He didn't, really. When Miranda had moved in to take care of her dad in his final days, she had cleaned and dusted a lot, and now it was just her, and it was a lot of house.

It was a two-story log cabin in the mountains, sixty miles from the city and where her friends and her former job were. When her dad's health was failing, she decided to quit her cushy ad-executive job and come up to take care of him. He was the only family she had left. She could afford to not work for a while. And, luckily, when he eventually did pass, her father left her enough money to keep surviving. The cabin was paid for, too, so she still had a free place to stay. Her father had been gone for six months now, and she was handling it well. Death was just a part of life. The only difficult thing now was dealing with the isolation.

The cabin was nestled in the hills. From the back deck, she could look out and see nothing but rows of pines, though out there were other houses. It wasn't exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it felt like it for her. The nearest neighbor was two hundred feet on the other side of the line of trees. Sometimes at night, she could see their lights glowing through them.

The one thing that living alone also made Miranda think of was perhaps starting her own Youtube channel. Her friends, Shawn and Jill, had suggested it to her, as she always had wanted to do video blogs on traveling and leisure. Maybe now she could make a channel about living in the mountains, and that could be her income to supplement the fortune that her father had left for her. She didn't expect to live in this cabin forever, but for the time being, it was a sweet ride. Her friends had promised to come visit soon. In the meantime, she would test out how it felt to go through her first winter up here.

The biggest adjustment to living in an expansive cabin that was hard to heat was accepting that at some point, she would have to put on clothes. Back at her apartment, Miranda had taken to a home dress code of complete nudity, especially after everybody started to work from home. She saved immensely on laundry, but had to scramble to find something to put on when Shawn and Jill would stop over, which would be at random hours, as they both worked in the film industry and did not work a normal schedule. Once Miranda had to go up north to take care of her father, her nude dress code had to be set aside, and it was torture, as it was summer when he had fallen ill, and every time Miranda got out of the shower there and immediately put something on, she felt herself sweating underneath. She went about her routine in the house feeling stuffy and wondering why the hell she needed to wear clothes when it was so warm, but that was the way normal society worked, and it was stupid. When it was just her alone in the cabin, the clothes came off, and it felt, for a moment, a tad disrespectful, as if her dad may be watching and frowning from above. But it was just skin, and there was nothing offensive about it, and Miranda soon relished being able to walk from room to room completely free and unburdened. It was a balm for the ache of loneliness, for she was not as restricted as she was in her apartment, where she couldn't step outside and had to be locked away behind closed doors if she wanted to be nude. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of with her body. She took care of herself and liked the way she looked, as she re-assessed in the tall mirror by the closet in the living room, where her full form almost startled her. She was not expecting a girl so free, and she had the freedom to walk by the grand, tall windows with the confidence that nobody could see, but almost wishing that she could be seen in a weird way. At least the sun saw her, unlike in her dungeon apartment. She was even able to step out onto the porch, itching that weird, dull desire to be seen, but also yearning for fresh air and a sense of freedom. She was hesitant at first, scared in a giggly, nervous way, for she knew there couldn't be any real danger, and after a while of psyching herself up, she did step outside fully nude one early fall day, and the feeling was exhilarating. She could see all around her, the stretch of the wilderness, the dense line of trees that she knew hid her neighbors, but also hid her. And the open sky above. She was in her own private little biosphere, where she could be naked anywhere she wanted, and she loved it. Right then, she thought she could stay up in this cabin for as long as she wanted.

But the cold soon came, and though winters weren't usually harsh in the area, it was still not pleasant to be without clothes once temperatures dropped below fifty, and word was that they would be getting a lot of snow this year. Miranda was told to prepare, and she did, getting plenty of nonperishables at the little Ingles which was not too far outside the quiet mountain community. Driving out into town felt like being in another world. She really had the illusion of isolation. It was hard to think that just outside her residence of winding gravel roads that there were paved highways and a Walmart and a half-dozen fast-food restaurants. She knew that if she didn't prepare, though, she could be stuck at the cabin with no way to get out, and that if she lost power, there would be no guarantee that the power company could restore it in quick time. So she stocked up on canned goods and prepared for what was to come, all the while remaining stubborn to keep off her clothes. The house took longer to heat because of the vaulted ceilings, and even with the temperature at a nice, stuffy seventy-five degrees, the living room still had a chill in its air, enough that she would sit on the couch and wrap a blanket around her shoulders while watching a show on the big-screen TV above the fireplace, the lights off and its blue glow painting all the wood-panel walls as she sunk into the cushions and got sucked into what was going on in the lives of Tyrian Lannister and Jon Snow. Snow. It would come soon. Winter was indeed coming...

Mid-November and Getting Caught

As it got colder, Miranda adapted the best she could. When traveling from room to room in the wide-open house, she donned a red-and-black plaid flannel robe, formerly her father's, and threw it off whenever she was stationary, only to sometimes pull it back over her shoulders when a chill chased up her spine. But still, sitting in a robe was preferable to sitting uncomfortably in jeans and a shirt. Her body was able to move more freely. Why did people consider jeans to be leisure clothing? She never understood that.

It got her mind to thinking about alternative types of outfits that could be worn in public that would maintain the comfort of being nude. Why didn't people walk around in togas during the summer? Or kimono? Women, she supposed, had it a little easier with summer dresses, but she wasn't much for dresses, and one wouldn't necessarily wear a dress in the winter. Soon would be the time where she would have to spend five minutes suiting up before going out to get groceries: Stockings, jeans, two layers of shirts, boots, and a puffy jacket. Hat and gloves. It was a process. But what about something that could be donned and taken off with ease? A robe such as she now wore? Maybe she could make money off of a patent for such an idea.

Before the bitter cold fully permeated the world, Miranda stepped out onto her deck one more time, with the robe merely hanging on her shoulders, open so she could experience both the thrill and the strange calm that came with exposing one's skin to nature. She walked up to the railing and leaned against it, letting her chest be displayed to the wooded backyard, the ground hard-crusted with frost, all trees—except for the row of pines—completely bare. There was something strangely melancholy about the late fall, with no snow as of yet, but an ever-present chill, and the nakedness of the trees that was not unlike her own nakedness. It was the thing of somber paintings of dreary landscapes, completed by the grey sky. But that scent of the evergreens filled her nostrils and told her that even in the barren months, life still flourished, and she filled her lungs with that scent and puffed out her chest, stood straight and proud with her robe hanging open so her body faced the trees, and then she heard the engine coming up. The Amazon delivery truck appeared before she could react, though she turned instinctively to the sound, letting the robe fall off one shoulder and making it impossible to quickly close it without making it obvious that she had been bared. The van froze as a person might, and she imagined the driver on the other side of the glass reacting to seeing her. She could barely make out his face through the reflection of the sky and the trees in the windshield. Like a deer in headlights, she stood there with her proverbial headlights looking back, and much more than that; the stark blackness of her pubic hair was probably a screaming beacon to this driver that she was nude. She closed her robe just as he opened his door. Maybe he didn't notice.

He was watching her steadily as he stepped out and reached in for the package. His skin was dark against his cold, grey surroundings, but his eyes were bright. He appeared to be fighting back a grin.

"Delivery for a Miranda?" he asked.

"Yep, that's me." She had been expecting her shipment of artesian soaps to come soon, she just didn't expect them to arrive so fast, or else she would have stepped out more modestly. Amazon Prime was no joke.

The man walked the package to the porch steps and Miranda came down halfway to accept it, keeping her robe closed with one hand, for she had not had time to tie it yet. Neither she nor the deliveryman spoke of how he had caught her, or if he had seen her, though when she reached for the package, it was a little heavy and unwieldy to balance on one hand, and she shot out her other to safely grasp it, leaving her robe to fall open slightly and grant a shadowy peek of her chest and stomach hidden underneath. Now she laughed and apologized.

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting company." When she stood with the package, the half-open robe settled back against her front so that there was only a wide window of bare breastbone and a descending, shadowy line of mystery all the way down, which the man's eyes followed before zipping back up and flashing a polite grin.

"That's alright. have a good day, ma’am." And with that, he turned away and marched back to his van, with a noticeable pep in his step, mirroring, a little, the rapid heartbeat where Miranda's robe opened. She turned with a blush to go back inside before the man backed his van out. Okay, six months of nakedness and one instance of getting caught, she thought. It was bound to happen...

*****

The incident embarrassed her enough so that she kept her robe on and tied as she walked through the house during her daily routine, but she soon thought about how silly that was, and she resumed her usual immodest behavior, letting the robe slide off when she settled in front of her desk or on the sofa, only to slide it up over her shoulders again to keep the chill away, but she never closed it. She would have to get used to clothes again for an extended period of time, however, when she went back down into the city to celebrate Thanksgiving with Shawn and Jill and their families. It was a grand little feast, and Miranda had not been around so many people in the past few years, and it was a tad overwhelming—but joyous—to meet new people, mostly Jill's family, all older, which made Miranda feel she should act proper. Adding to her stiff posture and permanent smile was the discomfort of her clothes on her body. The temperature in the house was high, and she sweating all the way to her palms, and couldn't wait to get back to her place and strip off and shower and never put anything back on. It was a long, cold drive up into the mountains before she could do that. Before she had left in the late afternoon, she and Jill and Shawn talked about them coming up to visit her. Or, rather, Shawn and Jill had talked about it. They offered. Miranda was touched by their insistence on keeping up with her, and she was thrilled to have some company up in the big cabin. She had plenty of room and she was sure it would be a lot of fun.

A Christmas Party

The snow came. it was a light dusting, but it was a winter wonderland nonetheless. Miranda stepped out onto the porch in her half-open robe as always to marvel at the peppery-white covering over the fallen leaves of her back lot. Hopefully it wouldn't scare Jill and Shawn away.

They had insisted on coming up on the day before Christmas Eve—Christmas Eve Eve—to give her company for the holiday, and she warned them of potentially getting bushwhacked up there, for the weather reports were now warning of a historical winter storm, the likes the area hadn't seen for a decade. They were most likely going to spend the night, though, considering the time they were planning on showing up. It was going to be a comfy winter night of drinking and board games and maybe a movie or two, and they were bringing another friend, a girl named Gina who Miranda didn't know very well. She was makeup department in some of the movie sets they had worked on, apparently, and she was kind of shy, and didn't have anywhere to go on Christmas, so the couple convinced her to tag along. Miranda was admittedly nervous to be having guests for the first time up in her cabin, and she dusted and vacuumed meticulously so that the place wouldn't feel neglected. She was also self-conscious about the smell of the human body that may have permeated in her home from her walking around bare-skinned; the essence of her oils, the permeating of her girl-farts (for girls did fart), all things that could inhabit the rooms, unhindered by the barrier of clothes. It made her paranoid, and she freshened up some rooms with a candle or a spritz of Febreeze and a small time period of an open window bringing in the harsh, chill winter air in hopes of making the cabin feel fresh. She admittedly exhausted herself, and took a shower after working up a sweat from all the cleaning, and when she got out, she waltzed around naked to allow her body to adjust before putting her clothes on, which would be the longest stretch of time she'd have to wear clothes if her friends were going to spend the night. She equally looked forward to their company but looked forward to when they would leave so that she could throw her clothes off again. It was a weird dichotomy.

Before she picked what to wear for the next possible twelve hours (sans sleeping), she decided to take one last step out onto her deck. She had some time; they probably wouldn't arrive until five o'clock or so, just as it got dark. It was after three now. She had spent so much time cleaning and then cleaning herself, that she was tuckered out, and stepping out into the harsh cold might refresh her. With her robe hanging open, and her feet inside some slippers, she stepped out, and the air was harsh on her exposed skin. The temperature was not quite freezing yet, but it was still below forty. She stepped up to the railing and braced her hands on it, peering out at the back lot almost completely covered in snow, but with dirt and leaves still showing through. It was a dirty-looking type of snow, and echoed the melancholy feelings of fall she got when looking at the bare trees and the grey sky. She would get a picturesque snow soon, though, she thought, if the doom-spreading weather reports were correct.

Her nipples stiffened into ice as she stood, and the familiar chill chased up her spine, so she closed her robe, though the cold air still nipped at her ankles and at the nape of her neck. She could feel the cold of the boards through her slippers, and she pulled the robe tight around her neck. Maybe her outdoor naked times were done for now. She was about to turn to go in when the sound of an engine came, and the crunch of tires on gravel, just as when the deliveryman had run up on her, and pulling around the bend came Shawn and Jill's red pickup truck, settling in next to Miranda's car. At least her robe was closed this time. She walked to the edge of the steps and watched as both doors of the truck opened and Shawn got out on one end, with the girl they'd talked about, Gina, stepping out of the passenger's side, followed by Jill.

"You guys are early," Miranda called. "I didn't have time to get dressed."

"Sorry, we wanted to make it up before the weather got really bad," Shawn said. "And we thought we'd surprise you."

"I'm surprised."

She held the opening of her robe tight against her chest as she watched Gina take hesitant steps forward and then stop to wait for her friends. She was a very pretty girl, with long, light-brown hair and chubby cheeks; an innocent face and her puffy coat made her seem child-like, like a kid who was sent out by their mother in thousands of layers to keep safe from the cold. Shawn and Jill, contrastingly, were dressed much lighter, Shawn in just jeans and a black t-shirt with an open coat over top, and Jill in jeans with the fur-trimmed boots with the puffy little balls dangling on the sides, and a blouse that had a plunging neckline, exposing her skin to the elements, despite her own coat, a thinner, black coat with the big buttons and a fabric belt, which also hung open. They reached the steps and Miranda moved aside to let them come up.

"Sorry you didn't have time to get dressed," Jill said. She was the first to climb up.

"That's okay, I should have gotten ready sooner."

"Hey, you didn't know, that's on us," Shawn said as he reached the top, and Gina brought up the rear. "Miranda, this is Gina. Gina, Miranda."

Miranda freed one of her hands from the hem of her robe and took Gina's hand.

"Nice to meet you," Miranda said. Gina nodded and was meek and silent.

"Anyway, let's all get in from the cold," Miranda said, and led them to the door.

"Yeah, especially you," Shawn replied. "It's cold as balls out here."

They were all quite impressed when Miranda led them inside. Shawn whistled, Jill panned her eyes everywhere in wide-eyed amazement, and Gina appeared intimidated by it all.

"Nice place," Shawn said.

"Kick back on the couch and I get can you guys some drinks. Oh, just take your shoes off."

"Right."

All three of them huddled near the door as they untied their boots and took off their coats, and they didn't have to ask where to hang them, because a coat rack sat right next to the door.

"What do you guys want to drink?" Miranda asked from the kitchen.

"Well we brought a bottle of wine," Jill replied, holding up a bottle wrapped in paper.

"Oh, nice!"

"But you can go get dressed first, if you want. We can pour for ourselves."

Miranda was on the cusp of saying "fuck it" and staying as she was, for she was more comfortable this way. And it wasn't like she was nude. Unless having their host recline in a robe was distracting enough.

"You know what, I'll just stay like this, unless it weirds you out," she said. "I'm more comfortable right now. Think of me as your Hugh Hefner. So y’all want wine?"

Shawn and Jill laughed, while Gina just looked with her quietly awed face.

"Wine it is. Gina?"

The girl came to and nodded her head. "Uh, yeah, sure..." By the way she talked, she didn't seem to be much of a drinker.

"Wine for everybody. We'll finish this bottle before dinner," Miranda said as she got some glasses from the cupboard, feeling her robe open slightly as she did, and she had to pull it closed and tug on the belt to tighten it when she set the glasses down. "Speaking of which, I'm no cook, but I have frozen pizzas we can make later."

"Nothing wrong with a pizza," Jill said. She stood by the kitchen while Shawn retreated to the couch, with Gina slowly following. Jill helped her carry the glasses over to the living room area.

"Just be careful, don't get too drunk and knock over your glass. I'll never get that out of the carpet."

"We won't trash your place, don't worry," Shawn said with a smile. "It is some place you got here."

"Thanks. Well, it's not like I earned it."

"Oh, you earned it plenty," Jill replied. They all settled down, Shawn and Jill on the couch, Miranda on one loveseat, and Gina, looking uncomfortable as Miranda crossed her legs and bared them up to the knee, sat in the chair opposite, with the massive wood coffee table between them all.

