He has never been one for long good-byes, and he doesn't know how to start now. He tilts his hat over his brow, mutters a few words under his breath and walks back to the truck.
From inside the cab, he looks out through the windshield, holding back an emotion he hasn't felt in a very long time. His eyes are glazed over as he wipes his face, ending at the grizzly brush upon his face.
Turning to the seat next to him, he reads the note, one last time:
We all die in the end.
THE END
NAKED FEAR
By
Tonia Brown
Howard kept his eyes downcast, watching as the sun-warmed sand crunched under his timid steps, tumbling over his toes and dusting his bare feet in a layer of soft, gentle white. It wasn’t that the sand was particularly interesting. It was the view that awaited him — should he lift his eyes — that had his vision glued to the ground. He clutched his complimentary robe tighter about himself and shuffled along, step by nervous step, wondering if he could really do this, knowing he couldn’t.
“Come on now, Howard,” Martin whispered. “It’s going to be okay. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Howard asked Martin’s liver-spotted feet, because he was unable to bear raising his head enough to talk to Martin’s liver-spotted face. Or the other liver-spotted bits of the old man. “I trusted you for five years, and look where it’s gotten me.”
“I’m only trying to help you.”
“I’m starting to doubt that.”
“I’m your friend.”
“You’re a crazy man.”
“Now, now. That’s my line.” Martin was smiling.
Howard didn’t have to look to see it. He could feel it in the man’s words.
Martin cleared his throat before he added, “And besides, hands-on therapy is good for the psyche.”
“Hands on!” Howard’s heart raced at the thought of someone actually touching him. It was bad enough being seen like this. “You said it was all look and no touch!”
“Calm down. You know what I mean.”
Howard supposed he did. But still … “None of that changes the fact that you’re a crazy man.”
“That’s as it may be; I’m also your therapist. Now lift your head and look around.”
“No.”
“Come on. At least take off that robe. You look silly with it on.”
“I can’t.” Howard’s lip quivered. And where there was lip quivering, tears were bound to follow. Which was par for the course, he supposed. Only he would end up in tears on a gorgeous beach in the middle of summer on such a beautiful day.
And all because he was afraid to be nude.
No. It was more complicated than that.
Howard Straw wasn’t just afraid of his own nudity, he was terrified of it. His was a commonly misunderstood condition, often misclassified as someone ashamed of his naked self, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Physically, he knew he was normal for his age, with nothing to be ashamed of: normal weight, height, build and, from what he had been told, he was blessed in certain anatomical areas. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to expose this normality to others, or himself. Even alone, in the shower, in the bed, he always wore something, anything, to keep from being naked. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with others being naked, but just the mere thought of someone seeing him in the buff sent him into a cold, sweaty panic.
“Howard,” Martin begged.
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“Of course you can. Here. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll go first.”
Howard’s eyes widened to saucer proportions when he heard the telltale slither of the old man’s dressing gown slip open. He watched in horror as Martin’s robe – the only thing that kept the doctor’s wrinkled rear from facing the rest of the world – slid down his calves and pooled at his bare feet like the shed skin of some terry-clothed animal.
“Ah,” Martin sighed. “Very liberating. I should have done this years ago. Your turn.”
“I can’t.”
“Look, son, we agreed before we left that you would see this to the end.”
“But I just can’t.”
“You signed a contract with me. Remember? You’re not going to welsh on your word are you? That would violate our therapist-patient bond. I mean, how can I trust you if you’re just a liar?”
Howard bristled. That was a low tactic, calling a man a liar. “I’m not a liar.”
“Then prove it. Drop your robe.”
“No.”
“Young man, I will not tolerate this kind of nonsense. We have come too far for you to start regressing on me. Now, raise your eyes and look at the people around you. The naked people.”
Howard hated when Martin said that word aloud. The old coot always stressed it like it was a disease of some sort. But the old coot was right. Five years and thousands of dollars worth of therapy had left him brave enough to agree to this lunacy. He couldn’t back out now. He was under doctor’s orders; a brief visit to an all-nude resort was surely the cure for his weary soul.
“Raise your eyes,” Martin commanded.
Just to silence the badgering old coot, Howard took a deep breath and did as he was asked. To his surprise, everyone looked normal. Nude, but normal. Folks were playing volleyball or swimming or sunbathing, all in the natural. A handful of people were pleasant to look at – shapely bodies with well-proportioned assets. The majority were, well, not as pleasant to look at. But, more importantly, no one was pointing or laughing or running or screaming. They were just … living.
It was peaceful. Nude, naked, exposed peace.
It bolstered Howard’s courage. He stood a little taller. Breathed a little easier.
“That a boy,” Martin said, patting Howard’s back.
Howard looked to his now-nude therapist, and winced. Somehow the effect wasn’t as peaceful when he knew the dressed person beforehand. His glance darted south for a moment, below the other man’s waist, before he quickly looked back up to greet Martin’s smiling eyes.
