They were out on the sidewalk like a shot.
"El," Dareen said, fidgeting in her burka, trying like hell not to bring her hands up to clutch her bee-stung nipples, "I've got to..."
"Get naked?"
"Shhh!!" Dareen said. Someone gave them a glance as he walked by. She leaned close to Elly, her eyes, peeking out from the veil, displaying urgency. "I feel a pulse bomb coming."
"A pulse bomb!" Elly's eyes opened wide. "Well let's find a place where you can strip! How long do you have to you-know-what before you get your power?"
"Two hours, about."
"Two hours! Jesus Christ! How are you gonna do that? You can't just hang out nude in downtown Manhattan for two hours."
"We have to find someplace," Dareen said. They were jabbering a mile a minute and hustling down the street frantically, Dareen in her burka, Elly in her jeans and T-shirt. Dareen's eyes, the only part of her visible, darting from side to side; all the time she was trying not to scratch the terrible burning in her nipples.
"Don't walk so fast," whispered Elly with rapid-fire words. "Two brown-skinned Middle Eastern women right next to Ground Zero, we gotta act cool."
"Cool! Some whole city might be in danger! Another pulse bomb!!"
"SHHH!" This time it was Elly who shushed her friend. Another guy looked askance as he passed, though actually it was because he had detected signs of a very large bust under Dareen's burka.
They suddenly found themselves at the corner. The Hudson River came into view. "Maybe if you took off your clothes and swam..."
"El! Two hours!! The police will catch me in plenty of time... I can't tread water for two hours anyway!"
"Tell them who you are!"
"El, I can't! They don't know NakedGirl needs two hours! They'll think I'm a nut or a..."
They glanced at a door two doors down. "Live Nude Girls".
Dareen's eyes flashed at Elly. "Don't even THINK it!"
Frantically they turned around and walked back the way they came. Dareen looked up. "If only I could climb onto a roof."
"You'd have to hop over those canopies and scaffolds."
They got to the other corner, almost dizzy from having checked out everything up and down and side to side. There was no place to hide, no place to get away. "A pulse bomb," Elly muttered, "oh man!"
"Shit!" Dareen said softly, in an unusual blurt of profanity, punching her fists down. The sight of a woman in a burka doing this got a couple of people's attention. Dareen shrugged at them with a look of apology in her eyes and the people walked away.
They turned around and resumed their frantic controlled pace, passing the same stores a third time, which only got them more frustrated. They came to a fire escape going up five stories to a roof. "Try that," Elly suggested desperately. "Strip now. I'll give you a boost and you can climb up to the roof!"
"Don't you think someone would notice that?"
"Dar, the sooner you get your clothes off..."
"I know! I know!"
Again they got to the corner where the Hudson River was and again they turned around. "Wait, this is stupid," Dareen, moving as quickly as a burka-ed woman could manage, went back to the corner and headed up the side street. They got to an alley. Dareen looked in. "This is it."
Elly looked. It was a narrow alley with a dumpster at the end. "What, jump in the garbage?"
"No, behind it. There's a space. I'll hide there."
"Yuck. With bare feet!"
"I can jump in a pond later. C'mon!" And they walked down the alley.
"Wait," Elly said. "I'll keep a lookout." And she went back to stand on the sidewalk.
Dareen hustled to the dumpster and squeezed around the side. Just enough room, she had to push her breasts through one by one. There was about six feet space behind. "Ughh!" She stripped off the burka, then her T-shirt and shorts she had underneath, then her bra and panties. Lastly and most reluctantly, her sneakers and socks. On this hot day the garbage stank, and a lot of it had managed to miss the dumpster. There was garbage strewn everywhere except for some spots of very dirty pavement. Her soles squirmed as they touched the warm filthy asphalt. Then she crouched and waited, looking at her clothes piled next to her with longing and regret.
Two hours she had to wait... alas, not five minutes had gone by when the loud sound of a truck backing up resounded against the high, windowless brick walls of the buildings on both sides; a garbage truck.