"Yeah I guess I have earned it," Miranda said. "Luckily, I've been taking it in stride. I'm doing good, I think."

"That's good," Jill said. "I worry about you sometimes."

"No, I'm good. It just gets lonely up here. But that's why I got you guys here now."

"Cheers to that."

"Cheers."

They all toasted. Gina looked from person to person, confused about what they were talking about but too afraid to ask, and Miranda suddenly felt bad for her. She wanted to open her mouth and explain, but there was no non-awkward to say "my dad died, this is his house."

"So what are you thinking of doing for work if you're gonna stay up here? Can you get re-hired at your own place and work from home?" Jill asked.

"I thought of that, but... I've been thinking more and more about the Youtube thing. I dunno. Seems I'm in the perfect situation for it."

"What do you think you'd Youtube about?"

"I don't know... living in the mountains, I guess? Living simply." She pulled the collar of her robe close in as she said this. By "simply," she meant "clothes-free," though that wasn't the best way to word it. "It'd be a hustle I'm sure, but I have cushion money."

"Well you know, Gina here kind of does the same thing," Jill said. "The hustle thing."

Gina shrunk in her chair at the mention of her name, but she maintained eye contact with everybody.

"Oh really?" Miranda said. "I thought you did makeup?"

"I do, but I also sell stuff on Etsy." Her voice was paper thin, and just as fragile, barely floating across the space between them, but her eyes found Miranda's, and there was a directness to them that showed that this was part of herself that she was eager to share. "My money's sort of split between film work and that."

"Nice, what do you sell?"

"Stickers and stuff. I do little brush designs."

"Nice. Well maybe you can give me pointers down the line if I do this thing."

"Youtube is a different ballgame than Etsy," Shawn cut in.

"Yeah, but there are probably similarities," Jill added, with a nudge of her elbow. Shawn realigned his talking points. "Living simply, huh? You mean like back to nature and all that? Are you turning nature girl on us?"

"Well..." the smile was forming and Miranda bit it back as she decided whether she wanted to be as frank as to disclose how she had been living and why she was in just a robe when they had come up. "Maybe. Maybe that whole... what's it called? Naturist?"

"Oh yeah, naturist," Jill piped up. "Is that why you're only in a robe?"

Miranda's smile couldn't be contained. The cat was out of the bag.

"I'll be honest: yeah. In the past six months, I can probably count on one hand how many times I've put clothes on."

She could see Gina shifting in her chair as if the sudden topic made her uncomfortable, but Miranda was distracted by the piqued interest of Jill and Shawn, the latter of who leaned forward on his knees.

"But even in this cold?" Jill asked.

"It hasn't been all that bad yet," Miranda said. "And as you can probably tell, I do keep it pretty warm in here."

"Yeah, it is kind of stuffy," Shawn said. "If I may say so. not complaining."

Miranda waved a hand.

"That's alright. yeah, I keep the temperature high, because, well... yeah. But I can turn it down for you!"

Now Jill waved a hand.

"No, it's alright, you don't have to. It's your house. You're probably chilly in that robe, anyway."

"Actually, it's a little stuffy..." She wasn't lying. Even just the robe felt like too much, so long had she gone without wearing much. The robe had only been her companion when moving about, or when a chill crept up to the couch when she sat. It was on and off of her constantly.

"No kidding," Shawn said, pulling at his collar.

"I'll turn it down," Miranda said, and made to stand, setting her wine glass down on the coffee table. Jill put out her hand.

"No, don't. You don't have to."

"I said I was a little warm under this," Miranda said. "It'll be good for everybody." And as she stood, the robe fell open a bit, flashing to Jill, just briefly, her wide cleavage, not that that should be shocking between just them girls, and as good friends as they were. Shawn saw, though, and he failed at pretending that he didn't see. Miranda just smiled it off and walked between the coffee table and Gina's seat, sliding by, wondering how more and more awkward that girl was feeling, until she got to the thermostat at the base of the stairs. There she stood, looking at the numbers that read seventy-five, and her robe was sliding off her shoulders a little bit. She almost thought of throwing it all off and using Jill's words against her: it was her house. But she hoisted the garment up and tapped the button on the thermostat until it was below seventy, then she turned and came back. She might as well have just turned the heat off, she thought. It would take a while for the place to cool down, and as she settled back into the chair, pulling pieces of the robe over her legs and closing the neckline again, she was honestly feeling as stuffy as she had said she was. It was throw-the-robe-off time, though she could not do that in front of friends. Topics thankfully moved to other things, like the coming storm, and if it would snow heavily up here, before Shawn kicked the elephant in the room with: "so you really like hanging around here naked, huh? Seems kind of peaceful."

Jill elbowed him again.

"What? She already said it."

Miranda just laughed.

"Yes, I do. It's honestly the only way I feel relaxed now."

"Really?" Jill asked, as if it were something she'd never considered. "That sounds nice..."

"It is. It's more comfortable than sitting around in clothes. Out here, I don't have to worry."

"That heat bill, though," Shawn added.

"I can afford it. It's actually not that bad. Well, it's more than my apartment, but still..."

"Well, if I could do it, I would," Jill said.

"What's stopping you? You live with him," she nodded toward Shawn. "Not some stranger."

Jill contemplated this. Even Gina, sitting quietly in her corner, seemed to turn the possibility over in her mind. Miranda didn't know what her living situation was, but she seemed like a girl who lived alone.

"I guess it would be weird, though," Jill concluded.

"I'd get used to it," Shawn said with a grin, and Jill playfully pushed him.

"It's weird for me to wear clothes anymore," Miranda went on. "I'm kind of glad you guys caught me in my robe. It's more comfortable than whatever I was gonna put on. I'll be honest, part of me wants to just throw this off right now."

Jill surprised her by what she said next.

"Well do it. It's your house, afterall."

Miranda was stunned; sure, it was something she had tossed over in her mind, but only as a pipe dream, not as something she would actually do. But now, given the invitation, she was petrified at the thought of the robe sliding off and revealing herself to her friends as she was most comfortable.

"Aw, no, I couldn't... that would be a little weird, I guess." She imagined being the center of attention, the only nude person in the room, and the thought actually thrilled her.

"I'll do it if you do," Jill added. Even Shawn shot her a surprised look. Gina, in her lone chair, squirmed.

"Really?" both Miranda and Shawn asked in unison.

"Yeah, fuck it. It is warm in here... maybe I'll test this 'naturism' thing out to practice at home." She cast her glance over at her boyfriend. "What do you say, babe?"

Shawn, for once, was at a loss for words. Jill took his shocked silence as an affirmation, and she stood. Miranda marveled as her friend quite unceremoniously peeled off her blouse, revealing her pale, flat belly, and the garment went up over her shoulders, tossing her dark hair, and she stood there in her black bra. Miranda wanted to tell her to stop, that she didn't have to, but there was no stopping her. Miranda had set these events into motion, and as Jill reached behind herself to unclip her bra, amidst the shocked gazes of Shawn and Gina, Miranda stood up before those cups could fall off of her friends' breasts.

She meant to step forward and put a stop to things. It was a societal instinct; one shouldn't be nude unless they intended to get down and dirty. But Miranda's body operated on different terms, and her arms moved without her command and threw her robe off of her shoulders dramatically. It felt like a great weight and she was nude in a flash, a flash of suddenly cool air on her skin, and the eyes of all her friends. She thought she heard a surprised gasp, but it may have been her own, at her own bold actions. Now there was no hiding; she was presented to her friends as she truly was, and right then, the cups of Jill's bra fell away and what was not supposed to be seen between friends was bared to the room in their full, weighty glory, the bumps around her areola gathering around very prominent, aroused nipples. Perhaps this was arousing to her, and that's why she did it. that's not why Miranda did it, but the result was all the same, and Jill laughed softly and leaned forward to unbutton her jeans.

Shawn was in shock, and his own instinct pulled his face into a look of jealousy, though there was nobody to be jealous of, unless he suspected that either Miranda or Gina had pent-up desires for his girlfriend. None of them appeared to, though Gina looked on at Jill stripping as if she were a captivating sight. Perhaps there was something captivating about seeing somebody disrobe so casually, as if it were no different than taking off a coat.

"B-babe..." Shawn stuttered.

"Might as well," Jill replied, taking down her jeans, stepping out of them, and standing for a suspended moment in her black panties, until without fanfare, she stripped them down swiftly, replacing the sight of them with the sight of her square-trimmed black pubic hair, and she stepped out of her panties and stood, then began to sit, but had hesitation.

"I'll get some towels," Miranda announced. "That's what naturists do, right? sit on towels?"

"Right," Jill said, standing there in concert with her naked friend, mystifying all. Her hands traveled instinctively to her bush, for that was something that was normally expected to be covered, and not seen by all, but then they drifted away and her hands went to her back, where she folded them. Miranda turned away from the unexpected sight in the middle of her living room and ran to the stairs to go up and grab some bath towels from the linen closet. Her heart was beating furiously through her naked chest, and she couldn't ignore the childish excitement she had now. Now her friends would be enjoying the cabin as she often did. Now her world was part of theirs. She felt a great relief, but also a tingling anticipation of what was to come. It was a strange pair of feelings, to enjoy the simplicity of nudity with friends but be egged on by the expectations of what nudity meant to society.

When she got back downstairs with an armful of towels, her expectations were exceeded, as Shawn now stood, bare-chested, and was leaning down to pull down his own jeans, with his butt facing the increasingly agitated but now aroused Gina.

He stood up to full height in his tighty whities when he saw Miranda.

"When in Rome, I guess. Unless you object."

Miranda looked at him and let her grin come out.

"No, go ahead, this is for everyone," she said, and without any hesitation, Shawn stripped down his undies, and male was unleashed next to female, and Gina was scandalized in her seat, gazing at bare male ass cheeks in her face as he bent over, and probably imagining what was in front, as he stood, and his loose part hung freely before Jill and Miranda. Miranda came over with the towels, heart fluttering when she stood so close to Shawn.

When Jill took two towels from her, she glanced over at Gina.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, I didn't think to ask if you were comfortable with this."

All eyes of the naked people now focused on the sole clothed person in the room. Her hands were folded in her lap, her arms squeezed together as if she were nude and trying to hide her body.

"It's okay," she said. "It doesn't bother me. It was just... unexpected."

"Well you don't have to follow in our footsteps, Gina," Miranda said. "Stupid me was just thinking out loud."

"It's your house, afterall."

Jill began spreading out the towels on the couch and Shawn, quite brazen and bold in his nudeness, stood tall near Gina, his hands on his hips, his hips pivoting so that she could peek at his penis in side-view, descending out of its nest of puffy pubic hair. He wasn't consciously showing off, though (or maybe he was at first), because his eyes traveled to the windows by the front door and he let out an exclamation.

"Oh look! Snow!"

Jill stood from where she was leaning over the couch, her full breasts hanging forward, and all eyes looked to the window, where in the graying evening light, fat white flakes could be made out.

"Oh, wow!"

Everybody rushed to the front. Everybody who was naked, anyway, in a big naked gaggle. Skin brushed against skin as they peered out and saw that the limbs of the evergreens were weighted with snow already. The back lot, over the edge of the railing, was pure white.

"I knew I'd get my Christmas snow," Miranda said with a wide smile. "And right when you guys arrived. Isn't that awesome?"

"It's a Christmas miracle," Jill said.

"Think we'll be able to get out?" Shawn asked.

"We'll check it in the morning," Miranda said. "It'll probably be alright."

She looked back towards the living room and saw that Gina was still sitting there, hands folded in her lap, looking at the group stealingly, but otherwise focusing more on her knees. Miranda motioned with her head, and Gina looked up.

"Come see this," she said. She didn't want to urge the girl into a situation she wasn't comfortable in, but she didn't want her to feel left out, either. To her surprise, Gina actually stood up, and slowly made her way over. Her friends looked back, smiled, and then went back to the window. Gina came up and stood right behind Jill, and Miranda stepped aside so she could get in and see. Shoulder-to-shoulder with her naked friend, her eyes went outside, and her face lit up with the magic of the scene. Then Jill moved away from the window and it was just Gina and Shawn, and Shawn closed the gap only to get a better look, causing Gina to briefly become aware of him.

"It's way prettier up here than it is in the city," Jill told Miranda as Miranda watched their two friends. She was a little on edge, unintentionally putting the shy, clothed girl next to a  brash, naked man, but they co-inhabited the window peacefully, one naked butt and one clothed in jeans. Miranda didn't mean to look, but her eyes crept up Shawn’s thigh to where his penis could be glimpsed just barely, and she wasn't quite sure: was it rising? He was getting aroused just being exposed next to the shy girl, she was sure of it, and she began thinking of some way to diffuse the situation, but Shawn presented it instead.

"It sure would be fun to run out in it," he said, still looking out the window. A little light bulb went up above Miranda's head.

"Well, why don't we?"

Shawn looked away from the window in surprise.

"No way, won't we be seen?"

He had turned his body slightly, and Miranda could see that he was, partially, forty-five degrees worth, erect, and passed inches by Gina's jeans.

"Who's gonna see us?" Miranda said. "Have you looked at my backyard? I step out on my deck naked all the time."

"No way, really?"

"Yep," she said with a beaming face and beaming body. Her whole being was emanating energy now. Jill, too, who somehow seemed to stand taller, for she was; she was stretching on the balls of her feet in her excitement towards this idea.

"And you don't get caught?" Shawn asked.

"Nope. Well there was one time with the Amazon driver..."

They all laughed, and Miranda looked to the door. Gina had turned around and stood awkwardly with the three naked people, but she didn't move.

"Let's do it," Miranda said. "I dare y'all."

Shawn was shaking his head with a laugh, and Jill's smile grew. Then she made for the door.

"Last one in's a rotten egg!" she cried. Laughter filled the kitchen, as well as a blast of cold air as Jill opened the door and stepped outside, instantly hopping on her feet and hugging herself. Gina was helpless and turned and turned as Miranda rushed past her and Shawn finally brought up the rear, and they all three were on the deck.

"Those boards are cold!" Jill exclaimed.

"Not as cold as the snow! Let's go, quick!"

Miranda led the pack in the dim light of the remaining evening. She looked back and saw Gina stepping out, closing the door behind her. Miranda turned away and carefully went down the steps, and then bounded around the corner and into the downward slope of her yard, her feet sinking into the snow. it wasn't even that bad; probably because her feet were already numb from the shock. And so, with enough light for each of them to see the others, they frolicked in the snow, half-white figures in the pure white, while Gina stood at the railing. The snow came up almost to their ankles, and Jill and Shawn were laughing and hollering. To the neighbors on the other side of the trees, it probably sounded like any group of friends having fun in the snow. Little did they know, it was without a stitch of clothing.

Miranda threw herself down and lay on her back to make a snow angel, and Jill and Shawn mimicked her, and there they lay, three people in a row, three pale bodies, three dark blinks of hair, none too dissimilar except for Shawn's obvious difference, which stuck up but was now stubby, shrunken from the cold. Miranda looked up at Gina gazing down at them. Then they got up and rushed to the steps. They laughed like children as they got to the bottom, climbing with numb legs.

Gina then turned for the door. Miranda's heart leaped into her throat for a moment, expecting the doorknob not to turn, for Gina to have unwittingly locked them out, but it opened and she entered. Her fear was forgotten as Jill and Shawn shook off the chill and hugged themselves. By the time they got to the door, Gina had reappeared and brought Miranda her robe.

"Aw, thanks," she said, and took it and gladly put it on.

"Let's get in, I'm freezing now!" Shawn cried, and Gina stepped aside to let the nude procession enter. They were still dancing on their feet when the cold was closed out.

"That was some fun, huh?" Miranda said. "Good idea, Shawn."

"Yeah, I may regret it," he said, as he rubbed his arms and Jill laughed and playfully pushed him. Her arms had left her chest and she stood bold and bare, her skin a rosy red, her breasts now characterized by suddenly even more-engorged nipples.

"You guys can go upstairs and use the shower if you want," Miranda said. "To warm up. There are more towels up there."

"Too bad you don’t have a hottub," Shawn said, and was already making for the stairs. Jill laughed and followed him. Miranda followed behind them and went to adjust the thermostat back up to seventy-five. When she turned around, Gina was standing near the couches, and it was just the two of them in the living room.

