The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 1 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

It’s not every night that you escape from being put in a zoo, but this was no ordinary night. Not by any means. In fact, “not being put in the zoo” was only the beginning of my night.

Generally speaking, my life was going pretty well up to that point: I was a freshman at State with a football scholarship, the full ride. Sports commentators were already calling me “an up-and-coming talent” -- on national TV!

And, best of all… there was Mayda. She wasn’t just my girlfriend, she was the one. She didn’t know it yet, but I was going to marry her. We were perfect together. Or at least *I* thought so.

I know I shouldn’t blame Mayda for what happened that night, but -- well, honestly, I *do* blame her. If she wasn’t so pig-headed, if she didn’t always have to have her own way, if she ever cared about what *I* wanted, everything would have gone differently!

Tonight was a special night: our six-month anniversary. My plan for the perfect evening was (1) a nice steak dinner at The Ultimate Steakhouse, followed by (2) a romantic walk along the Riverway, and then (3) back to my place for some long, hot recreational sex. I’m in great shape. I’m a running back, so I’m strong, fast, and agile. Mayda plays soccer -- I think she said she’s a center midfielder, but she runs all over the field. She has a body to die for. She’s tall, has the hint of a six-pack, a pair of impressively round, firm breasts, a smooth, cute ass, and long shapely legs. When she’s on the field, she wears her dark brown hair in a long ponytail that almost reaches her waist. I love to watch her hair bounce as she flies after the soccer ball. Soccer itself, though... I don’t understand the game at all. I had to say “center midfielder” to myself over and over for weeks before I could remember the words. Nearly every time the referee blows the whistle, I have no idea why. The only way I can watch a game is if Mayda’s playing. She’s a knockout, and nobody moves the way she does. She can run for 90 minutes plus, and still have energy. So… needless to say (but I want to say it), the sex was very good.

If we’d stuck to my plan for the evening, we’d still be together. I’d be the man, she’d be the woman, and we’d go on to spend the rest of our lives together. Instead, everything turned inside out and upside down.

The first snag, though, I should have foreseen: Mayda was never, ever ready for a date. I don’t know why I thought tonight would be different. She was punctual for everything else in her life, but dates? Always at least a half hour late. Minimum. This time it was forty-five minutes before we left her apartment, and we ended up arriving at the steakhouse an hour later than I planned. As usual, while she dried her hair and chose her clothes and put on makeup, I wandered around her apartment like a moron. What else could I do? She periodically assured me that she was “ready” or “almost ready” or “only had to put on her shoes,” but (as usual) none of that was true. I’ve learned to not take what she says seriously, and to never ask for an estimated time of departure. There is nothing I can do to speed her up, and experience has taught me that asking or prodding actually slows her down. We’ve had two really fierce arguments about how long she takes to be ready, so I avoid the topic as if it were a bomb. There was no way to know how much time she’d need. The only signal that had any meaning was when she’d walk to her door.

When at last, she emerged from her bedroom, hanging her left earring on her ear, I was fiddling with a glass turkey. She had this figurine on her kitchen counter: a turkey, made of orange glass. It was about the size of a football.

“Oh, do you like that?” she asked. “It’s super cute, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It weighs a ton. What’s it for?”

“It’s decoration!” she said with a laugh. “For Thanksgiving, obviously.”

“Thanksgiving is what… six months away?”

“I saw it and I couldn’t resist it.”

I hit the second snag right there, but I didn’t know it at the time. It suddenly struck me that this was the first time Mayda had ever bought something for her apartment that wasn’t 100% functional. She called the turkey decoration! Nothing else in the apartment was decorative. Her place was about as personal as a hotel room.

Of course, I was overthinking it. I was making a big something out of a little nothing. I took the purchase of the glass turkey as a fundamental change, when it was nothing but a whim. I took it to be the first indication she had started nesting: settling in and making a home. The thought buoyed me up, and gave me even more hope for our life together.

Mayda grabbed her bag and headed for the door. When she opened it, a current of air fluttered the curtain of the window behind me. She’d left her window open! “Hey!” I called to her, “Do you want me to close that window?”

“Naw,” she replied. “I have to change the air. It seems kind of musty in here.”

I gave a couple of sniffs and told her that the air seemed fine to me.

“Why do you care?” she asked, smiling. “Just leave it.”

“Somebody could climb in that window,” I told her. “It’s not safe.”

She scoffed and left the apartment. I followed her out the door into the hallway. Before she shut the door she started digging in her bag. “I made a spare key. I need to hide it in the hall someplace.”

“That’s not safe, either!” I told her. “Can’t you just call your super if you forget your key?”

Without answering me, she took a paperclip from her bag, unbent it to an S-shape, hooked the key to one end, and hung the paperclip behind a light fixture next to her door. “See? Now it’s hidden. The paperclip is a little handle so I can get it out.” To demonstrate, she used her fingernail to lift the key from its hiding place. Then she put it back again, smiling triumphantly.

“It isn’t safe,” I repeated. “Anyone could take that key and let themself in.”

She scoffed again, and walked to the exit stairwell.

I don’t know whether this is the third snag, or still the first, but -- because Mayda had taken so long to get ready, we couldn’t get a table at The Ultimate. They don’t take reservations, which I guess doesn’t matter because we wouldn’t have made it anyway, but if we’d arrived at 7, as I planned, we could have gotten a nice table by the window. Instead, now that it was 8 o’clock, there was already a waiting list. They told me they could seat us in an hour, if we wanted to wait.

I managed to hide my irritation and annoyance, but Mayda wasn’t disappointed at all. In fact, she was happy about it: “We can try Ebbidles!” she exclaimed. “It’s right across the street! I’ve wanted to go there forever! And look! They have plenty of tables!” So that’s where we went.

It turned out to be a vegan restaurant, so goodbye to the steak I was expecting.

“You don’t need to eat so much meat,” she told me.

“I’m a football player,” I told her. “I need those dense, yet tender, units of protein and fat.”

“Tom Brady is a vegan, you know,” Mayda told me. “And look at him!”

“I don’t want to look at him,” I told her. “I can’t stand that guy.”

After a meal of what seemed like hay and nettles, washed down with beet juice flavored with dirt, I suggested the (romantic) walk by the river. As if she hadn’t heard, Mayda said, “You know what I’d love to do now? You know what would be REALLY great? We could drive out to the desert! There’s this spot I know where we can look at the night sky. It’s really clear tonight, and once we get away from the city lights, the sky will be full of stars.” She smiled at me. “We’ll be far from civilization. We can spread out a blanket and have some fun... out in nature, under the moon and stars..”

That wasn’t the fourth snag, but it was well on the way to it. I don’t like nature, but I do like fun, so I went along with her idea. “How long will it take to get there?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Forty minutes, tops.” Actually, that didn’t sound bad. It would give us time to talk.

"Fine," I agreed. "My pickup's just a couple blocks from here."

Once we left town, and the lights and buildings were disappearing behind us, I opened my mouth to speak, but Mayda started talking first. “I’m glad we can do this,” she said. “Tonight’s a special night, and I want to celebrate with you.”

“Yes, I know it’s a special night,” I replied with a smile.

“You know?” she asked, in a surprised voice. “How could you possibly know? Did my mother tell you?”

“Your mother? What does your mother have to do with it? It’s our anniversary!” Did Mayda really not remember?

“Anniversary?” She was genuinely puzzled.

“Six-month anniversary of when we started seeing each other!”

“Ohhh! Right. Is that today?”

Obviously, she hadn’t remembered.

A little irritated, I asked, “If it’s not our anniversary that makes tonight special, what is it?”

“Okay,” she said. Her face was shining with excitement. “I was going to tell you later, after we made love, but I guess I can tell you now. I might EXPLODE if I don’t tell you. I’m going to play for Barcelona!”

“Barcelona, Spain?”

“Yes!”

“Barcelona, Spain,” I repeated.

“Do you know another Barcelona?”

“Playing soccer?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to get on a European team for a while now, and what I’ve done so far at State was enough to impress a couple of teams to invite me. Can you believe that?”

I hardly knew what to think. I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t find any words, except to ask when she’d go.

“I’m leaving at the end of the month! Isn’t it exciting?”

“You’re dropping out?”

“I’m leaving college, yes. But college was never my dream. It was just a place to play soccer. Now I can play for real, professionally. So fuck college! I’m going to Spain! I’m going to see Europe!”

My jaw dropped. I pulled over to the side of the road and turned the engine off. “But what about us?” I demanded.

“What about us?” she asked. “It’s not like we’re getting married or anything. I mean, I like you -- I like you a lot -- but I *never* led you to think I wanted anything more. We’ve only been seeing each other for a couple of months--”

“SIX months!”

“Okay, six months. Honestly, though, I thought you’d be happy for me. If an NFL team wanted you, I’d be happy for you.”

“It’s not the same!” I shouted.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re supposed to be together. We belong together!”

She withdrew to the far side of her seat and gave me a wary look. In a quiet, careful tone, as if walking on eggshells, she said, “Ross, we don’t belong together. I’m sorry. We don’t. I want change, adventure, uncertainty, change -- okay, I said ‘change’ already -- but any way, I’m pretty sure you want exactly the opposite. You want solid, stable--” She stopped herself, but I knew the next word was going to be stuck.

“Is soccer really that important to you?” I demanded.

“No, honestly, it’s not,” she said. “I love soccer, but mostly it’s a way out. Like right now: it’s taking me to Spain! Ross, I need to get away from here. I need a bigger life.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “College is just for soccer, and soccer is just to get away from here? So what is Barcelona?”

“Barcelona is Barcelona. It’s far away and exotic. It’s the doorway to a different kind of life.”

“Are you planning on coming back?”

“I don’t know. I have to see where life takes me. This is the first time I can take a big, bold step, so I’m taking it. I would kick myself forever after if I let a chance like this slip by.”

We argued back and forth. Well, really, *I* argued. She was calm, and she tried to calm me down. She pointed out that she’d never misled me, or made me any promises. “Every time you talked about the future, I always pressed the brakes. Haven’t I?”

At last, I played my clever, psychological card. I challenged her: “Okay. Then tell me this: What about that glass turkey? Are you taking that to Barcelona with you?”

She looked at me like I was completely crazy. “No, of course not. I’m going to leave it at my parents’ house. Why?”

“I think you bought that glass turkey because you’re nesting!”

Her eyes popped wide open in disbelief. After that, both of us really went at it, hammer and tongs. We revisited our entire history -- which, as it turned out, was a history of misunderstandings. Apparently our relationship was “built” (if I can use that word) on a series of events that meant one thing to me, and something entirely different to her. Over and over, it seems, I saw glowing significance in things that she found nice, but unremarkable.

I have no idea how long it took for us to get to the end of all that, but eventually we both ran out of things to say. After six months of seeing each other, we finally arrived at a moment when -- for the first and only time -- we really understood each other. In the awkward silence that followed, I reached for the ignition, to turn my car back on. There was nothing else to do but bring her home. But my hand never touched the key. In that instant, while my hand was still rising, an intense bright-white spotlight hit the car. I put my hands up to shield my eyes. “What the hell?”

“Where’s it coming from?” Mayda asked. “I don’t hear a helicopter.”

“Me neither,” I said, and everything went black.

 

---

 

I awoke in a dimly lit room. There was a nebulous glow above me. If there was a ceiling beyond, it was too far off to see. The glow grew lighter by slow degrees. I was naked, and lying on a slab of smooth slate. I turned my head to the left. I could see the wall, but it was distant, and the room empty. I turned my head to the right and saw Mayda lying naked on a slab, like me. There was a gap of about six feet between us. Her eyes were closed. I tried to sit up, but the only part of me that moved was my head and neck.

“Mayda,” I called. “Mayda! Can you hear me?” Her eyes opened, and she quickly looked around her.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Why can’t I move?”

“Okay,” I said. “Put it all together -- the light, losing consciousness, waking like this -- I know it sounds crazy, but I think we were abducted by aliens.”

“Huh,” Mayda replied. “For real?” She sounded more interested than afraid. As she scanned the room, I looked her over. I’d seen her naked plenty of times, but never from this angle. She looked spectacular. I had a view of her entire left profile, from her long, sculpted legs, to the soft curve of her ass resting on the table, up her flat stomach to her round, perfect breasts. And of course her face was beautiful as well. “I can only move my head,” I told her.

“Yeah, me too,” she replied, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was still looking around the room. “Do you think they’ve done the anal probe yet?” she joked. “I’d hate to have missed it.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?” I asked her. “We’ve got to find a way out of here!”

“Don’t panic,” she replied. “They aren’t going to hurt us; we’re not cows.” Then she laughed! “Maybe they’ll draw crop circles in our hair.” She giggled at her own joke.

The aliens entered at that point. One of them came and stood between us, so that he (I presume he was a he) could look into our faces. He resembled Mr Toad from the old David Petersen illustrations for The Wind in the Willows, except that our Mr Toad was wearing full body armor. Four of his cohort remained by the door.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” he said.

“Why did you knock us out?” I demanded. Mr Toad seemed taken aback by the question.

“We needed to examine you,” he replied, as if the answer were obvious. “We had to make sure you were in good health, without any physical anomalies.”

“Why did you need to know that?”

Again, he seemed surprised by the question. He answered in the tone of an adult explaining something simple to a slow child. “We’re going to take you to one of our planets. We have a lovely environment set up where you can live. I’m sure you’ll like it. We already have many human specimens-- Oh, that reminds me!”

He reached out his hand, and one of the other aliens gave him a small box that resembled a garage-door opener. He pointed it at Mayda and pressed the button. Nothing happened. Then he pointed it at me and pressed the same button.

I gasped. My back lurched. My penis hardened into a fierce erection. It was so hard it almost hurt. A wave of perspiration bathed my entire body, and my heart began to pound. I felt so sexually stimulated, I thought I’d explode in a nuclear orgasm. I heard myself groaning. I tensed all over. I writhed and twisted, my body arched so it rested only on my heels and the back of my head. God, I was so close… another moment and-- Then, before I ejaculated into the air, Mr Toad let go of the button. I went limp instantly. My body relaxed so abruptly, it landed with a loud slap! against the table. “Sweet Jesus!” I gasped, when I was able to speak. “Why did you do that?” I wanted to ask Why did you stop? but it would have been too embarrassing. I was still trembling and breathing unevenly and my voice was shaky.

Mayda’s eyes were saucers, but her lips showed a half-smile of amusement and interest.

