Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms

by Chuck Austen

  “Yes,” she said.

  Ah. Good. Nailed it the first time, for once.

  “Just me,” she continued. “And I couldn’t care less. I already knew anyway, it was just a shock to see it on the table like that, in all video formats, including PAL.”

  “For me too.”

  “But I know how you feel about me,” she said, smiling. “I’ve seen your erection.”

  “Everyone’s seen my erection.”

  “True. And some of them even paid money for the privilege,” she reminded me, smiling and nodding toward the pile of evidence in my hand.

  That had never occurred to me.

  “Interesting point,” I said. “So—you’re not upset? Or hurt, or confused about my sexual orientation?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re not angry?”

  She began to shake her head ‘no’ again, then stopped. She thought a moment, fixing me with her eyes, and her expression slowly turned a bit sour.

  “You called me a nudist,” she said finally.

  I studied her for several seconds confused. “You are a nudist.”

  “You said it with disdain.”

  “I…” I paused and really focused on her. She was visibly pained by that earlier comment. This is exactly what she had feared most when she asked me not to bid on her. Me lapsing. And clearly, I was a lapser. Like the dog.

  Lapser Oopso.

  Never mind.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, finally. “I was upset, and…”

  “Let’s just sell your comics,” she said quietly. “So we can make good on your bid.”

  There was a distance and finality in her voice that hit me hard in the gut. I thought about what I’d said, and what I’d really meant, and it made me wince. I had slid off the slippery slope of stupidity, submerged into a river of fear, and while flailing around to save myself, had struck my savior in the face.

  “Wisper, I’m really…” but I never got to finish my thought, because just then two familiar faces stepped through the crowd, one smiling with malevolent glee.

  The Boones. Papa mayor and little Washburne. Both were wearing velour jogging clothes, sunglasses, and gold jewelry.

  “Good, God,” I said. “What are YOU doing here?”

  Wisper turned at my question, and the shock of seeing the two men she least expected, and least wanted to see, nearly knocked her over. River in turn looked the Boones up and down, repulsed to see them in so many clothes and apparently comfortable. At least the mayor, if not Washburne. Old Wash looked as though just being around so many unnaked people was making his skin crawl. He sweated and cast his eyes about nervously, avoiding physical contact with anyone who brushed too closely near him. At one point someone bumped him, and he whimpered like a lost puppy.

  “What are you doing here?” Wisper asked, the words barely able to escape her throat.

  “We’re here to take you home, my dear,” the mayor said, and then looked at me. “And see to it that you never return to Nikkid Bottoms.”

  “You mean you’ll try…” I began, then noticed Washburne held what’s called a short box—a white cardboard container designed to hold small amounts of comics, and keep them protected from people who might want to touch them.

  Apparently the thing could also keep a gun quite safely tucked away as well.

  “Whoa,” I said, and nodded to the thing so Wisper, and River could see it as well. But they never did. Washburne pulled the pistol back inside the box, though I knew it was still pointed directly at me.

  “What?” Wisper asked.

  The mayor interrupted before I could answer.

  “Let’s go somewhere more private, shall we?” The elder Boone said slimily.

  Washburne stepped forward and pushed me to one side, separating me from the others, as the mayor took Wisper’s confused elbow and guided her along after me.

  Yes, her elbow was confused! All of her was confused, actually!

  Don’t get picky with my grammar at a difficult time like this!

  Overlooking the convention floor were hospitality suites with large, glass windows facing outward over the chaos, specifically designed so publishers and distributors could quickly and easily get away from the madding crowd and mingle in highly visible privacy. The rooms were comfortably furnished, surprisingly quiet, and had tables of catered food available to any who found their way in, intentionally or otherwise.

  The mayor ushered us up a flight of stairs, and into one of these pseudo-plush rooms, offering us seats in the plastic, and metal chairs. None of us took one, but the elder Boone made himself comfortable nonetheless, while Washburne moved over to a table and made grunting sounds as he attempted to open a can of mixed nuts.

