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The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 01

By: justtheone



One might perhaps notice, the following fable is a close thematic cousin to another of my tales entitled Yay Feminism, both exploring variations of the same fundamental scenario.

*****

1.

They told her the place they were going was actually separate from the Shambels nude beach—outside its official boundary, though right next to it. There was a big wooded ridge or bluff between them, a natural barrier sticking a good way out to sea, quite narrow but also quite high. The shore was completely split by it, divided into separate beaches—you couldn't walk around the damn thing, at least not safely, because it just had jumbled, jagged rocks heaped along its bottom the whole way, no path to use, no sand at all. 

North of the big bluff or whatever you called the thing, that beach was the real, official Shambels—and part of a much bigger "Naturist" campground, with fucking electrified chainlink fences all around its other sides. And supposedly it was all crazy old fat people in the place ... old hippies and nutty Germans or Dutch people—real dedicated lifelong nudists. They were almost religious about it over there. The kind that kept kinkiness out of it. It was a family lifestyle for them. You had to sign some sort of elaborate morality pledge to be allowed in. You couldn't ever see any of them over there, thankfully, and they couldn't see this side, the unofficial half. 

This other side, the South Shambels, was where young people went—all the college kids. Since it wasn't part of the Naturist territory, those freaks had no control over it, and actually the South Shambles wasn't legally a nude beach. It was a city beach or maybe a state beach—either way, what went on there all the time wasn't supposed to be allowed. Only nobody was enforcing that, for whatever reason. Probably its isolation helped—it was pretty out-of-the-way, an undeveloped area. There were no suburban neighborhoods around here. Not yet. To get to the place, or to that crazy Naturist compound, you had to drive a twisty dirt road for a tedious twenty minutes, first in a long loop around a vast historic cemetery and then through a dense stretch of orchards that some big company owned. So it was never any kind of tourist draw—only local kids used this beach, coming for the most part from the two universities close by, a big one and a not-so-big one. 

Having two schools that close meant a whole lot of kids, obviously. And not little kids, not real kids—rowdy college kids. A whole other beast. It got crowded whenever the weather was good. And then it got crazy. The beach itself was much smaller than the North Shambels, and the waves tended to come in rough—it was S-shaped, the lower end tapering around into a chainlink fence with a smelly mangrove swamp on the other side that was also a bird reserve—bugs ate you alive if you went too close to that end—and of course there were no hotels or bars and so on behind it, so you had to bring your own drinks and shit. Families would take their children and their grandmas other places to swim; the area had three other giant public beaches to choose from, all those much closer to the city and civilization. Shambels ended up strictly a young people's beach, and a party beach. College kids could come here and make bonfires at night and get shitfaced and screw around rowdy and nobody gave them a hard time about it, at least not yet. The drugs were getting pretty bad, and some day soon, sure, some stupid jerkoff would OD or knife some other fucker and spoil everything—but so far that hadn't happened yet, and the cops stayed away. 

Today was gonna turn out one of the especially crazy days. Real free-for-all. You couldn't show this shit on television. 

2.

Addy wanted all three of them to go topless. Neither Mia nor Ellie were keen on the idea, at first—Addy wouldn't freaking let it go. Plus she was insistent that it had to be all three of them, not just her. Wasn't that she wanted back-up—like she wasn't bold enough to do it solo, 'cause they knew she was. Instead she really seemed to believe that getting the others to do it with her would be for their own good. That it would teach them something, or prove something to them. Give them power. 

Eventually they allowed her to convince them. Decided they would both try it with her, at least for a few minutes. 

Ellie had been living with the pair this last semester—their first apartment. They'd all lived in the same dorm, the previous year, and got to know each other pretty good, though none of them were actual roommates until they'd got that apartment. So far the new place was working out fairly well—none of them got on each other's nerves, or at least not often, not too bad. The secret to their success was probably that they all shared the same bad habits. Things like cluttering up the bathroom, and not cleaning out the kitty litter—they were all equally guilty. They all let the same things slide, so no big nasty dramas got started, like happened with everybody else. 

The only iffy thing Mia and Ellie had to contend with was Addy being a bit of a nudist around the place ... Soon as she got home from class or her job, she tended to shed most or even all her clothing, and wouldn't put anything on unless she went out again, or if a visitor showed up at the door. Ellie herself had a particular set of comfy house clothes she liked to change into, in sort of the same way, which she referred to as her pajamas even though they weren't, really—just a hoody pullover and some loose workout pants, and fuzzy socks ...while Mia often wore a men's bathrobe that was about twelve times too large for her (she'd stolen it from her dad). So both of them understood Addy's impulse on a general level—hers just went much further than theirs. Too far, probably. Addy wasn't at all shy about her body—and while in many respects that was bound to be a good thing, it made living with her disconcerting. You'd be sitting in the living room watching TV and eating cereal, and she'd glide in and plop down on the other couch completely starkers with a bag of potato chips and then try to strike up a casual conversation with you while she was stuffing her face, sitting Indian style and dribbling crumbs all over her tits and her bush. And then if/when you got weirded out, she was like: "What?"—completely oblivious. It didn't seem to be a pretense. The nutty girl just genuinely didn't seem to understand that her roommates, even though they were all female and the same age and hetero, still might be made uncomfortable by her near-constant nakedness. Addy was apparently shameless in the best, simplest sense of the word. An Eve before the apple. 