Mr Toad held up the garage-door opener as if it were one of the seven wonders. With a touch of pride he explained, “This amazing device enables us to distinguish human males from human females.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “You can’t just tell by looking?”

“Obviously not!” He sounded indignant. Mayda giggled.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to go to your planet. I don’t want to live in your environment with your other specimens. Especially if it smells anything like this spaceship. I just want to get the hell out of here. Now.”

Mr Toad appeared shocked and confused. He was at a loss for words, as if my attitude was utterly unexpected and beyond comprehension.

“I’ll go,” Mayda said. I shot her a look. She held the look, and gazing straight into my eyes, she repeated it: “I’ll go to your planet. I’d love to go. I’m ready now.”

Mr Toad looked back and forth several times between the two of us.

“Let him stay here,” Mayda said. “Take me with you. I want to go.”

“Don’t do this because you’re angry with me,” I told her.

“I’m not angry with you. This isn’t about you. I want to go to their planet.”

“Don’t sacrifice yourself for me,” I said. “If it has to be one of us, I’ll go.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “It’s not a sacrifice! I’m going. I don’t care what you do, but I’m going. Here is the chance to see another planet; to see more of the universe! I can’t believe you don’t WANT to go.”

“Of course I don’t want to go! This is my home! This is your home, too!”

She shook her head.

“Hmm,” Mr Toad mused. “We have a conundrum. The reason we’ve come all this way is that recently we were embarrassed to discover that all of the human specimens we’ve collected so far are female. Of course, we had no way to tell, but there we are. We were specifically tasked, first, with developing this device -- so that we can tell the difference -- and second, to bring home a number of male specimens. With that in mind, we’d have no compunction in leaving you behind.” He addressed that to Mayda. To me, he said, “You, as we’ve determined, are a male of the species, so we must take you with us. It’s not as though we have a choice in the matter.”

“Of course you have a choice in the matter! There’s a whole planet full of men here! Pick somebody else! Take out an ad on Craigslist, for Christ sake! I DON’T WANT TO GO!”

Now, the next thing Mayda said was the last snag. This one was the atomic bomb of snags. It would be hard to find a bigger snag than this. It was the last thing I ever heard Mayda say. I’m sure she was joking -- I’m pretty sure she was joking -- but there are places and times that you should NEVER make a joke.

What she said was, “Too bad you can’t just, like, swap our brains, you know? That would be a win-win-win, right?” And again, she laughed! I glared at her. She smiled. Laughing, she stuck out her tongue at me. She was only teasing, I’m sure.

Then everything went black.

The next thing I knew, I was standing, naked, with Mayda’s breasts hanging off my chest. I looked down at myself and was shocked to discover that I *was* Mayda! I mean, I was me, Ross, but in Mayda’s body. They’d actually done the damn brain swap!

“What did you do to me?” I shouted in Mayda’s voice.

Mr Toad sighed in exasperation. “You are never happy, are you. You’ve done nothing but complain the entire time you’ve been here! I’m glad that we’re leaving you behind. What did we do? Obviously, we’ve done the body swap, exactly as you suggested. Your companion now has the male body, and you have the female one. He will go; you will stay.” He hesitated for a moment, and speaking to himself said, “Better be sure, though, before we let you go.” He picked up the garage-door opener from a table nearby and aimed it at me. I braced myself, and he pushed the button. This time, nothing happened. Visibly relieved, Mr Toad said, “Good, good. It’s important to be sure.”

“But -- but -- I don’t want her body!” I told him.

“What difference does it make?” he asked. “You look the same as before! It’s a well known fact that humans can’t tell each other apart.”

“Of course we can tell!” I shouted. “Believe me, we can tell!”

“I find that difficult to believe,” he replied. “Now: we’re going to leave you in the exact same spot where we picked you up. I’m sure you’ll find a way to complain about that, but we’re done trying to accommodate your every whim. Ready?”

“No, no!” I told him. “Not yet! I need my clothes... and my personal belongings.”

He huffed impatiently, as if I were an unreasonable child, but he left the room and returned a moment later carrying a tray, which he set in front of me. “Pick up whatever you need,” he instructed. “We will send you down in five seconds.”

“But these aren’t MY clothes!” I protested. “I mean these are mine, Ross’ clothes, but I need Mayda’s things!” I grabbed my flannel shirt and lifted it to see if any of Mayda’s things were underneath. They weren’t.

“You’re not making any sense. They are all the same,” Mr Toad replied in a weary voice. “Two seconds.”

“No, they aren’t the same at all!”

“Goodbye, you tiresome creature,” said Mr Toad, and in a moment I found myself in Mayda’s body, standing alone in a spotlight on the side of a country road, stark naked, clutching the flannel shirt I was wearing when I was Ross.

“You couldn’t even leave my truck?” I shouted, and the spotlight went out.

The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 2 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

I didn’t hear a sound as it went, but I could tell that the spaceship was gone. When I looked straight up, nothing blocked my view of the Milky Way. There weren’t any planes or weather balloons. There were no blobs of light or darkness that could have been alien ships. There wasn’t a cloud; the sky was a cold black backdrop to the stars. The moon was just above the horizon. I was thankful for its strange, pale light -- otherwise I would have been left standing in total darkness. There was nothing above me and nothing around me. The desert was as empty as the sky. Here I was: naked, alone, and far from everything. Not only had the aliens left me in the wrong body, they’d made off with my truck. What could they possibly want with that old clunker? It was probably just carelessness. For sure, they weren’t a very tight operation. A month from now, they’ll stumble over my truck, somewhere on their spaceship. They’ll wonder what it is and why they have it. They’ll use that garage-door opener on it to see if it’s male, and when it doesn’t rear up and groan, they’ll toss it over the side.

Yes, those stupid aliens took everything. All they’d left me was the shirt I was wearing when I was Ross, and not a single thing that belonged to Mayda -- aside from her body! -- no clothes, no keys, no cards, no nothing.

All this time, as I turned to look around and above me, I was distracted and disturbed by the bobbing of my breasts and the swaying of my butt. Shocked and still unbelieving, I looked down at myself. I clutched my breasts; I shoved my hand into my crotch. There was too much on my chest and not enough between my legs. And my ass! Somehow, the most disturbing part of being naked in public was the sensation of having my butt on display. I couldn’t see it, but I could easily picture what I looked like from behind. I’d seen it often enough, and I didn’t want to give that view to the general public. I blushed as I felt how large and smooth it was. It was wrong, all of this. So utterly and completely wrong.

”WHY?” I shouted. ”WHY? WHY WHY WHY? WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING HELL!” I balled up my fists and screamed into the night. I howled and wailed and raved. It hurt my throat, but I didn’t care. I fell to my knees and cried until I ran out of breath.

How can I ever play football ever again? The question struck me hard, and the answer hit me even harder: I will never play football again. Not seriously, which was as good as saying “not at all.” And if I can’t play football, I’ll lose my football scholarship. No -- I lost my scholarship already, just by ceasing to be Ross. Hell, I lost my truck, my girlfriend, my balls, my “up and coming” status… everything!

Now what was I supposed to do? Go live in Mayda’s apartment and pretend to be a girl? Was I supposed to go to Barcelona and play soccer? I knew zip about soccer! Shit… Mayda was a star. I’d be a total beginner. How could I possibly step into her place? Still, it was a stupid game; how hard could it be? I mean, if you get the ball you run into the left corner and kick it across the net. Once I figured out what the referee’s whistles meant, I think I’d be set.

I’m kidding, of course. I trained and worked hard for years to be the football player I am now. I mean, the player I was until a half hour ago. Mayda had trained and worked just long and just as hard. Sometimes when we worked out, I had a hard time keeping up with her! If I sucked at soccer, what would I do? Somehow, I’d have to hit the ground running. After all, I couldn’t get any slack by explaining to the coach that I was really Ross. And what about our friends? What would I tell them about Ross? What would I say to my parents? My face went white. What would I tell Mayda’s parents?

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It was insane. I couldn’t tell anyone anything! They’d lock me in the zoo.

Shit.

Still, I knew I did the right thing. I was right to stay behind. There was no way I could go and live in an alien zoo. But what about Mayda? Will I spend the rest of my life worrying about her? Wondering whether she was okay, out there on another planet? I still don’t understand why she wanted to go. Was it something I said? Something I did? Was it that stupid glass turkey? I sighed. It could have been anything -- how could I know? I felt guilty. I didn’t want to feel guilty. I didn’t think I should feel guilty.

Oh, God.

For some reason I started to cry again. I only stopped because it was making my abs hurt and I had no more energy left to scream with. I sniffed and snuffled, and when I looked up I saw headlights in the far distance. Whoever they were, they were heading east, back toward town. Hopefully they’d stop and give me a ride. Otherwise, I’d be walking for hours. Barefoot..

I quickly put on the flannel shirt. It fit me like a circus tent. I rolled up the sleeves into two big cuffs.

As the lights grew closer, I waved with both arms and jumped to get the driver’s attention. He stopped a few yards back from where I was. There was a rack of lights mounted on the roof, which told me he was a cop. He turned a spotlight on me. I blinked in the light, but made an effort to not cover my face. Then he swept the spot to my left and right. Making sure this is not an ambush, I figured. When he stepped from the car, I could see from his uniform and his buzz cut that he was a state trooper. He was a tall, lanky guy, over six feet easy. “Need help, miss? Are you alright?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m just trying to get back to town.”

“What are you doing out here all alone?”

“I -- uh -- I had a fight with my boyfriend.”

“Huh!” the cop grunted as he walked around the car toward me. I was a little puzzled by that, and asked him, “It’s a little chilly -- could I get into your car? Can you give me a ride back to town?” He didn’t answer. He walked across the beams of his headlights and looked me up and down. The expression on his face made me very uneasy. That, and the fact that he had his hand over his badge. He tried to make it seem a casual pose, like he was just resting his hand, but it was obvious: he was hiding his badge number. I wanted to run, but how could I? Where would I go? I knew that Magda was fast, but I was barefoot in the middle of nowhere. He’d catch me in a flash, and then I’d have to explain why I’d run.

He came very close and said, “A fight, huh? Did he hurt you?” Again, his eyes scanned me, this time lingering on my bare legs.

“No, I’m not hurt. He didn’t touch me. I’m fine.”

“What’s his name? And your name?” he asked.

I answered, “He’s Ross Ghulyan, and I’m Mayda Zakaryan.” It was the first time I claimed her name. It felt like a lie, but I knew I’d have to get used to it.

“He just drove off and left you?” I nodded. “It must have been a hell of a fight. So, this fight… was it a verbal fight, or a physical fight? Did he hit you? Did you hit him?”

“It was a verbal fight,” I said. “It was an argument. Nobody hit anyone.” I didn’t like where he was going with these questions.

“And uh…,” he reached up and fingered the collar of my shirt. “This fight… was it a naked fight?”

I looked up into his leering face and swallowed hard. “Part of the time, yes,” I said.

“Then the bastard took off with your clothes, didn’t he.”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat and repeated, “So... can you give me a ride to town? Or towards town? I see you’re heading in that direction.”

“Yes, sure, I can do that,” he said, and he slowly licked his smiling lips, looking me directly in the eyes the entire time. He said, “This shirt -- it isn’t yours, is it.”

“No,” I replied, my voice shaking. “It belongs to Ross.”

“So, it’s stolen,” he said with a nod. “I’m going to need to confiscate that shirt. And then I better give you a good looking-over… to make good and sure that he didn’t hurt you.”

I began to protest, but in a well-practiced move, he spun me and gave me a shove, and I ended up with my hands resting on the roof of the police car. He placed his forearm between my shoulder blades to keep me from moving.

“Now you just take it easy,” he said. “I’m going to search you; I have to make sure you’re not carrying any weapons or drugs or any other stolen goods.”

I began to point out that I obviously wasn’t carrying anything, but he cut me off by saying, “I’d hate to have to arrest a pretty young girl like you for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest -- to say nothing of indecent exposure. Do you understand me?”

He slid his hands slowly up my right leg, stopping before he reached my crotch. He did the same with my left leg. It was agonizingly slow. Clearly, he was going to take his time and make this grope session last as long as possible. He drew a big, slow breath as he ran both hands over my butt, caressing it, touching it, lifting it, grabbing it. His hands moved up my sides, over my breasts, and then he lifted my shirt completely off me. He tucked it into the light rack on the roof of his police car.

“Keep your hands on the car,” he instructed. “For now.”

Now that I was naked, he touched every inch of my skin all over again, this time starting from the neck on down. I felt his breath on my shoulders and back. As he fondled me, he made lots of noises: heavy breathing, sighs, exclamations. He hadn’t yet put his lips on me or come near to touching my pussy. He was clearly saving that for last. I’m glad to say that something happened before he ever arrived there.

He cupped my breasts for a long time, then he pressed his hips against my buttocks and rested his chin on my right shoulder. “Oh, God,” he said, “your hair smells fantastic.” His hands slowly worked their way down my stomach, heading for my crotch, when suddenly -- headlights appeared from the east, heading away from town, moving fast. Even while they were far off, I could hear music from inside the car -- the volume was cranked up way past eleven. It boomed and thudded like a concert or a club. From this distance, all I could hear was the thud of the bass. As it came closer, other sounds filled in the mass of noise. It took me half a minute before I finally was able to recognize the song: It was (of all things) Aerosmith’s Dude Looks Like A Lady.

The headlights came up and over a low hill. On the downside, when the lights dipped and no longer hid the vehicle, I saw that it wasn’t a car; the moonlight made it clear: it was a van, a white service van. The van was tearing up the road. It came up on us with frightening speed -- it had to be going at least 90 miles an hour -- and the driver clearly wasn’t in full control. The van lurched and swerved all over the road, straying off to the shoulder and screeching back to the asphalt.

“God damn it!” the trooper shouted, and then, “WATCH OUT!”

As he shouted, he wrapped both of his arms around my waist, and threw himself backwards with all the force in his legs. His leap carried both of us well away from the road. He grunted as he landed heavily on his back. I fell with all my weight directly on top of him, and his arm squeezing my waist hurt me badly. But his move saved us both: the van barrelled into the police car, knocking it three feet sideways. If the trooper hadn’t jumped, the police car would have hit the both of us.

With the sound of metal grinding metal, it took two tries for the van to back away and free itself from the crumpled police car. We heard cackling laughter over the music, and the van took off, heading west.