"Thanks for being a sport," Miranda told her. "I know that was probably weird."

"It's fine," Gina said, avoiding looking at Miranda even though she was clothed in her robe now. It felt more comfortable, for the moment, to stand before her and not be on display, and under the robe, she still had the comfort of being nude. But Gina still had some adjusting to do. Miranda decided to change the topic to make her more comfortable, and to get some intel on the side-hustle business.

"So how is the Etsy game? Is it a lot of work?"

Gina looked up as if surprised, and let the words come out.

"At first it is, to get set up, but then it's kind of easy."

"Do you sell a lot?" Miranda took a seat as she talked, and grabbed her neglected wine. She took a sip and let it warm her down in her chest.

"Sometimes. Sometimes not. That kind of sucks when there's a long stretch of time before you sell stuff again."

"I see. That always made me nervous."

"You're thinking about selling on Etsy?"

"Oh, no, I'm just wondering how much work I'd have to put into it working on my own."

"Well, with anything, I think you have to put in a lot."

"Yeah... Have a seat. You don't have to stay standing."

Gina nodded and went back to her spot on the opposite loveseat. Miranda sipped her wine, feeling her robe fall open a little bit as she got warmed up underneath. She went the next few minutes talking about the side-hustle life with Gina and asking her about her work in the film industry, if she was going to continue doing that, and she learned more and more about her, and it was all a little more comfortable when Gina wasn't presented with the pressure of a naked conversationalist. At least, until Jill and Shawn reappeared down the stairs, freshly showered and still nude.

"Whew! That feels better!" Shawn said. "It's actually really warm in here."

"I turned the heat back up," Miranda said. "Plus, you're gonna be real warm since you got out of the shower. That's why I never put anything on after I get out."

"Good call..."

He and Jill came back to their spots on the couch and Gina tensed up again. "So what do you wanna do? I don't think anything will beat that."

Miranda was worried he was hinting at something extra-curricular, something expected with the absence of clothes, something that his previous arousal had hinted to. But he was not aroused now, and his voice was innocent, and Miranda realized she was worried about all the possible ways inviting social nudity to her friends could go wrong, from a horny male taking it the wrong way, to getting locked out of her house in the cold, but none of those things had happened. The belt of her robe slipped and her robe fell open a little bit.

"Well, how about that pizza?"

"Oh yeah! I am hungry."

And so Miranda got up, let her robe slip off, and prepared things in the kitchen. They spent the next half-hour just chatting, all except one nude, and when the pizza was ready, they ate at the coffee table, bare arms and breasts hovering over the food they ate, all communing nude, and Gina ate her slices quietly and didn't seem to be (or didn't allow herself to be) bothered by eating with others who were nude. And then they decided to watch a movie. Miranda lowered the lights in the living room, and they put on something none of them had seen yet, and in the darkness of the living room, they all sat. Miranda brought over some blankets for Jill and Shawn, which they cuddled up under, and she sat and pulled her robe over her shoulders, and Gina sat sideways in her chair and they all watched, commenting here and there, as normal friends enjoying a movie. It was a comfy time, and Miranda was glad for the company, and glad to feel her skin sliding free under the robe. One notable thing happened during the movie: Miranda heard some rustling and was surprised and delighted to see that Gina was pulling off her shirt. Trying not to make a spectacle of herself, it came over her head and she lay it in her lap, and covertly she unfastened her bra and swept it off her chest, and she sat there topless, as if testing out what it felt like to be nude, and then her hips lifted as she unbuttoned her jeans. She must have gotten too hot in the seventy-five-degree room and under all her clothes. Miranda almost got up to go get another towel, but she did not want to stop the movie and didn't want to focus attention on Gina, and she smiled when she saw that she lifted her butt and slid her jeans underneath her to put a barrier between the chair and her. Then her attention returned to the movie. At some point, three-quarters through, Jill threw Gina a blanket, and she smiled, the first true smile Miranda had seen from her all night, and then they all sat and enjoyed the show. Then they all went to bed, presumably nude. Jill and Shawn got the guest bedroom she had set up, and Gina was relegated to the couch. She was already up and dressed when Miranda came down in the morning, in her robe to keep away the chill. She had already made coffee, and said she would have made breakfast if she knew where everything was. It seemed to be her way of saying "thank you" for a comfortable and eye-opening night. Then Jill and Shawn came down, still nude, only because their clothes had been left in the living room. They got dressed eventually, and Miranda decided to make enough scrambled eggs and toast for all of them, while they discussed how the roads would be. A quick glance at the news showed that the town outside her development was fine and passable. "The roads in here will probably already start melting by the time you're ready to leave," she had told them. They ate breakfast, and then Jill and Shawn gave Miranda a small gift that they had forgotten to give her the night before. It was a stained glass bird to hang in her window, a decoration they thought she'd like for her cabin. It was actually a prop from a big movie they had worked on. Miranda was delighted and touched.

After that, they sat around and talked some more, this time in clothes (even Miranda, staying in her robe), and it seemed like the fantastical night from before was just a dream, and eventually, Miranda's guests were off, and she stood, as always, on her deck, in her robe, waving goodbye as their car backed out carefully and crunched on the snow up the road. And then she was alone in the giant cabin again.

Post-Holiday, the Big Storm, a Snowy Adventure

For a brief period, there was a void in Miranda's heart that was left by the departure of her friends. She was reminded how alone and isolated she was, most felt during New Year's, when she stepped out to hear fireworks going off all around, people having fun together, with her all by herself. It was remarkably warm out despite the Christmas snow she had been given (all now mostly melted), so she slid off her robe and draped it on the railing, and stood nude in the dark, only to be lit up in orange and purple when the sparkling explosions filled the sky. She could hear voices of people in the near-distance, and thought she saw hints of movement in the darkness, through the trees, but those hints may have been her imagination. She wondered, perhaps, if anybody, either on the other side of the trees, or from the windows of the twinkling lights she could make out faintly on the surrounding hills, could see her pale-white figure, backlit by the lights from inside her house, and revealed with each burst of fireworks. She thought about stepping out into her back lot, as she and her friends had done, and just standing in the middle of the dark, nude, looking up at the sky, but strangely, she didn't feel like making the effort. She was in fact quite tired, as she'd been practicing good bedtimes during her time up here, and as it was now past midnight, she decided to turn in for now.

*****

She fell back into routine soon after, getting used to her solitude again, and filling her time with thinking up what she could do for her Youtube channel idea. She was soon distracted, however, by local panic over a big winter storm coming. The snow during Christmas had only been a preview, the warmth afterwards a brief reprieve. The real winter was coming, and Miranda had to get ready.

She again got to thinking about an easier winter attire as she laced up her boots, and these thoughts continued to travel through her mind as she got behind the wheel of her car and felt the pinch of her jeans on her thighs and in her crotch, feeling wholly uncomfortable, and the thoughts stayed with her as she walked through the grocery store, not used to wearing pants and keeping them hoisted up every time she felt them slipping down her waist.

She stocked up on plenty of non-perishables: canned chili, tuna and crackers, Vienna sausages. She wasn't used to getting a full supply of groceries when in her past life she could always walk down to the deli or cafe for lunch, so she just grabbed what looked good, and what didn't need refrigerating. But of course she grabbed plenty of frozen dinners and an assortment of delicious-looking pre-made deli items, to stay comfy in the snow if she still had power. Oooh, I should get some hot chocolate mix, she thought, and she got that. And two hours later, she was lugging everything up the steps to her porch, realizing why people got their groceries delivered nowadays. It was a big procedure to get everything unpacked and put away, but the first thing she did before doing all that was strip off every piece of clothing that she had put on before going out.

*****

The big storm came. She looked out one morning to see way more snow than had surprised her and her friends. It was a literal winter wonderland for sure. A thick coating even lined the railing on the porch. She stepped out in her robe to observe it all, and the air was dry and cool, but not entirely chilling. It definitely didn't look like anything she wanted to drive in though, and she was glad that she had stocked up.

She never did lose power. She was snowed in, but she had all the creature comforts, including hot chocolate, and heat, so she was comfortably naked and at peace as she sat in her upstairs office and jotted down notes and ideas on her laptop. And that's when the idea hit her again: I really should do a Youtube series about living in the nude.

Surely Youtube wouldn't allow it, but out of curiosity, Miranda searched "nudism" and found several channels that already used her ideas, many with the hosts framed from the shoulders up and bypassing the need for censorship, others showing clips from nudist travel destinations with blurred blobs over peoples' bodies, and yet others, even more surprising, with full nudity, a pretty female host stripping off her clothes and trying out a new beach. It was all allowed under the guise of art, and it got Miranda's wheels turning, though she didn't really think she'd want to so explicitly reveal herself on camera like that...

*****

The big snowstorm and the big scare both came and went, and the snow melted off the roads, but the rest of it remained. Miranda was truly living in winter now, and with her food supply almost out, she had to go do another grocery run. She had not thought too much about her Youtube ideas past her sudden surprise at seeing how much nudist content was on the platform, and instead her wandering mind had gone to winter attire, as she had been pondering on her last trip out. In the days before the storm ceased to become a concern, she had taken up a new hobby: knitting. Inspired by her father's robe, which was her constant article of clothing, she knitted a replica, only thicker, warmer, better. And not plaid. She was not skilled enough to do that. This knit was a dark brown, and was toasty warm when worn. A pocket on each hip completed its utility (and wasn't too hard to include, either, to Miranda's surprise). On the day that she had to go out for groceries again, she decided she would test out this piece of clothing in the outside world. Her father's robe would go on first, and then the knit robe. Then a knit cap, and finally, the boots. The boots would be the only time-consuming thing to put on. The rest could be thrown over her in seconds. She might draw some eyes walking through the grocery store dressed like that, she thought, but then again, there were some weird people out there. She would hardly be the weirdest. So she decided to give it a go...

She felt a little weird stepping outside in her new getup. Not that she should feel that way, considering she'd been outside nude more times than she could count now. But the knowledge that she was trekking out into civilization dressed like this, and the fear of how people would react to her, felt as thrilling as if she were making the trip nude. It was actually disappointing when hardly anybody batted an eye. There were plenty of people who came to get groceries in their pajamas, so a woman in a big knit robe was probably not that unusual. It really just looked like any other coat. The disappointment turned to a smile as Miranda realized this outfit was a success. She was comfortably nude underneath, no belts or waistbands or bras to make her feel uncomfortable, and when she got home, she could throw the whole outfit off in a second. Her wheels were turning by the time she was walking out of the grocery store, and she did notice a few eyes turn towards her. Maybe she wasn't so unremarkable. But a good clothing line ought to get its wearer noticed, shouldn't it? She had a good thing going for her. The only trick was getting the belt to stay secure, as when she walked to her car with several bags in each hand, she felt the inside belt of her father's robe slip, and the outer knit robe's belt as well, and if she didn't get to her vehicle soon, both garments would fall open and she would flash the whole parking lot. Definitely will have to fix that, she thought. The belt needed an actual buckle. But then that would introduce the same discomfort that came with modern attire. Maybe it would just zip or button up like a coat. But she liked the freeing feeling of the robe just folding over. Adding fasteners made it feel as constricting as normal clothes. The quest to stay feeling naked even when dressed was a difficult one.

She made it to her car and reached into the pocket of her outer robe to unlock the doors, and after she piled the bags in the back seat, she pulled the belt on her outer robe a little tighter to keep it from falling open. Then she got in and barely turned the heat on, lest it get too warm in the car. She almost thought about throwing her robes off for the drive home, but it was too impractical. She drove out of the shopping center, her mind turning over this myriad of things...

It was when she got home that the grand, anticipated moment arrived, and after she dropped the bags on the kitchen counter, she threw off the knit robe and tore open the plaid one underneath. She flung both garments over the back of the loveseat in which she had sat during the comfy movie night with her friends, and she stood in her cabin in nothing but her boots and her hat, which felt odd, compared to being completely nude. It made her feel even more naked. And also glamorous, the trendy boots a compliment to her body. Though she had a firm rule about no shoes on the carpet, she walked into the living room, past the stairs to the closet on the other side, with the floor-to-ceiling mirror. She was taken aback by the sight, almost as she first had been. She did look glamorous. She looked like a Playboy model, as she had recalled plenty of photos of models standing in nothing but boots or stockings, because they accentuated the naked body. Same with her. Her light skin contrasted against the dark boots, up her legs, and her bush complimented what she wore. The knit cap atop her head was cute. She looked like some boy's winter fantasy. Delighted, she turned her body to get a look at herself in side profile and looked over her shoulder at her butt, which, because of the way she poised herself, stuck out pert and cute. Maybe I could be a naked Youtuber, she thought, suddenly not shy about the idea of appearing like this to thousands of fans.

*****

It might have been an exhibitionist desire that led Miranda on her next adventure, and it might have just been wanderlust, but one bright afternoon, she decided to take a walk through the patches of woods surrounding her house, while the snow was still pure and pretty. She wore her boot-and-robe ensemble, and with her cap, she was nice and warm. Her boots crunched in the snow, which had been densely packed and was much crunchier than when she made naked snow angels with her friends. Plumes of it fell off of branches and rested on her shoulders, and though the air was cold, the sun warmed her face. She walked down the road from her cabin, past the neighbors' on the other side of the treeline, where the back porch could only faintly be made out, and she walked down a hill until she came to a white field, littered with the footprints of others, and she walked into it, feeling like she was part of a Hallmark Christmas card, and she walked along a treeline and then had a fantastic idea.

She entered the woods. The open stillness of the field turned into a much different type of quiet, a place that deafened the outside world but made every tiny crunch of the snow inside stand out. It was as if nobody was there, and Miranda had the whole forest to herself. Not a single other footprint marred the smooth crusted surface of the forest floor. She pioneered on. She wanted to see how deep this forest was, if houses bordered it, or if it was unbothered. She didn't know much about the area yet. Luckily, there was no way she would get lost as long as she could follow her footprints. So she walked.

It seemed that the forest did stretch on undisturbed for a while, as Miranda came to the edge of a little clearing and felt like it was the eye of a great calm. Across the eye she went, marking it with her bootprints, and the woods were denser even still up ahead. She marched until she could make out the edge of a treeline, and the pure white of a sloping field, and she looped back around. She walked, confident that she had a safe route back up, and then she opened her robes and let them slide off her body. She dragged them gently behind by the hand, sweeping the snow behind her feet, as she strutted towards the small clearing. Here she felt like a real snow angel, or another Playboy model. Fantastic and nude in just her boots. But above all, there was a sense of the magical. She was a wood nymph, a Woman in the Snow, a vision seen in both myth and erotica. She felt delightfully temperate, the air cold but the sun beaming down onto her bare skin as she crossed the clearing, leaning back to glance up at the sky. She felt at peace, and also on edge, both because of the disbelief that she was all the way out here in the nude. She could go anywhere, but she followed her footsteps and soon was close to the forest's edge. She could hear the hum of a car driving by and then fading, and she knew there was no going any further. Then she heard a not-too-distant voice, someone in the field, and she threw her robes on and fastened them quickly. If glanced from the field, what might have she looked like? A butterfly putting back on its cocoon.

She put her hands in her robe's pockets and stepped out of the treeline, her heart thumping and her body burning under her coverings.

There were two guys carefully sliding their feet down the slope into the field. They wore bright parkas and didn't look in her direction at first, instead intent on wherever they were going. Miranda smiled and looked down briefly as she walked up the treeline and back to the road. She felt like she could walk all day.

