by Avery, T. C.
OUTSTRIPPED
By
T.C. AVERY
Text Copyright © 2013 T.C. Avery
All rights reserved.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental
For Val
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Does it get any better than this?
Chapter 2
What happened?
Chapter 3
What ugly duckling?
Chapter 4
The ‘night life’ here sucks!
Chapter 5
The world is mine Oyster!
Chapter 6
1 plus 4 equals a lot more than 5
Chapter 7
Giving thanks
Chapter 8
It's the uniform
Chapter 9
Empire building
Chapter 10
Trojan (w) horse
Chapter 11
Boys and their toys
Chapter 12
Its all in the Music
Chapter 13
Mixing business with pleasure
Chapter 14
Rubber gloves
Chapter 15
Teenage voodoo
Chapter 16
Immaculate contraption
Chapter 17
What next?
Chapter 1
Does it get any better than this?
Jody is relaxing on a traditional teak steamer in the shade of her Bure (pronounced “boo-ray”).
She’s on a remote and exclusive island in the Yassawas off the North Western coast of the Fiji mainland (Viti Levu). It would take less than ten minutes to walk around the whole of this palm tree paradise and, as in all the best picture postcards, its golden sand all the way round.
The Bure’s bi-fold doors are open to the elements and to the spectacular view at one strategically private end. Jody has her second margarita of the afternoon in her right hand, waving gently back and forth, lightly caressing the air and is quietly gazing out over the breathtaking turquoise sea, with some strong and very friendly local hunk lapping diligently between her legs.
He comes up for air (as he occasionally does) with a dirty big sticky smile on his face and blocks her unrestricted vista of tropical perfection. Just a little! After all she can still see around the outside of her knees and her open Sulu, which has now slipped down her soft, tanned and shining thighs like a delicate chiffon scarf in a leg waxing advert.
"I haven't finished with you yet." She says in an assured yet mockingly scolding manner.
"Back to work!" She snaps.
Whilst Jody revels in her "nether pleasures" she rolls her tongue around the straw a few times then draws in a little more citrus and alcohol and wallows in the decadence of her situation with a huge and glorious sigh.
Jody is reminiscing on how she ended up here.
A smile came over her. Then an upwardly diagonal and unfocussed glance together with a light pursing and squashing of her lips in a questioning but enjoyable moment.
It’s all followed by a momentum-gathering, thoroughly confident, multi-nod and a comprehensive, self-gratifying, mental acceptance of a monumental achievement worthy of "back slap" and accolade. O.M.G. had she done well!
Smart?
Clever?
Best in class?
You bet your ass!
Chapter 2
What happened?
Luke Banner’s vehicle is just arriving at his pre-arranged destination. Spacious and comfortable. No expense has been spared here.
He’s very smartly dressed, and deservedly so, like the businessman he's made of himself. Full suit and regalia. One of his assistants attends to the passenger door on his behalf and then stands to attention, one pace back.
Luke eases himself out onto the ancient, weathered and charactered cobblestones. He always did like the feel (and sound) of a ‘good quality’ leather sole on stone. He arches his back, rises on the balls of his feet, then down again. Stretching after his long journey without extending arms but instead keeps them behind his back.
He takes a look up and down his smartly dressed and regimented audience and then his grand yet unfamiliar surroundings before being ushered towards the imposingly large gates. He couldn't help thinking to himself how incredibly well maintained and presented they were.
"Her Majesty awaits" A deep and particularly common but authoritative accent, hails.
“Definitely somewhere up North.” He thinks to himself.
“Get “A” fuckin’ move on will you?” The common, and definitely authoritative accent now decides to show his true colours and spoils the moment for everyone. Well especially Luke. And now the romance of prison is over before it ever had chance to begin.
Luke is trying to deal with his predicament in his usual irreverent manner.
“It’s gotta be a joke.”
“It’s got to be a fucking joke.”
“Surely?”
“Come on.”
“This isn’t happening.”
“How the fuck can this have just happened?”
123 days, 5 hours and 17 minutes earlier, Luke's unwelcome and unfathomable ordeal began. Or so he thought.
It began far, far earlier for Jody.
“Stop rabbiting on to yourself and get a fuckin’ move on.”
Chapter 3
What ugly duckling?
We all know the one about the "ugly duckling". Well I wouldn't call what happened to Jody a fairy story but it did happen and, "Oh my God", was it a big surprise? And not just to her.
Looking back, she really didn't know how she made it through high school or rather "Grammar School" as the chief nun insisted on calling it. It was “Chiefy’s” way of harking back to the days of a "proper education" at a "proper establishment", and although I say chief nun, she had heaps of other names:
"The Dalek". Which was an obvious and funny reference to her habit (excuse the pun) and the way she glided around like “Doctor Who's” nemesis.
