Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [135]
“Sorry,” she said, sheepish. “Instinct. Go ahead.”
She stood to allow me easier access, and I slipped the pants slowly down from her waist, trying to avoid sticking sores and split skin, for as with the shoulders, it had adhered in places where wounds had broken open and fluid had leaked. Mindie moaned a bit, and just as I got the pants down around her pubic area, she suddenly screamed, and slapped my face this time.
“DON’T LOOK AT MY KITTEN!”
“Your what?”
“JUST DON’T LOOK!”
“Mindie… ”
She stared at me for a long moment, then softened.
“I’m overreacting again,” she said.
“Somewhat.”
“I mean: we are going to be married.”
“No, we’re not,” I said firmly.
She looked like she’d been poked with a hot stick.
“What?”
“We’re not getting married, Mindie. But we can talk about that later.”
“But we have to get married. What will I do if we don’t get married?”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Mindie.” And I pulled again, gently, at her pajama bottoms.
“I won’t be fine!” she screamed. “GET OFF OF ME!”
She cuffed me in the side of the head, and I went down, ripping her pajama bottoms with me.
“RAPE!” she howled. “RAAAAAPE!”
She slap-slap-slapped at me, and grabbed the pajamas, still screaming, and trying to pull them back on. Tripping over the torn fabric, she fell onto the toilet seat, struggling, wriggling, and squirming, all while trying to hide her exposed private parts. Her body was hideous. Every inch of her flesh resembled photographs of Hiroshima bombing victims, only less attractive, and in full color. Things burst and oozed everywhere. The doctor and I tried to control our revulsion, and I fought the need to vomit.
“Eeeeewww,” Morgan said through a mouth full of chocolate, having walked down to stand in the bathroom door with his comic. Ms. Waboombas was looking over his shoulder.
Mindie stopped screaming and glared up at them with absolute horror, and absoluter fury.
“HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!”
An otherworldly growling sound launched itself from her, and she leaped off the toilet, slamming me backward into the shower and under its spray of scalding water. Rebounding off my flopping body, Mindie hopped over the doctor, plowed through Morgan, and knocked him flat, stepping on his face as she scrambled past Waboombas, scratching, clawing, and snarling her way out into the hall.
Screaming in my girlish way because of being boiled alive, I rolled in the tub, yanked down the shower curtain, and managed to scald myself fairly evenly on all sides. After hours, and hours of rolling and screaming which really lasted only seconds, I finally managed to pull myself out from under the murderous spray of death, leaped out of the tub, over Morgan and the doctor, and ran after Mindie.
Stopping near the bed in the hotel room, I could see my naked former fiancée through the doorway, out in the corridor, looking like some partially cooked animal trying to escape its own barbecue. She snorted and grunted, glaring up and down the hall, considering what to do next.
“Mindie,” I said calmly. “Come back inside. You need to…”
She snarled at me, scratching her stomach, baring her fangs and hissing like a cornered snake, before she bolted off toward the stairs.
I chased her, but was hampered by sticking, wet, clingy pants, and roasted skin. On top of that, Mindie was faster than she looked— a woman possessed—escaping in a blur, out through the exit and down the stairs.
By the time I got to the ground floor, she had disappeared somewhere, either into town or the surrounding foliage, completely naked and covered with boils, where she would likely become an urban legend.
I wrote Doctor King a check for his services and thanked him profusely. He told