“Shit!” the trooper shouted. He shoved me off him, dumping me to the ground. He jumped to his feet and started for his car. As if he’d forgotten and suddenly remembered, he looked back at me and called, “You hurt?” I shouted NO -- I had to shout over the music. The commotion was fading, but it was still pretty loud. He nodded and made a gesture with his open palms that I think meant Hang on, I’ll be right back -- which of course didn’t reassure me at all. He ran around to the other side of his car and swore. Clearly, the driver door had taken the impact of the crash. I got to my feet and watched him put one foot against the side of his car as he pulled with both hands to try to open it. At first, the door didn’t move at all. Before his second try, he took a big deep breath, then bellowed like a weight-lifter as he tugged with all his strength. The metal screamed and banged as he struggled. When the door abruptly gave way, it fell completely off the car, and cop landed hard on his ass, just missing being hit by the heavy door. He got up, swearing, and managed to dig deep down inside for some fearful oaths as he picked up the door and hurled it off the road on the other side. He jumped in, swearing nonstop.

I ran to the car and tried to open the passenger door. He looked at me, startled, as if he had no idea where I’d come from. The door didn’t open; it was locked. “Take me with you!” I shouted. “You can’t leave me here!” He looked at me, his face in turmoil, and he said, “I’ll be back! I’ll be right back!” I had to jump out of the way as he pulled a wild U-turn. He very nearly fell out the door-hole, and struggled to keep upright by clutching the steering wheel. Then he grabbed his radio and stomped on the gas pedal. He took off like a shot, chasing the van.

“HEY! Hey, you jackass! What about me? WHAT ABOUT ME!” He turned on his siren and lit his roof lights. There was my shirt, flapping next to a red beacon. “My shirt! MY SHIRT, God damn you! You asshole! You asshole! MY SHIRT!”

There was no way he could have heard me, I know. By the time I started yelling about the shirt, he was already well out of earshot. Great.

And then, a small miracle! As I watched, fuming with anger, my shirt unfolded itself, ballooned, and freed itself from the light rack. It fluttered a moment before dropping into the road. It wasn’t too far from me; maybe 60 yards. So I started walking. What else could I do? I was intensely conscious of my nakedness. The sensation of that sleezebag’s hands on me lingered unpleasantly on my skin. I shuddered and twitched in disgust, and realized I was shaking as I walked: it was my adrenaline kicking in. I’d just have to wait for it to pass. Why did I ask him to take me with him? What a stupid thing to say! I no more wanted to go with him than to live in that smelly alien zoo. I was just desperate. It was my fear talking. Clearly, what I really needed to do was to get the hell and gone out of there before he came back. Or else I’d have to find a place to hide until he passed, but where? There was nothing around me as far as the eye could see: just desert, low hills, a road, the moon. And me, a tall, naked girl, walking on tiptoe. Why was I walking on tiptoe? Was I trying to be quiet and not attract attention? Maybe there was some muscle memory in Mayda’s body. Would Mayda’s muscle memory know how to play soccer, even if my stupid brain had no idea? And speaking of muscles... I felt my stomach and sides gingerly. I knew I was going to have some bruises where he held me when he jumped. I suppose the trooper saved my life, or at least prevented some serious injury, but if he hadn’t felt the need to grope me; if he’d simply given me a ride like he was supposed to, we wouldn’t have been out there at all! He’d have been sitting behind the wheel when the van approached, and he could have swerved to avoid it. I’d be on my way home, instead of walking in the moonlight.

After I’d gone about halfway to my shirt, another headlight appeared in the east. Another car leaving town. I knew that I should run to grab the shirt and put it on, but I didn’t have the energy, and when I tried to run, the effort hurt my abs and sides.

For that reason, I was still naked when an old beige pickup truck pulled up next to me. Thankfully, there was a woman driving, and the first thing she said was, “Get in! Get in! Hurry! Come on!”

Once I climbed in and shut the door, she pulled a blanket from behind the seat and gave it to me. “Wrap yourself in that,” she told me. “Cover yourself good and warm. Are you hurt? What happened? Do you need a doctor, the police, a telephone?”

“No,” I told her. “I’m fine. I had a fight with my boyfriend and he left me out there without a stitch.”

“He didn’t rape you or hurt you did he?”

“No. He just… left.”

“Men are bastards, honey,” she said, shaking her head. “They have their moments, but they’re all bastards.” She glanced at me, then asked again, “You sure he didn’t hurt you?”

“No, he didn’t hurt me. He just left me.”

“Cause if he hurt you--” she looked at me, nodding “--I’ve got a couple of guns. We can go hunt for him.”

My jaw dropped in astonishment. “You’re not serious, are you?”

The woman smiled, then guffawed, throwing her head back as she laughed. “No, hon, no -- I was just kidding! But you shoulda seen the look on your face!” She imitated my expression so comically that I had to laugh, too

She introduced herself as “Lemon -- like that girl on 30 Rock.” She looked about sixty, a wiry, outdoorsy sixty. She had short gray hair and was dressed in tight jeans and a gray t-shirt. She asked me what I needed.

“I just need a ride to town,” I told her. “I know you’re going the other way, but it would mean a lot to me.”

“I tell you what,” she said. “I think that right now what you need more than a ride is a decent set of clothes. You look about my sister’s size, especially up top. Right now, though, I need to get home. I can’t turn around and head back to town just yet. I’ve got some supplies that are needed directly, tonight. If you come with me, I’ll dress you and feed you and give you a bed for the night, and when morning comes, I’ll take you wherever you need to go. How does that sound?”

When I considered the fact that I had no alternatives -- other than waiting for the creepy trooper to return -- it sounded just fine.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, there’s something else you need, and that’s a good bath. You look like you’ve been rolling around on the ground -- not that there’s anything wrong with that!” She laughed again, popping open her eyes and mouth, then throwing her head back and cackling loudly.

Lemon was pretty friendly, and I warmed up to her right away. Soon we were chatting like old friends. I had to give her a somewhat altered version of how tonight had gone. Telling it from Mayda’s point of view made me realize a few things about myself and how I’d behaved with her.

Strangely enough, as we talked, and as Lemon spoke of her own life, I got the feeling that if I told her about the aliens and the brain swap, she’d believe me, and maybe even help me find my way as a newly-minted woman. Unfortunately, and as you’ll soon see, we never got to that point.

I told her about my experience with the state trooper. She listened attentively, and when I was done, she gave me a very serious look, and stopped her pickup in the middle of the road. She put it in park and turned off the engine.

“You mentioned the police. I know it was a very unpleasant experience, but I get the feeling that you’re a girl who lives on the straight and narrow. Am I right?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” I replied.

“Well, then--” she fixed her eyes on mine “--I have to ask you something, honey, and I want you to tell me your true feelings. Do you have any legal or moral objections to meth -- to methamphetamine? Do you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“We’re heading to my house right now. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that my nephew has a little shed out back where he cooks meth. If you knew of such a thing, would you feel obliged to tell the police? Would it make you loathe to accept my hospitality tonight? Or, if you accept my hospitality, would you feel obliged to lead the police back to my place, so they could arrest me and my family and friends?”

Again, considering my utter lack of alternatives, I told her that it was all fine to me, as long as I wasn’t involved. I assured her that I was perfectly capable of seeing nothing and noticing nothing, and that I was sure I’d forget everything immediately after.

“Good!” she exclaimed, and with a big smile she started the truck, put it in gear, and stepped on the gas.

Even if I did want to tell the police, I doubt that I’d ever be able to lead them back to Lemon’s place. After we crossed the desert, to where the trees began again, Lemon turned off on a by-road, and -- in a darkness that the moon couldn’t entirely pierce -- she took one dirt road after another, easing her way over deep potholes, until, after a steep concrete incline, we pulled into her driveway.

By that point, I was expecting a shack or a cabin or a little trailer, but instead she had a cute two-story bungalow. A real house, with a porch swing out front and two gables up top. It was well-kept, at least as far as I could see in the moonlight. The lawn was cut and flowers were planted. There wasn’t any trash around, or a goat tethered in the yard, or a pot-bellied man in a rocking chair, or any of the other stereotypes I was expecting. It was like a suburban home planted out in the woods.

Inside, everything was neat and clean and cozy. She brought me upstairs and showed me her guest bedroom. It was so nicely appointed, I felt I was in a bed-and-breakfast. The guest bathroom (which was in one of the gables) had a clawfoot tub, which I’d never before seen in real life. She was quite proud of it, and immediately opened the taps. She poured in some bubble bath. “You can use any of the shampoos or conditioners. The towels are here: this one’s for your head, and the big one’s for the rest of you. The wash cloths are here, and you can help yourself to the loofahs and brushes and what-have-you.” She set a new unwrapped toothbrush on the sink.

Then, as the tub filled, we poked through her sister’s things, and Lemon picked out some shoes and underwear and a nice dress, but I’m not going to describe any of them (as pretty as they were) because -- as you’ll soon see -- I never got to put them on.

If you’ve never seen a clawfoot tub, I’ll describe it for you: it’s an old-fashioned, free-standing tub. They’re made of cast iron and covered with white enamel. The reason we call them “clawfoot” is because the tub rests on four legs, and each leg is traditionally shaped like a bird’s claw. They’re beautiful and luxurious, and I had my first moment of feeling my femininity when I put my hand on the side of the tub, lifted my leg, and stepped into the soapy foam. It was such a girl thing to do, like a picture in a magazine, and here I was, happily doing it.

After I’d been soaking for five or ten minutes, Lemon came in with two mugs of hot tea. As we chatted, she absent-mindedly took my hair and with an elastic band and some hair pins, she wrapped in up in a bun. I have to admit, it did enhance the soaking experience.

After Lemon left me to soak in the steaming water, I inevitably fell asleep. When I awoke, the water had cooled quite a bit, but that wasn’t what woke me. It was the people yelling outside. Their shouts, as far as I could tell, were quite consistent in their content, and they stressed two points above all: the first was that “It’s gonna blow!” and the second was “Watch out!”

Personally, I’ve never found “watch out!” to be a particularly useful warning, mainly because it’s so lacking in details. In the present case, it was no help whatsoever.

On the other hand, “it’s going to blow!” was quite rich with information. In spite of its terseness, it delivered a key message, and did not leave anyone asking for more. I’m sure that no one was standing in the yard waiting to ask -- or demanding to know -- exactly which it was going to blow. There would be plenty of time to find the antecedent to the pronoun AFTER “it” blew. For the present, everyone who heard the warning would simply run and duck for cover, or both.

Lemon had mentioned the meth lab. I knew that meth labs were highly volatile, so I supposed that this was the it in question.

I heard a soft whump! that vibrated in my body. Some instinct drove me to pull my head under the bathwater. As I did the entire house shook, and I saw a ball of fire pass over the tub. When I raised my head, the roof and walls were gone. The floor seemed to have withstood the blast. I was sitting at the top of the house, with a nearly unobstructed 360-degree view. The gable had been roughly torn away, leaving me in an open-air bathroom. I lifted my soapy head higher, and looked into the woods that surrounded the house. A small tree had caught fire, and several other trees had been knocked flat. I had to turn my head all the way around to get a look at the meth lab. To say that it was on fire is to drastically understate the case. From the size and shape of the inferno behind me, I could tell that the lab had been about the size of large trailer home. It was burning so brightly, that I had to squint to look at it, and I couldn’t look at it for more than a second at a time. If someone had told me that a chunk of the sun had fallen into Lemon’s backyard, well, of course I wouldn’t believe it, but it would be hard to think that anything else could be that bright and that hot. Two stories up, I could actually feel the heat from the blaze. I sank up to my neck in the water and considered my next move. Certainly I’d have to get out of the tub, dry and dress myself, and find Lemon. I’d have to get the hell out of here before the police and fire department showed up. I took another quick look around me. Behind me was the burning meth lab. People were still running around, shouting. In front of me was the woods, dark and silent. I’d probably have to head that way and hope to find a trail.

I swear, I had just taken a glance at Lemon’s sister’s clothes, lying intact on the bed, and I was just about to get up and out of that tub, when there came a cry that rose above the rest: “There’s another one! Run! Run for it!” and two seconds later a second explosion rocked the earth. I couldn’t react fast enough to duck this time, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing blew over or past me. This time, it hit underneath. Something hard, heavy, and fast-moving, struck the tub. I felt the impact jar my backside. The impact was so strong that it tore the bathtub free of its plumbing, and lifted it off the floor.

At first I thought that it was going to hurl me down to the lawn and leave me naked on the grass. I wish that it had done so! Instead, the tub was propelled like a jet ski high into the air. It shot in a graceful arc over the ruins of the house and over the lawn strewn with debris. I clutched the sides of the tub with white-knuckled hands and did not blink for the next several minutes. As I shot through the air, I was sure my life would end with me smashed into a cartoon pancake between a massive pine tree and a cast-iron clawfoot tub. At least a death like that would have been one for the record books.

But no -- my life, and my flight, didn’t end there. The tub veered slightly to the left, missing the massive pine. Still airborne, we ripped past saplings and hanging vines. I wanted to cover my face with my hands, but I didn’t dare release my death-grip on the sides of the tub.

I estimate that we flew 100 yards before the tub hit the ground, and there I expected our trip to end, leaving me walk back through the woods, wearing only suds. But that is not how it ended.

Somehow -- and we will see exactly how -- the tub kept on going, digging a path through the ground, like a mad apocalyptic plow. Miraculously, it missed every tree solid enough to interrupt its forward momentum, so on we went. God knows how far we travelled! We dug through the earth and ripped through the forest until the tub’s propellant finally gave out at the banks of a stream.

I gasped in relief. My eyebrows were stuck in the UP position, high on my forehead; I couldn’t bring them down. A more immediate issue was my hands: I couldn’t peel my fingers off the tub! I’d been gripping it so tightly for so long that my muscles were locked in that position. After several fruitless attempts to work them free, I ended up using my forearms as levers to slide my fingers down past the outer edges of the tub’s rim. Once that was done, I only needed to turn my hand a little farther to pop my thumbs off the sides of the tub. As far as the rest of my body went, I didn’t feel any cuts or bruises. I moved my arms and legs; it didn’t seem like any bones were broken. You might wonder why I didn’t just look down at myself to take inventory, but the strange fact was, that the tub was still full of water and bubbles. Well, there were little branches and leaves sprinkled on the surface as well, but somehow the tub -- like a juggernaut’s car in miniature -- managed to keep both me and the water intact as it tore through the forest, uprooting saplings and ripping apart vines. I submerged my hands and pressed them against the sides of the tub: I needed to work my fingers until they could move again. Then I put my stiff fingers to my face, and brushed away the debris as well as I could. Lastly, I rubbed and tugged at my eyebrows, to try to relax them and bring them down off my forehead.