Yet Ellie suspected this was a pose—quite well-performed, but an act, nonetheless. Ellie hadn't called her out about it—not yet, anyway, and she wasn't a hundred percent certain—but in her private opinion, Addy got off on what she did. It was a mind game. She liked weirding out her roommates, and then pretending not to notice was just part of the routine, part of the prank. She had herself a real good body, and she knew it. She'd done some modeling, off and on. Also she went through about a boyfriend a month, on average. Seemed to use them up and dispose of them with just about the same pace—and the same emotion—as tubes of toothpaste. 

Addy would occasionally talk at some length about wishing she could go around undressed outside of the apartment—how nice that would be, if nobody cared ... if that kind of thing was no big deal. Except Ellie was pretty sure she was kidding herself, when she said stuff like that, possibly without even realizing it. Because if nobody did care—if it really suddenly became "no big deal," a completely nudist world—Addy wouldn't get any charge out of it. She wouldn't bother doing that shit any longer. 

Deep down, you didn't take your top off at a beach like South Shambels if you didn't want it to be a big deal to other people. If you didn't want all the boys to notice and get jazzed up by what you were showing them. 

Another thing ... It's suspiciously easy—well, maybe not entirely easy, but easier—to be shameless in that innocent child-of-nature sense when you've got a model's body. Because obviously you've got no reason to get nervous and embarrassed if you happen to be young and hot. Ellie wished Addy could be more honest about this stuff. The girl was proud of her figure and liked showing off, and that should be fine, but she didn't want to seem like a pervert, or arrogant. So she had to hide that she liked it. She hid the thrill from herself, probably, just as bad as with Ellie and Mia and the rest of the world. That was kinda real sad, as well as silly and ridiculous and irritating. 

Mia, on the other hand, was a strongly conservative and repressed sort of person—and though she tried to hide this from Addy, all the same you could tell from the looks she'd get on her face that she thought Addy was sinful and corrupted, and that the devil would carry her off when she died unless she could one day redeem herself. Probably Mia prayed for her ... and probably she secretly envied her at the same time, and was ashamed of the fact. And yet in a funny way, she probably got off on that, too, same as most churchy girls—being Holy among Heathens, in an endless internal struggle against the temptations of the wicked and perverse world surrounding her—the giddy thrill of specialness and superiority that entire idea gives you. It's a drug. 

Now all this was just speculation on Ellie's part. Even so, she was pretty convinced she was right about these things. Ellie had gone through a somewhat extreme religious phase herself. Hers had burned out fairly fast, thankfully. She'd realized she just plain enjoyed tormenting herself too much. Whole program had become a guilt fetish, frankly masturbatory, encouraging her worst tendencies instead of curing or suppressing them, and after that rather embarrassing personal breakthrough she could no longer take any Jesus stuff seriously. 

Anyhow.

Ellie herself, like most of us on the planet, had at best mixed feelings about her body's attractiveness, as well as the appeal of proud free-spirited public nudity as a concept. She did envy Addy's unquestionable good looks, same as she believed Mia did, and also the brazenness which Addy's beauty permitted her to have—but you couldn't help pitying the way Addy always must disguise or distort her motivations and inclinations, in order to indulge them. In fact in her own way, Addy was possibly more repressed and tortured inside than Mia or Ellie had ever been at their most self-righteous and insufferable. 

The thought or the idea of public nudity had power to it, for Ellie. It was dangerously exciting. It got to her—it tickled inside, whenever she considered it. She had flashing fantasies, now and again. Thinking "What would that guy over there do if suddenly I went up to him and just—" And there were times she liked to imagine what it would be like to pose nude, or nearly so, for pictures in a magazine—not really on the porno level but something legitimately arty. What it would feel like to see herself on a cover like that, on the shelves in the store? That would be hot, was what it would be ... Yet she knew it wasn't something she could or would ever actually do, or truly be capable of enjoying, in real regular life. She would get too scared and too embarrassed. She would freak out and either faint or throw up or have a seizure or something. 

Once or twice, when watching Addy parade herself again and again around their apartment, she had considered trying to join her like that, and then trying to play it off the exact same way Addy did, like it didn't matter a bit to her, when she shed all her stuff ... like she could be perfectly comfortable that way, feeling no edgy weirdness to it from wondering what it would make the others think of her, and of her body. Just instead acting like: "Oh, am I naked? I didn't even realize ..." Like Addy did. But Ellie had never gone through with this. She'd never been able to. Once she got close, actually undressing completely in her bedroom, but then she chickened out before she could open the door. Just put her clothes right back on. 

She had good boobs. Probably as good or better than Addy's for whatever that was worth. She wasn't as skinny as she used to be, and could never decide if that was a plus or a minus. Sometimes she missed the way she used to look, other times she decided she liked being curvier. She always tended to look too pale. She blushed too much, and too easily. Those were definite issues for her. Also there another consideration to worry about ... when she got turned on, it was too intense. She would get all shaky and have trouble breathing. It became too obvious. Made her too vulnerable, when she got heated up. Her last boyfriend liked to tease her about that. "Most girls don't get ever get worked up as much as you. Or they don't never show it. They don't let themselves. They keep it all locked down inside and make it really super hard for a guy to tell if he's getting to her, and if she's liking it properly if he has ... But you're not like that, Ellie. Not one bit. You're very ... expressive." 