"Mary Madge". A rather derogatory dig at the fact she ran the school as a Dickensian dictatorship and gave off the whiff of an absolute "legend in her own knickers" or the reincarnation of the somewhat revered biblical sinner turned good (true or otherwise). Mary Magdalene that is, and the very name by which her penitentiary was known. I mean school.
"She who must be obeyed." An obvious one.
"The Bitch." Not really called for but it seemed appropriate at the time.
“The Anti-Christ."
“The Boss."
"El Diablo."
…. And at least several hundred more.
“Maggie” also seemed spectacularly appropriate, especially in the light of Maggie Smith’s stellar performance in the old classic “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. But the mentor like role, as it was, and the legend that actually is “Maggie Smith” gave this term of endearment too much endearment. It was consequently outlawed for use as a nickname in the unspoken “rules of school”.
As I was saying Jody really didn't have a clue how she made it through high school. She wasn't particularly tall. Not exactly popular. Couldn’t be classed as attractive. Not even to herself. At home. With her mirror! Not even when she pleaded with it (the mirror that is) with all her heart. She did think about the whole poisoned apple thing, back then, but didn't have the guts to go through with it. There were too many "Bloody Snow Whites" anyway. She wouldn't have been able to keep up with the lies and the cover stories, even if she could have conjured them up. Too much of a ‘prig’ you see.
At the time.
So, although not particularly attractive, or tall, or popular, Jody did have a certain intellect.
Above average but not a complete book wrangler. Smart but not super intelligent. Clever but occasionally lacking in wisdom (or rather “street smarts”).
Her underlying issues and consequently the cause of all her troubles revolved around her big problem with the "right and wrong" thing, and the logic, or rather the lack of it, in bad behavior, breaking the rules and injustice.
Not hers.
Everyone else’s.
Anyway, collecting her thoughts, Jody turned to what used to be the happiest day of her life. The day she finished high school.
It was as if a two-ton weight had just been lifted from her chest and she could immediately start to rise again. Resurface above her deep and dark river of shame and ridicule and finger pointing and sniggering and bullying and just about everything else you can curse an average downtrodden teenage misfit with.
It’s not unusual of course but in Jody’s case this wasn’t your average teenage self-pity, borne of pretend shyness and a defiant reluctance to actually meet the world head on, and say “Hi.”
This was real! It was real enough to touch. It was real enough to see and smell. And it had left a lingering, festering, malignant anger ingrained in her psyche.
But today, the day of her release, it would all disappear. She would be cleansed. Washed with a spirit so heady it would make her lips curl upwards. It would make her cheeks glow. It would make her eyes light. It would even make her smile!
Jody collected her exam results from the Dean of year, Miss Jett, or “Suffra” as the girls called her, on the grounds everyone under her command went through hell. It was as though word hadn’t reached her yet that women had got the vote so everyone was treated to her opinions on equality, and women's rights, and challenging the system, and blah, blah, blah.
She was right of course, but she just came across as some sort of “Super dyke”.
Jody’s results were good.
Not fantastic, but enough to get her where she wanted to be, which wasn’t just out of school. It was out into the real world. Somewhere away from all this. Somewhere new. Somewhere where nobody knew her. A chance at a fresh start. A chance to be somebody else. A new Jody. A phoenix of a girl.
She got her “A” in Math’s and a “B” in English wasn’t too bad either. A couple of “C’s” in General studies and Spanish completed the list. She was hoping for better in Spanish but “Never mind. It’ll do.”
“Not as good as we were hoping for Jody. Is it?” said Miss Jett.
Now Jody had been brought up to respect her elders, not answer back, do as she was told, and to always do the right thing.
Over the last few years, however, her sadly dwindling resources of respect for others had been metaphorically and literally beaten out of her.
The first retort that came to mind was torturously held back before it caused any unnecessary aggravation.
“Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.”
Which is Latin for “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
It was not going to be prudent at this juncture.
Instead she slowly looked up from her results sheet and rested her gaze on “Suffra”. With closed lips she extended her jaw forwards, took a deep breath and snorted her disdain.
She looked down, again, at her results. Then, without lifting her eyes toward her ‘superior-no-more,’ bent her knees, reached to her side and picked up her school bag. She turned around and huffed and puffed her way out of Miss Jett’s office. Then, down the corridor, left into the cloakroom, out the other side and through the double entry/exit doors, down the eight concrete steps, she knew better than herself, and then counted her footsteps to the school gate.
One hundred and seventeen purposeful paces later she was one step outside the gates. Jody turned around and, in traditional “Three Amigos” fashion, she crisscrossed her hands alternately between shoulders and hips and gave the best hip-thrust she could muster. Outside of bedroom practice that is.
“Fuck this school, and all who sail in her.” She shouted, and then produced a host of one and two fingered salutes, for good measure.
This was the first time Jody had ever uttered anything stronger than “Piss, Bastard, Bloody or Shit”. It felt good! And it showed!