The End of Winter

That walk had energized her. Not just the exercise, but the obvious. It got her mind turning again. In the months after as the cold snow outside became such a normal sight that it was a shock when the ground started to show through, Miranda chased threads. She looked up the process of creating a Youtube channel. She even filmed a test video on her webcam, of her sitting with nothing on (as always,) the camera just stopping at her shoulders, as she gave a fake greeting of "what's uuuup? Thanks for coming to my channel..." Wording, she thought. Producing content wasn't going to be easy. Whether she was going to through with it or not, she did order herself a better microphone, regardless. It would come in handy even if she didn’t stream with it. She also looked up what the process would be in order to patent a clothing design, though her findings were confusing. Different shades of an idea or a combination of possible ideas half-formed in her head. She had a lot she could do. She thought of her walk in the field again, and imagined herself walking across that same clearing, nude, but with her phone camera held up, to record her making her brave trek. "Hi guys, I'm just out here in the mountains, naked, but not afraid!" Now that was a striking image. Miranda's Naked Adventures. As if wanting to assess the outside and entertain that adventure right that moment, Miranda stood and trotted down the stairs on the balls of her feet. Her tits jiggled in her excited descent, and she liked it when they did. There was a strange, benign pleasure in feeling your body in motion. She drifted through the kitchen and headed straight for the door. Not only was the sight of the snow half-melted a shock, but so was the air, not as biting as she expected (and which she had trained herself to withstand for small periods), but pleasantly warm on her chest. She stepped forward with surprise and gazed out at her back lot. It was no longer a winter wonderland, but looked wet and dirty. Miranda sighed. She guessed she would have to wait before having another walk like that through the snow. It would have looked good on camera: the contrast between her beige skin and all the white. She let out a sigh, and with the sigh, took in a breath that smelled of dirt coming up from the melting snow, and it smelled like the beginning of spring. And then she heard an engine approaching.

Her head jerked to the right, and there, pulling up next to her car, was the familiar dull blue of the Amazon delivery van. She had nowhere to run, and not even a robe to cover herself with now. She just froze there, still leaning against the railing, watching as the van's door opened and the driver got out. His teeth were showing on his dark face and he shook his head. Miranda now smiled as well and stood away from the railing, coming up to the top steps of the porch without placing her arms in front of her, to greet the same delivery man as she'd met at the start of winter. He was still shaking his head as he came up to the stairs.

"Tell you what, I'm gonna request to always have this route, as long as you keep ordering stuff."

"I might be," she said, leaning down and taking the box from him, and it was heavy and she knew it was her microphone. Next she might end up getting a better camera, or a green screen backdrop. There would be plenty of things she would need. "You'll see me again."

The man grinned as if he were just told that Santa Claus was coming, and he remained there until Miranda turned (giving him his first-ever glimpse of her from behind) and disappeared inside.

They Might Be Naked Angels

Chet wasn't able to comprehend that his life was going to change when he first saw the naked women out in the field. At the very least, it was a change in his daily routine.

He saw them late one morning as he was hauling wood from around back to begin another one of his carvings. They were less than a football field's length away, out in the open grass under the sun, and it was unmistakable that they were nude, as their bare skin glowed, and their bare butts, bisected by the simple shade dividing their cheeks, was distinguishable even across the distance, as was their rear-ends’ plumpness, and the slenderness of their waists. There were three of them, and they were unmistakably young and attractive. Despite the exciting sight, it irritated Chet.

He had been living in the cabin for ten years, after his divorce. The small portion of land was his, and the surrounding mountains and fields were of no interest (yet) to developers (he chased anybody official-looking off the land with his hunting rifle when he saw them). He had built the cabin himself, prided in it, and savored the solitude of his new life. Now, at sixty, the only thing he cared to do was be alone at the base of the hill, where at night, the field was illuminated by the moon, and where on some nights, he saw campfires, and he made entertainment of scaring the shit out of young millennials that had trekked out to taint his land. He knew they came there to get romantic, drink, and have sex. Well there were motel rooms for that sort of thing. This was the first time he had seen anybody be as bold as to do something like that in broad daylight. They were probably exhibitionists, or doing this for their Instagram page or whatever the kids posted on.

It was also the first time he had seen a woman in a long time. Well, that wasn't true. Liz, the delivery girl for the prepper website he ordered extra supplies from, dropped off deliveries about every month, and his daughter, Chastity, who he still kept in touch with, visited him once, but she seemed uncomfortable being out in the middle of nowhere far from what she thought of as civilization, and she hadn't been back since, though they still called and texted each other. Those were the only two things Chet used his phone for: to order supplies he couldn't get in town, and to keep in touch with his daughter.

But this was the first time he had seen a woman in undress in the ten years since he had divorced his wife. The pinups hanging in Stevie's Pub didn't count. And he couldn't deny the erotic pull that those three bare-skinned beauties had, the sudden, for now faint, desire that they stirred, when he had not thought about a woman that way for those ten years. Nevertheless, he did not feel shy about grabbing his gun and marching out there to tell them their business. Chastity would probably warn against that, against the optics of approaching three women, three nude young women, as an old man, and the wrongness of telling a woman what she could and couldn't do. But they were on his property line, and he didn't sanction the taking of nudie pictures on his property, no matter how pretty the models were.

As he walked out, rifle held in one hand (he knew he wouldn't need to actually use it, just brandish it), he could determine, as he got closer, that they were indeed very pretty, even though their backs (and butts) were turned to him. Their skin was golden, as if they were quite used to being naked in front of God and everybody. Shameful, he thought. No modesty. When he was within forty yards, one of them turned slightly, her arm gracing against her hip, the side of her face briefly shown, and there was the outline of a full, yet delicate, teardrop-shaped breast. One of the other girls, the one farthest to the right, also turned and looked over her shoulder at him.

Her face studied him. She had a quizzical look, and was pretty in a stern way, the set of her mouth affecting disapproval when there was none, her eyes wide-set and serious. She was pretty and intimidating; pretty intimidating. She didn't seem embarrassed or shocked to have been discovered. Her eyes and brow were serious, and her mouth was flat and neutral, a thin nose set above it, her lips pale pink above the naked shoulder over which she looked.

"You're on private property!" Chet announced, and now he was within twenty yards. The other two girls finally looked at him as well. They were faintly identical, but unique in subtle ways. Perhaps sisters, but a lot of social media girls all looked the same, especially naked. They all had long, light brown hair, except for the girl on the right, whose mane was darker, almost black, and a little shorter. And the one on the left, the one with the eye-catching breast, was a shade lighter. And none of them said a word. They just looked over their shoulders at him, interested in whatever was in front of them, and strangely—or perhaps not strangely—Chet wished they would fully turn around, so he could see them completely. Confronting three nude women, with their pleasures fully bared, was maddening. But he raised his rifle slightly in his hand to communicate he was not interested in that.

"I said this is private property, you can't be here. What are you girls doin'? "

The slight curves of smiles formed on their faces, and then they looked away from him again, and Chet was insulted.

"Hey!"

They looked back at him again, and he got closer, tantalizingly closer, close enough now to prod any of them with the barrel of his gun. The three girls stepped back from whatever they were observing, and finally turned their bodies, so that in side, quarter, and front profiles, he saw them all, and he took a breath at the sight of their pleasant breasts, and full seamless fronts, each of them owning a wide and fully-grown dark growth of maidenhair. He thought sillily that all girls of the new generation shaved. The sight of their dark triangles excited his old-fashioned mind.

As they stepped to the side, he saw what they were observing: a little rabbit, astoundingly unafraid of the girls, hopped away now that Chet was there. He had a brief moment of whimsy and delighted surprise, but then turned serious again. He raised his gun.

"Y'all get out of here. You can do your streaking thing over yonder, though I still don't approve. As long as it's not on my property."

The girls didn't seem to understand, or care, and they also didn't care anymore about the rabbit that was getting away. Now they were interested in him. All three of them turned fully to face him now, and they all three took steps towards him. He stood in a daze for a second, until the first one touched him. Her fingers graced his chest and he took a step back and raised the gun.

"I mean it!" he shouted, pressing the stock firmly into his shoulder. "Get gone!" He couldn't believe he was resisting the touch of three beautiful naked young women, but not resisting could mean they would be clobbering him over the head with his own gun the very next second. Something wasn't right.

The girls understood this gesture finally, or at least registered the anger in his voice. They didn't seem afraid that he would shoot them, but they did back off. Their smiles had turned to scowls and they looked downright offended. Then the girl on the right, the one with the darker hair, uttered a single syllable: "uh," while looking at her friends and nodding her head in the direction where the rabbit had fled. She turned from Chet and broke out into a trot, her bottom bountiful as she zipped through the grass, and her friends turned and began to follow her, the lightest-skinned one glancing at Chet with curiosity first, and then she too turned, and she and the others were just three fanciful departing figures, their hair flying behind them and their arms out, embracing the expanse of nature. Chet lowered his gun, and he was surprised to find that he was trembling.

*****

He walked back to his cabin on shaky legs and collapsed in his fold-out chair in front and felt humiliated for some reason. Then he thought about calling somebody. But who? The police? They wouldn't come all the way out there. And besides, could he really call the law on a couple of harmless, naked girls? The real reason, though, that he did not call anybody, was that the situation was so weird. How could he explain it? The feeling of humiliation still stirred. What also stirred was a faint sense of the supernatural, but that was just silly, and he dashed that silly thought and eventually got up and finished his morning tasks. He could no longer see the girls. They were long gone anyway. And they would not be back, an almost regrettable thought.

*****

They did come back. Chet was sitting out front the next morning, chipping away at the pieces of wood he would with time form into depictions of bears, fish, and other animals, which he would sell to tourists who did come by, normal tourists who didn't come there to be up to no good. It was how he made money, besides his Social Security. And there they were: a much different type of tourist. He stilled his knife and watched them bound across the field, from the left to the right, as if chasing each other in play. Their hair flew behind them, at least the two with the longer hair, and in side-profile, their feminine traits bounced with sharp and pleasing jostles as they ran. They were far out, about as far out as they had been the previous morning, and eventually they disappeared behind a hill, and he didn't see them again that morning.

Perhaps they were living out there, as he was, he wondered. Three millennial girls with an idea of what "back to nature" meant: taking off their clothes and running through the grass like children, unaware of the harshness of living out in the wilderness. He chuffed and dismissed their foolishness, and had no need to chase them away. They were a pleasant sight, at least.

*****

He was almost disappointed when they didn't show the next morning. He was embarrassed to realize that he looked out the kitchen window with his fresh mug of coffee a little too early, a little too eagerly, for it was only seven in the morning, and they had not showed until eleven on both previous days. But then eleven came by and he did not see them, when he was positioned again out front, working on his carvings. He sighed and continued his work, realizing he couldn't be so lucky all the time. Was that what his sad little life saw as lucky now? To just glimpse some naked girls?

*****

The next morning, one of the few women in his current life arrived: Liz, in her pickup truck, with boxes of his supplies in the back.

"Hey Chet," she said as she slammed her door and walked to the cab to retrieve his goods. "How's things?"

He thought about telling her about the girls, but figured it was too silly. She might worry about him and call somebody to come check on him, and that was the last thing he wanted.

"Things are about normal," he said as she hoisted down the first box and looked at him quizzically. Liz was too perceptive and Chet was acting perceptibly different enough to be noticed.

"What's got you bugged?" she asked, carrying the first box over in her thick arms and dropping it near his wood-carving table where he stood. She leaned up and dusted off her hands. She stood sturdy at nearly six feet, and her fire-red hair mirrored her personality sometimes, and her full chest thrust out against her white tank top, which she wore underneath her open flannel. It reminded everybody of her femininity, but nobody would ever limit her characterization to just that.

"Nothin' buggin' me, just... well, it's been weird out here the past couple of days."

"Weird how?"

Alright, he would tell her, he figured.

"Well, just three days ago, I was sittin' out here in the morning and I saw three naked girls out there in the field yonder."

Liz turned her head and looked out to where he motioned, as if the girls could be out there now, and then she looked back.

"Three naked girls, huh? Lucky you."

"They was there the next day too, just runnin' through the field. They're mighty strange."

"Well that sounds like nothing to complain about!" Liz said, and she made for the back of the truck to grab more boxes.

"They just struck me as really weird..." Chet continued, speaking more now to himself as Liz unloaded everything.

"Sounds like you got some hippies taking up residence," Liz offered.

"Yeah, hippies..."

"How were they weird?" she talked as she walked back and forth. She was on box number four.

"Well, I approached them to chase them off my land, and they didn't talk."

"Didn't talk, huh? Did you try talking to them?"

"Of course I did!"

"What did they look like?"

"Well... they was real slender, and um, naked.. and... gee, I don't feel right comfortable describing."

Liz laughed and dropped the last box.

"Well it sounds like you got more excitement than usual. Who wouldn't want a couple of naked girls to visit them? Anyway, I'm off, Chet, have a good one."

He looked at his boxes of supplies at his feet, all unmarked, but he knew what each one was. "Yeah."

Liz stopped and studied him.

"You are alright, right?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fine. I didn't imagine them girls, if that's what you're thinking."

Liz raised her hands.

"I would never think that. Well hey, maybe take a picture of them when they show up next."

"Don't got a camera."

"You got your phone, right?"

"Oh. I suppose I do." He was good enough to figure it out. He was able to use it well enough for his current needs. He could figure out a simple camera app.

"Show me next time I'm back," Liz said, and she turned for her truck.

Chet watched her climb in, start the engine, and roll down the trail, kicking up dust, until he was left alone with his packages, and he picked the first one up, straining his back as he did, and thought of the naked girls as he carried his things in.

*****

He actually spent part of that night practicing with his phone's camera. He felt like a fool. He took shots of random things inside his cabin: the gas lamp, his bed. The small bookshelf which held the few tomes that he cared to read: reference books, field manuals, one or two Jack London stories. He also tested the camera at the field in the dark, but there was too little light to take a decent picture. The camera could not compete with what his own eyes saw: subtly, in the endless dark, the faint illumination from the moon making the field of grass stand out, the subtle change of the sky from pitch black at the horizon to a deep blue higher up, and the faint, ghostly figures of three nude girls coming out of the field.

This is it. They're back.

As Chet stood out in front of his cabin, the only light being the gas lamps from within bathing his front stoop in faint orange, he watched as the ghosts drifted out of the darkness and became more real. They were the same three girls: two long-haired, the other's shorter black hair still standing out in the darkness with a gleam of the moon on it. Chet raised his phone again to try to capture them, but it was pointless. They were just white, out-of-focus blobs on his screen. He thought of how people made fun of others who saw Bigfoot and couldn't get a decent picture. None of those people had tried to take a photo of three naked girls in the middle of a field at night before. When he lowered the phone, they were much closer, and he probably could have gotten a decent picture at that point. They had slowed their gait and were walking seductively (or so it appeared) towards his cabin, new looks on their faces, looks of deviousness. He had the sudden fear of demons in him.

They stepped within the wash of the lamplight coming from within the cabin, and were just a few feet outside of Chet's grasp. They stopped, as if to say hello, but of course, they didn't say anything, and Chet, feeling admitted to, let his eyes drink them in.

Their skin had new qualities in this low and unnatural light. They glowed like amber. Delicate shadows gathered on the undersides of their breasts and in the crux of their thighs, and those mystifying black angles, which seemed to cancel out all light, captivated him as much as ever. Their eyes glinted, and in them, Chet saw a different set of emotions from what he had seen that first day in the field. Without knowing what to do, Chet opened his mouth.

"Well, welcome back," he said, the polar opposite of his previous demeanor towards them. The middle girl stepped forward, and Chet's heart tumbled in its steps.

As her face drew near—and Chet had every bit of trouble just focusing on her face, with the heavenly plum-dotted spheres of desire hovering just below him—he could see an interrogating look in her eye, and a suspicious smirk, as if she was saying: no gun this time?

He stumbled back a step or two and ended up tripping and falling back into his chair. His great weight collapsed into it and it felt like it would almost give out, and the long-haired girl descended upon him. His legs were parted, and she stood between them, leaning down to paw at his chest, then finally falling to her knees, positioning herself conveniently at a spot to pleasure him, and making him twitch and strain against his pants, but the naked girl, her bare chest above his constrained arousal, ran her hands over his shirt instead, as if she were interested in what material covered this natural man. As Chet took shallow breaths, the other two girls gathered around. The light was low enough to make one think that they were only phantasms, the contact real enough to dash out any of those thoughts. Soon, forcefully, the middle girl tore his shirt open, popping almost all of the buttons, and her breath came out in a surprised laugh at the revelation of skin. Then the other two girls fell to their knees. Chet was in a strange trance, as three women hovered over him, running their fingers through his chest hairs. Bobbing breasts were so close to the sides of his face, and he was so in disbelief at his situation, that he let his hands wander. If this was a dream, he was going to enjoy himself. So he cupped and palmed a palmful of warm, soft woman, the stiff stab of a nipple in between his fingers, the cotton-soft give of the rest of her down his digits, and he salivated. And the middle girl's hands traveled from his bare chest to the waist of his jeans, and his belt. He was breathing heavily. Here was everything he'd been missing in the past ten years. Not just the past ten years, but the past twenty; never at all during his marriage had he lived a fantasy such as this. Not even before that. How many men could count on even one hand the number of times they'd lived a scene such as this? If there were any that could count to even two, Chet would have liked to know their secrets. Probably money. For him, this one encounter would be worth a lifetime (as he probably didn't have long for this Earth anyway), and his luck was merely being at the right place at the right time. So he thought as his hands pressed into soft flesh and the prying hands of the girl between his legs opened his fly and released him.