He had really liked that about her. She still didn't find it was a thing she could take pride in. 

Addy talked about going topless at Shambels like it was about "liberation"—in the sense of feeling easy with yourself, comfortable with your looks. Not caring whether you were beautiful or not, and not caring if anyone was looking at you or what anybody would think if they did ... She claimed it was just all about you and your soul and the sun and the breeze, and nothing else, no other considerations bothering you or distracting you from the spiritual experience ... As if sex had nothing to do with the stunt. "Furthest thing from your mind. That's not the point at all." 

In Ellie's opinion, that statement was entirely absolute bullshit. Flaky deluded hippy-dippy nonsense. Maybe if they went and did this at the North Shambels, with all the fat old European immigrants, that was what it might be like—but on the South Shambels, chock full of drunk and horny college guys gaping at their gazonga's from all directions, well, thinking there was no sexual connotation was naïve to the point of idiocy. Or more like willfully delusional. 

If you were a decent looking girl and you went to the South Shambels and took your top off, it was because you wanted to show all those boys your titties. You wanted to put on a show and turn them on. 'Cause doing that—if you were bold enough and hot enough to be able to—turned you on too. It would give you power and it would give you a rush—feeding on the guys' desire, having it fuel your own. It would be a randy, blatantly sexual act, like the courtship displays you see animals do on TV on nature shows. Pretending otherwise, like Addy insisted on doing, was stupid and maybe even pathetic. 

But Ellie didn't tell her so. She didn't say any of this stuff out-loud. She kept it all to herself. 

She wanted to do it, was the thing. And she knew she couldn't go through with it unless Addy and Mia were with her, doing the same thing. Girl power! Addy's delusional bullshit might be necessary as well. Ellie might have to try pretending she felt the same way, in order to stop herself freezing up. 

She figured Mia wanted to do this also, just as much, just to feel for herself what it was like—standing in her way more than basic body-image issues or a lack of courage would be her fear of sin and degradation. Except in the end that might become the principal motivating force, rather than an obstacle. Maybe it had already done so. Conservative, religious people are funny like that—the urge to give in to corruption gets stronger and stronger, the longer and harder they fight against it, and the greater it scares them. That struggle, the fear, the surrender—obviously all this can become pretty sexy and intoxicating stuff. And besides, all they gotta do afterward is repent, remember, and Jesus lets them off the hook, if they're sincere enough ... This itself provides a whole other rush—the ecstasy of redemption. Yes sir, it's quite a trip, if you've got the mindset for it. And you can loop the loop over and over, much as you feel like. Ellie isn't talking out of her hat—she speaks from experience.  

People-in-general often yearn for a more enlightened and less inhibited society, where we all have sex without any guilt or conflict or second-guessing ... Addy herself came off like that, when she described her fantasies of casual, perfectly safe, no-big-deal nakedness, worldwide, like a Return to Eden Before the Fall ... Only it would suck all the sexiness out of sex, if those type wishes suddenly came true. Sex would become too easy and too simple and too relaxed. Too safe. Passion needs drama—and drama needs some danger. Without the drama, without all the silly scary inner-conflicts and bullshit, sex would end up no more interesting and awesome than handshakes or blowing your stupid nose. 

3.

Mia drove them there, 'cause she had the most gas in her car. 

The parking lot was packed. They had to park up along the narrow access road, back in the woods. Quite a distance back, too. The cars were lined up both sides of the road, bumper to fucking bumper. Obviously the beach was gonna be mobbed. They probably wouldn't find any free spots to lay out their towels. Mia actually wanted them to forget the whole thing and just go home, try some other day. Addy told her not to be such a poopface. "It's always like this. The beach will be fine, trust me. They just didn't make a big enough parking lot." 

"Hope you're right." 

"At least we leaving the car in some shade," Ellie said. 

Mia only grumbled. "Can't believe you called me a poopface, like we're ten."

"Well I wouldn't, if you weren't," said Addy. 

"Mia might be a poopface," said Ellie, "But you're a big brat, Addy." 

"And proud of it. And you're a bigger brat than I'll ever be."

"And I take pride in that too." 

She could always count on her roommates for really intelligent, enriching conversation. 

The walk from the car wouldn't have been bad except her flipflops made her feet hurt a little. They were cheap and old and didn't fit her feet her very well. Never had. She should have thrown the things out ages ago and bought new ones, but she'd forgot how crummy they were. One was too tight, so the straps cut into her toes, and the other was too loose. Even if they'd fit her perfect, cheap flipflops—or even expensive flipflops—just aren't good for walking any distance in. Especially over a gravel road. If it hadn't been gravel, she would have chucked the flipflops into the bushes and gone barefoot. But for the present she had to keep the stupid torturous things on. 

Made her wish she had Hobbit feet, in spite of the fact they'd be hairy and huge. 

