She just had to giggle as she flew, making her breasts jiggle as she sped toward another call on this humid, foggy night. She got a big kick out of Rayette McIver, the comedian whose weekly 10:00 "NakedGirl Barely Comes Through" segment had just ended. This week, in her trademark cheap-looking Halloween-style raccoon mask and long fake-plastic shiny black boots, she was huffing her chubby pale body down the side of the highway, computer generated fuzz obscuring her breasts and crotch, even though it was obvious she was wearing a body stocking, trying to get to a bank that was being robbed. "Why don't you fly, NakedGirl?" some truck driver yelled at her. "I gotta eat more beans," she huffed to herself.
Dareen giggled again and then suppressed it, admonishing herself for her mind wandering. But of course, she always showed up on time and always prevented bad things from happening, so maybe on this -- was it her twenty-fifth call, she had lost count -- she was losing a little of the earlier sense of urgency. She remembered her friend from college who worked at the rape crisis center, whenever she went "on a call" to counsel someone she kept joking going out the door, which seemed childish and irresponsible to Dareen, but maybe it was a way to keep from burning out and to stay sane. She apologized to Allah in her heart for having giggled. Still, if she ever disclosed her true identity to anyone (aside from Elly), she wanted it to be to Rayette McIver.
Getting serious, not knowing what kind of situation she was heading toward, just the usual sure sense of exact location, she found herself heading into Scotchtown, kind of a white working-class area. Though a lifetime Atlanta area resident, she hadn't been around here much. Landing on the top of an apartment building, she saw a delicatessen opened late, next to a convenience store, people buying lottery tickets, hanging out. On the next block, a pawnbroker's shop on the corner, and some other down-and-out type places, a boarded up "Kit Kat Club" with a female silhouette over the sign, Dareen guessed it to have been a topless dancer club.
The naked superheroine stood poised behind the cornice, crouched out of sight five floors up, looking around, wondering what was about to happen.
A dark car rounded the corner quickly and holy sh...
The assault rifle poked out the window and Dareen heard the click of it being cocked before any of the people on the street were aware. Someone pointed to the dark car and there was screaming and frightened scrambling and at the same time, a nude large-breasted female swooped down from somewhere, in a twinkling placing herself in front of the gun, bracing her spread arms and legs with hands on the roof of the car and hard soles on the asphalt, a sound like sandpaper as her feet acted like brakes to stop the car, a muffled sprinkling as she absorbed a round of bullets which bounced off her flat tummy and tinkled down onto the street, then with the car stopped, half spun-around, she bent the long shaft of the assault rifle into a "U" shape, threw the useless scrap of metal onto the street where it fell with a clank.
And now as the word "NakedGirl!" escaped from various mouths in the quickly gathering crowd, the nude brown figure yanked the gunman out of the car, a young man in jeans and T-shirt. The driver, in a business suit, tried to escape but with a quick turn of her torso her breast clubbed him and he fell to the street. A space in the crowd and an old man, possibly the intended victim, had fallen to the sidewalk, clutching his heart. Helpful arms carefully carried him into the delicatessen.
Dareen, as she now expected, had a certain sense of where the nearest precinct was. She carried the men, frozen with fear, by their collars and was not put off by the realization, as she kicked open the precinct door and delivered the criminals with her report to whoever was on duty, that she seemed to be a character in a boring series with an unchanging plot, which always ended with this scene.
But this time her work was not yet complete. She flew back to the scene and, after a moment's hesitation, reluctantly landed in front of the crowd of people. She had to check on that old man to see if he needed a quick flight to the emergency room. Standing awkwardly in front of the gawking crowd, her modesty suddenly kicked in and she felt the movement of her hands to cover her breasts and crotch. She quickly strode into the delicatessen.
The old man was sitting at a table, short of breath but apparently perfectly O.K. In fact there were several tables here, it was not only a carry-out place but a place where people sat and ate. In the unexpectedly large restaurant Dareen found herself surrounded on all sides. She looked down at her bare feet next to all the shoes and sneakers and her toes squirmed. For a long moment no one spoke, the nude girl with an arm across her nipples, the other hand cupped over her crotch, clutching her butt cheeks in a vain attempt to hide the view of her totally bare backside, head to heels.
"NakedGirl!" someone said.
"Is he -- are you all right?" she said to the old man.
"Fine. You saved my life, thank you," he said, in an old-style Irish-like accent. Then he crossed himself like a good Catholic, and tried not to look downward at the girl's nudity.
