Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [26]
“…three men in dark masks held me at gunpoint and made me do it…”
I had nearly culled the possibilities down to one or two that seemed least ridiculous when Woodruff, the incompetent fool, waved Ms. Nuckeby back in my direction! She nodded her thanks and began running straight toward me. Running! Good, God, NO! I watched in horror as her breasts jounced about, magnificently!
I gave a couple last-minute jerks, but to no avail. Smoke now pouring from the pool machinery, I urgently drew in a deep breath and turned sideways underwater just as Ms. Nuckeby crossed the patio and reached the pool’s edge.
“MISTER WOPPLESDOWN?” she called.
She stepped farther into the darkness of the evening, glancing briefly over at the now sparking pool equipment, and leaned out to look around the yard.
“MISTER WOPPLESDOWN?”
When she got no answer, she stepped closer to the pool, just as the filter popped and sparked, and threw some flaming debris near her feet. She screamed and danced aside, but remained in the back yard, scanning and searching, apparently determined to find me and make sure I was all right.
Damn her.
I grimaced under some last-minute, increased pressure on the dying machinery’s part, and found the pain suddenly deflating my stuck balloon.
Finally!
The good news was: before long I’d be loose. The bad news was: before long I’d be loose. Meaning: the only thing holding me to the wall was about to let go and set me drifting, naked, into the middle of the pool with a mutilated Johnson.
I gritted my teeth at the embarrassment to come and supposed it to be only fair. I had seen her naked after all. I wondered if she’d find me as alluring, particularly given the angry black-and-blue shade little Corky was undoubtedly taking on.
I decided not to go down floating as it were—that the solution here was to take things head on. So I made one last Herculean yank and—glory-be-halleluiah—jerked myself free with a minimum of skin ‘lossage’. I then popped up over the edge of the pool as if I’d been waiting for Ms. Nuckeby all along, merely taking a moment to check things out from below the surface, and hoped there was no blood trailing up from my self-inflicted genital wounds.
But she was gone.
I looked around anxiously, then spied her inside. She was pointing and gesturing with concern back in my direction, and speaking in agitated tones, again to Woodruff. He seemed— surprise—to be having difficulty understanding. I took his sluggishness as an opportunity to make good my escape and bolted for the other side of the pool, splashing and thrashing like a sea lion being attacked by a killer whale.
Now was not the time for subtlety.
Somewhere in the distance, I swear I heard Bailey Weebimix laughing with glee.
Once at the pool’s far side, I leaped out and dashed into the house through a side door, traversed the kitchen in a mad slide, slipping only once and managing to avoid impaling myself on some wellplaced kitchen knives I had never used and whose only purpose, as far as I knew, were to skewer homeowners racing naked through their own kitchens.
I skidded briefly into a cupboard, banged my head on a hanging pot ($169.95 from Williams Sonoma, and apparently you can use it to cook things in), bounded over a dinette chair and managed to slip out the pocket-door leading into the foyer, at the back of which Woodruff was finally beginning to understand what Ms. Nuckeby was desperately attempting to convey in life-or-death terms.
“Do you suppose Mister Wopplesdown has been injured?” he asked, sounding curiously pleased.
“I don’t know,” Ms. Nuckeby said, sounding quite frightened. “Shouldn’t you do something? Check the grounds? Call someone? Turn off the power breakers?” Her voice was magnificent. Like milk and honey to a dying thing that needs—milk and honey. It made me sigh, audibly and desperately.
“What was that?”
Dammit.
“What was what, madam?”
“That sound. Like someone sighed. Didn’t you hear it?”
“I try not to hear such things, madam. It usually means I’ve done something wrong.”
Footsteps headed my