“Not bad for an old man, eh?” Martin asked, waggling his furry eyebrows.
Howard refused to answer those eyebrows.
“Take off that robe,” Martin said.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” Howard whined.
“As your doctor, and your friend, I declare that you have never been readier.”
Howard was pretty sure that was Martin’s afternoon Martini talking, but he also knew that it was indeed now or never. The doctor was right about at least one thing: Howard did look silly in the robe among a sea of nude bodies. He was the odd man out in this situation. For once, by not being nude, he was the outsider. And perhaps that was the whole point of this exercise. Howard Straw closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, undid the tie of his robe, and let it fall to the sand.
To his delight, the world did not explode.
The warm sun caressed his bare bottom.
A salt-laden breeze stirred the hair across his bare legs and arms and other places.
A woman screamed.
Howard opened his eyes. That didn’t sound right. The brochure said nothing about screaming. The brochure said he would find acceptance among the other nudists, no matter his body type. Was his greatest fear true? Was he really that odd looking? Did he truly have something to be ashamed of? Could he ever be naked again?
The woman screamed once more, and Howard scrambled for his robe.
“What’s going on over there?” Martin asked. He snatched Howard by the shoulder and jerked him toward the commotion. “Come on. They might need help.”
Howard didn’t have time to grab the terrycloth covering.
After a short nude sprint, or rather a short nude drag behind the overexcited therapist, Howard found himself standing at the waterline, very close to a woman sprawled on her back across the wet sand. She was quite beautiful, with wide hips and blond hair and full breasts – or breasts that would have been full if it weren’t for the fist-sized chu
nk taken out of the left one. The woman writhed on the ground, screaming blue murder and bleeding all over the place.
The beach frothed with a pink lather; crimson blood and white sand mixed into foam by her ever-kicking heels.
“Get away from my wife,” said a hefty man, who stood over the woman in a protective stance.
“I’m a doctor,” Martin said. “I can help.”
The hefty man relaxed at that and moved to one side, giving Martin access to his injured wife. In a gathering crowd of exposed breasts and free-swinging genitalia and plump rumps, all Howard could focus on was the woman’s mauled body. The sight nauseated him. Nudity was one thing, but this was something else. This wasn’t therapy. It was the opposite of therapy. It was … nightmare-apy.
“What happened?” Martin asked.
“Something attacked her,” the hefty man said.
“What?”
The man shrugged. “Shark maybe?”
“He bit me!” the woman screamed as she clutched her mangled breast. “He just came out of nowhere in the water and bit me!”
“Who?” Martin asked.
But the woman never got a chance to answer. She just closed her eyes, gave a single violent shudder from head to toe, and then fell still. No one spoke for several seconds, which felt like an eternity to Howard. The circling crowd stood in silence and stared at the bleeding body, unsure what to do next.
At length, her husband asked, “Is she okay?”
Martin took on a grim look as he passed his hand over the woman’s eyes, closing them and answering the husband’s question without speaking.
“What attacked her?” Howard asked.
As if on cue, another woman screamed. Then another. Men joined in the hollering, and all at once, the beach was pandemonium, parting in a scramble away from the water’s edge. That’s when Howard saw them: a group of men, five in all, staggering onto the sand from the surf. They looked ill, sickly green and bloated about the neck and face. But odder than that was the fact that they were clothed. Each man sported a ragged set of combat fatigues that had seen better days. They weren’t part of the resort, neither staff nor visitors.
At first Howard wasn’t sure what the big deal was, why folks were running away and screaming, until one of the men lunged at a nearby old lady and sank his teeth into her neck. Howard stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as the woman’s crimson life squirted in an arc against a sparkling background of oceanic blue.
In seconds, the beach went from pandemonium to full-scale chaos.
The nudists scattered, copious amounts of flesh bouncing and bobbing, this way and that, all in an effort to escape the mauling maniacs and their rabid attacks. Howard’s senses were overwhelmed in an instant. He could barely handle seeing other naked people, but to bear witness as they ran amuck, crawling and ducking and rolling, all in the altogether … It was just too much for him. His psyche shut down. He closed his eyes, locked his knees and seared himself to the spot. He couldn’t move. He wouldn’t move.
Under the shrieking, he heard the widowed husband ask, “Honey?”
A low growl met Howard’s ears.
“You’re still alive!” the husband shouted.
The growls grew louder, and the husband’s shouts warped into pain-filled screams.
“Come on, Howard!” Martin yelled.
Howard could hear Martin calling his name, could feel the aged therapist yanking on his arm. But Howard wasn’t on the beach anymore. He was in his happy place. In his mind, he was at home, wrapped in his warm blanket, under which he had several layers of clothing on. He was not on a nude beach. He was not surrounded by excited, running, naked people.
“Howard!” Martin yelled. Then he shrieked in surprise, perhaps even pain, “Get off of me, you harpy!” The next sound the therapist made was a strangled, wet choke and cough and gurgle. After this, he made no noise at all.
