By Lora Guy

Cross dresser caught up in a sudden, massive group transformation in downtown Boston.

Calamities usually don't happen unless several mistakes to come together...

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The Boston Bubble: Lora's Story
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Chapter 4
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Glowing with sweat, I just managed to catch my breath before George stumbled into the room, bleary-eyed.

"Are you OK? I thought I heard..."

"Nightmare." I made sure I had a serious look on my face and after a short pause for dramatic effect, I went on. "I dreamed I was fighting someone. A real knock-down, drag-out battle. But it was one of those dreams where it feels like your swimming in marshmallow. You know what I mean?"

George nodded. "Yeah."

"And nothing really makes sense..." She nodded again. "In the beginning, I had no idea why I was fighting with this woman, but then somehow I did know. She was pissed at me because..." I put a confused look on my face and pulled the trigger. "... because I wet the bed." George's eyes went wide. A giggle followed by a tiny "oh no" squeaked out of her as she turned and ran down the hall. As she slammed the bathroom door, I called out, "It was awful. She was spraying me with furniture polish."

Ignoring the commotion, the cat walked up and started rubbing his body on my leg. Leaning forward, I looked down at it. "I'll have you know I'm not that kind of girl." He looked up at me. "You have to understand, last night was a mistake. I drank too much." Unimpressed, the cat dismissed my misgivings and went back to rubbing himself against me. "I hope you'll at least have the decency to never mention last night again."

Sitting back, I reached up and rubbed my temples. I could feel the makings of a head ache coming on. From experience, I knew that I needed two things: water and caffeine. Getting up, I shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle half way and plugged it in. Then I started hunting. Water was easy; I just pulled a glass off of a shelf and chugged a couple of glass-fulls straight out of the tap. The coffee hunt wasn't quite so successful. I was still looking for a jar of instant when George came into the room.

"Lenny, I haven't felt like that since I was a little kid getting tickled. I'm going to need your word on something. Please don't do that to me unless I'm within five steps of a toilet."

"OK, promise. You have any idea where your sister keeps the instant?"

"You won't find any. She's a tea person." I turned and made a frown. George went on. "If we get ourselves in gear and head back over to city hall right now, there might not be a line up. And we can probably pick up a coffee and a bite at that Red Cross set-up."

"Sounds like a plan to me." I looked over at my hoodie and track pants folded beside the couch. "And if it looks like we're going to be staying here another night, I'm going to need to see if I can buy me some clean clothes. And a tooth brush."

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As we made our way back to city hall plaza, George was uncharacteristically quiet. "So what's on your mind?"

"Huh? Oh. I was just thinking about actually trying to fit into this world looking like this." She made a sweeping motion down the sides of her body. "As a teen aged girl, I mean. There are so many cliche things that I just don't want to find myself doing."

"I do think there's hope for us George."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this morning when I mentioned that I need to buy some clothes, neither one of us got excited by the idea of going shopping."

"Granted, but I"m still going to be watching for the symptoms of congenital girly-ness."

I thought for a moment. "You mean things like dotting your i's with a little heart?"

George smiled. "Exactly. In fact I hadn't thought of that one."

"So what is on your list?"

"Well, for starters, spending three hours a day sitting in front of a computer, updating my face-space page."

I chuckled at that, then offered up, "or how about bitching about the cold in January while refusing to wear a warm coat."

She nodded, then added, "or making one of those goddamn kissy faces every time someone points a camera at me."

Tipping my head slightly, I nodded my agreement. After about ten paces of deep thought, it came to me. "George, I can top all of those. Promise me, if you ever, ever hear me inviting someone to join me just because I need to go take a piss, then PLEASE pull out a gun and shoot me where I stand."

George stopped walking and turned to face me. Putting a hand on my shoulder, she said, "Sir, on that you have my word as a gentleman."

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Arriving back at the plaza, we could see that we were early; no one had shown up to unlock the building yet. Without any discussion, we let the morning chill push us into the Red Cross tent for that coffee.

There were about fifty girls seated around the place, but it didn't feel crowded. It was early yet, so there were no volunteers actually working. We made our way over to the far side of the tent where there was a table set up with hot coffee. A small sign announced HELP YOURSELF.

I poured us two cups, looked at George and asked, "Cream and sugar?"

A light bulb seemed to go off in her head. "You know, here's something I hadn't thought of yet. I don't know what the hell I like any more. I used to drink coffee black, but now I have a craving for something smoother. I think I'll try it with a splash of..."

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The truly awful things in life rarely occur due to one particular thing going awry. Calamities usually don't happen unless several mistakes come together at the same time and place.

When a nameless, faceless functionary contacted the local offices of the Red Cross to inform them of the state of emergency declared in downtown Boston, he was only following protocol. The person who received that call did what they were trained to do in an emergency; they organized a crew which was sent to erect and stock a mobile meal center in City Hall Plaza. When this crew arrived at the barricades on Congress Street, they were confronted by a young platoon of national guard troops with somewhat vague orders to stop anyone from passing. The Red Cross crew left the truck and its contents in the care of the troops, who moved it inside the barricades.