The rest of the people were not so circumspect. Their stares were direct and intense. Three young men right in front of her got over their awe and couldn't help licking their lips at the sight of such unvarnished female beauty. Dareen tried to glare back. Then remembered her super powers and forced herself to drop her hands to her sides where they formed fists. "Excuse me, I have to go." Seeing the young men stare anew as they regarded the huge dark nipples, Dareen felt like covering herself again.
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw a camera being taken out. Without thinking her hand went out in a blur and knocked a man's camera to the ground. She looked at the man and he looked at her. She looked down. It was a quite fine 35mm camera. "Sorry," she said.
But now there were other cameras being brandished. And now a TV camera crew, having heard of the drive-by attempt and the police report, was arriving outside! She couldn't knock down all the cameras. She thought of her pledge by the horses, doing what was asked of her while protecting her modesty, and decided on the quickest and simplest solution. Flee! She jumped over the people's heads and ran down the narrow hall to where she sensed there was a back entrance.
There was -- but before she got within eyesight, still within the narrow crooked hall with corners piled with boxes, she heard people coming in that way too.
It was stupid, it was temporary, but it was the only way to keep from having her picture taken in the next few seconds. She found a dead-end passage which led to two big doors, coolers, she knew, and careful so as not to rip the door like that time in her apartment, she slid into the second one.
She stood for a second in the cold darkness, feeling dirty ice under her bare feet. This was really cold -- it wasn't just a refrigerator, it was a freezer. She heard people moving around outside and getting closer. With her super sight she looked around in the darkness, the boxes half-torn open to show frozen chicken pieces and ribs and goodness knows what else. A small cabinet up near the ceiling. She carefully opened it and crawled in.
Smells can't travel well in cold air, but her nose unfortunately was sensitive enough to pick up the rank odor of frozen, long-forgotten omelette mix. The cabinet was just big enough for her to crawl into it and close the door. She cringed at feeling the yellow frozen glop rubbing against her bare hip.
She hugged herself against the cold, and listened. The door to the freezer room opened and a light was switched on. She held her breath. Then the door was shut and she was alone again in freezing darkness.
Please, Allah, don't let me freeze to death. All the ice here, it must be well below freezing. In the dark she could read the beat-up thermostat: seven degrees Fahrenheit. She prayed everyone would go and she could leave safely before the heat was sapped from her body and hypothermia set in.
Minutes went by. The sounds had ceased. And a few minutes later, doors were being locked. She wiggled her fingers and her toes. No loss of feeling, though she could feel every degree of the cold. To stay totally naked in a subfreezing compartment like this, she was COLD.
Yet apparently she was unharmed. After maybe twenty minutes she emerged from the cabinet, felt her soles touch the dirty ice on the floor, stretched her arms and legs. Hmmm. I seem to be O.K. And then she realized she had discovered another aspect of her super powers.
She stood there, no sound except her breathing the air that emerged with clouds of condensation from her nostrils, wanting to be absolutely sure before she attempted her escape that there was no one around to surprise her with a camera. Finally she chanced it, s - l - o - w - l - y pulling the door latch, creeping out, feeling the warm air hit her, the warm floor under her feet. No, no one around.
To go out the front entrance would be folly, right out onto the street. She continued to the back. There was a lit room that she had to pass. Waiting a few minutes, hearing no movement, she somehow sensed that no one was there (which did turn out to be the case). And as she passed the room, apparently the office with a desk and bills and papers on spindles, there was a mirror on the wall and she saw herself in it.
She recoiled at first. After an hour in the subfreezing cold, her violet-tinged hair boasted a slight frosting. And her nude body -- her skin had a faint purplish hue. She touched her nipples, bent over to touch her knees, her toes. She still felt the chill on her skin but she didn't feel stiff or anything. But the sight of how her body looked after exposure to cold was a little scary.
She got to the back door and of course it was locked. How to break the lock silently? Then she looked up. The ceiling had a trap door that was open, revealing the dark cloudy muggy night sky. That was why those people had given up looking for her; they assumed she had flown out that opening. Which it turned out she did now. Dareen launched through the opening, into the night sky, back across town to her fire escape. Hating the memory of standing naked in the middle of that crowd of people, she hopped into her bedroom and was glad to be under the covers, alone where people couldn't see her, and after experiencing the dark cold of that freezer, she enjoyed the warmth, enjoyed for a change the hot stickiness of the Georgia summer night.