Then they had to pass a couple making out in the backbed of a pickup truck—really going at it in there, hot'n'heavy. Actually when they got closer, they saw it was a couple couples—the other lying flat, so they weren't visible until her and her friends were right beside the truck. Ellie told herself not to look over as they walked by, but she did anyway. Got just as much an eyeful as she feared she would.

She didn't actually see any genitalia, but it was still pretty bad. The couple lying low—the girl was blowing the guy. Thankfully her hair covered everything. You could see what she was doing, but you couldn't see her doing it. Just a mop bouncing up and down. The guy was puffing on a joint while she did it to him, and he was looking pretty pleased with himself. That didn't bother Ellie—the big goddamn swastika tattooed on his bare chest, that bothered her, big time. 

What kind of girl did you have to be in today's world, to blow a guy with a swastika tattoo? Bitch must have some interesting issues. Ellie almost wanted to see her face now, just so she wouldn't have to wonder about it. She wanted to go back and tap the dumb bitch on the shoulder so she'd look up and Ellie could examine her and ask her a few pointed questions ...


The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 01



As for the other couple, sitting up against the cab ... Those two were just kissing, except they had their hands down the front of each other's swimsuits, cranking away in there hard as they both could. At least they still had their swimsuits on. 

"Christ, some people's children," said Addy, when the truck was behind them—only of course she said it loud enough the couples would hear her, unless they were too wrapped up in themselves to notice. One of the girls laughed, but realistically it might not have been answering Addy. 

"I don't understand why anyone would do that," said Mia, "Out in the open like that. I just don't get it. Why do they like doing that? It just doesn't make any sense to me." 

"People like that make me sick with that shit," Addy said, "It's just disgusting. Doesn't it make you wanna throw up? PDA ... Pretty Disgusting and Atrocious." 

Such a fucking hypocrite. But Ellie, as usual, kept her opinion quiet. 

At least the bitch turned out to be right about the crowds—just like Addy told them, it wasn't near as bad as the parking situation seemed to signify. That wasn't to say there weren't lots and lots of people here, 'cause there sure as shit were ... but still the beach was big enough it had plenty of free space available for new arrivals to set their stuff down. And Ellie was happy with the spot they got to claim. It wasn't too close to the water, and it also wasn't too far away, plus they didn't have other groups jammed too close around them so everybody would be kicking sand and crap all over each other's towels. That was how it usually ended up when she went to a beach. 

For some reason, one half of the beach, the north side closer to the big rocky bluff thing, had filled up much more than the other half. She wondered why that was. That side was sort of hilly—not hugely hilly, just a tiny bit—and it also had several big spiky boulders sticking out of the sand, or piled in heaps with tall grass growing out the cracks. The south half, where they'd planted themselves, was much more flat and open and clean-looking. Still, more people seemed to prefer the rockier, broken-up part, given the choice. Maybe they liked having stuff around them to partially shield them. Not like you could hide away completely, but the rocks would give you a sliver of privacy, as well as keeping other groups from settling right next to you. Of course when you thought it over for a second, it was contradictory and pretty silly to come to a public nude beach and then put your towel down in a more-or-less secluded hiding place out of everybody else's view ... But the impulse was perfectly understandable, no matter how dumb it was. Though she liked the spot they picked, or thought she did, she wished they could have got here earlier in the morning to claim one of those spots in the rocks. She would have liked a place in there better. 

They spread their towels out, and Mia had brought a cute sun umbrella to plant in the sand over them when the sun got to be too much, though the wind was too strong for the flimsy thing and kept blowing it over. Both the other girls made fun of Ellie's towel when she laid it down, because it had Chewbacca the Wookie on it—she'd had it since she was tiny. Hardly fair to mock her—Mia's had pink unicorns! Addy's was just plain yellow. 

Then it was time to undress, if they could actually go through with it ...

In fact for Ellie it turned out easier than she expected. Except she cheated, kind of—and cheated herself, perhaps. She kept her eyes down on her toes and did it as fast as she could, while at the same time in her mind she recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner, so she wasn't really thinking about what she was doing and it didn't feel any different than getting undressed in her bedroom to take a shower or whatever. Except for one thing. The sun, the heat—and it didn't really feel like heat. Heat was what it was, but it felt like a force pushing down on you. Or punching you, more like. The impact of it, all over her, was like WHAM! Made her think of a deathray in a space movie—like instead of Mister Happy Sun it was some giant killer robot standing over her and zapping her with a cannon, and any second she'd disintegrate into a little poof of ashes. Jesus. 

You wouldn't think it would have been that big of a change—already she'd been hot and sweaty, of course, and squinting from the reflected glare off both the sand and the water, so her cheeks had got a little achy. You'd expect taking your things off would help, actually—make you less hot, once you had some more air moving over the rest of your skin. Instead it was the reverse. Like shutting her shields off, to use another space movie idea. She'd had on an oversized T-shirt over her bathing suit, with Cookie Monster on it, the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of raggedy khaki cutoff's—they weren't cut very high and trashy, though, just right at knee level. So she'd been pretty well covered up—not tented-over like an Arab woman, but pretty regularly dressed. Not showing any more skin than she normally would—her arms, her calves, and her face, obviously. And then feeling the difference it made, taking those coverings off and letting the summer sun blast her all over—suddenly she understood why desert people completely covered up the way they did, head to goddamn toe. Then a good breeze got going, off the water. That made things quite it a bit better. She was still getting sun-blasted, but it stopped bothering her. The good tickly feeling of the breeze took her mind off it. 