He popped out with great relief and pent-up agitation, his arousal finally free, his obscenity, something that as an old man he should covet to himself and not display to the world, but here three young women beyond his generation buzzed down to it and flurried it with attention. Curious hands grasped and smiling faces observed every twitch and tremor. And then the girl in between his legs, not satisfied with just seeing his dick, yanked at his pants so that he could be just as nude as them. He obliged, and raised his weak legs, and his pants were stripped down to his ankles. Once there, the girl at the center of him investigated his shoes. He wore simple loafers tonight, and she got them off and stripped his pants over his feet, taking off one sock but leaving the other, and Chet was left sitting in his chair, completely naked, naked as the three maidens who surrounded him. His face found a breast at his side and nuzzled into it. The warmth of her body was remarkable, the softness of her chest delectable, and his lips, again salivating, drolled over her nipple, slathered over her bumpy areola, as the other girl straddled him. This was bliss; this was Heaven. Was he already dead?

Retreating his face from the girl on his left, he faced the one before him as she sat with her legs wide to accommodate the spread of his, and nuzzled up close to his lewd display. Contact between cock and crevice made him tremble, and then hands braced his shoulders and the girl raised, hovered above him, and permitted him to enter. She settled back down on his lap with the firm purchase of him inside of her, while hands massaged his shoulders. And so he sat, being made love to by one who he had threatened with his gun days before, now ready to shoot his own ammunition. It was a short task. Chet drank in the sensations of her walls closing in on him, pulling, and he shot out a breath into her face, and then, with ten years of pent-up lust, he exploded. It was unbearable, and he groaned out into the lonely night beyond his porch, and the girl leaned into him, and he felt her breath on his face. He quivered and pumped into her, and then went slack. His arms forgot their potential prizes of touch and fell to his sides as the slender naked woman came to a rest against him. What a night.

She lay there for a minute against him, while errant hands from the other two girls massaged his scalp, and then she straightened her back, lifted her hips, and exited him. What was left of him twitched and bobbed in the air, slick and shiny, and the second girl came in, but Chet put up his hand. Too much, too soon. I am not ready His thoughts seemed to transmit into the second girl’s mind, and she settled her soft bottom on his lap and sat there, reaching out for him. His hands reached out everywhere, and he thought, if I have died, I don't regret it. He stung with pain and pressure below as a naked goddess perched on his thigh, waiting for when he was ready. He passed the minutes in a daze with the beautiful bodies around him, and after a time, another set of lips was gracing the tip of his arousal, and Chet took in a sharp breath with his new entry. Now, he was repeating the ceremony, with this second girl, so similar to the first, that he had a feeling of deja vu. He hurt; his pleasure was laced with pain, and the girl got more pleasure this time with the lengthened duration of their session. But Chet wasn't so sure pleasure was her goal. What the hell was he doing, cumming into two—and soon to be three— strange girls? Was he about to be a father yet again? He would have protested, but the writhing body of the second girl on his lap, tits in his face, chased away all reason, and his hands braced her hips and he buried his beard to scrub between her breasts.

Crickets were chirping and night birds calling when he came with a painful gasp into her, and all the other senses of the night returned. His ass hurt in the chair. The girl's weight on him was strong, until she lifted herself off of him and he was left slouching, spent. Then the short-haired girl came up, and Chet put up his hands. Did they have no concept of pacing? Did they not know his limitations? Again, like the second girl, she sat on his thigh, and he was too tired at first to explore her features, but eventually, his hand raised, and his fingertips traced soft and electric skin, all the way to the summit of her breast, and her rubber nipple. Then he sighed and collapsed. the black-haired girl made to mount him, but Chet put out his hand again. She stilled, and he managed to sit up and begin to pull himself out of the chair. She stood off his thigh and admitted him to be freed, and stumbling, he walked barefoot into his cabin.

He left the door wide open and headed straight for his little bathroom. He painfully pissed, and had flashbacks to his younger days, pissing half-drunk at a noisy, dirty bar, wondering how he was going to make it home that night. Luckily, tonight, he was already home, and he wasn't drunk off of anything except his satiated lust, and expectation of lust yet to be fulfilled. The girls stood in his little cabin waiting for him, one, two, three damning sights, the contrast between the two he'd already fucked and the one in waiting suspenseful, as something about the black-haired, short-haired girl with breasts as modest and shapely as apples, with an expectant gaze that was strangely innocent, stirred his lust off the charts. But he was tired, and he stumbled to the bed, leaned into it, and fell on the mattress. The black-haired girl, followed by her friends, came up to him and climbed up onto the bed. It was time for round three, he guessed. He could hear the buzzing of flies getting in through the front door, but he could care less, as the apples of the black-haired girl hovered over his face, and she lowered down to him like a lover, and soon they embraced.

*****

He awoke to light much fuller and more intense than he was used to. He craned his head up and saw that he was laying naked on top of the sheets. The cabin was empty, the lamp had burned out, but the front door was thankfully closed. But no naked girls shared his space currently.

Chet sat up, and his back hurt, and so did his dick. The previous night's events were no dream. He got up and looked for his clothes before stepping outside, but then remembered he lived in the middle of nowhere and that it didn't matter if he was outside naked, for nobody was going to see. Outside was also where he left his last outfit, to his memory, so with a little bit of nervousness, he turned the front doorknob and stepped out into the vibrant morning air and its accompanying smells. He smelled lilies and bear grass and arnica, and his own body, a mixture of sweat and something else, and he felt the air on said body, and was amazed by how much little fanfare with which he stood out exposed to all. But that was the selling point of his house when he had bought it: secure privacy.

His clothes were still where he—or the girls, rather—had dropped them. They didn't run off with them, thankfully. Not that they would. Would they? Chet thought. There was something playful about them, though he couldn't really say they seemed malicious. Definitely not that. Yet why would they all three want to have sex with a crusty sixty-year-old man? Surely not because they found him irresistibly attractive. It was a pity fuck. Or fucks. Sympathy for a lonely soul. No, it was play. They were having fun the way they had it, as in running naked through a field. But something about the way that each of them had eagerly mounted him, especially the third girl with the dark hair, who thrust against him more than he had thrust into her, had seemed urgent and purposeful, as if done mainly to bring about some result. Obviously, his own orgasm. But...

Oh God, please don't let it be that they wanted babies from me. He couldn't be a father at sixty. But what did it matter? They were gone. Maybe they didn't want him to be a father. But they knew where he lived.

Chet was inside by this point, in his thoughts, and had dropped his clothes on the bed and found that he had been standing near the kitchen sink during this whole thought process, staring out at the empty field and into his busy mind, and he hadn't bothered to get dressed yet. Alright, he would get dressed. But first, some coffee. And while it brewed, he used the bathroom.

When the coffee was finished, he took it out front and still didn't put his clothes on. It was a sudden decision after looking out at the field and thinking of the three girls' nudity in the warm day. Before he went out, he went back to the bathroom to give lil' old Willy a better shake, because something about walking nude after having used the bathroom felt gross to Chet, but if he were a little more cleanly... lil' old Willy deserved the extra attention, anyway, for all the work he had went through. Chet found himself smiling and chuckling to himself as he stepped outside and sat back down in his chair, that seat of hot love, and leaned back, sipping his coffee and feeling it go warm all the way down his chest. He didn't feel chilled, even though he was naked. It was about sixty degrees in the mornings, but he felt perfectly comfortable. Soon the day would get warmer and he might even feel overheated. He looked out at the field and watched, waited for a moment, as if he knew that the girls were going to appear, but after a while he set his coffee on the tree stump he used as a side table and he pulled forward the wider, lower stump with his work which he had left off with sitting atop: a two-foot-tall piece of wood crudely fashioned into the lumpy form of what would eventually be a bear standing on its hind legs. Chet pulled his knife from the stump (he really shouldn't leave it out there like that, he thought; if the naked girls could come up in the night, so could a thief, or a thief who didn't mind shedding blood) and he began to work.

He sometimes would work with the piece of wood in his lap, during the early stages of chipping away pieces, but not today, for obvious reasons. He propped the piece on his knee at first to hack down its side, and then imagined the knife slipping and cutting something else, so he stopped with that. He had to lean forward to work on the bear, and after a bit, it made his back hurt, so he got up, reached down to take another sip of coffee—now cool—and carried his bear-in-progress to his makeshift table of plywood and sawhorses, where he could work while standing, and there he stood, brashly nude, as if as a lure for his lovers, and he did hope he'd see them this morning. But he also spent the time paying attention to how it felt to stand as he'd never stood since a toddler, without anything on his body, and it made him contemplate his physique. Was he attractive? In a rugged way? Or did it matter? No, it didn't matter. He was comfortable.

Though he decided he wouldn't let Liz catch him like this, he thought with a laugh.

*****

He went out to town after his mind cleared of his experience, which quickly began to seem like a dream, for he did not see the girls again that day. It was early in the evening when he went out, because clearing his mind had taken some time, and his work on his carving became idle, just something to do to pass the time, waiting for the girls to show up again. It was pathetic. Was his attention now going to be centered on them? He would probably never see them again. That made them have even more of a hold on his mind. They were so strange. Whatever their story was would bug him for some time.

He stopped at the local general store and bought his usual supply run stuff: toilet paper, dish soap, dried goods, etcetera, enough modern niceties to fill out his stock form Liz and what he eke from the land. Afterwards, even though it was late (for him), but because he hadn't been in a while, and because he could use a drink, Chet stopped by Stevie's Pub.

He took in the familiar cigarette smell and the overwhelming noise, the only real noise in his life currently. As it was around seven o'clock, the bar had a good number of people there. He saw many of the regulars, some of whom nodded in recognition of him. He didn't come there all the time. Probably at most once a month, when he came into town for his supplies. Or when his boredom kicked in.

He settled down onto a bar stool and Stevie, big, burly, and still young in his forties, greeted Chet. He also had a new person working the bar with him: a young woman with a ponytail and a tight tank top. Stevie asked how he was doing, but it was the girl who eventually took his order. Chet had wanted to mention to Stevie his wondrous night, but he held back and then asked for a beer from the girl, and since it was late and he hadn't eaten yet, Chet asked for a menu.

Though the bar was busy (for Stevie's), Chet had a free space on either side of him, enough space to stretch his elbows, talk if he wanted to, but be by himself if he preferred instead. To his left was a big, six-foot stocky man who Chet didn't recall the name of but who was always at Steve's even in the afternoons, and farther down was Becky, who Chet did know, because she was at the bar even more than the stocky guy. She was older than Chet, with a yellow-dyed perm and a missing tooth, which you always saw, because she was always drunkenly grinning. It was always a motley crew at Stevie's.

To Chet's right, there sat a young man that he had never seen before, and farther down, around the corner of the bar, two more regulars were spaced out. Chet got his beer from the new girl, who, when he looked up, was inviting for his eyes for the strategic presentation of her cleavage, but she was nothing like the girls from the field. She smiled guardedly, getting a bead on Chet as with any new (to her) customer, and he asked for a burger and then waited with his beer, listening to the idle conversation floating up and down the bar like fragments of radio messages.

The newcomer appeared to be in his own world, because he had a little spiral notebook laid out in front of him, next to his plate of nachos, which, when Chet glanced at it, had indecipherable scribbles on it that must have been a form of shorthand. Chet chalked him up to be some sort of recluse (like him), coming somewhere public to work on his writing, which he wrote in shorthand to keep prying eyes from reading. Perhaps he was writing an erotic memoir, and Chet laughed inwardly at the thought. He certainly could write one of his own now.

But the man must not have been completely withdrawn, because after he picked up his pen and scribbled (left-handed, Chet noted, with a sloppy nacho chip in his other hand, which he ate while writing), the man turned to the regular on his right and said, with a full mouth "and you never saw her again?"

The regular, a small, chubby-faced fellow with an energetic face, said "Naw, she disappeared right after that, like she was a ghost."

Chet focused his attention to his right, sipping his beer and listening to the conversation.

"That sounds about right," the newcomer said, and jotted down another indecipherable note in his notebook.

"So what are you sayin'? That I really had sex with a ghost?"

Alarm bells were going off in Chet's head.

"Technically... yes," the newcomer said.

"I'm sorry, but what are you boys talking about?" Chet cut in. He couldn't help himself. The new girl coasted by the bar just then and looked at Chet as she went to refill the guy's beer.

"Richard here says a naked girl showed up in his bedroom in the middle of the night and slept with him," she said. "I think he's just been comin' here too much and been fantasizin' about me."

She poured the man's beer, a little too quickly, and a thick layer of foam gathered at the top of the glass, but "Richard" didn't seem to mind.

"Oh you know I'm always thinkin' of you, Kayla, but this girl was somethin' else."

The young guy beside Chet had put down his pen and went back to his nachos, but he looked deep in thought still. Richard went on touting his conquest.

"You ever heard of that, though? A naked woman just appearing in someone's bedroom? Ain't that somethin' in the paranormal world? Succubusses, or somethin'?"

"Not quite a succubus," the newcomer said with a full mouth of nachos again.

"Well," Chet cut in. "It's funny you boys are talking about this, because I made love to three lovely women last night."

The bartender, "Kayla," Richard had called her, shook her head and walked away. "Little boy big dick stories," she said with good-natured mirth, and she disappeared into the kitchen. Richard was laughing. "No man, this was something unreal." The newcomer was still contemplating his nachos. Chet felt laid bare.

"No, I mean it," he said. "I live way out in the hills. The other day, there was these three naked girls just walkin' out in the field."

Now the newcomer's eyes shot up and he forgot his nachos. Chet continued his story, glad to get it out.

"I thought they was some goddamn kids up to no good, but there was somethin' different about 'em. They stuck around, and well, one night, they came up to the front of my cabin, and well... they were pretty insistent on having their way with me."

The newcomer was definitely interested. He leaned in towards Chet across the bare bar stool between them.

"Did they say anything? Did they disappear afterwards?"

"No, they didn't say a word at all, which weirded me out. And yeah, they sort of disappeared. After the third one made love to me, I think I fell asleep, and they just left."

The newcomer leaned back on his stool.

"I see..."

"What the hell's going on here? Is there some cult of witches in this town or somethin’?"

"No, nothing like that." The newcomer contemplated his nachos again, or at least it seemed like it, for he was staring through them.

"Is that shit connected to what I had the other night?" Richard asked, and the newcomer looked up.

"I'm sure it definitely is."

"Alright, spill it, man," Chet pressed. "Who did I have sex with?"

Kayla reappeared with a plate of burger and fries on her palm and she rolled her eyes when she overheard the discussion still going on, but then dashed away her incredulity for her happy face.

"Here you go hun, you want another beer, too?"

"Oh, yeah. I will, actually. I think I'm gonna need one."

"Alright."

And with that, Kayla rushed over to the taps, and Chet wasn't interested in his dinner anymore. He looked at the newcomer intently.

"Well?"

"I can't tell you everything right now. But you say you live close by?"

"About twenty minutes out. Are you saying you wanna visit?"

"I do. I want to take a look at your property. If you don't mind."

"I don't, but what in the hell are you gonna be looking for?"

"Any evidence I can find. Eat up for now. When can I come?"

"You can follow me back tonight, but it's gonna be dark soon."

"Then let's go now. Pack up your burger."

"Shit, man."

"I'm serious. This is just too lucky for me."

"Aw shit, this is gettin' good," Richard said on the sidelines.

"No beer, hun," Chet told Kayla as she came back with a full glass. "I'll pay for it though. Could you box this up?"

Kayla looked surprised, but said she could, and she ran back to the kitchen to get a box and Chet pulled over the beer to drink as much as he could before he had to leave. Probably not a good idea for driving twenty minutes home, but he could hack it.

"Tell me what you can, now."

"Let's just say that I've been following this phenomena for years now, and I'm only now starting to understand it."