Wet warmth splattered across Howard’s torso.
Howard decided to risk a peep to see what this fresh hell was, and immediately wished he hadn’t. A sheet of crimson painted Howard’s chest and tummy, but it wasn’t his own blood. It belonged to Martin, who now lay at Howard’s feet, split groin to gullet, like a human watermelon dropped on the sidewalk from very high up. Over the yawing cavity that once was Dr. Martin Jones, stooped the dead blonde. Only she wasn’t quite as dead as she had been just moments before. She stared up at Howard through cloudy eyes as she gnawed upon the loose, wet loops of Martin’s innards. Just a few feet behind them lay the twitching body of her husband, his blood-soaked groin missing a few vital organs.
Gagging, Howard turned his head from the gory scene just in time to see a certain blood-covered little old woman get to her feet, ragged throat and all. The octogenarian ran with a speed that belied her age, and then launched herself at a portly man who was doing his best to waddle to safety. The pair of them tumbled to the sand, arms and legs and naked parts entangled, gore flying fast and furious.
Another growl arose, and with it, Howard found his feet, running full tilt toward the bathhouse in the distance, sprinting away from the blonde and her now-rising husband. All around him, people were screaming and fighting and dying. He’d lost track of the five soldiers, but that no longer mattered. It didn’t take a genius to realize what was happening here. Perhaps not the why, but Howard had a handle on the what. The original five were just the beginning; for each following victim that struck the ground, there came a new threat.
Make that a nude threat.
Howard skidded into the bathhouse, and whipped about to close the door behind him. Handle in hand, he paused – for a millisecond, a breath, a single heartbeat – to stare at the carnage. The beach was alive with the unclothed dead, some walking, some running, some slithering along on their blood-slicked bellies, all seeking fresh flesh to rend. The panicked crowd ebbed and flowed in all directions, a naked throng manic for shelter. Most fell under the mauling hands and gnawing teeth of their crazed nudist brethren before they could find safety.
Howard slammed and locked the door behind him, praying the thin barrier would hold. Within seconds of his securing the door, a flurry of pounding arose from it. Whether it was hapless victims seeking help, or the maniacs hot on his trail, he didn’t stick around to find out. Howard set off again, running the length of the narrow bathhouse until he emerged from the opposite end. He had to get the hell out of this nightmare resort.
The gravel walkway that led from the bathhouse to the main entrance cut his bare feet as he ran along, but Howard ignored the little bites and pushed forward, seeking a safe haven from this insanity. He was in good shape, though not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. But he supposed that with the right motivation – such as fear for life and limb – he could and would run for a very long time. The walkway ended in a parking lot, which Howard forwent, seeing as how he’d left his keys in his pants. And his pants were in his room at the hotel. And the hotel was back there, with those things.
Howard slowed at the end of the lot, near the road, stopping for a moment to catch his breath. As he stood, stooped, with his hands on his knees, heaving for precious air, he heard the roar of an engine behind him. A bright red Mustang zipped past him, but before it reached the road, it came to a screeching halt. At first Howard thought the driver was stopping to offer him a ride. The driver’s side door swung open, and out popped a screaming brunette woman, heading for the bushes along the drive.
“It got in my car!” she yelled as she ran past Howard in a wobbling limp.
No sooner had she spoken than a blood-soaked man leapt from the confines of the car and set off after the limping woman. The man was missing his right arm, but his injuries didn’t seem to slow him one bit. Howard never got a chance to react, and neither did the woman. Like a rabid beast, the one-armed man snarled and lunged for the limping gal, dragging her to the ground with his single hand, and spilling her blood across the asphalt with nothing but his gnashing teeth.
The sight of this
once again encouraged Howard to flee. He leapt over the struggling couple and ducked into the still-running car. Slamming it into gear, Howard put his pedal to the metal, burned rubber, and left a smoking trail behind him as he fled the scene. He had to find help. And fast.
The village that bordered the nudist resort was a mere five miles away. With the help of the sports car, Howard was able to reach the town in record time. Along the way, he found a towel draped across the passenger headrest, and used it to clean the blood from his body, trying his best to stay on the road as he retched and wiped. He pulled onto Main Street doing an easy eighty, and came to a screeching halt just outside the first building he found, a place called Mother’s Diner. The diner was bound to have a phone, as well as other folks he could warn. Others had to know what was happening. The world needed to be warned of the dangers on the beach. Howard sprang from the car, hustled up the sidewalk and burst into the busy diner.
“Help!” he cried. “Please help me!”
All movement and sound in the diner ceased, as every patron stopped what they were doing – some in mid-bite, some mid-drink, some mid-conversation – and stared at Howard. A woman shrieked, not very loud but enough to set Howard’s already frayed nerves on edge. He spun in place and pressed his face against the glass doors of the diner, seeking the source of the woman’s concern, certain something or someone had followed him here.
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