Anyhow in a minute or less she was able to get the essential job done without panicking and freezing up, which was good. Victory! The regular clothes went and then, without pause, she peeled off the bathing suit beneath them and Yay! She'd done it! Okay then ... only in the final analysis it wasn't the heart-thumping mind-blowing erotic sensory experience she had wanted it to be. That wasn't good. That was a severe disappointment. 

She was standing there on a beach in broad daylight with gobs of people all around, even if the majority were pretty distant—but except for that startling pounding deathray blast of the sun, mixed with the slight comforting distraction of the wind blowing over her and tickling a tiny bit, and also the fact she was feeling hot gritty sand under her feet instead of carpet or tile, otherwise it was the same as standing undressed in her home, safe and private. There was no horrible panic or embarrassment—which was nice, yes—but there was no electric sexual thrill, either. Not yet, at least. On a scale from one to ten, her arousal level would read about 0.3. She felt about as horny right that second as she had when she undressed the previous night after work, and looked down over herself and decided it was time to trim her toenails and maybe shave her legs, when she showered. 

Things would get better. They'd just got here, after all. The adventure was just starting. It would have been nice if wolves started howling as soon as she slipped her top off, sure ... but this was reality. That was the important thing to keep in mind. This was REALLY HAPPENING. Of course it would be different from her crazy secret fantasies ... because those were just in her imagination and this was actually happening. Duh.

Mia took a hundred years to get finished, and she was shaking and blushing throughout the process—her face and shoulders turned as bright pink as the unicorns on her beach towel. And she didn't take her bikini bottoms off. She only went as far as topless. Had to be said, though, she had a pretty impressive rack, whether she realized it or not. More impressive than or Ellie's or Addy's, and theirs were both pretty durn good. Mia was way better endowed in the torso than Ellie had ever realized—the silly girl's typical choice of clothing had kept the truth hidden all this time until today. Weird thing to discover like this. Mia also put on an enormous pair of mirrored sunglasses, to hide behind. Then she laid on her towel face down, and immediately started reading a book. It was another one of the freaking bullshit Christian novels she always read, when she wasn't reading something for school, with a misty-eyed pioneer girl on the cover like they all seemed to have. Trusting Mercy, it was called. The last one, if Ellie remembered right, was Heaven's Bounty, or maybe it was Bounty's Heaven. 

Jesus. That was all you could say. Jesus. But then she always felt guilty when she made fun of them. Mia always got such a radiant expression when she read the damn things. A glow of God-light. It was silly and it was dumb, but it also made you feel like a huge vile jerk for mocking her. 

She wasn't as pale as Ellie, which wasn't fair. Ellie was counting on her being ghostly white, exactly the same as she herself always was—but Mia must have been tanning, somewhere, in preparation. Big cheater. 

Ellie couldn't actually tan, neither naturally nor artificially. Her skin didn't work that way. All she could do pretty much was roast pink. Her mom had always told her sun was really bad for her and she should keep covered up as much as possible. Wouldn't let her go outside without a big brimmed hat on and with sunscreen slathered all over her. This was why nowadays Ellie loathed hats like that, and sunscreen. She actually didn't believe in sunscreen anymore. The whole business seemed like a racket to her. She hated the way it smelled—and even the "non-scented" kind had a stink of its own—and it never seemed to work worth a fuck anyhow, no matter how much you used and how greasy it made you. She would always still roast pink and then peel all over. She had learned to accept this. But it was never the sunscreen's fault, supposedly—everybody always just said "You didn't put enough on." Or you didn't buy the strong enough kind. Or—her favorite—you stayed out too long. If you couldn't stay outside with the stuff on, what was the point? None of the bottles had a time limit listed on the back. Not yet, at least. "Good for ten minutes only," they should say. Or five, more like. 

It was like hand lotion, or chapstick. Same racket, same bullshit. The stuff got you hooked. You used a little bit one time, and then suddenly you needed it all the time or your skin turned gray and cracked all over and shredded off you. Like your skin couldn't survive without the shit ever again. 

Of course feeling the sun like she was today—this killer robot deathray blammo—she was having some second thoughts about the stuff. If there was ever a day and a setting that could cause her position to reverse, this was the time and this was the place. But no. Fuck it, she told herself. It was too late anyway. The damage was already done. She'd got fried the first two seconds, soon as she pulled her shirt off. Tomorrow she'd look like Freddy fucking Krueger—no doubt about it—but that was tomorrow. For now, she wouldn't worry about it. She knew sunscreen wouldn't save her—even if she'd slathered the shit all over herself back home before they started out, like you were supposed to. It had never once done her any good any other time. When she went to a beach, she got burned. Every single time since she was a freaking toddler. Fact of life. So do your worst, Mister Sunshine. She wasn't gonna give two shits. 