My eyebrows came down by themselves later, I don’t know when -- as you’ll see, I got pretty distracted soon enough.

Something more urgent seized my attention. The tub itself -- which was, remember, formed of cast iron -- inexplicably and suddenly began to heat up. The temperature rose so rapidly that I leaped from the water, afraid of being scalded. I stood looking at it puzzled, rubbing my derriere. My butt wasn’t burnt, but it did feel a bit tender.

The tub reached such a high temperature that the ground around it, which was a little damp, began to sizzle and smoke. The radiant heat reminded me of a cast-iron stove. I had to back away. The next morning I discovered that the front of my body looked like it was sunburned -- just from standing next to the red-hot tub.

Not to be left out, the water in the tub gently bubbled and steamed, but the bubbles quickly swelled and multiplied until a full and powerful boil was underway. A great steam arose, and a fierce, violent, turbulent boil was well underway.

I bent, almost kneeling, to look behind and under the tub to discover the source of the heat. Keep in mind that I had to keep my distance from the incandescent tub, but I wouldn’t have seen the source at all if a nearby bush hadn’t dried up and withered away before my eyes. Once the bush was out of the way, it became obvious: There were a pair of metal canisters that were hissing and glowing red. They were jammed in and securely wedged between the back legs of the tub. Basically, they were stuck right under my butt for my entire crazy ride. These were the propellants that shot the tub through the air and drove it across the ground! This was the source of all that destructive power! Somehow during the second explosion, the canisters were thrown into my bathroom, where they lodged underneath the tub. Mystery solved!

I realize that you might be wondering what insane chemical madness was housed in those deadly little tanks? If there ever was a label on them, it had long since burnt away, and I wasn’t curious enough to dare a closer look. Whatever rocket fuel was inside, it had finally given out near this stream. It couldn’t push that tub another inch. Careful though: it didn’t look like the canisters were ready to retire for the night. They still had work to do.

The pair of them were hissing ever louder. By now, the water in the tub had completely evaporated, and the white enamel cracked and flaked from the heat. The canisters began to shake, as did the tub. The enamel let off a cloud of black smoke, then burst into flame. The tub and the two tanks bucked and rocked like an insane mechanical bronco. I could tell they were ready for an apocalyptic night on the town -- they were raring to go. In the absence of music, the three metal pieces let off a fearsome banging noise, like Thor’s hammer on a bender.

This time I didn’t need anyone else to shout it’s going to blow! or even watch out! Clearly something drastic was about to happen; something I wanted no part of. I backed away anxiously, looking around me for cover: a big rock or huge tree to hide behind, but there was none. Luckily (!) as I flailed and panicked, my heel caught in a tree root, and I fell backwards, landing on my soapy derriere in the mud. From there, I rolled down the dirty slope toward the water, landing on my back among the rotten leaves and mud.

Still: better there than in that madcap tub!

I didn’t see it, but I heard it. The canisters erupted as one with a deafening blast. The bathtub lifted off in a grand farewell that sent it high into the air. One end glowed an angry spanked red, and while the white enamel burned and smoked like a flaming tire. It flew straight and true, still upright, as it sailed over the creek, but once it reached the height of the tree tops, it began to flip end over end. It kept its trajectory, though, and kept gaining altitude. I could still see the flames and the red-hot glow even after it passed the trees.

At last it flew out of sight. The noise, the flames, the heat were all gone, and I was surprised to hear the gurgle of the creek. Now that the tub had taken its party elsewhere, the woods lapsed back into a quiet and a stillness such that the crickets and the gentle ripple of the water were the loudest sounds I could hear.

And yet I listened, straining to keep still. I felt sure that I’d hear the crash when the bathtub came to earth. Instead, I heard nothing but the crickets and the stream. Oh well. Maybe it never landed. Maybe the tub was destined to never fall. For all I know, it landed on the moon. Or maybe it struck Mr Toad’s spaceship and did enough damage that he’d have to bring Mayda back. We’ll probably never know.

Alright then! Here I was once again, naked in the middle of nowhere. A few clumps of suds still clung to me. My butt was covered in mud and slime. In addition, the explosion had thrown several bucketfuls of dirt, sticks, and pebbles all over me.

I stood up cautiously and peeked over the bank. The canisters were ripped open by the blast. Their salad days were over. Whatever damage they were born to do, they had done it. I had nothing more to fear from them.

Sighing, I tried to brush some dirt off my arm, but it only smeared and muddied. I dipped my toe in the stream to see if I dared to slip in and rinse myself off. It was cold. Not icy cold, but too cold for a sane person. Okay: naked and dirty it is.

Taking stock: Mayda’s clothes (which should have been mine) were on a spaceship flying off to an unknown planet. My plaid shirt was lying on a desert highway, unless that creepy cop returned and picked it up. Lemon’s sister’s outfit, which I could have worn, was probably blown to bits or burned along with the rest of Lemon’s house. My truck was lost in space. The tub -- like Mayda -- had flown off to parts unknown, to have its own adventure.

What was next for me, then? An answer was quick to come: I looked downstream and saw a metal rowboat, caught in the weeds and muck on the opposite bank.

“Anybody mind if I borrow the boat?” I called out loudly, to no one in particular. I didn’t expect a response. No one was there.

The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 3 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Looking back on that moment, I’ve never been able to understand why I didn’t consider walking back along the path that was plowed by the atomic bathtub. It would have been pretty easy to follow, even in the places where the trees were too thick to allow the moonlight to penetrate. The legs of the tub had dug two deep furrows in the earth that I could have followed all the way back to Lemon’s house.

The short answer is: it just didn’t occur to me, not even for a second.

Looking back, it might have made more sense: Lemon would have helped me; she would have at least helped me to get somewhere safe. Lemon could have lent me some clothes. Certainly having clothes to wear would simplify my journey home.

But… maybe it was the sum of many little things that unconsciously prevented me from considering that path: (1) I’d have to walk past and over the exploded canisters. They were blown into tatters and fragments, any one of which could cut my feet to pieces, and it was dark enough that I couldn’t be sure of seeing every bit of shrapnel before I put my foot down. (2) The woods were dark. I’m not a fearful person, but I had heard stories of bears, coyotes, and feral dogs on the local news. (3) I didn’t see any light in the direction of Lemon’s house. The burning of the meth lab was so intensely bright that if it was anywhere nearby, I should have been able to see it -- at least, as a glow in the sky. Instead, there was only blackness.

It’s possible that the trees were too much an obstacle for my line of sight. It’s possible that I’d gone downhill, and Lemon’s house was over a rise, from my point of view. It’s also possible that I’d traveled so far, that by the time I walked back, no one would be there except for police and firemen. Another encounter with the forces of order seemed dicey. They’d have to assume I was somehow associated with the meth lab. I’d have a lot of explaining to do, but no good explanations to give.

In any case, I didn’t go back to Lemon’s house. I saw the rowboat, and it looked like fate.

Of course, the rowboat was trapped on the opposite bank. I’d have to cross the stream to take possession of it. I don’t know who it belonged to, or what it was doing there. There were no trails or roads nearby that I could see. Nor were there houses, cabins, or even little shacks. Just a boat, all on its own. It wasn’t tied up; as far as I could see it had floated down of its own free will and decided to settle here, much as the bathtub had. At least until the bathtub had second thoughts and took off for the sky.

There was nothing for it, but to wade over and climb inside the boat. If I was lucky, this stream would carry me closer to town. I’m not an outdoorsy type, but my sense of direction told me that the stream was heading toward town. If I was right -- or if I was really lucky -- this creek would empty into Robbins River, which cuts across town. Just to add an injury-by-reference, Robbins River is where I intended to take that romantic walk with Mayda, earlier tonight.

The bushes were pretty tight along my side of the shore except for where my tub had landed. So I waded directly into the stream. The water was cold, yeah, so I tried not to think about it: I just kept stepping in, one foot after another. It didn’t look deep, but it was a full ten yards across: plenty of room for surprises. Also, the surface of the water was rippling and moving fast, so I took my time, fighting the cold, stepping as carefully and intentionally as possible..

It was frigid enough to make my teeth chatter, and when I stepped in deep enough for the cold water to hit my crotch, I winced and gasped. I felt the cold acutely on my derriere, and then on my lower stomach. With each step, the water was several inches deeper. The rocks were slippery, too, and I could see there was a high probability that I’d lose my footing and be carried downstream. If that happened, I’d have to swim like hell. At this distance, I could easily miss the boat entirely.

At last, I got to the point that water was up to my lower ribs. I held my arms high, out of the water, and I was trembling like a bad report card. I stood there like an idiot, wasting time for a few moments, and then decided to go for it. I threw myself forwards, diving headlong into the water and making a swim for it.

Instantly, I regretted it. The cold water sucked the energy right out of me. It was instantaneous: not only did the cold make weaker, the sensation of losing motive power was so startling that my fear only made things worse. As soon as I was immersed, my arms and legs seemed weak and powerless. It was so frightening and shocking that I had to fight against panic as well as the water. The current carried me like a tiny bit of flotsam. Still, knowing what was at stake, I struggled to keep my head up, and managed to kick and thrash in the right direction. As soon as I was near enough, I clutched the side of the boat, first with one hand, then the other.

If you’ve never been immersed in a cold stream, you’ll probably think that everything I said was imagination and exaggeration. It’s not. It’s fine if you don’t believe me. I’m just telling you what happened.

There wasn’t enough oomph in my arms and legs to haul myself out of the water, so I worked my way around the boat, hand over hand, toward the shore where it was shallow enough to let me stand and fall into the boat.

A yellow waterproof jacket was lying on the bottom of the boat. At first I draped it over me like a blanket and lay there shivering, waiting for my energy to come back. Then I sat up and slipped the jacket on, and closed the clasps in front. Even though it was rough and basically a rubbery plastic, it was WAY better than being naked. I did feel a bit warmer, though I wish the coat were long enough to cover my butt, or that a pair of pants was part of the offering. Clearly, whoever lost the boat had zero consideration for the wardrobe needs of its next occupant. Oh, well.

There was nothing else in the boat but a single oar.

The boat was jammed up against a tree root and held in place by weeds and a clump of flotsam. I used the oar to poke at the floating trash and leaves. It didn’t want to give at first, but as soon as I opened a channel for the water to flow through the middle of the mess, the pieces began to break away and glide off. In a trice the blockage was washed out, the boat was freed, and we went gliding downstream at a fast clip.

Although I was able to keep the nose of the boat pointing downstream, my attempts to use the oar to actually steer were abject failures. The idea of a rudder was clear to me, but every time I’d stick the oar in the water, the boat would respond by promptly turning around and trying to run ass-first. The boat was also clearly designed to entangle itself at the bank, any bank, so I mainly employed the oar to push off any approaching mass of weeds and rocks or to back out of one that managed to catch me.

The moon set as we went along, the boat and I. In spite of my precarious situation, I fell asleep three times, and each time I woke the boat was stuck again on some plant or rock. I’d push off, and we’d resume our speedy flight downstream.

The channel grew wider and deeper. I saw the glow of city lights on the horizon, and felt assured that I was heading in the right direction.

I fell asleep a fourth time, but this time I woke to find myself well and truly stuck. The boat decided to ram into a huge rock, a boulder, that sat in the middle of the current. The jolt very nearly threw me from the boat. We’d gone aground in the middle of the river -- for by this time I found myself in a serious stretch of water. The speed of the current and the distance to the shore on either side was enough to make me doubt that I’d be able to swim to safety -- if indeed safety was to be found on either bank. There was nothing to see but trees, from the edge of the water on back.

The boat sat pretty high on the rock. We weren’t quite “high and dry” -- the tail of the boat was still hanging in the water. Apparently the boat had jammed itself in pretty tightly somewhere -- the rock was pinching the rowboat and wouldn’t let go. I tried, but couldn’t push off using the oar. In fact, I pressed so hard that the oar let out a loud crack! that frightened the hell out of me. I examined the oar carefully, feeling every inch of it, but couldn’t find a break or split. After laying the oar carefully under the seats, I tried putting one leg out and pushed with one foot. That did nothing. I tried lying on my back and putting two feet against the rock, but there wasn’t enough leverage, and I clearly wasn’t pushing in the right direction. The real problem was that I was afraid of getting too far out of the boat. However, after various fruitless attempts, it became clear that the only place where I’d have enough leverage to free the boat was standing on the rock. After what I’d been through, and what was to come, I think it’s saying a lot when I tell you that this was the most frightening part of my adventure. One highly likely outcome was more than obvious: I could get out, stand on the rock, lose the boat, and end up sitting alone in the middle of the river, wondering if or when someone might find me.

By now, the sun was up, so I was able to get an accurate picture of my predicament: I hadn’t hit *one* rock; I’d run into a group of rocks, and the remedy wasn’t a simple case of pushing off. I’d have to haul the boat up and onto the rock and then launch myself off the downstream side. The rock surface was fairly big, which was reassuring; there was enough space for two rowboats, or a rowboat and a bathtub, should one come sailing down from the sky.

I checked the clasps on my coat, took a big, deep breath, and -- clutching the boat the entire time -- stepped onto the rock. It was clean, not slippery. So far, so good. With a few frightening pushes and oaths, I managed to haul the boat out of its jam and onto the rock. Then, never letting go of my vessel, I studied the safest way to launch it. I saw that I could drop it on the downstream side, where it would be stuck on another part of the rock. Then, I’d climb in, and from inside the boat, push off with one leg and be on my way. After several fear-filled recalculations of my plan, I said to myself, Let’s do it! and soon I was on my way again.

That small episode did wonders for my mood. I felt powerful, clever, and resourceful. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful day. My exertions had warmed me, and I was even beginning to perspire under that plastic jacket. So I undid the clasps and let the air play under my arms and over the front of me. My back was pretty hot, but I didn’t dare take the yellow jacket off. I’d had enough of public nudity and couldn’t chance being separated from my only piece of clothing. I leaned back and enjoyed the sun, the beautiful sky, and my interesting trip on the river. I was still convinced that I was heading back toward town. I congratulated myself on my prowess as a sailor, and even went so far as to wonder whether a word like sailoress or sailorette existed. Of course, my feeling that everything was going well was exactly the signal to whatever perverse deity was designing my journey that it was time to stir the pot.