  “It’s so annoying the way they move the dates for this convention around, every year,” Mayor Boone said, looking out the glass windows and over the crowd. “I’d much rather be home for the Festival, but…business calls.”

  Plastered all along the walls were covers of Nuderman, Flashyman, Nudegirl, and a host of others, all variations on popular superheroes wearing only masks and other kinky accoutrement, but very little actual clothes. An enlarged cover of my favorite comic, along with a dawning truth, stared me in the face at roughly eye level, mocking me.

  “You brought these from your world,” I said, slowly sussing things out, “and sold them here.”

  “That’s right,” mayor Boone oozed, obviously quite proud of his evil brilliance and his growing status as my arch villain. “All the work is done, and takes very little effort, or money on my part, to make it marketable here. I have the things re-lettered a bit for the dissimilar market, but mostly I simply convey it over as is. No unnecessary expenditure to creators, no royalties—cash for printing isn’t even required, if I use the exact versions as sold back home with new covers. Obscenely profitable, all things considered.”

  “I imagine it’s pretty unlikely anyone will ever stumble through that dimensional hole and discover your secret,” I said, admiring his darkness.

  “I’m certainly counting on it, as you might well imagine,” he agreed.

  “Good money in stealing other people’s property?”

  He shrugged. “Sales of what you people consider ‘porn’ in this world isn’t quite what I had hoped,” he sighed. “But it’s enough to turn a healthy profit and reinvest in other, more lucrative business.”

  “Comics, as a business in general, isn’t really all the lucrative,” I said.

  Sales on all the main superhero titles had dropped off significantly over the years for various reasons to a point where major characters like Superman only sold tens of thousands globally. Cat Fancy magazine sells more than seven million every month. Hell, Independent Sawmill, and Woodlot Management magazine sells almost a hundred times better than Superman. American comics, contrary to popular belief, were waaaaaay down on the bottom of the totem pole as far as return on investment. Their actual value, and importance in the world, is largely overestimated as the characters from inside their pages can be found on every cereal box, theater marquee, and television screen the world over. The comics themselves very few people really care about. Even the fans mostly hated them if you believe what they say online.

  “Apparently,” Boone said, sighing. “I was sadly misled by the attention and notoriety the superhero enjoys in this world. Ah, well. It was still an evident opportunity, one I took advantage of. I certainly didn’t lose any money.”

  “But you’re done now,” I said, getting a feeling from his general tone.

  “I am. I’ve sold a significant percentage of my business, and created enough wealth from other areas of investment to continue the life of grand leisure I, and my children, enjoy.” And the next he said more meaningfully to Wisper. “Something I will share generously with my inevitable grandchildren.”

  “When is enough ever really enough for a man like you?” I asked.

  He stopped looking at Wisper and turned his lizard eyes back to me. They mov
ed and blinked not at all; as each stared into me, unsmiling, dark and fearsome, straight through my flesh and into my meager soul. I was saved from shriveling into a little ball of blackened goo when his attention was thankfully diverted by Morgan, Sophie, and Wendy being ushered into the room at the urging of some muscle-bound types who rent themselves out by the hour to break heads, shatter bones, and open peanut butter jars.

  “Hey, Corky,” Morgan said. “What’s going on? These guys said you were in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” Wendy said. “’Cause if you’re not, I’m missing valuable selling time.” She indicated the suitcase she still pulled behind her.

  I turned back to Boone. “What do you want? Money?”

  “Money?” he scoffed, as though I’d offered him poop-on-a-stick. “What does a man like yourself imagine he knows about wealth?” he asked me.

  I nearly laughed. “What are you talking about? I’m one of the richest men…”

  “You are nothing,” he said, so flatly and so positively that it chilled me to my marrow. “You’re a second. No…” he studied more intently. “No, more likely a third heir. An inheritor.” He said the word ‘inheritor’ as if it had slithered over his tongue and left a slime trail.

