The Creep sat outside his shop, holding his head between his knees. Red flashing lights in the distance were my signal to leave. My fingerprints could be easily found but I wasn’t sure it mattered. What’s a little arson compared to child pornography?
I got on the ladder at the edge of the building. I had grown a lot more reckless over the past twenty-four hours and didn’t even check the alley before I climbed down. When I let go of the ladder, I found a teen holding a basketball, staring at me. Did he just watch me come all the way down the ladder? He didn’t say a word, stunned into a trance. I merely held a finger to my lips before heading off the other way.
Only a few blocks separated my home and my bare body. I didn’t bother sticking to the shadows. I just ran, no longer caring who saw, a bar-back dumping a bucket of water behind a restaurant, a young couple doing dishes by the window, the group of teens playing baseball, a retail employee on a smoke break, sorry to interrupt your texting session.
I paused in an empty alley to catch my breath. In the distance, I could still see the dark smoke rising above the town. The fire was going strong, probably too powerful to put out, one of those fires that could only be contained until it finished burning what was already within its grasp. That store was done for.
Police sirens went off behind me. I spun around. Relaxed. I wasn’t caught. A police cruiser was slowing to a stop on the street, waving down some pedestrians. The officer was questioning them.
I crouched and casually slunk back into the shadows. How careless of me. I was suddenly acting like the most confident nude woman on the planet while I was in the most danger yet. Stupid, stupid. Stay cautious.
A teen ran up to the police cruiser. He was carrying a basketball. It was the teen, the one that saw me clear as day. My stomach sank. Flasher. Sex offender. Oh my god. I ran around the corner, nearly hyperventilating.
The shadow of a man crept across the pavement causing me to almost jump out of my skin, but then I saw him. It was the tall roller skating beggar from the boardwalk, Dreads. He looked at me in all my glory, but he didn’t look me up and down the way you might expect. There was no threat in his eyes. Somehow I felt safe. He turned and pointed to a building far down the alley. It was the back of the concert hall.
Dreads skated towards it and I instinctively followed. A door in the back of the concert hall was propped open. Dreads must’ve thought that’d be a safe place for me. The only problem was there was an empty lot between me and the building itself. If that police car cruised on by while I was crossing the lot there’d be nowhere to hide.
But Dreads skated out into the road just as the police cruiser came by. He tapped the hood of the car and it stopped. The officers got out and started yelling at Dreads. For a moment I was afraid of what sort of brutality might ensue, but Dreads was harmless and the police officers knew it. Dreads started wagging his hips, dancing his dance, skating backwards, distracting the cops. They laughed as they tried to talk and wave him off the road.
I bolted across the lot not looking back. Once inside, I leaned against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. What next? I figured there would be a coat room. Maybe within half an hour I could show up back home wearing my new fur. Since when did I become such a thief? Since I became a nudist.
The entrance I came in wasn’t meant for patrons. It must’ve been an employee entrance. I had been to the concert hall a few times before but I didn’t recognize where I was at all. It was dark though, so I wasn’t too worried. I made my way cautiously down the hall. I turned a corner and found a door, opened it and went in. It was even darker in there. Pitch black. Oh well, at least there wasn’t any danger of being seen here.
I took a step forward and almost fell as my foot went down farther than I expected; a step down. My foot made a loud bang and a deep male voice said from a few feet away, “Are you okay?” Oh my god. Rather than answer, I started down the stairs as quietly as I could while keeping a brisk pace. I must’ve entered the main seating area from the back. Yes, I could hear them now, the sound of a few hundred people breathing, waiting for a show to start. They didn’t have to wait long. If it was this dark, the show was just about to start. In a moment the lights would go on and I’d be standing among the audience with nowhere to go and nothing to cover myself. At the bottom of the seating I would hit the stage, and then I could go either direction to reach an exit. Why didn’t I see a glowing red exit sign on either side?
I almost fell again when I tried to take a step and found that there were no more. The seating was a lot shorter than I remembered. The stage should’ve only been a few feet ahead. I took a few steps with my arms extended forward. But I didn’t feel a wood stage. I felt cloth, large hanging drapes, the stage curtains. I didn’t just walk through the audience. I had walked through the orchestra.
The curtain began to rise and the lights faded in. I was standing in the center of the stage. A communal gasp echoing through the theater. I sensed the television camera men's eyes widen, their lens focused. Would he stop rolling? No, it was not their job to make that decision. They would record the action. Someone else higher up would cut the cord and stop the show. But how long would it take that person? I felt the captive gaze of my audience in the theater and in front of their televisions at home all over the county and the millions of online viewers that would come later when this went viral. I felt all their views filled with shock and outrage and lust and envy. But I didn’t look frightened or caught or like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was poised with my legs and arms ready, position one.
Whether or not the conductor saw me was irrelevant. I just know the music began to play. And I began to dance.
ENF: Embarrassed Nude Female Page 6