From the street, Elly had seen it approach. It then occurred to her that keeping lookout, what exactly would that involve? There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do except watch helplessly as the driver and his partner, big beefy men with moustaches, perhaps of Pakistani descent like her, switched between looking back out their windows and checking their side view mirrors.
Dareen listened to the approaching engine with mounting panic and then heard the loud clank as the outriggers of the truck shoved up into the eaves of the dumpster. In a few seconds she would be exposed to anyone who wanted to look down the alley. And the men would see her too in their mirrors. As the dumpster rose she thought and acted fast. She hopped up and grabbed the side with her hands, placed her toes against the bottom rim, and rose up with the dumpster.
The men, of course, did not notice the extra hundred pounds or so of load. The dumpster rose up to the horizontal and then as it began to tip upside down, emptying its contents, Dareen hopped forward onto the top of the truck. The racket of the machinery was so loud that the soft thump of her bare feet was not heard.
As the dumpster went down and the truck parked it back on the asphalt, Dareen looked up. If only there was a fire escape or a ledge... but no, the two buildings were just solid brick, no place to jump onto. As the truck grumbled out of the alley past a horrified Elly, the naked girl dropped to her stomach and lay as flat against the truck as she could.
West Street affords a view of the Hudson River, and the reborn Jersey shore beyond, which is not only naturally beautiful but inspiring. Though Dareen was facing that way, one could forgive her for not appreciating these triumphs of man and nature as she sprawled spread-eagled and naked on top of the filthy garbage truck. She felt the grime of the unwashed metal scraping into her skin. Her breasts were squashed beneath her and spread from the sides of her slim torso, always an uncomfortable feeling for her but even more so on dirty shaking metal. As the truck picked up speed she felt the air whip over her buttocks. She tried not to look over to her right, into Manhattan, where surely someone in those buildings was looking down and noticing the very unusual view of a naked woman hugging the top of a truck. The truck, though dirty, was painted white and her brown skin would certainly stand out.
And now the Jersey view was blocked by the new entertainment centers along the Chelsea Piers, another inspiring sight that included an outdoor roller skating rink, a playground, and a trapeze school. The truck stopped at a red light and Dareen died a thousand deaths, waiting for someone to notice her and call out. ‘Please, turn green, turn green...’ The red light seemed to go on forever. Cars and trucks were stopped around her, some of the trucks higher than she was. She could hear the driver and his companion talking through the roof of the cab, it sounded a little like the Urdu phrases Elly had exchanged with her parents over lunch that day. Then the engine revved again, seemingly amplified as the vibrations resounded through her abundant breast tissue.
She watched the trapeze people in their shorts and T-shirts, the women in sports bras, as they swung and flew and grabbed hands. Suddenly one of the men glanced in her direction and missed a grab. He fell in a crazy semi-pinwheel turn down to the net. So did his partner. When they were done bouncing on the net and got back up to the platform Dareen saw people pointing. Right at her! She cringed right down to her squirming toes, thinking of her bare butt on full display even though these people were a couple of hundred feet away.
Blessedly, the light finally changed and the truck lurched forward, then shifted gears and got up some speed. The Chelsea piers were now behind her. And now, more menacingly, the boat docks and now the great aircraft carrier Intrepid, permanently docked at 45th Street as a museum. It towered high above the garbage truck and the naked girl's tensed butt as they passed. Surely the people up on the deck would notice! Her thoughts were interrupted by a jolt as the truck hit a pothole, then another. Her chin hit the truck roof. Her breasts, crushed though they were, jiggled crazily beneath her.
Once again a dreaded red light at 57th Street. Dareen could not help turning her head. There was midtown, the wide two-way cross-street, hundred of people crossing in Dareen's line of sight, which meant that they also would have a view of her if they looked. Again, Dareen detected a couple of people looking at her, and swore she could see the faces of astonishment.