"Phenomena?"

"Yes. You think naked women just show up at random people's homes and have sex with them?"

Kayla reappeared with the to-go box, rolling her eyes once again.

"Well, no."

"So are you sayin' he had sex with a ghost, too?" Richard asked, still zeroed in on the conversation.

"No," the newcomer said. "I think this is a different entity."

"What in the fuck are you talkin' about man?" Chet cut back in. "What's your name, anyway?"

The newcomer stuck out his hand, which was slick from nacho grease.

"Sorry, names's Joe Keen. I'm an independent journalist."

Chet took his hand, which was slimy, and then began putting his burger and fries into the to-go box.

"Name's Chet. And these girls weren't no ghosts."

"No, they are definitely a much different thing."

"Then tell me about it."

Minutes later, as Chet sat his to-go box on the hood of his truck, Joe Keen laid it out for him, opening up a binder that he had been carrying at his side, opening it up to some computer-printed interviews, and a picture of a fair-looking young woman, with dark hair tied back in a bun, and nude, apparently, though the picture was cropped off at the shoulders. She was remarkably pretty, though, and she looked very similar to the dark-haired girl who had favored Chet.

"I first stumbled into this when I was doing a personal interest story for a tabloid. There was a guy, real conservative, who didn't like seeing how scantily clad some girls were that came into his restaurant. And then, as if in response, the universe dropped a naked girl to greet him when he was getting in his car at the end of the day."

"Just dropped a naked girl?"

"She just walked out of nowhere. She was standing naked in the middle of the parking lot, and there was nobody else around to see. She and the man had a long conversation, and then she left, and the man felt better about his convictions. It was just a weird story, but when I was told to follow it up, well, it seems this story happened again and again all over the world."[ii]

Joe tapped his finger on the printout of the pretty young woman.

"And this picture was taken by one of those contactees. She didn't just talk with him. She got him off."

"He had sex with her?"

"No, but she did seem interested in his semen."

"Excuse me?"

Joe closed the notebook.

"It's a lot to explain. Get in your truck, I'll follow you and I'll tell you the rest when we get to your place."

*****

Chet drove with apprehension at what was to come, be it revelations about the girls he had met, or the revelation that this "Joe" could actually be a criminal who was going to rob him. For what, he didn't know. Chet didn't have much. The light was dimming, and the beer he had pounded made his old eyes tired, and the scent of the burger and fries in the seat next to him made his stomach growl. And as he drove, he thought he saw flashes of bright skin and impressions of femininity on the sides of the road...

*****

They pulled next to Chet's cabin just as the light was beginning to fade. Joe the journalist got out in a hurry while Chet went to the other side of the truck and took out his dinner.

"Alright, now show me where it happened," Joe asked. Chet walked his to-go box to his plywood table, set it down, and pointed out at the field.

"Well, like I said, the first day I saw them, they were right out there. Just standin' with their backs to me. Oh, I didn't say, but they was lookin' at a rabbit. It wasn't afraid of them."

"Interesting...."

"And the next couple of days I saw them running back and forth across that same area. Then at night, they came and met me right here, and well..." He nodded to the chair. "That's where it went down. And then the last one did me on my bed."

"May I take a look in your house?"

Chet really wished he was in reach of his gun. He also wished he could start eating.

"Sure."

He left his food sitting on the plywood table—hopefully a bear wouldn't come sniffing for it—and led Joe inside. Once inside the door, Joe walked around, investigating everything, looking under the dining room table, in corners, not commenting on the humble quality of Chet’s home, but ever on the search. Then he went for the bed. He pulled back the sheets, looked carefully, pulled up the undersheet and offended Chet a little bit with how intrusive he was being. Then he looked under the bed.

"What the hell are you looking for?"

"Anything they may have left behind. But it doesn't look like they have, if they’re angels, anyway."

"What?"

"I'll explain in a bit. I'd like to explore your property out there before it gets dark."

"It's not all mine. It goes out about a hundred yards."

"Alright. Let me get my flashlight."

And so Chet sat down in his chair and ate his burger and fries, which were now disappointingly cold, as he watched the journalist trek out into the field in the dying light. He walked far out until he was about where Chet had first seen the girls, and then he walked past that, getting smaller and smaller. It was interesting seeing a normal, clothed person out there in comparison to the girls. Then the man disappeared around the edge of a hill and he was gone for a while. Chet continued eating, watching the other parts of the field.

Eventually, the man reappeared and crossed the field, going to the side of the far left, and Chet watched him until he was a tiny figure out there.

"What the hell you doin' out there, boy?" Chet said to himself with a full mouth. The sky's light faded, and soon Chet could see the man's flashlight turn on way out there. It was the only sign of his location. Eventually, that light was bobbing its way back to Chet's cabin in the dusk. It was almost as dark as the night of the girls. He could now see Joe faintly behind his own light, which shut off as he neared the cabin.

"Find anything?" Chet asked him, closing his now-empty to-go box and setting it on the tree stump beside him.

"No, but that's not discouraging. They're probably out there somewhere. They have a hiding spot, or somebody is sheltering them. They're going to be laying low for a while."

"So you going to fill me in on the rest of whatever the hell this is all about?"

The man signed, and walked into Chet's work area, standing amidst the sawdust and carvings.

"You got an extra seat?"

"You can grab a chair from the kitchen, I'm too old to get up again."

"No problem."

Joe disappeared into the cabin, and Chet was giving him a lot of trust to enter his home unsupervised, but he felt a little better about the man, now. Whatever he was hiding had no nefarious intent behind it, and whatever he was hiding was about to be revealed. He came out a few seconds later and sat the chair down near the plywood table, across from Chet.

"So a few years back, there was this young man, college-aged, who ran away from home, and he was seen going all over the Southeast with a girl in tow, about his age as well, and she was real strange. She wore a thin robe instead of normal clothes, and she didn't say much.[iii] Apparently there was another party looking for them as well. I don't know who that party was, but they seemed to know a lot more about this phenomena than me."

"What's a phenomena about it?"

"Well, according to this young man, he had met a girl in the field near his house, and she was naked. Unlike my findings, this one didn't speak, but otherwise she behaved very similar to the other girls I've found out about. She followed him home, and they had sex.

"Now here's the creepy part: he discovered later that he was the only one who could see her."

Chet's blood was beginning to run cold.

"And what's crazier... he found a strange object in his room later. You could call it an egg. He threw it out. Days later, there was a naked little girl spotted running around in town."

You're shitting me, Chet thought, but he didn't say anything. His face said all he needed to say.

"And days later, instead of a little girl, it was a full-grown woman who was seen. She visited the young man, and this time others could see her. She was taken away, but then escaped. That's when the young man ran away, and at some point, they must have reconvened, and were on the run together. The last that was heard from him, the girl had gone her own way, had learned to speak, and had integrated into society, indistinguishable from you or me."

"So what are you saying? I really did have sex with some ghosts?"

"No. I think you had sex with their children."

Chet shook his head in confusion and stared at this young man as if he were insane.

"Think of it this way... there are entities, they look like women, but they aren't. But they can mate with humans, and when they mate, they give birth to a normal flesh-and-blood person. And I think that's who you met.

"Way back in 1897, there were some gold miners up in the Yukon who encountered this very same thing. The story goes almost exactly like the young man's, except there were many of these women entities, and they did have sex with them, and at least two children were born after that. One of them was carted away by a professor studying what was going on. I don't know what became of the child.[iv] But the professor, he has an interesting lineage. Do you know of Horace McCalister and his college, Jelena Parks University?"

Chet shook his head.

"This man runs a private university on an island, and it is clothing-optional, and mostly enrolls young women. It made a big stink when he revealed it to the world a few years back.[v] He says he's promoting a healthy view of the body and of sex, but of course, people assume he has ulterior motives. Well, he is a descendant of this professor. And even another ancestor of his, in the early Twentieth Century, made a name for himself by chartering sailboat cruises with young naked women as part of the crew."[vi]

Chet drank this all in, imagining a boat on the high seas with fair naked girls leaning against the gunwales, looking out at the endless sea, their butts perched up and visible for all the rest of the crew to see.

"What's that got to do with this, though?" he asked.

"Imagine, if you will, that men's concentrated lust for women might sometimes manifest itself as a physical entity."

Chet again shook his head in disbelief and tried to focus on what the man was saying. None of it made sense.

"...And that they inhabit our world from time to time, though they can fade in and out. This professor from 1897 believed they took the semen of men to maintain their form in this world. Or maybe for energy. But sometimes, if they wish, they can mate properly, and they give birth to a new lineage, here on Earth."

The reporter concluded his theory and sat back in his chair. Chet was left stunned.

"So you're saying... that these girls are the daughters of some supernatural thing, that somebody else... had sex with, and that they are here because we're horny?"

"Yes, more or less. And I think your friend at the bar was the one who had sex with one of these entities. That's why I was here: to find out more about his story."

"So there's one of these, uh, "entities" roaming around this town?"

"Yes. Or, no. She was here, but she's not here now. Now there are her children, and they are living out there in the hills somewhere, nursing, well, your children."

Chet leaned back forcibly in his chair. He didn't like hearing that. "Well, I already have a child of my own...."

"They seem to take care of themselves. You won't have to be a father. They ought to be taken in, introduced into society, and taken care of, but they have their own ways. A man contacted me a while back that said he fathered some of these children, as you did, from their mothers, who were children of the Naked Angels."[vii]

"Naked Angels."

"That's what some have called them. Anyway, this young man discovered his apparent children living in society sometime later. They live among us, as your children will no doubt eventually. If you're still here in a few years, you may see a naked child running across the field next. Don't worry if you do, you don't need to call anybody to report a missing child. Because that child is yours."

"This is heavy, man."

"I know. That's why I'm here. I've been researching this ever since I first stumbled onto it, and I'm writing a book. Tell you what, if you ever see those children, you call me. Or if you see those women again in the next few days. I'm going to be in town for a little bit."

The man reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet, and withdrew a card, handing it to Chet.

"In the meantime, if this sits on your mind after tonight, I suggest you look up a man named Tom Dougherty. He's a professor up in Massachusetts, and he's had some encounters with these Angels."[viii]

"Alright, well, this is a lot to take in."

"I know it is. Just know, that what you think you know about the world... there's a lot more going on under the surface."

And with that, the man stood.

"Well, I'm going to get back to my motel room. Do call if you see anything else."

"I guess I will," Chet said, and leaned forward in his chair to stand. Joe put out his hand.

"Oh no, you don't have to get up. I can see myself out. Take care, sir."

"Chet."

"Yeah, Chet."

He watched the man turn and walk back to his car, and a minute later, his engine was started and he was backing into the entrance of the field, bathing the grass in the red wash of his taillights.

*****

Chet had gone straight to bed after that meeting. He had been too tired. He didn't even get his groceries out of his truck Luckily, they were all non-perishable.

Days later, he was sitting in his work area, contemplating his completed carvings, and he hadn't seen the women from the field—or their progeny—at all. And it was with them in his mind as he stared disatisfactorily at his carved bears and fish. He rooted at his side for a fresh piece of wood and began to chip away at it. He wore clothes this morning, as in the previous two mornings after meeting Joe and becoming accustomed to wearing clothes again. His brief stint of naturism was behind him. But as he chipped away the pieces, it didn't feel right to be paying tribute to what he saw without being as pure as them, so he stood, took off his shirt, and then kicked off his shoes so he could remove his pants. The air was warm on his skin, which was already clammy-feeling from a light sweat that had developed underneath his clothes, but now, liberated and out in the open, he felt a little bit more refreshed, and he picked up his piece of wood and began to work at the plywood table.

An hour later, he had the crude form of a nude woman shaped out of the wood. He took a break and contemplated it, whether its implied shape did justice to the women of the field or not, and then he came in and widdled the figure down more, and he applied sandpaper to it, wishing to make it as smooth as the skin that he had felt under his palms. The finer details came later; some small notches for the eyes, careful clippings to form the nose. Eventually he had his own Galatea to his Pygmalion.

Not fully satisfied with the look, he applied a light stain to it, giving the woman effigy's skin a bronze hue as the real girls had had. And then he got creative. With a darker stain, he colored in the hair atop the wooden woman's head, and then, with a careful brush, colored in the hair below with several vertical swipes. It was an important element, and completed his tribute.

Weeks later, he had his wooden woman on display next to his silly bears and other outdoorsy carvings, as a small caravan of tourists came to take a look at his wares. One young man seemed particularly interested in the woman figure.

"Wow, this is beautiful," the man said.

"Thank you," Chet replied, sitting in his sacred chair, waiting to see if the man was gonna buy.

"It's not like all the other ones... is there inspiration in it?"

Chet smiled slyly.

"It shouldn't be different from the others. They're all tributes to what's found in nature."

"Awesome. I'll take this one. How much?"

"Normally I'd charge fifty, but this one's a one-of-a-kind; I haven't made any more like it yet. So seventy."

"Deal," the man said, and fished out some bills. Chet was glad to see his art inspiring someone already, but there was something inside of him that was sad to see the figure go, as the man turned it around on the plywood table and the carefully-formed butt that Chet had brought to life out of sandpaper, patience and imagination presented itself to him.

"So what made you carve this out of the blue, if it's your first one?" the man asked, picking up the foot-tall carving and marveling at it, now that it was his. Chet looked up from the man and saw a familiar sight in the background, in the field beyond him.

"Well, that," he said, and the man turned around and gasped at the sight of what was out there, the inspiration for Chet’s art and the pleasant memory of a night of love, and the apparent mother of one of his children. The nude girl stood not too far out, shielding her eyes to observe all the activity going on at Chet's cabin, and the man in turn observing her, every delicate feature that mirrored what he held in his hands.

"Who is she?" he asked, as the dark-haired girl lowered her hand, appeared to shrug, and then moved along, walking as if the people at Chet's cabin were not a concern, even though the others in the company of the young man soon turned and watched her depart, a subtle shift in each cheek of her rear-end that was painstakingly recreated in wood.

Chet grinned, feeling as if he were a guardian of something wonderful.

"Well, if you wanna find out, I suggest you camp out there tonight. You might just meet her."

And so Chet sat and felt secure in his charge, and in due time the field was populated with the offspring of the naked angels.

The Women of the Spring

It had been a while since Nick had hung out with his friend Linda and her husband David. He was kind of looking forward to this current outing, only now that their Jeep was bounding down the gravel path in the wildlife management area near where they had gone tubing many years ago. That had been an awkward time, with their friend, Helena, deciding to bare all. That had actually been the last great get-together they had had, because shortly after that, COVID had happened, and Nick went without seeing many of his friends for years. But he was usually a solitary person, anyway, so for him, there was little difference in his daily life.

He wondered if Helena's naked exhibitionism had been part of the reason they hadn't done another outdoor water-themed get-together ever since. David and Linda were very conservative in their ways, and they seemed displeased with Helena's conduct. Nick certainly wasn't displeased; that day almost changed his life. He had only been in the presence of a naked woman twice: once, at a strip club, taken to, ironically, by David, who he was not as good friends with as he was with Linda (David was trying to "make him a man," he had said), and another time, with a prostitute, and that episode was completely embarrassing. Helena was the first nude woman he had spent a long time with, and it forced him to be able to talk with her normally without being flustered by her beauty. The prostitute was a different experiment, and its results ended up with him getting used to the idea of his own nudity. To the point that, as he rode in the passenger's seat of David's jeep, heading towards a natural spring which was a popular swimming spot in the area, he was wishing they could do it nude, for those two past experiences had indeed changed him. But that was not likely to happen, as David, despite being a dude-bro type, would think that was weird, and any appropriateness of the idea was out of the question since the spring was a family-oriented place, and a new addition to David and Linda's family, their now-six-year-old daughter Steffi, sat in the back seat.

Up until they arrived at the beautiful nature preserve, Nick was kind of unenthusiastic about even coming out. For one, Linda, who he had had a crush on right before she got married to David, was not there (she was having a "me" day while "the boys" went out to play, plus girl). Linda was probably the only reason that he hung out with David, whether he realized it or not, and now that they had a full family with a young daughter, he was essentially just a third wheel (or fourth, which technically wasn't a bad thing?). But yet they still asked him to come hang out. If only Helena was also there...