Addy took even longer to get naked than Mia, but only 'cause she didn't start until Mia was done. Instead she spent ten minutes fiddling with her phone and cussing at it—she couldn't find a playlist she'd just made. Probably hadn't saved it right. And then finally she flung it down on her towel and whipped her shirt off, and her skirt—two quick jerks. She'd had a sleeveless blouse with its bottom half unbuttoned and the tails tied up high to show off her belly, and the glittery piercing she had in it, with little beads or something dangling out of it. (How could anyone stand a thing like that? You know they always got caught on stuff, like every time you brushed against something. Twice Ellie saw Addy snag herself on the living room curtains when she was pulling them open, and once on a dish towel in the kitchen while she was doing dishes. Judging from how bad she squealed and swore, it really hurt when anything jerked like that on your belly piercing. Crazy nonsense.) As Ellie had suspected, she hadn't bothered with a swimsuit top underneath the blouse. But she was wearing a thong under her skirt and she didn't remove it. 

That meant only Ellie had got all the way naked. Addy also had a black ballcap she kept on, with her hair pulled through the opening in the back over the strap, and then from her bag she produced a pair of aviator sunglasses that matched Mia's. Huge fucking lenses, like all the style-dogs wore in the 80's. Were they coming back in fashion again, all the sudden? She hadn't noticed before. 

Ellie wanted a pair of her own. But she never had any luck with sunglasses. Whenever she bought a pair, she broke them or lost them within two days, every single time. 

Mia's towel was in the middle, with Addy on the left and Ellie to the right. Addy sat down on her towel but didn't lay flat. She supported herself with her hands behind her, and bent one knee up a little—striking a pretty classic, pretty goddamn cliché beach pose, like you saw on postcards and crap. 

Ellie saw she had a new tattoo on her stomach— a tiny red frog under her belly button. It probably wasn't real. One of the stupid stick-on ones. She also noticed she was wearing a couple tiny silver rings on her toes. She wondered how it felt, wearing rings like that. They looked kind of pretty, but she thought that would bug her, having to feel the rings on her toes like that all day, like crud was stuck between them. She probably wouldn't be able to stand it. She was always really ticklish between her toes. And they would probably give her blisters, anyway. 

Now Ellie had to decide if she was gonna sit like that, the same as Addy, posing herself like a cheesedick, or lay back flat, or go tummy down like Mia, the fucking coward. Also she had to decide whether or not she should pull her bottoms back on, since neither of her friends had dropped theirs. She wanted to, honestly, and she wanted to lay on her stomach, at least for a little while ... but she resisted both inclinations. If she laid down like Mia, she'd never get up again until they decided to go home. And if she put her bottoms back on, she would have officially chickened out. She'd only taken them off a minute ago. The fact her friends hadn't gone that far with her—like she thought they would, like they said they would—shouldn't hold her back. She mustn't let them spoil this for her. 

She decided not to sit or lay down at all. Not just yet. Better to keep in motion ... and to get away on her own for a bit. Her roommates were supposed to make this easier for her, but instead they were making it more difficult. Instead of pushing her forward, they were already dragging her back. 

Hell with both of them. 

"I'm gonna explore a little," she announced. She slipped her feet back into her flipflops, but then changed her mind and stepped right back out of them. "And maybe swim some. Back in a few, dearies." 

"You put enough sunscreen on?" Addy asked, like her mom. 

"I'm good," Ellie told her. And then she strode away toward the surf. It was hard not to run. She didn't want to run. She wanted to walk along at a steady, even pace, like she was perfectly comfortable and confident.

The sun—pushing against it was like pushing against a wind. There was still wind blowing straight in her face now, from off the water—did wind ever go the other way, out to sea, along a coastline? If it had she'd never felt it. But the wind here wasn't strong enough to put up any resistance. The sun, though, it did. She closed her eyes and it really felt like a hand pressing over her face, trying to drive her back or topple her over on her back on the sand—like a big leather catcher's mitt, trying to smother her. And not just on her face. The air—the space she was moving through felt thick, gooey. Dragging on her limbs. This wasn't the wind—the wind was separate. And probably it wasn't all just the sunlight and the heat. It was vapor in the air—humidity. But she liked thinking of it more as the sunlight itself. Pushing against the rays as they were blazing at her and blasting her, trying to disintegrate her ... That was more dramatic, imagining it that way. Something about that idea turned her on, a little. The challenge of it. 

And it wasn't just the sun's rays that were blazing at her and blasting her skin—trying to push her over. It was all the eyes—everybody looking at her, if anybody was. 

They would, even if they weren't now. They would when she got closer. When she turned away from the water, like she knew she was going to do, any second now, and walked that direction along the shoreline ... towards the crowded part of the beach. The crowds where all the guys were. 

They'd all look at her and take her measure. And she knew she'd be able to feel it. All those gazes sweeping over her, up and down. Blazing rays from their eyes, scanning her. Blasting over her, all at once. Every exposed bit of her. Hundreds of them. Holy God. 

And how many of them would dig what they saw? Not all of them would ... lots of them would think she was slightly too scrawny or not scrawny enough. They would definitely think she was too pale. They wouldn't think her boobs were good enough, or they wouldn't like her hair the way it was cut, or they wouldn't like all her freckles. They'd look and then they'd look away. Maybe they'd think something mean, or maybe they wouldn't bother thinking anything. 