While I was musing and praising myself, the water had grown rougher and faster. It didn’t alarm me -- at first. It wasn’t as though I was heading for a waterfall or anything like that. The boat collided many times against rocks -- not as large as the one I’d escaped, but still quite dangerous. These unexpected jolts arrived with such speed and without warning that I was afraid the rowboat would be wrecked. Once, the current threw the boat up so high against a rock that the boat tilted sideways, nearly spilling me out into the river. The boat kept moving, though, and quickly dropped back to level. Soon, though, the water was so rough that the boat was striking rocks and scraping against them almost constantly. The boat rocked and lurched so violently, that I found myself gripping the sides with the same intensity that I’d gripped the flying bathtub. Several times the boat was tipped sideways, but never went all the way over. It always righted itself and kept on its way.

After many shocks, drops, scrapes and bangs, we hit a patch of clear, fast water. I don’t know how fast we were going, but I was hanging on for dear life. Then, without any sound or warning, the boat flipped over. I have no idea how it happened. It felt like we slid up a ramp that got so suddenly steep, that finally the boat gave up. It threw in the towel and went over. It happened fast -- I didn’t see it coming at all. All I could do was hang on. One moment I was sitting on a quiet stretch of that rollercoaster, and the next moment I was in the water looking up at the upended boat, canopied above me. I reached up and grabbed the seat. I didn’t panic, but I didn’t know what to do. I had to hang on, and I needed to surface, so I tried to do both at once.

It all came apart when my back hit a rock and I lost my grip on the boat. The current twisted and turned me and threw me head over heels. It was like falling into a washing machine. At one point I couldn’t tell which way was up. I didn't know where to go for air. It was scary, but I didn’t give way to panic. Finally, my foot touched bottom and I pushed off hard.

At last my head broke the surface. I gasped and cried and struggled to keep my face above water. A lot of things went through my head at once. In one single moment, (1) I saw my boat far off, flying downstream. It was probably looking to hook up with that bathtub from hell and form a gang of cursed inanimates. (2) I wasn’t in the middle of the river, but neither was I near to shore. And (3) during my exertions under water I lost that supposedly waterproof plastic yellow jacket. It would have been handy to have, considering that once again I was naked without any prospect of finding clothes, but that damn thing was heavy. It weighed me down in the water and functioned like a sail, making it easier for the currents and flows to push me around and keep me under. It wasn’t as though I took it off, but as I felt it slipping down my arms I made no attempt to keep it. It was a question of survival.

Now that the waters had had their way with me, the flux calmed. As I floated on my back and tried to catch my breath, the current gently carried me to the shore on my right. If I was going to choose, it looked like the way to go: the left side had rougher water and visible rocks. The water near the right side was not exactly still, but it was quieter and less rippled.

As soon as I felt ready, I turned over and started kicking and swimming for the shore. I couldn’t take a direct line for it; the current was still pushing me downstream, though not as violently. As I came closer to the shore, I spotted a break in the trees up ahead. I kicked harder and headed for it. Three times I stopped to test the bottom. The fourth time, my feet touched, so I gratefully started walking. There were smooth rocks and pebbles under my feet, along with some mud. The weeds ended when I reached the break in the trees.

Judging by the height of the sun, it had to be at least ten o’clock.

When I made my way around the last tree and stepped out of the water, I was surprised to find myself in someone’s backyard. It was a fairly deep backyard, with two levels, each with a well-tended lawn and flowers. Down where I was, there were two lawn chairs and several children’s toys strewn about. On the higher level I saw a swing set. Okay: so this was the house of a family with at least one small child. Maybe they’d see it in their hearts to help a girl find some clothes and make her way home.

I can’t just click my heels like Dorothy, I told myself. Then, I couldn’t help it: I began picturing a version the story The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy starts off by losing her clothes in the hurricane, and lands naked in Oz. From there, she -- like me -- would try over and over to find something to wear AND a way home.

I didn’t get very far in my musings, because I suddenly became aware of a little girl. She was probably about ten years old. I didn't notice when she appeared, or whether she’d been standing there all along.

“Hello, little girl,” I said. “My name is Mayda. What’s yours?”

“You’re NAKED!” she exclaimed, her eyes as big as saucers.

“Yes, I am,” I admitted. “Are your mother and father at home?”

“You’re NAKED!” she repeated.

“Yes, I know,” I replied. “Do you have a big brother or sister, maybe?”

“You’re not supposed to be naked,” she informed me. I could see she had a future in law enforcement.

“I don’t want to be,” I told her. “But I was shipwrecked.”

Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew even wider. Then she turned and ran toward the house. She climbed a set of stairs off to the left edge of the property. Before following her, I looked around me for a towel or any kind of cloth or clothes to cover myself with, but there was nothing.

At the top of the stairs I found the little girl standing near a teenage boy. He was sitting on a lawn chair. The little girl continued to eye me with profound suspicion, as if I were a fugitive from justice. “See? I told you!” she said to the boy.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed, gaping at me. “Are you real?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m an angel. Are your parents at home?”

“They’re at CHURCH!” the little girl replied, putting heavy stress on the last word, as if it should have been obvious. Then she added, “Don’t you know ANYTHING?” to underline it.

“They’ll be back soon,” the boy told me.

“I’d like to wait for them,” I said. “And in the meantime, do you have a towel or a blanket I could cover myself with? I fell into the river and lost everything.”

“Yeah, for sure,” the boy said. “Follow me.” He turned and walked into the house.

“We’re not supposed to let strangers in the house!” the little girl cautioned.

“It’s okay,” he said. “She needs our help.”

“Do you have a sister who might be my size?” I asked. “I need to borrow some clothes.”

He stopped and looked me up and down. Then he gestured toward the little girl with his chin. “Rebecca’s my only sister. My mother is about your size, uh, especially up here.” With an embarrassed grin, he cupped his hands at his chest to illustrate how large her breasts are. “Oh, there--” He pointed at a drying rack where some clothes, mostly lingerie, were hanging. “There’s one of her dresses. You can hold it up and get an idea.”

”SHE CAN’T HAVE THAT,” the little girl declared. Her jaw was set. She clearly felt that her home was being invaded and she alone was defending the castle.

“She’s not taking it,” he told her. “She’s just getting an idea.” To me he said, “I’ll get you a blanket. I’ll be right back.” When he turned away from me, I saw him look off to the right at a large mirror. He was trying to sneak a long look at my naked body. I pretended not to notice. After all, he was only the second helpful person I’d met since the aliens left.

While he fumbled and searched in the other room, I picked up the dress off the drying rack. It was a shirtdress with thick horizontal white and black stripes.

“You can’t have that!” the little girl shouted.

“I’m not taking it,” I told her. “I’m just looking.” She was beginning to get a little tiresome. She actually balled her fists and stamped her foot. I held the dress up in front of me, and looked in the mirror. Mayda gazed back at me. Of course she looked wonderful. Of course the dress would look lovely on her. It was weird as hell to know that the girl in the mirror was me.

I don’t know what material the dress was made of, but it felt incredible. It was knit, but unbelievably soft. It hung down to my mid-thigh. Thankfully, their mother was pretty much exactly my size. Hopefully she’d be as kind and helpful as her son, and not as suspicious and antagonistic like her daughter.

I was soon to find out.

The front door wasn’t visible from where I was standing, but I heard it open. A female voice called out, “Sean! Rebecca! We’re home!” A male voice called out, “We’ve got bagels!”

The little girl took off like a shot, talking a mile a minute. “Mom! MOM! There’s a NAKED GIRL here and she’s stealing your clothes! She came out of the river and told Sean that she’s an angel. And he BELIEVED HER. She’s not an angel -- she’s a THIEF!”

“Oh God,” I sighed to myself. In a louder voice I called out to them, “I’m not a thief. I fell into the river and lost my clothes. I just happened to come ashore in your backyard.”

The father drifted in first, blinking in surprise. He gaped at me and repeated, “Lost your clothes?” His wife came in, glowered at me, then turned her baleful, offended glare on her husband. “Bill! Bill! Close your mouth! What’s wrong with you?”

He stammered and gestured toward me. “She -- eh -- she’s lost her clothes. You can see.”

“Yes, I can see,” his wife repeated. “I can see far too much!” To me she said, “What are you doing with my dress? Put that down!”

“I was just--”

“PUT IT DOWN!” she commanded. Clearly (and unfortunately) she was more like her daughter than her son.

I sighed. “I’m just trying to see if you’re my size! If you could let me borr--”

With a fury that shocked me, the woman grabbed her dress and tossed it behind her, onto a chair. Damn it, I was naked again. By now I was getting pretty tired of it, so I didn’t bother to cover myself. The father’s eyes went everywhere. He wanted to look at me, but absurdly he didn’t want his wife to catch him looking. I couldn’t help but notice that he was sporting a long, hard, impossible-to-hide boner. His wife followed my gaze, then her eyes flashed fire. She started punching him in his arm.

“Hey! Hey!” he protested. “What did I do?”

“You know what you’re doing!” she exclaimed. “I want you to stop!”

He gestured mutely in my direction.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry to disturb you all, but the only thing I want to do is get home. And it would be a great help if I could borrow some clothes. Once I’m home, I can pay you for them, or wash them and give them back to you.”

In a soft voice, Bill asked, “Where do you live?” His wife socked him in the arm again.

“Damn it, Joan, that hurts!”

“Ooooh, you said a bad word!” the little girl cautioned.

“Look,” I said. “If you’re not going to help me, I’m just going to leave. Again, I’m sorry.”

“You’re leaving… dressed like that?” Bill gestured at me, clearly indicating my nakedness. He turned to his wife.

“No, she’s not leaving,” Joan replied in a brisk tone. “I’m going to call the police. Breaking and entering, theft, robbery, whatever it is… and INDECENT EXPOSURE!”

“Oh come on!” I protested. Sean was quietly watching from the next room, holding a blanket in his hands. I was about to gesture to him, to toss me the blanket. With that, I could at least cover myself. But he looked away and tossed the blanket out of sight.

What the hell? I asked myself, but then I saw him sneak behind his parents and grab the black and white dress. His mother was busy punching 9-1-1 into her phone. The little girl was glaring at me. The father was gawping at me. No one was looking at Sean except me. He signaled for me to go out the door behind me and go around the house to the right, where he’d give me the dress.

The mother was speaking into the phone. “Yes. My emergency? Well, I had just come home from church, and when I walked in the door, my little girl-- what? Aren’t you listening? I’m trying to tell you my emergency! I came in the door. I'd just come home from church--”

I turned and ran.

There was some fumbling and banging and shouting back in the house, but I didn’t stay to listen or look. I just ran. When I turned the corner at the back of the house, Sean was waiting at the front corner, holding the black-and-white dress in one hand and his little sister’s bicycle in the other.

He shoved the dress into my hands and said, “Take this bike and ride down the hill. That’ll get you far away fast. At the bottom of the hill is a bike rack in front of an apartment building. Leave the bike there, and I’ll tell my dad to pick it up.”

“Thanks, Sean,” I said. He blushed. I laid a big kiss on his left cheek and smiled.

Then I jumped on that little girl’s bike and started pedaling like mad.

The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 4 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

If you consider the topic Making Good Choices in Life, you would not normally include the idea of riding buck naked on a child’s bicycle in broad daylight through the suburbs on a Sunday morning. However, if you consider that the alternative was allowing a legalistic and judgmental suburban church-goer to have me arrested, I think that riding buck naked, etc., etc., was the best choice I could make under the circumstances.

Think about it: the police would find themselves wondering why I’d crawled naked from the river, which means I’d have to tell the story of the boat. Naturally they would want to know how I came to be alone in a rowboat at night, and that would lead to -- well, I could leave out the bathtub, but could I leave out the meth-lab fire? For sure, I’d have to leave out the aliens and the perverted state trooper, but if they wanted to retrace my steps last night, what parts would I be able to tell? I don’t think I could construct a big enough lie that would get me from Ross’ pickup truck to the rowboat.

And so, to avoid the police and their questions, I pedalled as hard as I could out of that driveway, naked once again. I would have stopped and put that dress on if I could have, but the mother was hot on my heels, shouting things like, “Sean! What have you done? What have you DONE?” and “Bill! Grab that girl! GRAB her! Don’t let her go!” and “911? 911? Don’t hang up! DON’T HANG UP! I’m not done talking yet!” That’s why I jumped on that little bike and pushed off without getting dressed first.

My idea was to put a little distance between myself and that woman, and then to slip the dress on. Across the street and down a ways I spotted a high hedge, so I swooped in behind it. I stopped, and put both feet on the ground.

Yes, I did. And then I looked up. The hedge shielded a driveway. I had expected that much. What I didn’t anticipate was that the driveway led to a parking lot, and in the parking lot was a great big church. There was the church, there was the steeple, the doors were all open, and there were the people, milling around in the parking lot, gaping at me.

None of them were near enough to grab me, so I quickly pulled the dress over my head and shoved my arms into the sleeves. Not the ideal circumstances for putting on a dress, but I had no reason to expect the situation to improve. I pulled the hem down as far as my belly button before realizing that I’d put the dress on backwards. So up it went, baring my breasts again. I pulled my arms out, turned the dress around, shoved my arms back in, and tugged the dress all the way down to the middle of my thigh.

Finally! I was dressed! I had clothes on, like a normal person! And I didn’t look half bad, either. The dress fit as though it were made for me. I have to say, the black and white stripes hugged my curves in a very flattering way. Fraught as that moment was, it was the first moment that I not only enjoyed wearing women’s clothes, I delighted in wearing them.

The churchgoers were nowhere near as pleased as I was. In fact, they were shouting at me. Mostly they were saying “Hey!” and “HEY!” but a few of them managed to let off some longer phrases, like, “This is a house of GOD!” and “How DARE you!” and “Cover yourself! What’s WRONG with you!”