They pulled into the wooded, gravel lot and got out into the thick, humid, Southern air. Nick could taste the vegetation in his nostrils and could hear the droning hum of the cicadas. Steffi bounced out of the car and happily observed the surroundings while David dramatically pulled off his shirt (at least it looked dramatic, because he intimidated Nick a little) and commandingly opened the back of the jeep to grab their towels and suntan lotion. Nick just stood and felt like another kid, David's big, special-needs kid that he dragged around everywhere. That's what Nick felt like, sometimes.

"Alright bro, let's go check it out," David told him. "You'll love it."

He grabbed his daughter's hand before she could run ahead, and carried their stuff under his other arm, while Nick walked beside empty-handed, just swim trunks, sandals, and a black Final Fantasy t-shirt. He left his glasses in the jeep, and everything was a slight blur. Not that he would need his sight much.

Steffi was at his side, between him and David, in a pink full swimsuit top and a darker pink pair of swim-shorts, modest, as expected from parents like Linda and David, who would never let their daughter be seen in something as tacky as a junior bikini or any of those weirdly adult-looking swimsuits made for toddlers, and David, he wore, as always, his dark Hawaiian patterned shorts, and his bare, barrel chest. Whether Nick would take his shirt off when in the water would be decided. After his past experience, he felt more confident to do so, but his self-consciousness still clung to him, especially since there would be so many people at this spring, according to David.

"This is a popular spot, man," he said, motioning towards others walking ahead of them. Other family groups, couples or single parents with kids, walked, carrying towels and wearing swimming attire, some less modest than Steffi, others clothed shoulder-to-ankle despite the heat and humidity, and others, groups of teens and younger twenty-somethings, were coming back from the spring, their ankles and shins wet, their t-shirts soaked through. Nick did indeed feel self-conscious about being bare-chested in front of so many people, especially so many good-looking people, as his eyes glanced over at some of the passing young twenty-something girls, modestly dressed enough, but with their wet t-shirts clinging just enough to their skin to draw impressions of what they looked like naked, with their shorts short enough to invite passing glances at their milk-white thighs... all things he was accustomed to stealing glances at, as on that day when Helena showed up for their river trip in a bikini, and that was teasing enough before she lost all...

He thought of her naked again, how incredible it was. Would he see anybody naked today? Fat chance. But somehow, that was the secret draw that made him accept the invite to come out here, even though he was in a boring family dynamic currently. One never knew...

They passed a tiny food stand inhabiting a beat-up trailer that Steffi immediately asked if they could visit.

"Not before you swim," David told her. "Besides, we're going home to fried chicken, remember?"

Little Steffi's resulting "awwww" was laced with disappointment, besides the delicious promise of something home-cooked by Linda once they were done with their adventure. Nick glanced back at the food truck, for it did look inviting. It was neat that one could come out here and swim and be in nature and have some hot food also available when they were done. He almost wanted to slip away and see what they served. But soon they were traveling downhill, down a steep incline, and the sound of splashing water was up ahead...

The trees parted and below was a pristine, crystalline natural pool of water, with people gathered near the sides and the shallow parts. The only human alterations to the natural spring were a concrete set of steps and railing on one corner, a smaller set of steps leading into the water, a cleared-out little gravel area with benches on one slope, and a rope with some buoys on the one end, to keep people from slipping over and falling down the rocky stream below.

A group of young women, Nick noted, stood around on the concrete area, looking at the water and dropping bags as if they had just arrived. All of them, about four to be exact, wore denim shorts and tank tops, and had eye-catching caramel skin. They appeared to be Southeast Asian, or Latin. Little kids waddled in the shallow area around the set of steps immediately before Nick, and he watched some of them slip and be caught by their parents.

"See that, Steffi?" David advised. "The bottom's slippy, so let's be careful, okay?"

He and Nick walked down the slope and veered past the little steps, towards one of the benches where they would drop their stuff and Nick would presumably take off his shirt. There was a large wooden signboard there with large flyers pressed under a plastic panel. Nick looked back over his shoulder at the caramel-skinned women and felt the old feeling of self-consciousness again. They were all very pretty; their hair was black and wavy, short on their shoulders but wide and poofy, another with more of a pixie haircut, and another had long, flowing dark, straight hair down her back as she turned. He thought he saw one of them reaching down to the hem of her shirt to pull it off, and he bumped into the bench and had to look away. David noticed and laughed. Then he knelt down and spread some suntan lotion on his daughter's shoulders and face, and Nick turned away and looked out at the water, wondering if he should take off his shirt, though it felt weird to do it right there next to David and his daughter. Not that it should feel weird, but it did.

The shallow area where the kids were wading with their parents was quite rocky; a large boulder actually took up a centerpiece, with some kids scrambling up its slick surface. Farther out, only a few people lazily stroked across the rest of the spring, where the water turned almost a deep green, and a screen of trees half-circled around the whole body.

"How deep is that?" Nick asked without looking down.

"It gets pretty deep," David said. "Probably like thirty feet or something. You wouldn't even be able to dive down and touch the bottom."

"Wow."

"That's why we're not going to go out that far, right sweetie?" he said next, obviously to his daughter. Then he stood and was walking past.

"Well, you don't gotta wait on us, you can go out there," David said. "Let's get in."

Nick felt a sudden burst of confidence now, and, without looking back at the gaggle of pretty girls, turned to the bench, peeled off his shirt, and laid it there. He kicked off his sandals and turned to the water, carefully going down the steps and soon catching up to David and Steffi as they slipped in. He threw himself in, and instantly regretted it. The water was cold as hell. He actually let out a little holler of shock, and David laughed.

"Yeah, it's cold at first," he said. "I shoulda warned ya."

Nick was quickly able to get used to it, though, and he paddled out, past the big boulder and into the sea-green deepness of the spring, where one of the people who had swam out was now returning, and they crossed paths. A curious detail that Nick took note of was the young man's expression. It was weird; he seemed to be staring past Nick, and his face was contorted in confusion. Nick paid it no mind and paddled past him, to the big, dark deep, and with the people at his back, he felt like he was in some hidden spring straight out of the Legend of Zelda games. He placed his face flat in the water and peered down into the depths below, and he could actually see quite clearly, all the way down, where a giant log rested in the murky depths. The sight almost terrified him; if one sank down there, they would never have a chance of coming up...

When he took his face away from the water and his ears cleared, fantasies of being in a sacred spring all by himself vanished as he heard a commotion behind him. People were raising their voices. Had he gone too far out for safety? He paddled himself around to face back towards the shallow end, and gasped for breath at what he saw.

It had to be a mistake, but there was so much bare skin that it couldn't be, even with his eyes slightly out of focus for his lack of glasses. Gathering around the large rock were the young women he had been so self-conscious in front of, the young women who, when he last looked, had appeared to be pulling off their shirts. Now one of them, stepping behind the rock, was absent of anything to interrupt her bare skin—and ah!—there was the unmistakable twin pink of her nipples, of her medium bare breasts completely free, resisting any pull of a swimsuit top and splaying outwards, and the rest of her was no doubt just as bare. In fact, Nick thought he saw a shimmer of darkness at her thighs before she came around the side of the rock and raised, erasing any doubt. Her other friends were in front, paddling into the water, bare backs and the rise of bare butts half above the surface. The long-haired girl's mane trailed behind her; they were swimming toward him. And in the background, he saw displeased families exiting the water with their children, and he caught sight of David, sitting at the stairs and bringing Steffi in to face him, and his face was stern and disapproving.

Nick didn't know what to do; he was stuck there treading water as two of the girls approached. He felt like he was in Jaws, watching something come that he couldn't do anything about. Or Anaconda. Or Naked Women from Venus or something. He was not used to being on the receiving end of attention.

As the smiling faces, just above the surface of the water, drew near, they noticed him and flashed grins, and paddled past him, on their way to the deep area past where he had just been, leaving ripples and slender afterimages in their wake. Nick blinked, turned partly in the water to see them drifting past, a choice view of the moving clefts of their butts as their legs kicked, and then he turned back to the shallow area, where the other two beauties were only half-submerged, gladly displaying their breasts, while some of the families were exiting the water and dragging their children along. David was still sitting on the steps, holding Steffi close to him, and Nick started paddling towards them.

As he got near, he heard one lady shouting something to the two girls, but they seemed oblivious, and then the lady, a plump old woman in a long pair of shorts and a flowery blouse, stomped her foot and turned away. There was still a lone guy, around the same age as Nick, reclining on the bigger set of concrete steps where the girls had been, obviously enjoying the show. David was shaking his head as Nick came up, but not at him, just the situation. Nick kept his shoulders under the water and just drifted up to his friend with his hands guiding him along on the slick rock surface below.

"I think I'm gonna take Steffi out of here, dude, they aren't budging," he said.

Gee why? Nick thought. It's only some naked women, but it was none of his business, and he was not a father. He didn't have to be a father, though, to sympathize with David when Steffi's moans of protest came up.

"Ooooh, why do we gotta go? We just got here."

Nick met eyes with David and they both shrugged, and Nick stole a glance over to the big rock, where the two remaining girls had now slipped into deeper water in front of it, and happily raised their hands and waved to their friends all the way on the other side. Then they threw themselves forward and swam out.

"They're from somewhere else," David said. "I don't think they speak English. They ain't responding to people. It's like they think there’s wrong with what they're doing."

Nick had nothing but another shrug to reply to that with, while Steffi looked up at her father.

"Are they being bad, Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetie, they are. Come on, let's go."

David stood from the water and steadied himself on the steps to guide his daughter up, and Nick watched them, content to stay where he was, whether it was self-consciousness again making him hesitant to show his bare chest, or just unwillingness to leave while the girls were there to watch. When Steffi was padding her wet feet on the concrete above, David looked back down at him and smiled.

"You don't wanna leave, do you?"

Nick found himself smiling as well, and he couldn't believe it when he was bold enough to shake his head.

"No, I kinda don't—" his smile grew even more. "But I guess we have to."

He was equally surprised by the look of understanding that came over David's face next.

"Hey Steffi," David said, looking down at his daughter. "How about we go check out that food truck, huh?"

"Really?!" Her voice rose up with so much excitement.

"Sure, just don't get too much so you ruin your dinner. C'mon."

He looked down at Nick and gave him a wink.

"Hang out for a while, and you can meet us over at the food truck when you're ready. We won't come back for ya, unless they—" he glanced up at all four of the girls now paddling back from the deep end, a row of four delighted faces framed by their wet, gleaming shoulders. "—are gone by then."

"Alright, man. Well I hate to split up..."

"No you don't," David said with a grin, and then he started walking up the hill with his arm against Steffi's back, so she wouldn't turn around and look, but the promise of the food truck had made her lose interest in the water. Then Nick was alone in the shallow end of the spring, or at least until the four women returned, heading straight for the rock. One of them, one of the ones with the wide, poofy hair—now slicked down against her head—climbed out of the water and onto the rock, turning her body over so that her everything was presented as she briefly lay on her side, then turned over and sat leaning on her hands, her knees up, her chest out. She only glanced at him for a second. Nick glanced at her eyes, but was transfixed by the way her breasts subtly changed shape and position from when she was on her side, to when she leaned back, and her face was neutral and unconcerned with anything, and in the background of this astounding scene, the other man still sat on the concrete steps, now taking out a cigarette. Nick just sat there, chest deep by the steps, his hands idly moving with the natural current and his brain hardly able to believe that its imagination had been fulfilled: he really did get to see some nudity after all, and how!

The other girls came up near the rock but just sat in the water, just their shoulders poking up, not out of any shyness because of Nick's presence, but just because it felt good to be in the water. He understood that this was the case when one of them—the pixie-cut one—indeed looked his way and actually smiled at him. His heart fluttered, and he got brave:

"So why are you all naked?" he called over. She was about thirty feet from him, too far to have a conversation at normal volume (though he would faint if they were any closer).

"Huh?"

"Why are you all naked?"

The girl looked up at her friends, then at the girl up on the rock, and paused at her because she too noticed the man on the steps enjoying a cigarette and the sight (he was laughing now at the interrogation going on). She looked back at Nick.

"'Cause that is how you swim. Not here, though," she stated, as if only now realizing it.

"No," Nick said. "Not at all."

"We get in trouble?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

It would be considered rude to stare, but he was not staring. He was looking at someone as you're supposed to speak with them. It was just lucky for him that that person was naked. She was, however, mostly concealed, for now, and only her one friend sat above with nothing to hide, her hips a delicious shadow, a spot of sun bleaching her skin with a glare. His eyes rose to her a couple of times, and in that case, he did make an earnest attempt not to stare, but it was hard (heh), hard with the rock goddess overlooking everything, demanding to be looked at.

"Where are you from?" he asked next, and the pixie girl, interested in the conversation, drifted just a few feet closer, and Nick's heart skipped a beat.

"We are from Spain," she said. "Just here on vacation."

"I didn't know they swam nude in Spain."

"There are some nude beaches, yes, but we've never been to them. We live in very small town. That's just how we swim there. Nudity..." she raised her arms and made an animated shrugging gesture, with an exaggerated grimace, and a slight reveal of her breasts when she raised her arms. "Is no big deal."

Nick just marveled, and shook his head in wondrous disbelief. "For some, anyway."

She lowered her hands back into the water. Behind her, the girl with the longest hair was now climbing up onto the rock with her friend, her hair streaked down her bare back, pointing to her simple butt as she stood for a moment at full eight, canted a leg, and stretched her arms to the sky, passing her fingers through some low-hanging Magnolia branches above, where little pink-white flowers bloomed. She looked angelic. She was facing the smoking man, and, at noticing him, she waved one of her outstretched hands, and the man smiled and waved back. Then she turned and lowered herself so that she could lay on the rock where the sun found her.

The pixie girl was joined by the last of the group, whose short, shoulder-length hair was similar to the one sunning on the rock, and she seemed interested in the conversation that was going on. Her eyes were sparkling and curious and her gleaming shoulders were teasing. The pixie girl, after watching the exchange between the smoking man and the long-haired girl, replied to Nick's statement.

"It's a big deal for you?" she asked. He didn't know if she meant him personally or if she meant Americans in general. Either way, he replied with a slightly shaky voice as the twin beauties outstretched their bodies on the rock above: "Y-yeah."

Her friend smiled at the reaction, or perhaps it was at the general reception of their nakedness, because she glanced back past the rock at the smoking man, who was finished with his cigarette and wasn't smoking anymore, and she muttered something low to her friend and they both laughed. They seemed so happy there in the water; the friend swept wet, dripping hair out of her brow and flashed her teeth, and then suddenly she stood, flashing Nick—intentionally or not—the water running down her stomach in a clear sheet, dripping in tiny streams briefly from the tips of her smallish, pointed breasts, and coursing down the clefts of her thighs around her soaking-wet pubic hair. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, and Nick realized he was staring the whole time. The girls realized, too. It was, afterall, a big deal.

He was terrified that she was coming right for him, and that that's what they were laughing about, planning to tease him, but the only tease he got was her body moving close as she tip-toed carefully over the rocky bottom, around the big rock, circling close to him as she came around to head for the larger platform, where all four of them had gotten dressed. Her body turned as she passed by, her eyes, glancing down briefly, with a suppressed smile on her face, and her hips turning so Nick saw them in side-profile, a large dimple on her haunch, a peek of black at the front, and then she turned again so that her butt was moving, hypnotically, peppered with water droplets, as she rose all the way out of the water and got smaller in his blurring vision, passing behind her friends on the rock as she neared the patio, the whole scene like an impressionist’s painting without his glasses. Naked girls reclining in the foreground and a naked girl walking in the background; it was a wondrous image. The man at the patio sat straight up and pulled at his neckline, anticipating the girl, who looked up and waved but then cast her head down to look for what she had come for: her sandals. She slid them over with her toes and then slipped into them, and turned from the man, who adjusted his cap and gazed at her ass the same way Nick had done as she walked away, circled the steps where Nick was, and headed for the bench where he and David and Steffi had been, to look at the signboard there. While all this activity was going on, he heard the splash of water and looked away to find the pixie girl right next to him. She was sitting in a shallower spot now, and the soft points of her breasts teased at the surface of the water. The rest of her body was a tan shimmer underneath, including the shimmering darkness at her lap. There was nothing to hide and no way for Nick to pretend that he wasn't flustered.