Jody then got a little carried away with the moment. Her derisory jubilance was taking her places she had never been before. Knees bent and wide apart, tartan skirt riding high up her thighs, she was now grinding out some challenging tribal confrontation with all guns blazing and fingers firing obscenities. Even the “All Blacks” would have been proud of this performance.
Jody’s qualifications were enough to secure her position with a big travel agency in London. She’d already received the job offer three weeks earlier but everything was riding on these results.
University never interested Jody. School was enough. She wasn’t going to subject herself to any more of ‘that crap’. So a career, straight out of school, was the target. There were not many firms taking high school leavers at the time so she’d been very lucky to find one to take her on. The agencies had come up trumps and although not her first choice, out of those available, Jody’s soon-to-be employer was at least:
· In the City. Which fell in nicely with ‘her new life’
· On the map. Which meant she could ‘have a real career’
· International. Which meant she could really ‘go places’ and ‘do stuff.’ If she played her cards right.
The little sheet of paper she now had in her possession, with the A’s, B’s and C’s in all the right places, was her ticket to a new existence. The actual certificates came later but the results were all that counted right now.
“Time for some burning.”
Jody had been planning this for ages. The thought of a fire was always exciting but this occasion was a world way from ‘warm glows, marshmallows and introspective reflection’. This was flame licking, heat seeking, memory wiping and re-birthing all with a hint of sadism and ritualistic pleasure thrown in.
Jody was meticulous. She didn’t just throw a pile of books and uniforms onto some burning wood. She spent the best part of a day making sure each and every school book was connected somehow to “Those Bastards” and remembered in all its shame, before watching it fall, darken, shrink, curl, glow, burn, smoke and die in the flames. Some providing a myriad of extra colours as the various prints and inks on the pages within gave off their own little versions of the Aurora Borealis.
‘The uniform’ provided her with special memories. The actual clothes she was wearing when “it” happened were marked and could not be mistaken. These would be saved for last. Indelible ink had been used to inscribe each and every item of clothing worn when “it” happened.
It read “W.A.I.F.A.” and it was meaningless to all except Jody.
It meant everything to her.
It was her reason to be.
Her mantra.
The following day Jody buried the ashes and embers from her ‘private ceremony’. Somehow ‘deep in the dirt’ seemed a final and fitting end to that ‘bygone era’. She would have preferred to bury them at sea, but that was never going to happen. Not only did they not deserve such an honour, but she lived too far away. And anyway “what did she know about boats”. And she didn’t want any bibles involved either. Which were “probably a pre-requisite”, she thought, when you organize something formal like this at sea.
Jody spent the next two and a half weeks metamorphosing into her new self. It was going to be “a mission” but she had mentally pre-prepared herself for the task.
School days are over for good and in her own words “It was time to get all grown up”.
Now as luck would have it, Jody’s family wasn’t poor. They weren’t wealthy either but the ‘Hoolah’ required for a transformation of this magnitude wasn’t going to hurt daddy’s retirement fund. He kind of expected it anyway. So, when his ‘little treasure’ asked for the coinage for a new wardrobe and makeover, he gladly obliged. “A reward” as he put it
, for her success in her exams and a ‘leg up’ to start her new career on the right footing.
Now, as you’ve probably guessed, Jody wasn't well versed in the art of 'girly' stuff. At least, not the ‘grown up’ version of 'girly' stuff. A lot of homework was required, which was, once again, per chance, well within her capabilities, given her previous stereotypical (but practical) activities in her very recent and already forgotten past.
As we all now know, the Internet is a great place to start for everything, but somehow, there was so much more to be gleaned at the coalface. Hairdressers, Nail Salons and Beauticians that is.
“Who knew?”
Jody was enlightened like never before. She discovered what incredible places they are for whiling away the time, ‘ear-wigging’ on gossip, joining in and even creating more gossip, browsing, studying and mentally downloading magazine after magazine on ‘what and what not to wear’, ‘how and how not to look’, ‘what and what not to say’, ‘how and how not to act’, do, eat, sleep, shit, fuck and everything else. Especially if you wanted to ‘get’ and ‘go’ places or needed to as in Jody’s case.
And from the pages of these ‘Power to the Pussy’ magazines Jody’s already growing confidence took an escalator ride to the clouds.
After five hairdo's, three nail jobs, countless massages, facials and waxing’s, forty four clothing sessions (at least) and two jewellery parties, the new and improved "Jody Mark II" had, not just been well and truly R & D’d (researched and developed), she’d been put into production and constructed!
There would be no more bad hair days, duffle-coats, boring outfits, cheap shoes, bras that didn't fit, one color make-ups, unbranded handbags, men's watches, CND badges, bobble hats, student seconds or charity shop specials. Never again!
And, no more ‘big knickers!’ The next time her skirt gets lifted, she’s going to enjoy it. Not squirm and wriggle and fight it. Jody’s new underwear, or rather lingerie, will absolutely NOT be purposely designed and coloured to instantly revile and disappoint any suitable admirers lucky enough to be in this vicinity. Under her skirt that is.