57th Street is the last light; after that West Street becomes the West Side Highway with no stops up to the toll plaza at the Broadway Bridge at the northern tip of Manhattan, up past 207th Street. That stretch would have afforded Dareen ample opportunity to jump off onto a grassy shoulder and then dashing into a leafy and uncrowded woodsy area where she could wait. But no, the garbage truck turned off onto the service road, Twelfth Avenue. Looking ahead, she saw that it was headed for a depot of some kind, with lots of other similar trucks. More ominously, there was a platform above them that men were standing around on, sipping coffee. She would be right under their eyes, a few feet away.
She had to act fast. To the side was a building with a construction canopy, obviously with a floor though she couldn't see it behind the lip of the canopy. There was an open window above. She got up onto the truck, careful not to fall over as it lurched slowly over the bumpy road surface. Luckily, it swept close by the canopy, maybe three feet away. The naked girl saw her chance and hopped onto the lip, her foot curling uncomfortably around the narrow plywood, and jumped down onto a corrugated metal sheet.
To her horror it began to give way. This wasn't a floor at all, it was just a rain guard of some kind. She didn't want to get stuck on the sidewalk, and she might get injured, it was a long way down. With mincing steps frantically headed for the building she grabbed onto the concrete sill and felt it scraping her breasts and tummy as she pitched into the room inside.
It was very dark inside and musty, with a smell like old books in a library. She was at the top of some stairs. As her eyes got used to the dark she saw a narrow hallway in front of her and another door, slightly open. She knew herself naked and alone and vulnerable in a strange place. She found herself getting onto her knees and falling forward in a prayer to Allah. Please, let no one see me, let me be alone until my powers come. And then, let no one see me as I go where I'm called. She hated being naked, she dearly wished to be back in her burka. But that was impossible. She had been "called" to maybe her most important task yet.
She got up and brushed the dirt off her front areas, off her breasts. Her body had been shaken almost to numbness by the vibrations of the garbage truck but now she felt the stinging sensation returning to her nipples. She tenderly cradled her breasts in her cupped hands, hands that could cover her nipples and areolas but not much more.
A sudden sound from down the stairs startled her. She thought again of telling whoever found her that she was Dareen Alkaras, NakedGirl, whose face they had seen on TV. But that was a crazy idea. They might not recognize her face, and where were her super powers? Alone and without clothing or ID she was in danger of rape. Or arrest, with the slapping on of handcuffs that would prevent her powers from coming. And with a pulse bomb on the way, much more than her own safety was at stake.
The sound down the stairs seemed to come closer. She padded as silently as she could down the narrow hallway. With one footstep slightly to the side she found out that it wasn't a hallway at all, it was a plank. By then it was too late -- she had tipped forward and grabbed onto anything she could, which turned out to be a white rope that was suspended from the ceiling. It sank with her weight about four feet. She heard the soft squealing of pullies above. In the dimness she could make out another white rope to her right and grabbed it. It too yanked down, though only a little.
Dareen looked back to where the plank was. By swinging back she could reach it with the tops of her bare feet, but then what? She could not let go of the ropes. She closed her eyes, realizing how close she had come to falling quite some distance and maybe getting seriously injured. She looked down and shook one of the ropes slightly. She did not know how far down to the floor below but sensed it was quite some distance. She descended with straining hands grabbing one rope, then the other, only to find that they both came to an end in little loops. She wished she knew how far down it was to the floor, but dared not jump. From wherever it was -- this strange dark place of ropes.
She waited, holding the two loops that were three feet apart. A minute went by. Her arms were getting tired. She felt her whole body stretched out, her breasts jutting out in front of her, her tummy concave, her big toes pointing downward. If only her powers would hurry up and manifest themselves...
Then, somewhere ahead, muffled in the distance, a door was pushed open and now the sound of it hitting a stop. And now another door opening, and the footsteps of hard leather against a hard floor.