"Why don't you do it?" she asked. The way she inflected it, it was hard to tell if she was literally asking him to join in, or if she was wondering why he insisted on wearing clothing in the water. He attempted to answer in a way that satisfied both questions.

"W-well, I would get arrested," he said.

"Really?"

He nodded his head, his eyes locking onto hers to avoid staring at everything below (he hoped she wasn't observant, because he could definitely feel his shorts pushing away as his tent-pitching partner began to do its work; it couldn't be helped). "Yeah, it's against the law here."

"Even to swim. That's stupid.

"I see no rule!" called the other girl, and Nick looked back to the signboard, where the girl still stood, one hand on her hip, the other stroking her chin, remarkable to see with one uninterrupted hue, top to bottom—especially the gentle curve of her bottom—as she acted like there was nothing strange about her walking around that way. Then she turned, full-frontal again, and Nick was mystified—all over again—as she slowly approached, saying "no rules about wearing clothes."

The pixie girl in the water smiled at that. "See?" she said. "We're alright."

Nick laughed. It wasn’t like he was going to stop them. But he didn't know what to do or say now. He was shrinking in on himself, while meanwhile, he was definitely not shrinking in other areas, especially when the second girl stepped into the water right next to him, but instead of entering, she plopped her butt down on the top step and there sat, her knees slightly parted, inviting a glance between them, of not only dark hair, but also a trace of lip. Nick shot his eyes away to not be rude, and the pixie girl was smiling knowingly.

"So why don't you do it?" she asked again, and Nick now realized she was indeed egging him on. Jesus. He shivered, trying not to look up again at the other girl sitting behind him with her parted legs, finding only the pixie's smiling face, half-exposed chest, and completely exposed friends behind her, magnificent on the rock. There was nowhere to look without seeing beautiful naked girls, and his arousal was urgent, desperate, and ultimately shy.

"Shy?" she asked.

"That too," Nick admitted. "...Do you usually swim with guys back home?"

"Not always. Sometimes."

"Isn't it awkward?"

"Awkward?"

"Don't they stare?"

"Not always, but sometimes," she repeated, and laughed. "It's just what we are. The guys in our town, they don't see a big deal, either. Like I said, where we live, that's how you swim."

"It feels good walking, too," the girl behind him said, and Nick hazarded a glance back, and trembled down below again. "To walk free. We only walk on the shore at home."

"Yes. Free," the pixie said. "So why don't you do it?" She reached over and nudged him. The touch of her fingers on his bare arm was like lightning. Nick trembled a bit and hugged himself, issuing forth another laugh from the girl. She seemed intent on seeing him naked, though. Was he more attractive than he thought? Or perhaps, he warned himself, this was not a show of attraction, just a desire to see him enjoy himself. Simple friendliness was something he had a constant issue with misidentifying as flirting. Even when he had that prostitute visit him, he was unsure of how to interpret her actions.

"There's nobody here," the girl continued. "You won't get in trouble."

"Well, alright. When in Rome," he said, and he took a first shaky slide off the bottom step where he sat so he could disrobe. "Or when at home."

He began to stand, thought against it, and just lowered himself in the water and, to his own astonishment at what he was doing, pulled off his trunks. Instantly the water wrapped around his body and he felt the cool, enveloping embrace over his hips and thighs; a seamless feeling. And his erection bobbing free in the water. He stood just enough to throw his shorts on the ground, just enough for his chubby ass to lift out of the water and moon the girls, with his offensive part facing the wall, and he heard a male voice far behind announce: "well, I'm out."

Nick lowered back in the water and turned, erection bobbing like a buoy underwater, to see the man by the steps stand, brush himself off, and walk towards the trail, apparently not keen on being in the company of a naked male, even if they were outnumbered by women. It would have been an opportunity for him to get naked as well, as he was obviously getting a rise out of the show and would conceivably be all for exposing himself to the women of the spring, but apparently he was a voyeur only, and he soon disappeared through the branches, and then it really was just Nick and the women, and he was naked together with them. But he was not as comfortable as they were. He drew his arms around himself and hugged his pudgy frame, as if that hadn't already been exposed when he had taken his shirt off. The pixie girl was smiling at him.

"Go swim!" she said, tapping his arm again and sending more lightning bolts coursing through him, all the way down to his lightning rod, exposed but hidden somewhat in the rippling water. "Go see how it feels!"

Nick moved from his spot, feeling all the terror of being a kid and venturing out into the deep end before he fully knew how to swim, the fear of drowning replaced with the fear of exposure, the fear being anticipated with each inch he moved forward. He was hesitant, but was soon far in enough to begin to stand, his toes touching the slick rocks below, his body at full height, and terrifyingly nude, but still hidden under the increasing depths. The pixie girl stood—he looked over and saw as she was revealed out of the water momentarily, her torso as wet and inviting as her friend's had been, and she threw herself forward into the water, and was in the next second paddling up next to Nick.

"Let's go, come on," she urged, and she gently stroked again, and Nick leaned forward and began to swim. His ass poked up out of the water, cooling his cheeks and mooning the other girls, but he concentrated on swimming, making the same trek as he had a while ago towards the deep, green water, only now with the new sensations all around him, the girl at his side, but also the sensations around his body, not all completely physical, but a strange, weightless feeling, as if he were floating in space. There was no familiar tug of his trunks resisting the current, just freedom, the only thing reminding him of his body being his penis flowing with the current, and now no longer erect (for the moment), just a faint reminder of his body. Otherwise, with the branches and vines hanging above and all around, and the scent of them in his nose, and the birds and bugs chirping and buzzing, Nick approached an almost meditative state. He could hardly believe where he was, and even forgot about the swimming beauty next to him. He had been dropped into a sacred spring hidden from civilization. He was in some Eden, swimming with his Eve. Was this really what skinny-dipping was usually like?

They reached the deepest point and then stopped. Their feet lowered and they treaded water, and Nick was faced with the girl in front of him again, reminding him of who he was with, and she was impossible to ignore.

She was so close, and as their legs kicked in unison, he felt his attraction to her rise up again, but it was invisible under the depths. That, in a way, was also a liberating feeling.

She grinned at him, the water splashing on her teeth with her chin just on the surface. "Isn't this better?" she asked him.

"Yeah," he managed to breathe out. "It really is."

"And people actually put clothes on to swim," she said. "Silly."

"Yeah..." He guessed it actually was. He had to now agree. All it took was less than a minute for him to be converted.

His toes brushed against her, and it gave him a start. His heart jumped as he realized how close he was to her, and how close the source of his sole physical sensation was to her as well. It was almost forgotten, and it was forgotten for a reason, for it no longer was flipping about in the current, but fully inflamed. Then his heart seized in panic when her hands slipped into his and she leaned back to pull him along, and his stabbing show of attraction moved in as if for the kill.

"You know what's even better?" she said with a wondrous smile. "Sunning out on the rocks. Come on and try i—"

Her voice cut off right at the contact between his tip and her thigh. The underside of his erection glided along her upper leg as he fell towards her, and she kicked her feet, straightened up again, and laughed. She did not let go of his hands. He wobbled against her skin and found himself prodding, pushing, and tracing the sensitive areas of her thigh without any intention of his own; the movement of the water did all the work. He thought of a million different apologies and explanations, but she didn't seem to care about the transgression, and simply laughed again and repeated: "come on," as she let go of one hand and leaned to the side, slowly starting her way back, and trailing Nick along with her. He was left twitching down below as he kicked his legs and came up beside her, and then he let go of her hand and they both swam, the other women up ahead, the two still on the rocks, the girl on the steps now standing and walking over to the bigger set of steps, all of them an enticing vision drawing closer and closer as Nick's lesser self cut through the water like a sword and seemed ready to lose itself even without the contact of the pixie's skin.

Soon they neared the rock. The other women were right above him. One of them, the shorter-haired girl, brought in her legs and stood, as if to make room for him. Just the sight of her rising above him filled his heart—and certain blood vessels—with heat. She turned to watch her friend about to discard her sandals and then look down at her clothes as if contemplating putting them on, and again she was in beautiful side profile, and in between her and Nick, the rock girl's butt was presented to him, suddenly the most aesthetic trio of lines to him: one curving down, two curved lines bisecting it, fullness and plumpness filled within their curves. And then she stepped forward off the rock, leaned down to put her feet in the shallow water, and waded towards the patio to her friend, climbing out and turning, this way and that, so that her dripping body could be appreciated from multiple, breathtaking angles. Both of their bodies were a travelogue of perfectly-complimenting lines and curves, all colored in by the same shade, and it struck Nick then that within those lines was perfection, and that it ought not to be corrupted by a bathing suit.

The pixie girl next to him stood and clambered up the rock, her shiny wet butt rising in his face, and a peek of fur. It was too late to avert his eyes, and her butt passed by and uncovered the long-haired girl's face, which turned and regarded Nick with a neutral expression. She threw her hair back and then disregarded him, staring up at the flowery branches and looking a mixture of contented and bored. A sheen of a light sweat polished her tan skin.

The pixie girl made it up and turned around, standing to full height.

"Come on," she said, motioning the path he should take walking around the rock to climb up. Nick nodded and complied, feeling the moment of doom as he rose out of the water, ascending with each step to reveal his arousal, which he couldn't pretend didn't exist, even while trying to pass his hands casually over it to cover it. He soon needed his hands for balance, and was holding them out and tip-toeing onto the rock with his lewd display wobbling in front of him. The pixie girl caught his hand when he almost slipped, and then they stood there, face-to-face for a second, and it was like a dream. It was all a dream. It had to be, as in his side view, the other two nude girls stood and talked among each other, making motions with their hands and consequently making the slightest jiggling motions on their chests, and that didn't help allay his firmly-present erection.

"Sit, sit," the pixie girl motioned with her hands, letting him go, and Nick lowered to a crouch, then popped his legs out and contemplated how to "sit." It would be understandable that he stick his legs out and lean back as the long-haired girl did, to let the air evaporate the moisture off his exposed torso, and to let the sun bless him, but his aroused state made him self-conscious. There seemed to be no other option, however, and he had not been slapped so far, so he went through with it, let his feet stick out over the edge of the rock, and he leaned back, letting himself show, presenting his erection with no shame. It actually felt freeing, and a tiny burst of adrenaline released in him; he was even shaking. He suddenly felt good, and expectant of what could happen as a result of his show, until he glanced over, past the long legs of the pixie girl who still stood beside him, and locked eyes with the long-haired girl, who glanced at his penis, scrunched her nose, and curled her lip in a look of disgust, and then looked away again.  Instant regret filled the sudden gulf in his chest. But the pixie girl was beaming down at him, and one of her eyebrows raised when he lifted his head and saw she was studying him. Gazing up at her, her body in a whole new light, like a giant looming over him, she looked up and reached out her hand for the Magnolia branches above. She raised to her tippy-toes and with two fingers plucked one of the white flowers and lowered back to her feet and looked down at Nick. His heart rushed again as she crouched, beside him, and reached out the hand holding the flower. Carefully, tenderly, with Nick holding his breath, she held the flower above the summit of his erection and let it drop, placing it right in his crown. And then he let out a breath, and his erection twitched. But the flower held its spot.

"There, a beautiful picture," the pixie girl said with a grin. "Don't be ashamed of it."

Nick took another shuddery breath. He shouldn't, he supposed. Here was something he'd been conditioned to be ashamed of, to gratify in the shadows, now presented to the light of the day, and with the beauty all around him, he desired to show it, to show the whole world: I am aroused! Was this part of skinny-dipping, too?

The girl settled down on the rock beside him, and he felt pained tenseness in him, begging to be released, but the long-haired girl said something in Spanish, and the pixie turned to her, responded, and then the long-haired girl stood. Just gazing up at her, stealthily, from the edges of his vision, was almost too much, for she was perfect, too, standing straight, the puff of her pubic hair accentuating her otherwise uniformly-colored body, and the black mane of her hair falling down her back and matching the puff below, and she turned to look back at her friends, who Nick could not see from his vantage point, and he was glad he couldn't, for at that moment, all of the power with which he tried to contain himself was lost, and the flower was launched off his penis with a burst of relief.

Embarrassment followed, as the pixie girl looked away from her friend and laughed in surprise at the sight of a river of white taking the flower down to settle in a pool on Nick's stomach.

"Wow," she said, and suddenly reached out and grasped him there. It was so sudden, and the sensation so pure, as he pulsed out what was left of his passion, that he cried out, and the pixie laughed, and squeezed. A trickle of him ran down her knuckles, and she wiggled him back and forth and then ran her tightly-gripped fingers up his shaft and over his crown, making him hiss in the fresh spring air with the faint bleachy scent of his own release, and then she leaned close and put her lips to his ear, while her hand squeezed him into submission.

"You need a girlfriend," she said with a laugh that tickled his earlobe, and then she let him go, pulled her legs in, and stood, leaving him collapsing onto his back, heaving, his erection throbbing and bobbing.

"We have to go," she said, looking down at him. "Enjoy the day!"

He was left dazed, unable to say anything, as the pretty face and bare underboob looked down at him and then moved out of his vision to replace it with the branches full of flowers swaying in the breeze, and the cool feeling of that breeze cool on his tip. He heard the girls talking behind him, and then heard things being moved, a bag scraping against the concrete as it was picked up, and the faint, subtle sound of clothes sliding back onto bare skin. And he was unable to lean up and turn around and say goodbye, and just lay there and caught his breath, let himself splay out there so obscenely, too weak to slide into the water and clean himself off, and in a minute, he attained a meditative state again, hypnotized by the movement of the swaying branches, the sounds of nature, and the moist, cool feeling of the mess in his lap. What a morning. And then there was a very familiar voice behind him.

"Aw, what the hell?"

He sat up so quick and rolled over to see David standing at the end of the trail, Steffi held against him with his hand pressing her face to him, and Nick slid off the rock, scraping his thighs and—-with a yelp—something more sensitive, and his feet shot with pain as he landed firmly in the water and lowered himself to his shoulders.

"You had a good time, I see."

"I-it's a long story. I'm sorry, I uh..."

"Whatever, just meet us back at the car. I think we're going home."

There was an instant protest from Steffi, but David did not relent, and did not let her go, for he could not obviously allow her to see what was presented at the spring. Nick was about to explain how he had been urged to join the girls, and how wonderful it in fact was, and how David and his daughter should join in the same manner, but there was no way to express that with how David had found him, no way to make it appropriate or acceptable for them to enter as he was, and David turned, dragging his daughter back up the trail, and Nick was left alone, completely alone this time, in the spring, collecting himself and dreading how to explain things for the rest of the day. The meditative quality of the spring had vanished, and though he was physically comfortable, his mind was a wreck, and his chest throbbed with worry, and the faint pulse of his morning of pleasure still hung inside like it had just happened, and then he dipped his hands in the water and went through the humiliating task of cleaning himself, though there was no longer anybody there for him to be humiliated in front of, and then he exited the water, anxious to get dressed and feeling suddenly alarmed to be walking from the steps to the bench full out in the open, a supposedly pleasant experience as one of the girls had described, and he grabbed his towel and dried off hastily, pulling on his shirt and remembering his trunks were discarded at the water's edge, and he tromped barefoot to where they were, bottomless, his now loose and small self flipping freely as he shuffled across the gravel, and he plucked up his shorts and put them on, and when he was fully clothed, he felt somehow incredibly dirty, and he turned to the trail with much dread at what he was going to face. The women of the spring may as well have been a dream at this point, but he knew they weren't. He also knew that his relations with David and Linda were going to be awkward after this. But he took a breath and headed up the trail.

For every season, there is a Naked Passion, but too much passion might leave one Obsessed.

Press flesh with P.A. Choi at:

twitter.com/PAChoi4

instagram.com/pachoi4

goodreads.com/pachoierotica

Or shoot an e-mail at pachoierotica@gmail.com

[i] They’re a blast!

[ii]See Joe’s report in Naked Angels!

[iii]As seen in I Brought You Flowers

[iv]See the full details in Snow Angels!

[v]The beginnings of that university can be seen in full, naked view in Junioress Park

[vi]As seen in saucy detail in To Sail with Naked Girls

[vii]As seen in Village of the Naked Girls

[viii]His story can be heard in A Naked Girl Walked into My Office, and he also appears In the Dead of Night; and narrates The Mystery of Naked Girls, a collection that includes Naked Angels!