But not all of them would dislike her. Some would dig her. At least a few, right? Some of them would go, "Hey, look at her." Some of them would go, "Wow." And then they'd think about doing things with her, all sorts of things. Good things and bad things, and bad things that were good. 

Some of it might be scary. Some of it you wouldn't want to know about. 

But she wouldn't fixate on that part of it. She wouldn't let that happen, not today. She was goddamn determined to enjoy this. She would not let herself get shy or get queasy. She would not cringe or shiver when people looked at her. She would not flip out and run away. 

She would act like she'd done this a million times already. Like she was supercool and this kind of thing was no big deal at all. 

She made a solemn vow, inside her head. Like a heroine would do in a movie, with a big flourish in the accompanying music to heighten the moment. Trumpets and drums. 

She would fake out everyone, or die trying. 

4.

At first she was gonna charge straight into the water for a thorough rinse, but then she changed her mind at the last second (or pretended to change her mind, like deep down she hadn't been intending to do this all along), and veered left, right at the edge of the water where the rollers hit, the tideline or whatever you called it. Then she was heading toward the bluff, north—and the greater concentration of people. 

She marched along, stately as a princess, in the surf—the water rushing back and forth over her feet, up to her ankles. Warmer than she expected it to be, actually. Head held high and shoulders back. She looked at the sky, mostly, the clouds and the birds. Or the top edge of the bluff ahead of her and the pine trees on it, counting them. Or she looked sideways out to sea. She never glanced at any of the people around her once she had moved in front of them. Never turned to her left side at all, landwards, as she strutted by those chattering crowds. At least never directly. Of course she could still sense them all looking at her. Some of them. Lots of them. Maybe most of them—most of the boys, anyhow, as she approached and then cruised casually past on her way ... as if she was completely careless and oblivious to their scrutiny. 




The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 01



In her head, she was sort of narrating to herself, like Snoopy does in the comics. Exactly like Snoopy, in fact. "Here's the World War One Flying Ace, walking along a nude beach in front of a zillion college boys ..." Except she wasn't actually a WWI Flying Ace, even in her imagination. What she should be saying was "Here's the Idiot College Girl ..." Or better yet "Here's the Horny College Girl ..." 

-- "Here's the Idiot Horny College Girl, testing her courage, testing herself ... Here's the Idiot Horny College Girl, walking along a nude beach—walking in the nude herself, in point of fact, along a beach in front of a zillion college boys ... a zillion idiot horny college boys, no doubt. Which are also all nude, what with this being a nude beach. They're all the same as her, in both key ways—both the nudity and the horniness—the only big difference between them being that they're boys and she's a girl. A crucial difference, though, ha ha. 

-- "Here she goes, just to see what it feels like. To see if she's brave enough and wild enough. And moreover, if that's the right word, to see if she likes it. And to see if they like her, all these horny idiot boys, when she shows herself off, displaying herself as brazenly as possible before them. Is she just making a fool of herself? Or is she turning all these fuckers on?" -- 

There's another little voice in her head, talking at the same time as the Snoopy one. And actually it's not in her head. It feels more like it's down inside her stomach. The Snoopy voice is in her head while this other one is in her guts. In fact it's like her guts themselves are talking. And what they're saying is: JesusJesusOhJesusJesus—I'm naked!—I'm naked!—JesusOhJesus—I'm naked outdoors! All naked! NAKED! In front of a zillion guys! A zillion guys! They're seeing me SEEING ME! JesusOhJesusOh! They can all me see! I'm letting a zillion guys see me all naked! 

Pretty schizo, isn't it? Mos def. Nobody could tell from her expression that anything like that was going on inside her. From her serene face, and from the easy even rhythm of her stride, everybody must think she's perfectly calm. Perfectly at peace with herself and her surroundings. Just enjoying herself and the whole scene, the glorious summer weather ... Of course really it's like she's running a gauntlet. Charging across a battlefield, into machine gun fire ... That's what it feels like, inside, under the surface. An endurance test. She's fixed a slight smile on her face—well, more like a lopsided grin. But inside her mouth, behind those grinning lips, she's grinding her teeth so hard she's probably gonna crack a molar or maybe even pop the hinges of her jaw.

And yet she's loving this. Even though it's making her sick, she's loving every second—it's just like a roller coaster or a real good horror movie. Every step she takes, she feels more proud of herself and more powerful. In her guts she's tortured and freaking out, but she's not letting it stop her and she's not letting it show. This is a victory. A triumph, in fact! She's faking out the whole world, just like she decided she would. She's really doing this without falling on her face! As if it's really no big deal. It's proven now—she was so scared she wouldn't be brave enough or strong enough. But now she knows she is! She is! She is! She is! 

So now it's getting easier, moment by moment, step by step. Her stomach's beginning to calm down, and her bladder too. The performance, the pose—it's becoming more and more real. Soon it won't be an act any longer. Soon maybe she'll really feel the peace and relaxation she's counterfeiting 

The lie will turn true. 