An hour later, a seventeen-ish looking girl in a rather loose fitting police officer's uniform showed up and drove the truck to the Plaza. There, she organized an ad hoc group of girls who did their best to erect the tent. When they were done, they were happy with the results. To a trained eye, the potential catastrophic failure would have been obvious, but there were no trained eyes among them. The king pins holding the frame of the tent together required the use of cotter pins to hold them in place, but few of the city hall workers who helped erect the tent had ever heard of a cotter pin; hence few were used.

When the tent was stocked by these same people, they thought they were being efficient by stacking the cardboard cartons of supplies immediately beside the cooking equipment, oblivious to the fire hazard they were creating.

This string of well meant actions all came together at the same time and place to make it possible for something awful to happen. Mother nature set things in motion by rattling the tent frame with a light, gusty breeze.

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Never having seen a king pin before, neither Lenny nor George recognized it for what it was when it bounced off of the table beside them and landed at their feet. They both looked down at the same time to see what had made the metallic ping on the concrete. George never had a chance. The aluminum frame member silently fell fifteen feet before it hit her on the top of her head. Lenny saw it dropping out of the corner of her eye and managed to protect her head by sacrificing her left arm. After bouncing off the two of them, the pole pushed a stack of boxes over, which in turn landed on the propane-powered hot plate. Two of the boxes immediately caught on fire; one containing emergency candles began burning quite vigorously.

Everyone else in the tent turned to look when the pole knocked over the boxes, so contrary to what you would expect, no one had to yell out "fire". They all just stood and hurried out the door on the far side of the tent, the last of the group nervously looking over her shoulder at the rapidly growing flames. Neither she, nor any of the other people leaving the tent noticed Lenny lying flat on her back with George sprawled out across her legs.

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For the second time that morning, I found myself waking up disoriented. I pushed my eyes open to see what was making all the noise. The sight of the flames licking at the side of the tent cleared my thoughts in a flash. I worked myself into a sitting position and found that I was looking down at an ugly gash on the top of George's head. So much blood... I was covered in it.

"George." No response. "Shit. George, get up!"

Nothing. Pieces of paper ash were floating around in the air. Sooty smoke was filling the dome of the tent. I swung my head around and saw where the door was. Good, nothing between us and there.

"OK George, we gotta go."

I pushed George up into a sitting position and held her there while I got on my haunches behind her. Wrapping my arms under hers and around her chest, I used the strength of panic-induced adrenaline to stand up. Then, glancing over my shoulder, I started dragging her the fifty feet to the exit. When we were about ten feet from the door, I heard the clang of another piece of the tent frame hitting the ground. The sagging roof pushed a gust of black, ash filled smoke past us just as I pulled George out through the door. I made it another ten feet before I fell on my butt, choking for breath, still hugging George. I remember sitting there, looking around at a crowd of surprised faces, thinking, "I wish they'd all look somewhere else, because I think I'm gonna puke."

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Mike Riley was an odd combination of a man. His friends and family saw an amiable, hard working, honest person. And he was. But Mike had a private hobby that he kept to himself.

Mike supported himself selling, installing and maintaining security systems. And he was very good at what he did. An impressive list of corporations in the Greater Boston area relied on his top-notch services. One of his specialties was installing hidden little cameras which could be remotely monitored by anyone having an internet connection and the correct password. What our Mr. Riley didn't tell his clients was that buried in the software of every one of these systems was a back door. A back door that only he had the key to. Mike could sit in his living room and watch the images fed from any one of the hundreds of cameras which he installed and maintained.

In the beginning, it was all quite innocent. The back doors were there to make it easy for him to see which cameras needed service. But very quickly, Mike learned something about human nature. It was amazing what some people would do when they thought no one was watching. No one, that is, except Mike. A few of the locations were more interesting than most. They provided Mike with an endless stream of everything from pilfering security guards, all the way up to couples having sex while supposedly working late. And Mike recorded all of it.

A few years ago, the owners of the building at Five Cambridge Street had hired Mike to install one of his security systems. During the installation process, Mike decided to give his client something that they hadn't asked for. Five Cambridge Street is located directly facing City Hall Plaza, so Mike placed a zooming, swivel based remote camera on the outside of the building. He now had a front row seat for every sports rally, concert and protest demonstration.

At the moment when the bubble occurred, Mike wasn't expecting anything so he wasn't recording. He wouldn't make that mistake again. As soon as he heard that something big was happening downtown, he rushed home, set his camera for a wide view and began recording the plaza. Teen girls continuously milling about looking lost, the Red Cross tent being erected, night fall and then dawn... all digitally captured on one of his hard drives.

Having his morning toast and coffee, Mike Riley watched as part of the huge expanse of the tent roof quickly sagged. When a stream of girls came pouring out of the tent, he moved his camera and zoomed in tight on the area around the door. Sixty seconds later, as a gust of thick black smoke spewed out of the door, a girl stumbled backwards out of the tent, dragging a limp body in her arms. A few yards from the tent, the girl fell to her butt, looked around and then passed out. Mike zoomed in closer. In spite of the smoke oozing out of their clothes, it was easy to see the bone sticking out of the heroine's left forearm.

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Hi folks... just me again.
A week and a half ago, when I wrote and posted the prologue and first chapter of this story, I thought maybe a few hundred fiction junkies like me would bother themselves to look at it.
What a pleasant surprise to see that it's not hundreds, but thousands who are reading it.

Thank you for that, but special thanks go to those of you who are going to the trouble of posting comments and pushing the kudos button.

☺... Lora