I know that for the church people, my nakedness was an unexpected addition to their habitual religious practice. I knew that I’d invaded their morning: my appearance was a great big deal, maybe the story of the week or the story of the month, but for me it was only one fleeting moment in a long, crazy trip home. A trip that had grown pretty old by now. I’d had enough. Frankly, I was pretty well pissed off. I understood that they were upset and angry and offended, but it was just an accident! I wanted to shout, Get over it! Grow up! but I didn’t. None of this was their fault. So, rather than shout back, I settled for sticking out my tongue at the church people before I turned and pedaled away. Okay, so maybe I ruined their Sunday church experience, but at least I didn’t give them the finger or swear at them. Above all, I had done my best to keep my exposure to a minimum.

At the end of the driveway, I stopped for a moment and took a look down the road. When Sean said “hill,” I didn’t think much about what the word meant, aside from my being able to coast to the bottom. Now that I was about to start my descent, my heart skipped a couple of beats. The hill was pretty damn steep and pretty damn long. It’s called Bellen Avenue in Duxbridge, if you want to look it up. I want to say that it was a 45-degree slope, but honestly I feel that it’s steeper. I rolled down a little, experimentally, so I could test the brakes. An older couple was climbing the hill, so when my dress ballooned and flew up, she gasped, “Oh my!” and he said, “Quite inspiring,” in a goofy voice.

The good news was that the brakes worked fine. I apologized to the couple. The man smiled like a child with an ice cream cone, while the woman commented, “You know, you can’t go around like that. You may think it’s funny, but it’s not.”

“Believe me,” I told her, “I don’t think this is funny at all.”

She harrumphed in disbelief, and they continued their trudge up the hill.

I pulled the dress tight across my thighs, gathered it behind me, and sat on the scrunched-up part. Then I rolled down the hill without fear of making a spectacle. I pumped the brakes the entire way down. I couldn’t risk going fast -- my poor bare feet would be torn to shreds if I had to use them to stop. Accompanied by the frighteningly loud squeal of the bicycle’s brakes, I made my way pretty quickly to the bottom of the hill.

Another sound accompanied my descent: it was only in my head, but it was as persistent as the high-pitched screech of my brakes. I didn't know at first how it got there, but one line from a Bob Dylan song kept going on a loop and I couldn’t make it stop: Lay lady lay / Lay across my big brass bed. It was driving me crazy. It took a minute or two to figure out how that particular tune got started, but then I got it: the man who said “Quite inspiring” had a weird dippy voice, just like Dylan’s in that song.

As I said, the hill was incredibly steep, which made me think that the river must decline at a similar angle. A slant like that would account for the speed and violence of the current.

As I neared the bottom of the hill, I began to recognize a building here and a corner there, and soon I knew more or less where I’d ended up. I knew that Bellen Avenue was the big main street in Duxbridge. Even though it’s the town right next to mine, I don’t know Duxbridge very well. I’d only been here once or twice. It was only when I reached the very bottom of the hill and saw the bike rack and the apartment building mentioned by Sean, that everything clicked in my memory: I was in front of the building where Charlotte lives! One of the last times I’d seen her was when I helped her move in.

I coasted up to the bike rack and pushed the front tire into it. For some reason -- maybe because the tires were much smaller than an adult bike, or maybe because I was doing it wrong -- the bike didn’t want to stay upright. I had to move it to one of the end slots and lean it against the bike-rack’s frame. While I bent over to wrestle Rebecca’s bicycle into a stable position, an unexpected breeze lifted the back of my dress, exposing my legs and derriere and everything else all the way up to the small of my back. Of course, a random man who looked like an overgrown frat boy was passing close by at just the right moment. He saw the whole show. When I straightened up, blushing with embarrassment, he smirked and said, “Don’t feel bad. You have the most beautiful backside I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, do fuck off,” I told him, and the smirk fell from his face. I pushed past him and trotted up the stairs into the apartment building.

By the way, that was the last time that the wind caught me unaware. From then on, I developed a seventh sense: I was always aware of the state of my skirt vis-à-vis the flow of air.

I didn’t remember Charlotte’s apartment number, but I did find her name: RAFFLYAN. There wasn’t any answer when I pushed the button, so I waited a minute, then buzzed her again. After I tried a third time, I saw a car pull up at the end of the building’s walkway, next to the bike rack. Rebecca and her father, Bill, got out of the car and walked up to her bike. I didn’t have anywhere to hide; there was nothing but the walkway and the glass of the entryway between me and them. I tried the inner door. It rattled loudly, but it was locked. I buzzed Charlotte with a little more urgency.

Then Bill looked up and saw me. His jaw fell open. He was enchanted; it was easy to see. He reached down and turned Rebecca by her shoulders so she faced her bike with her back to me. Then Bill waved, with a wide-eyed, empty-headed look. If I could have, I would have smacked him, but I couldn’t. So I waved back. I tried to smile, but my lips put up a struggle against it.

I want to say, for the record, that I do (still) feel guilty about stealing a bike from a little girl -- “borrowing without asking” is no better. It’s no excuse. Rebecca may be pushy, suspicious, and unwelcoming, but she is still just a little girl.

Then, I was saved from Bill and Rebecca: the door behind me opened. A man was going out, and with a smiling show of gallantry he held the door open for me. I scurried inside, smiling and saying thanks. As I brushed past him, he involuntarily jerked away from me as if he’d been struck. I saw him stiffen. His eyes widened. He tried to smile politely, but he shot out of there as quickly as he could. I was puzzled, but I retreated from the entrance until Bill and his daughter were no longer in view.

That’s when it hit me -- or hit my nose, rather: I was finally in an environment where the air was still. Until now, I guess I’d been upwind of myself. What I mean to say is, I stank. I reeked, in fact. That’s why the man at the door changed so quickly from gallantry to get-me-out-of-here.

I don’t why I smelled so bad. After all, I’d spent an entire night in the river, and that water seemed clean. Before that, I was soaking in a bathtub. It was clean by definition.

Then I remembered: I had rolled around in some mud and rotten plants. I did wear that disreputable jacket. And who really knows what’s in the river? In any case, no matter how I came by it, I was putting out a military-grade stench.

So, where was Charlotte’s apartment? I glanced at the elevator and the door to the stairs, and then it came to me: the third floor. We said it often enough during the move, when we were lugging her stuff upstairs. I pushed open the door to the stairs: Someone was waiting for the elevator, and I couldn’t inflict my funk on them. Once I climbed to the third floor, I was guided by the memory of hauling all those boxes and pieces of furniture: turn left, left again, all the way to the end, last door on the left. There it was: 319, Rafflyan.

I rang. I knocked. I listened. It didn’t sound like anyone was home.

Okay. So I didn’t truly need to stop at Charlotte’s. Sure, I smelled awful. Yes, I was hungry and had no money. HOWEVER, I wasn’t naked any more. That was one huge problem out of the way. I could simply walk down the streets of town all the way to Mayda’s apartment. Getting home, which was my other huge problem, was not such a big deal any more: It was only about two miles. Still, it would be nice to shower, maybe change, maybe eat something, possibly borrow a pair of shoes, before trudging across town. Charlotte would let me do all that. Or some of that. Probably.

Then too, it might be better to NOT see Charlotte. I only ran into her building on impulse, to hide from Bill and Rebecca. I came inside because I didn’t want to be arrested for stealing a little girl’s bicycle, along with all the other crimes Rebecca’s mother had listed.

Did I really want to see Charlotte? Charlotte was a complicated person, to put it mildly. She could be very kind, helpful, and giving. She was also my ex-girlfriend, and she could be intensely, obsessively jealous. I broke up with her a few months before I started seeing Mayda. Charlotte had become too difficult. I got tired of walking on eggshells. She started reading things into every little word I said, until finally our relationship became a series of mind games that I never wanted to play.

Something else about Charlotte that I didn’t see it at first was that she kept creating situations where I’d have to choose between her and… well, between her and everything else. We’d been going out for about three months when she mentioned her “heart thing.” One day she was on a bus when she suddenly felt palpitations in her chest. She broke out in a sweat and became very frightened. She asked the bus driver to stop in the middle of the block to let her off. An older woman helped her off the bus and sat her down near a fountain to try to collect herself. “The lady dipped her handkerchief in the fountain and used it to bathe my head,” Charlotte told me. “She took my pulse and said it was very irregular.”

“So, have you been to the doctor?” I asked. Charlotte had shot me a look that said, What the hell are you talking about? Aren’t you listening to me?

After that, her “heart thing” would pop up occasionally. She was pretty smart about it; she didn’t play the card too often. The first time, we were going to have dinner with my parents, but she had “an episode.” I had to sit next to her, take her pulse (which was normal), and put cool compresses on her head. We ended up not having dinner with my parents.

The same thing happened when one of my best friends, Jack, enlisted in the army. I was going to see him off, me and a bunch of the guys. He was heading out in the morning, but Charlotte’s “heart thing” intervened. Instead of saying goodbye to an old friend, I ended up refreshing cold compresses for Charlotte and feeling her pulse.

I know I might sound heartless, but I looked up the symptoms of heart attacks, and they were nothing like what Charlotte described. Also, she didn’t seem to be in any real distress. But the thing that convinced me that they weren’t serious was Charlotte’s refusal to see a doctor about it.

Finally I had enough. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I understood how she drove a wedge between me and the other people I loved. At the time I was just tired of this convenient malady that kept us from doing things that *I* wanted to do. Her “heart thing” never once came up when we were doing something she wanted to do.

I decided that the next time she had “an episode” that I’d take her to the emergency room. I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The day it happened, the last time she ever had her “heart thing,” I was about to go to football practice. In my whole life, I have never missed practice. Never. Not even when I was sick. Charlotte asked me to get a compress for her forehead and to feel her pulse. Instead, I called a taxi and bundled us inside.

The ER doctor did an EKG, took some blood work, asked her describe the symptoms. In the end he told her that she’d had a panic attack. “Your heart is fine,” he told her. “It’s perfectly healthy.”

I didn’t say anything on the taxi ride back, but once we reached her house, I took off to practice. It was nearly over when I got there, but I had to make the effort. I had to at least show up.

That was the beginning of the end. Charlotte moved from the “heart thing” to talking about marriage and children, and that was the final straw. I realized I didn’t want to be tied to her for the rest of my life, and I broke up with her.

So… considering all that, it was probably better to give Charlotte a miss. My stomach rumbled; I knew I smelled bad, but oh well. Time to start walking.

I turned my back on Charlotte’s door and made my way toward the elevator. The light for floor number one winked out and number two lit up. I caught another whiff of myself and realized that I’d better take the stairs before the person, whoever they were, arrived. The light for floor number two winked out and three lit up. As I pushed open the door to the stairwell, the elevator doors opened, and Charlotte emerged, dressed in hospital scrubs and looking tired.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a sullen, suspicious tone.

Then it hit me: I was a complete idiot. In spite of everything I just said, Charlotte probably would have come to Ross’ rescue. But I wasn’t Ross any more. When I knocked on Charlotte’s door, I was thinking as though I was still him: In my mind, Charlotte was my ex-girlfriend. She might help grudgingly, but she would have helped -- Ross. But Mayda? Charlotte hated Mayda. In Charlotte’s mind, Mayda was the bitch who stole her man. She’d said it several times. She blamed our breakup entirely on Mayda, and now *I* was Mayda. Charlotte would happily burn me alive and laugh about it.

But then, an idea occurred to me. There was a card I could play. It might work. It would probably work. But oh, man! If it didn’t, I might as well hightail it out of here.

Charlotte repeated her question, with a bit more venom.

I swallowed hard and told her, “Ross dumped me. For good. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Her face lit up, like a child on Christmas morning. Her hostile demeanor fell away. A smile transformed her face. She zoomed over to me and grabbed my arm. Then she immediately recoiled and backed away. She wiped the hand that touched me on her pants, while she pinched her nose shut with her other hand. “Oh my God! Did you swim here through the sewer? What the hell?”

“I, uh, fell into the river,” I confessed.

“Listen,” she said, ignoring my reply. Her tone was gleeful and excited. “You have to come inside. Take a shower, get cleaned up. I can rinse out that dress and hand-wash it. It’ll take all of fifteen minutes. We’ll have some breakfast, and you can tell me all about it.” She turned and started walking toward her apartment. With her back to me, she groaned in disgust and said, “No offense, but you really stink. I mean, you stink like mad. I can even smell you with my nose shut. You smell so bad I can taste it. Yuck!”

Once inside, with a face full of revulsion, she pulled my dress off me and roughly pushed me toward the bathroom. “Oh, come on,” I protested. “I can’t smell that bad!”

“OH MY GOD!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You DO smell that bad, and then some! Please, for the love of God, get in the shower. I’ll wash your dress in the kitchen.” I was about to shut the bathroom door, but she stopped me with her hand. “Make sure you wash your hair,” she said. “But be quick. I worked last night and I need to eat and sleep. But I want to hear everything about the breakup. Hurry!”

She pushed me into the shower, then she grabbed a bucket and a bottle of Woolite. She carried them out of the bathroom with my dress. When I finished washing and turned off the shower, I saw that she’d hung a bathrobe on the door. I wrapped my hair in a towel, the way I’d seen Mayda do, and gratefully put on the robe. I say gratefully because it was wonderful to once again have clothes to wear, and clean clothes at that. Charlotte was sitting at her little table with a breakfast spread before her. I sat at the place she’d set for me. My dress was draped over the back of the chair, drying. I sniffed it. “It smells clean,” I commented. “Thanks!”

She gestured at my plate and said, “Dig in!”

She’d prepared eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. It was perfect. As we ate, I told her a highly-edited version of my evening. Of course, I left out the aliens, the groping trooper, Lemon and her flying bathtub… Even if she had believed me, she wouldn’t have listened or cared. The only part she wanted to hear about was the argument and the breakup. So I told her. I reversed the roles, saying “I” and “me” instead of “Mayda” and “Ross” and “him” instead of “me, myself, and I.” I started with the dinner, explaining how I’d managed to land us at Ebbidles. I even said, as Mayda had, that “I wanted to eat there since forever.”

“Ugh! That shitty vegan place?” Charlotte cried. “He hates that stuff!” She shook her head knowingly. Clearly she saw Mayda as a selfish idiot, and that was fine with me -- at the moment, anyway.

I told her how Ross wanted to walk along the river, but I insisted on driving to the desert. She gave me a look that said You are a complete imbecile.

When I got to the part about my moving to Barcelona, she didn’t care about Spain or playing soccer as a professional. The only thing she heard was me saying that I had dumped Ross, and she refused to believe it. “No,” she said, “No, no. No, no, no. You didn’t dump him. That couldn’t happen. He dumped you.”