  He stood again, walked over, and took one of the DVDs from my hands, chuckling at the imagery on both sides.

  “I heard you down there, screaming about this video,” he said, obviously amused. “Leaving behind your collection of rare and expensive comics…” again he glanced at Wisper, and she withdrew from the touch of his eyes, “…and something of even greater value.”

  He handed the video back to me, placing it atop the pile.

  “A real man of wealth is a man with the strength of certitude in his own rightness,” he continued, “with the power, and the courage of his own, considered convictions, who will stand naked before anyone upon the center of the world’s stage, and say ‘I am right, to hell with you all.’”

  I said nothing, though my mind was scampering about like a ferret searching for whatever ferrets eat, trying to remember all the good one-liners and put-downs I’d ever heard in my lifetime. Instead, all the ferret found was Opus, and even he didn’t like Opus.

  “You are a pseudo-man who wilts at the first sign of conflict,” Boone told me. “Ends any personal endeavor the moment someone criticizes.”

  “Hey!” Morgan said. “Like your fan-fic!”

  I turned and glared at my old friend, and felt, once again, the pain of not having brain-melting powers.

  “You are the kind of man,” Boone continued, “who holds only the convictions others will allow him. Who freely gives one and all complete power over himself.”

  “Wow,” Morgan said, unhelpfully. “Has he got you down.”

  Boone simply smiled. He didn’t need Morgan’s reassurance. He already knew. “You do not understand wealth,” he said, stepping closer until he was scarcely inches from my nose, “nor could you ever begin to earn it for yourself. To someone like you, it must be given. Handed out. Doled.”

  I seethed but said nothing. Behind him, Washburne finally opened his can of nuts, with more force than necessary, and sent them flying about the room. Mayor Boone closed his eyes momentarily, sighed, then reopened them, staring back into me.

  “I know your type all too well,” he told me, a tinge of sadness in his voice. “Even now, you have not the strength of will to stand against ridicule, to fight for what you believe to be right, to raise yourself and crush those who would call you out for exactly what you are. A wimp. A taker. A sponge. Instead you prefer to allow me to define you, rather than take the risk of confrontation and define yourself. On the world stage, you are incapable of being a player. You are merely an extra.”

  Apparently done deriding me, he turned on his heel, walked away from me, and began gathering his things. Some of them were what used to be my things.

  “I’ll take these comics,” he informed me placidly. “They’re of no use to you anyway. Wisper deserves someone more than you will ever be, no matter how much money you might have access to.”

  He stopped gathering and smiled at me.

  “Don’t despair, young man. There’s really only one percent of this world that deserve all the money, fame, and beauty that it has to offer. The rest are Deltas or Gammas,” and smiling before his next line, he fixed me with a pointed look, “or Epsilons.”

  “I was never in a fraternity,” I said.

  “Oh, but you’re in one now,” he said, a light laugh in his voice. “The largest of fraternities, my dear boy. The fraternity of the common man. Wisper, my dear, might I take you home? Really, my lovely girl, you deserve someone so much more significant than this young man could ever hope to be.”

  “I don’t want Washburne,” she said, and I took note of the fact that she hadn’t led with ‘I want Corky’.

  “No, I see now that you were far too much woman for even my progeny. But certainly you don’t want this man,” he nodded disgustedly in my direction. “This clothist. He can’t even let go of his own fears long enough to be honest with you about how he sees you. He calls you a ‘nudist’ with—as you yourself noted—disdain.”

  Damn him. How long had he been following us? Long enough apparently to know exactly how to use me against myself.

  “The woman he supposedly loves,” Boone finally finished with amazingly sincere sadness in his voice. Even I almost believed him.

  Right up to the point when Washburne moved closer and reminded me with a small cough that he had a gun.

  Wisper could only look at me with growing anguish. He was getting to her.

  “Corky… ” she began, but seemed to have lost the strength to continue.