“Nobody dumped anybody,” I told her. “We weren’t engaged or anything. We were just dating and then we stopped.”

“OH MY GOD!” she shouted, "YOU ARE SUCH A FILTHY LIAR!" With her hands in her hair, she rose to her feet. My heart froze. I suddenly felt as though I’d been thrown back in time to other occasions when I’d seen her throw a fit like this. With her hands still clutching fistfuls of her hair, she walked over to a strictly ornamental fireplace. There on the mantle… oh God, a chill ran through me… in an embossed silver frame, was a photograph of her and Ross.

Thunderstruck, I blurted out the obvious: “You’re still in love with him!” The words fell out of my mouth. I was astonished. (At least I managed to say him instead of me, which was the horrific element here.)

“Of course I’m still in love with him!” she shouted. “He’s my soulmate! He’s my one-and-only! He’s the man I’m going to marry, and he knows it, too! But you, YOU just had to steal him away, with your long stupid hair and your sports. You had to get in between us!”

“Okay,” I said. “If that’s true, I guess that’s why it didn’t work out between us.” Here I was, walking on eggshells again.

“What do you mean if that’s true? Of course it’s true!”

“Okay,” I agreed. “That’s why we didn’t work out.”

I looked around the room and -- as if they were hidden before -- many pictures, all of them framed, of Ross and Charlotte. I counted six. For the first time, I was honestly grateful that I wasn’t Ross any more.

“That’s right!” she said. “That’s right! It didn’t work out with you. Because you aren’t his soulmate!”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I told her, “You’re right. I admit it: you're right.”

She went on for another ten minutes. While she ranted, she gathered up the dirty dishes and pans and threw them violently in the sink. It made a lot of noise, but somehow nothing got broken. When she finished describing her imaginary relationship with the man I used to be, she took a deep breath and looked at the woman I am now.

“So where is he now?”

Oh! That was a question I wasn’t prepared for. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I guess he’s out there, somewhere. You know, in his truck.”

She frowned. “You mean he’s driving around?”

“Probably.” This was no time for frankness. I wasn’t going to tell her that Ross (who wasn’t really Ross any more, but was now the woman Charlotte hated) had flown off in a spaceship, and was now on his way to be an exhibit in an interplanetary zoo. I was sure that the truth wouldn’t go over well at all. Instead, I said, “Why don’t you call him?”

“That’s a good idea,” she replied, with a thoughtful look.

“I’m sure he’d be glad to talk to you.”

“Of course he would! What a stupid thing to say! I talk to him all the time. He always calls me -- even when you two had your little fling. He would call me.”

I knew that none of that was true, but I said, “Wow, I had no idea.”

She smirked and told me, “You had no idea about a lot of things, missy. Let me tell you.”

I picked up on her hint and asked, “Are you saying the two of you were sleeping together--”

“While he was seeing you? Yes. And it was hot.”

Another lie, but I pretended to be surprised and a little hurt.

“Look,” she said, feeling triumphant. “You can wait for you dress to dry. If you want, you can crash on the couch. Just close the door when you go, and don’t wake me up. I’m going to get some sleep.”

With that, she walked into her room and closed the door. I moved some of the couch pillows to the floor and lay down. I was pretty tired. Through Charlotte’s door, I heard her leave a message on Ross’ voicemail.

“Hey, Ross. Hello, honey. Do you miss me? I know you do. I miss you, too. If you want to talk, you know how to find me. If you want to see me, you know, um. Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for lying to her, and for going along with her lies. I had no idea that she’d constructed this fantasy relationship with me. With the old me, the previous me. I sighed.

Then I started thinking about Barcelona and soccer. There was so much I needed to learn, and I needed to learn it in a hurry. Spanish and soccer. Mayda’s training schedule. Mayda’s friends and family. Oh, boy. I was going to need a great big chart and lot of checkboxes. I wish I’d paid more attention to her while she was with me.

As crazy as Charlotte is, one thing I learned from talking with her is that as Ross, I’ve been a selfish, self-absorbed lout. Charlotte, and then Mayda, were just add-ons in my life. I never really thought about who they were, how they lived, what they wanted from life, how they fit into the world, and how they related to the people around us. All I really knew was Ross, and only knew him from the inside. Until now, I didn’t really know how others saw him.

While all this circulated through my head, I fell asleep. Deeply asleep. And I had a dream. I dreamt that I was back in high school. It was early morning, and I was dressed in hospital scrubs. It was the typical anxiety dream: there was a big test that I wasn’t prepared for.

There was a weird twist to the dream, though: I wasn’t Ross. I wasn’t even Mayda. I was Charlotte, and I was frantic. And the test? The test was that I had to find Ross.

The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 5 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

I woke to what seemed at first a clicking sound. It took me a few moments to remember where I was and to figure out the time of day. At first I thought it was early, about sunrise, but as I came back to myself I understood that it couldn’t be morning. The reddish golden glow was that of sunset. I was still at Charlotte’s apartment, and I’d slept through most of the day.

I groaned and stretched. I still needed to get myself home. To Mayda’s. That was “home” now.

Charlotte’s voice suddenly and softly asked, “Where is he?”

“Oh my God, Charlotte! You startled the hell out of me!” I jerked up to a sitting position. Charlotte had pulled a kitchen chair over, close to the couch. She’d obviously been watching me while I slept. And-- “Hey!” I exclaimed. “What are doing to my dress? Are you cutting it?”

I snatched it from her left hand. She held a pair of scissors in her right. She’d cut a series of three-inch vertical slits all the way round the waist. I could still wear it home; the slits would show a little skin, but nothing that would get me arrested. “Charlotte, you’ve ruined this dress! It was a beautiful dress, and now it’s--” words failed me “--it’s -- it’s ruined.”

“You ruined my life, I ruined your dress.”

I looked at the scissors in her hand. I looked at her face. A sudden horrible thought hit me, so I put my hands to my head to check my hair.

“I didn’t cut your hair, you dope,” she said, as if that should have been obvious. “I’ve been calling Ross all night -- I mean, all day -- and he hasn’t answered. I’ve left him one message after another, but he still hasn’t called me back. Now his phone goes straight to voicemail, and his voicemail is full.” She sighed heavily. Then she lifted her face, looked me straight in the eye, and asked, “Is he still alive?” She followed that with a whispered, ”Did you kill him?”

”WHAT!?”

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. She set the scissors on her coffee table. “I don’t mean it. I know you didn’t. I know you wouldn’t. I’m just so sad. And hurt. And angry. And SUPER-ANXIOUS. I’m so anxious. I think I might be getting depression.” She paused. When I didn’t say anything or react in any way, she ventured, “I feel like I wasted all these years when you were with him.”

“Charlotte, Ross and I only dated for six months. That’s all.”

Big round tears began to flow down her cheeks. “I’m sorry about your dress. I didn’t mean it. I’ve been up all day when I should have been sleeping. I’m all wound up and I don’t know what to do. I’m so upset, I can’t go to work tonight. Once his voicemail filled up, I got so frustrated… I saw you sleeping… You were lying there as if nothing at all was wrong in the world. I was mad at you, but I couldn’t hurt you.” After a pause she added, “So I cut your dress.”

After another deep, heavy, ragged sigh, she told me, “You can borrow something of mine if you want.”

“Really?” I said. “That would be great,” and I visually compared her foot size to mine. She saw where my eyes went, and pulled her feet away from me. She quickly added, “No shoes, though.”

“Well, never mind then,” I conceded. “Barefoot’s not so bad.” I pulled the black-and-white dress over my head. It didn’t hug my curves as well any more, but it would get me home.

“I’m going,” I said. “Thanks for all your help. The breakfast, the couch, the listening... I wish you hadn’t cut my dress, but-- thanks. And don’t worry about Ross. I’m sure he’s fine.”

She started to say something else, but I closed the door on her and quickly got the hell out of her building.

My feet were still bare, so I keep a wary eye on the ground ahead of me. I couldn’t afford to hurt or cut my feet. I was a soccer player now. Still, it was true what I’d said to Charlotte: barefoot wasn’t so bad. It was kind of nice, actually. The temperature was fine, and I was pretty sure I knew the way. I followed Bridge Street, which (like its name) crossed the river. That damned river. I stopped and frowned at its roiling current. I wanted to throw something in, just to show my frustration; make it a matter of record. But there was nothing to throw, and I knew it was a stupid thought anyway. I scanned upstream and down, but there was no sign of the rowboat in the river. No trace of the bathtub in the sky, either. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that clawfoot monstrosity came crashing down right next to me. Still, it wouldn’t have spoiled my mood: I was back in my town, back in the normal world. Everything was right again, except that I was someone else, and had a month to learn a new language and a new sport. Perfectly normal.

The sun had set while I was at Charlotte’s, and the half hour of twilight was fading. My stomach growled with hunger, and my throat was dry as well. I wasn’t starving, though. I could easily hang on until I reached Mayda’s apartment. Compared to the rest of my experience, being hungry and thirsty was not so bad. At least I wasn’t naked any more.

I followed the riverway. In spite of what that idiot water had done to me, I had to admit it: the river was lovely. The street lamps were starting their slow progression from dim light to full glow. I knew the moon would soon peek over the horizon. I passed a few people walking the other way, and they all smiled and greeted me. A few looked with curiosity at my bare feet and the gashes in my dress, but nobody pointed or made any remark. It was fine: I was back in the real world. My crazy adventure was nearly over.

Then, a bit of luck: I spotted a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground. It was stuck against a little rock. Otherwise, it would have blown away. I scooped it up happily. Now I’d be able to stop somewhere and eat! Someone was going to be unhappy about losing that money, but I didn’t see anyone scanning the ground. So I folded up the bill and held it in my hand. Yes, of course: like so many women’s clothes, the dress had no pockets! Another thing I’d have to get used to.

I made a detour away from the river. There was a diner a few blocks in that direction that I used to visit as Ross. Mayda never liked the place. She said it wasn’t clean, and that it smelled bad, but I didn’t agree. Besides, they served huge portions, and they were well-known for serving “Breakfast All Day.” That sounded pretty good right about now. So, buoyed with anticipation and my new-found wealth, I walked in. Immediately, the man behind the counter shook his head at me. “What?” I asked, not understanding. In answer, he tapped a sign on the wall that read:

NO SHIRT
NO SHOES
NO SERVICE

Then he pointed at my feet. I sighed and walked out.

I trudged back to the river. I wasn’t quite as happy now. There were other places to eat along the way, but all of them were much nicer and more high-toned than the diner. I didn’t think they’d allow a barefoot girl with a slashed dress to eat there.

As I walked, I thought about soccer. I’d half to start watching films. I’d have to learn all the basic moves. I’d have to work on dribbling and shooting. I thought about the way that Mayda played: one thing that struck me, over and over, was easy to say, but it meant a lot: Mayda was a team player. When I was Ross, I was a team player as well, but it means something entirely different in football. I’ve seen Mayda take shots at the goal, but far more often she set up the shot for somebody else. They did a lot of passing on her team. A LOT of passing. Seemed like every player tried to give every other player a chance. They trusted each other. I’d have to learn to do that, too. Mayda had some clever moves, some fancy footwork, but she didn’t rely on it. Her real secret weapon was that she paid attention. She seemed to know where everyone else was, even when she wasn’t looking at them, and she’d often pass the ball to an empty space — not to where a player was, but to where the player was going to be. And she never stopped. She had the stamina to tear up the entire field, even at the end of the game.

I guess I knew more than I thought. Still, I’d have work hard and train hard, the way that Mayda did.

While I was absorbed in my thoughts and plans, I covered a lot of ground, and now I was nearly home. I could see The Ultimate Steakhouse and Ebbidles. Mayda’s apartment was just a few blocks away. Twenty bucks wouldn’t go far at The Ultimate (and they probably wouldn’t let me in anyway), so I went into Ebbidles. I want to say that I went there grudgingly, but it wasn’t true. I was too hungry to be picky, so right now Ebbidles looked like heaven to me.

When I’d gone there with Mayda yesterday -- wow! Seriously, it was only yesterday? -- anyway, when we visited Ebbidles yesterday, I was a little angry and frustrated. I didn’t want to be there; I wanted to be at The Ultimate, eating a thick, juicy steak. Now, after everything I’d been through, I understood why Mayda was attracted to this place. It had a nice atmosphere. Everyone was smiling: the customers, the staff, the cooks. The kitchen was open: I could watch them working. Everything was clean and calm. And oh, it smelled so good.

The hostess greeted me. I asked her whether my bare feet were a problem. She laughed and said, “No, come on in.” At the waitress’s recommendation I ordered a meatless hash that came with meatless bacon and potatoes. It turned out to be pretty tasty and filling. The coffee was good, too.

After I’d eaten and was enjoying a second cup of coffee (with nondairy creamer, of course), the hostess chatted with me a bit. After some hesitation, she asked me, “What happened to your dress?”

“Revenge,” I answered.

She took my answer in, rolled it around in her head, and then she got it. “Did you steal somebody’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “That’s what happened.”

“But how could she cut your dress with you in it?”

“I was asleep.”

We both nodded sagely, as if to say We’ve all been there. I knew I was supposed to nod at that point, but seriously, I don’t know. Has every woman been there?

I left the whole twenty to cover the bill, which meant an almost eight dollar tip. I really enjoyed the meal and the experience, and after all, it wasn’t my money.

After I’d walked about two blocks, a police car pulled up next to me. The cop stayed in the car. From the very first moment, I didn’t like the guy. For one thing, his head was about even with my butt, and his eyes kept drifting there as we talked. Or rather, while he interrogated me.

He asked where I was going, I told him I was going home. I didn’t tell him the address. He asked why I was barefoot. I told him that walking barefoot is good for your feet and legs.

“You do have nice legs, I have to admit,” he commented, nodding. Then he asked, “What’s with all the slashes in your dress?”

“It’s the new fashion,” I told him. “It’s called slasher chic. You’ll see lots of dresses like this in the days ahead.”

“I think somebody was mad at you and they cut up your dress,” he observed, nodding some more. I really wanted to slap him to stop that nodding, but instead I just said, “Yeah, you guessed it. That’s what happened.”

“Ooh! Was it a cat fight?”

In case it isn’t clear, I was getting pretty irritated and offended by this moron. I knew that men could be this stupid. I’d seen a lot of it. However, it was not much fun being the object of the stupidity. I was sure he wouldn’t dare step out and grope me the way his colleague had done, but still, he was taking advantage of his badge. If he wasn’t a cop I would have walked away before he even opened his mouth.