  “Wisper, they…” I said, but stopped short when Washburne, pretending to rest a comforting hand on my lower back, instead rested the snub-nose of something else there in such a way that the others couldn’t see. Wisper took my inability to complete a sentence as something else entirely.

  “Maybe it’s best I do go home,” Wisper said finally, more as a question. “With them?”

  When I said nothing, she lowered her head to avoid my eyes.

  “Right,” she said. “Goodbye, Corky.”

  And with that—guided by the elder Boone doing a damn near perfect imitation of understanding and sympathy—she and River moved toward the exit.

  “You gonna say anything?” Ms. Waboombas asked. “You just gonna let her walk outta here and let the bad guys make you out to be some kinda puss?”

  Wisper stopped in the doorway as if she too hoped for something from me. I started to speak, but Washburne separated a couple of ribs near my kidneys.

  “I know you love her,” Waboombas said. “You gonna tell me love don’t conquer all?” She sounded almost desperate. As if this were as painful for her as it was for us.

  All eyes centered on me. Mayor Boone smiled. Sophie pleaded with silently moving lips. Morgan seemed dumbfounded. Even River appeared to want me to say something.

  But I said nothing. Wisper said nothing. Waboombas said nothing and just glowered at me.

  “So you’re a coward,” Waboombas snarled at me, then turned to Wisper, “and you’re a runner. What a pair you make.”

  Wisper looked stricken, then scowled back at Wendy.

  “What do you mean, ‘a runner’?” Wisper asked. “I…”

  “…run,” Waboombas concluded for her. Then the taller woman gestured with irritation toward Washburne. “Snake oil here wants to marry you. You run. Corky’s grandpa gives you shit. You run. You’re a smart girl. I bet you went to college, right?”

  “I…yes,” Wisper said.

  “And you quit.”

  Wisper looked stunned, but by her silence I knew Waboombas had hit a nerve.

  “Corky backslides a little….” Wendy snipped, and didn’t need to finish.

  Wisper looked at her, then down at her feet. Finally she turned to me and stared, one last moment, waiting.

  “Now would be a good
time for you to say somethin’,” Wendy told me pointlessly.

  Washburne pressed the gun more forcefully into my back, and I obliged him by saying nothing.

  “You see it as running,” Wisper said to Wendy, though she continued staring at me. “I see it as knowing when to cut my losses.”

  Finally, the door to the suite closed, and Wisper physically vanished from the room, though my mind would hold that last, heartrending image of her despondent face burned into my heart for the remainder of my days.

  Waboombas fairly snarled at me, “You stupid, son of a…”

  Then Washburne stepped out from behind me and showed off his little toy.

  “Whoa,” Wendy said, her eyes as wide as the sea.

  “Corky, look out!” Morgan called to me unnecessarily. “He’s got a gun!”

  I just stared at my semi-retarded friend, blankly.

  “I’m not kidding,” Morgan said, more distressed. “Look.”

  I continued to stare.

  “No, I’m serious. Look at his hand. There’s a gun. For real.”

  “All of you get undressed,” Washburne said coldly.

  “Fuck you, get undressed… ” Wendy said, raising herself to her full, towering height. But then Washburne waved the gun in her direction, and the two thugs-for-hire moved toward her. For a moment, I thought she might leap on them and perhaps sex them to death. But after a few deep breaths, and a moment or two to let her brain work through the reality of the situation, she settled down and likely realized killing them with her vagina wouldn’t be as much fun if she also died during the experience.

  “I don’t want any of you following us,” Washburne said, as if I wanted to follow anyone but Wisper. “So take off your clothes, and…and get down on the floor, and stuff.”

  We hesitated, and he waved the gun menacingly. Wendy, Sophie, and I were naked in moments, much to the delight of the professional wife-beaters, who were obviously locals and not accustomed to nudity. They showed tremendous interest in the ladies, whose tantalizing costumes had—oh, wait—nope, one was apparently getting off on me.

  Morgan was the least willing to undress and had to be prodded by Washburne a couple times before a fearful Sophie started removing his clothes for him.