“A cat fight?” I replied. “No, it was a lingerie pillow fight that got out of control.”

That stopped him. His head quit bobbing. His mouth even dropped open a little. He froze for about three beats, then said, “I wasn’t sure those things existed.”

“Can I go, officer?”

“Well, look,” he said, “I actually stopped you to warn you. We’ve had reports of break-ins and of women being assaulted in this area. It’s not a good night to be walking alone. If you hop in, I’ll give you a ride.”

“No, thanks,” I replied. I wasn’t going anywhere with this guy. “I just live two blocks that way. I’ll be careful.”

“Okay,” he said, clearly disappointed. “Keep your eyes open.” Then, after taking one last long look at my butt, he drove off.

When I got to Mayda’s apartment door, I examined the lamp where she’d hidden the key. I had to admit, it was a good hiding place. Even though I knew the key was there, I didn’t see it at first. And if I didn’t have fingernails, I wouldn’t have been able to fish it out.

When I got inside and shut the door, I felt an enormous sense of relief. I didn’t turn the lights on at first; Mayda had left the bathroom light on, and the dim light was kind of restful. I pulled the dress off over my head and dropped it on a chair. Then I noticed the window she’d left open. I remembered wanting to close it before we went out last night, but Mayda didn’t let me. So I walked over and closed it now. Being by the window made me conscious of my nakedness, so I drew the blind. I was about to turn on a lamp, when a rough male voice said, “Leave the light off, baby. I can see you well enough.”

I swore silently, inside my mind. Fuck this guy. He had to be the intruder the policeman warned me about. Well, whoever he was, whatever this asshole thought was going to happen here, was absolutely NOT going to happen. I’d had enough.

I turned to face him. I couldn’t make out his face because he was back-lit by light from the bathroom.

In a throaty whisper he said, “God! Look at you! What a beauty! We’re going to have some fun tonight, I can see that.”

“You want some fun?” I shouted. “Have some of this!” I quickly stepped forward with my left foot, at the same time swinging my right elbow in an arc. When it connected with the man’s forehead, the blow had all my weight behind it. He staggered back a few steps and collided with the wall, but he didn’t go down. He grunted in surprise, then he quickly dove at me, grabbing me around the waist. As he pushed me to the floor, I locked my left arm around his neck and began squeezing with all my might. The two of us fell to the floor with a loud thump.

When I was Ross, I’d been in a handful of fights, and I won most of them. Well, some of them. Okay, honestly, I won a couple of them, but I at least I had more experience fighting than Mayda. But as Ross I was much stronger, and right now I missed that strength. My attacker easily freed his head by grabbing my arm and pulling it off him. I balled up my fists and pounded his head, over and over. He grabbed my wrists and pushed them to the floor. Now I was thoroughly frightened, but there was no way in hell that I was going to be beaten that easily. He was sitting on my stomach, so I started kicking him, whacking his head with my heels. Now I felt some power: Mayda had strong legs.

“Stop it, damn you! Stop it!” he growled softly. He didn’t want the neighbors to hear. Well, I did. I began shouting for help.

“Shut up!” he whispered, and let go of one my wrists. Before he could cover my mouth with his hand, I cocked my arm back and hit him hard in the throat. I hit him as hard I could, with all the force of desperation and fear. He reared back, choking and struggling to breathe. In that moment I found the leverage to push him off and stumble to my feet. I ran to Mayda’s dining table and threw one of the chairs at him. I knocked the other chairs over as well, making as much noise as I could. Then I threw over the table, putting it between him and me. It made one hell of a racket.

“I should fucking kill you,” he muttered.

“NOT IF I KILL YOU FIRST!” I shouted back. He took a step forward and grabbed the table. With one hand, he tossed it out of his way. I could see that given time, he’d overpower me. I wanted to run out the door, but given our positions, he’d grab me before my fingertips touched the doorknob.

Then I saw the item that became my salvation: Mayda’s glass turkey was sitting on the counter, right behind me. It was the same silly turkey we’d fought about last night. It was hard and heavy, and about the size of a football. I grabbed it, cocked my arm like a quarterback and threw that damn glass turkey as hard as I could, putting the force of my whole body into that throw. That ugly glass lump nailed him full in the face. He fell back heavily, landing on his ass. “ARE YOU HAVING FUN NOW, YOU ASSHOLE?” I shouted. He held one hand up as a mute plea for mercy, and put his other hand to his head. I could see he was bleeding badly, but this was no time for tenderness. I looked around for something else to hit him with, in case he stood up again or drew a weapon. I spotted exactly what I needed leaning in a corner near the kitchen counter. There it was, the perfect weapon: a half-size baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger. I snatched it up and tapped the floor with it. I was trying to find something menacing to say, as the intruder struggled to his feet. “You bitch,” he said thickly. He stumbled his way to the door, one hand to his head, the other hand warding me off.

I wasn’t sure whether to hit him again, or let him get away. He managed to fumble open the door and escape to the hallway. Forgetting my nakedness, I chased him.

I’ve been to that apartment building often enough to know that there are only a handful of doors in that hallway, but in my memory I can see a dozen, stretching off in the distance, and a neighbor leaning out of each and every partly-open door. Their heads were twitching back and forth between the fleeing, bleeding intruder and me, the naked girl with a baseball bat.

A woman two doors down across the hall was on the phone with 911. “You’ve got to hurry!” she said. “He’s running away! He’s bleeding from his face.” Then her head swiveled, and her jaw dropped. “And she’s naked,” she told the operator. “Naked with a baseball bat. A little one. No, the baseball bat is a little one. She’s tall.”

I nodded thanks to the woman on the phone, and coolly scanning the faces of the others I rested the bat on my shoulder (like Harley Quinn!) and called out, “Okay, folks, the show’s over.” That’s what you’re supposed to say in situations like that.

After I shut the door and threw the deadbolt, I leaned against the doorjam and slid to the floor. I don’t know how long I sat there, shaking. I don’t know why I wasn’t crying. I just sat there, my butt on the floor, my knees drawn up, watching my hands tremble.

What an outrageous night it had been! I should have had that guy from the Princess Bride with me, exclaiming “Inconceivable!” at every turn.

I looked at the clock. 7:45. Twenty-four hours ago, Mayda and I had walked out this door together. She was still her. I was still me. Now Mayda, dressed in my body, was gliding off to the stars. As far as I could tell, she was happy to go. Not that she was happy to leave me; that wasn’t it. She just wanted more. She wanted adventure, the unknown, the unexpected. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me, per se. It’s just that I wasn’t enough. If I thought she didn’t want me, or didn’t love me, or didn’t care — I don’t think I could bear it. But knowing that I wasn’t enough? It hurt. It was humiliating. But I knew eventually I’d come to live with it. I wanted her to be happy, even if happy meant living in a zoo on another planet.

I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, but only two minutes later someone started pounding on the door. I jumped to my feet.

“This is the police, miss. Are you alright in there? We had reports of an intruder.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I replied through the door, but my voice was pretty shaky.

“Are you alone in there, miss? Are you safe?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s gone. I chased him off. I told you, I’m fine.”

“Could you open the door, please, miss? I need to know that no one is in there with you, threatening you.”

“Yeah, sure, fine,” I said, “just give me a second to put some clothes on.”

“Miss! Miss! Please open this door. RIGHT NOW. I’m concerned for your safety.”

My temper was starting to rise. “I will open the door as soon as I put some clothes on! Did you not hear me? I’m going to put some clothes on!”

“Miss? Miss? If you don’t open this door by my count of three, I will have to break it down. I need to know that no one is in there threatening you.”

“Fine!” I shouted, grudgingly giving in. I undid the deadbolt and opened the door. The cop — the same cop I’d seen on the street, the one who wanted to give me a ride — burst in. He had his gun drawn. To his credit, he carefully searched the room before he gave me a good looking-over. He pulled the door out of my hands so he could see behind it. He jumped back to check the kitchen. He poked the curtains. He looked behind furniture, even where there was no room for a person to hide. He was pretty damn throrough..

While he did his thing, I shut the door and walked toward Mayda’s bedroom.

“Wait!” he cautioned. “I haven’t cleared that room yet!”

“I’m getting dressed,” I told him. “If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to shoot me.”

He followed me into the bedroom. Mayda had left a light blue shirtdress on the bed. It wasn’t as luxurious as the white-and-black dress I’d stolen, but it was the same kind of dress. I pulled it over my head in one movement. Then I told the policeman, “You’re standing too close to me.”

“Sorry,” he said, backing away. While he checked under the bed, in the closet, and in the bathroom, I went to the kitchen and got myself a glass of water.

He came out of the bedroom talking into his radio. Really it looked as though he was talking to his shoulder — where his microphone was clipped to his shirt. He stopped near the glass turkey, staring at it. “Whose blood is that?” he asked. “Were you hurt?”

“Only my dignity,” I told him.

“Did he steal anything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I haven’t had a chance to look. It doesn’t seem like anything’s missing, but I’ll have to look around.”

He asked me to tell him what happened, sometimes asking me to act it out a little. Other police arrived. They took pictures. They bagged the glass turkey. “Good job,” one of the technicians said to me. “Primo DNA.” They wanted to take the baseball bat, but I didn’t let them.

Just before they left, one of the policewomen told me that the man was in custody. He’d run from here to the Emergency Room, and told the nurses that he’d fallen. It just so happened that one of the women he’d assaulted earlier was there as well. She saw him, identified him, and the man was arrested on the spot.

The police stayed in my apartment until eleven. When they finally left me alone, the woman across the hall, the one who called 911, knocked to ask me if I was okay. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said. “I’m always good for a cup of tea and a listening ear.” My eyes teared up at her kindness, and she gave me a hug. I thanked her and told her I was fine.

She left. I locked the door and all the windows. I looked in every corner and cabinet and under and behind every piece of furniture. I needed to be sure I was alone. I also needed a shower, but I decided to wait until morning, when it was light.

Although it wasn’t cold, I fell asleep wrapped in a blanket, clutching the baseball bat, sitting on the floor next to the couch. It was the only spot from which I could see the whole apartment.

When it was finally light out, a knock came on my door. I didn’t want to open it. I just yelled, “Who’s there?” and a voice I knew called back, “It’s Mom, honey. Can I come in?” As she asked, I heard her key in the lock, and the door opened. It was Mayda’s mom. My mom. Mom.

If you have a human heart, you know what followed: Lots of crying. Lots of holding each other. Lots of saying it’s all right and you’ll be okay.

She asked whether the man had hurt me. I said no, then ended up telling her the whole story of how he’d gotten in and how I’d fended him off. Then it struck me (so I asked her): How did Mayda’s mother know I’d been attacked? She pulled a newspaper out of her bag and showed me.

It wasn’t the headline at the top of the page, or even the one after that. In the bottom right on the first page, the headline read: NAKED GIRL STOPS RIVERWAY RAPIST.

“Rapist?” I repeated. It really hadn’t struck me until I read the word. “He wanted to rape me,” I said, realizing it in that moment. When the policeman on the street said that women had been “assaulted,” that’s what he meant: they’d been raped. I was stunned.

“But you stopped him, honey,” Mayda’s mom said to me. “Now he’ll be in jail for a long time, hopefully.”

The story began on the first page and continued on page 29, inside. There was another story, about the other women, with this idiotic headline: VICTIMS GET EARLY THANKSGIVING, THANKS TO GLASS TURKEY.

“That’s really a stretch,” I commented, and my mother laughed.

Yes, I called her “my mother.” I told her how Ross and I broke up, and I cried again. Not just because it hurt to be left behind, but also because I was lying to this kind and loving woman. Her real daughter was gone, and I was left in her place.

She cooked me breakfast. I ate, then we drank coffee together. After we’d talked ourselves out, she asked me, “Are you going to be okay sleeping here tonight?”

I took a deep breath and said, “No.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “I was going to propose this today anyway, before any of this happened. In one month, you’ll be leaving to play for Barcelona. Tell me what you think of this idea: You go all out to get ready for Barcelona. (1) You drop school. You can check with your teachers, see if any of them can see their way clear to giving you a grade rather than marking you incomplete. (2) You break the lease on this apartment and move back home. It’s month-to-month, so there'll be a penalty, but we can help you. It won’t be too bad. (3) We spend this last month together, you and me. I’ll train you. I’ll take you back to basics, as if you never played soccer before. We’ll work on every part of your game, and seriously concentrate on your fitness, in a holistic, sustainable way.”

I stared at her open-mouthed. With a half-smile she prodded me, “I used to be a damn good player, you know. And a good coach. I’ve still got a lot I can teach you. What do you say?”

“It’d be a dream!” I said, and we hugged each other. “I’m going to need to watch a lot of games, too,” I told her.

“There’s some reading you can do as well,” she added.

I took a shower before we left the apartment, and as I stood under the stream of deliciously hot water, I wondered, Do I dare ask her to explain the offside rule to me? I’ve never understood it.

 

---

 

POSTSCRIPT

After the story of the Riverway Rapist and the Glass Turkey went national, I got stuck with the nickname Naked Girl. The name followed me to Barcelona. Even though it should go without saying, I’ll say it: I made damn sure that no one saw me naked in public ever again.

The news media reached out to my future coach in Barcelona for a comment, and he said, “We welcome a player who has so much fight and determination. We expect her to bring her energy and fierce unstoppableness — can you say that? Unstoppableness? However, I suggest that she leave behind her glass turkey. Ha ha! A glass turkey! Can you imagine?”

 

---

 

POST-POSTSCRIPT

I played four years for Barcelona. They were a great four years for me as a player and as a person. Of course, during that time, I met a man, fell in love, and had my heart broken. It hurt much more than I ever thought it could.

I was still licking my wounds when I came back to the States. Barcelona wanted me to stay, but new professional teams were forming in the US, and and I wanted to contribute as a player. I was ready. They wanted me, I wanted them. Plus, I felt it was time to represent my country.

Two weeks after I got back, the Utah Highway Patrol found Ross’ truck. It had turned up, apparently abandoned, on a lonely road. They recovered my bag — I mean, Mayda's bag — but, apart from some very old trash and dried-up fast-food wrappers, they didn’t find any trace of Ross.

I can’t help but think that Ross is back as well — that he’s out there somewhere.

If he is, could he be looking for me?