Except the actual business of walking is trickier than she'd anticipated, because of the waves coming in. They're deeper and hit harder for some reason, along this part of the beach, than where she started. There seem to be more of them now, too. Really clobbering her ankles when they smash in, and then when they recede, they try to pull her out with them. It's like tentacles squeezing on her feet and dragging on her, trying to topple her over and then haul her away under the surface to be drowned and devoured by monsters. She should maybe move up higher a little, above the tideline rather than wading like this down right through it, like she started out. But that feels cowardly. Like she's too wimpy to hold her own against the waves. It's not like the water is knee-deep. When the waves whoosh over and back, the foamy surf barely covers her feet. Yet it still exerts quite an impressive pull—stronger somehow when it's sliding back than when each waves crashes inward. And the pull outward seems to last a tiny bit longer, as well. She wonders why that is, if it's not just her imagination. And the soaked sand itself keeps sucking downward on her feet like quicksand (which is pretty much what it is, only just a few inches deep), almost as strong as the sideways pressure from each wave, first pushing inland and then the slightly tougher and more drawn-out dragging the other direction, outward ... 

Ha ha! It gets tougher and tougher to keep walking forward physically just as it's getting easier mentally and emotionally ... Perfect! 

Few funny things she's noticing, about the people ... even without letting her eyes look directly at anybody, some odd stuff still jumps out at her from the surrounding scene. Maybe they're not very odd, when you consider them. They're disappointing, though. Because they indicate very clear to you that this place isn't as wild and wacky as its reputation. These college kids seem pretty tame, all in all. 

First what jumps out at her, now she's on the more crowded half of the beach, is major gender segregation going on. It's as bad as a kindergarten playground. You see big packs of boys, and little packs of girls (there are lots, lots more boys here, than girls) but only a few mixed groups. Like one in ten, if that. The boy groups are clustered together, in five or six spots, and the girl groups are clustered together in three or four other spots, but they all keep well away from each other. And the few little mixed groups that are here keep well away from everybody else. They're mostly all up toward the top part of the beach, for some reason. The very top edge, in the shade of the trees. But you don't see any couples out here on their own. Of course the mixed groups are probably made up of couples in a group, doubled or tripled-up together. But there don't seem to be any single pairs at all anywhere on the whole beach. 

And yeah, thinking it though, Ellie knows if she had a steady boyfriend, the last thing they'd do together, just the two of them, would be to come to a place like this. It would be a different thing if there was a beach they could be together on their own. But here with big crowds like these... no, for various reasons, it wouldn't feel right. Though she can more or less imagine coming out with another couple, maybe, or a couple couples, like some of the groups have ... Somehow that would be less awkward, at least in certain respects. In other respects, it would be more awkward. But it would take sex out of the equation, wouldn't it? Mostly it would. At least overtly. It would make it into Addy's hippydippy-feelgood-type thing, instead of a kinky thing—all about just openness and togetherness in harmonious nature and blah blah blah. Or that's what everybody would pretend while they were here together.

Second funny thing she notices is the out-numbered girl groups all look older than the boys. Not a hundred years older, but on the grad student level, or at least seniors ... while most of the boys are probably freshmen. Meaning they don't look any different to Ellie than high school guys. Not too pleasing. It's their haircuts, and their builds. And the way they stand and the way they talk. Most of the girl groups, they all look gay to her. Not all of them, but most of them. Again, it's their haircuts and their builds, the way they stand and the way they talk. 

The boys all ignore them and they all ignore the boys. It's pretty weird and sad. Like they're both invisible to each other. 

And maybe it's her imagination—maybe she's fooling herself—but it feels like both genders look her over the same sort of way when she walks in front of them. Not just looking but studying—measuring—calculating. Looks that cut you up and sift and weigh you. 

She doesn't mind the scrutiny. She doesn't mind what it indicates. She knows Addy would or would claim to. Mia would run screeching for a Bible like she was being pursued by slavering vampires. But Ellie has invited those looks. She did it deliberately. 

Except she brought the heat on a good few degrees stronger than she intended. She wanted to get checked out, yes. Definitely. But the principal goal was to get boys excited. Older lesbian girls hadn't really figured into her fantasy—still, she doesn't mind their regard, nor their consideration in those terms, if they want to give it to her. She can handle it and even get a bit of an extra buzz out of it, too. She doesn't mind the thought of inspiring fantasies in others that would never inspire a fantasy for her. Nor does she mind the thought of inspiring fantasies in others where they have her doing things she would never actually want to do. That idea doesn't gross her out, the way it would some people, or maybe most people. 

But though she wanted attention, she didn't intend to be the sole center of everybody's attention. And that's what she seems to have become. Hopefully it's not really that bad. Hopefully it's just her imagination. But it doesn't feel like it is. Feels like every single person on the entire beach is giving her the Look, and they ain't being subtle about it. The Looks are really chewing her over with hungry, greedy eyes. Killer robot laser beams, just like she expected. 

And best/worst of all, she is their sole target. Nobody else is getting these Looks, far as she can tell. Nobody! 

To a point, that's actually kind of awesome. She's the star of the show! This is her movie! It was never like that even in her fantasies. She always imagined herself surrounded by all sorts of other crazy stuff. A whole bunch of wild encounters all going on at the same time—everybody feeding off everyone else's energy. Not exactly an all-out orgy but orgy-ish. Orgy-istic. More of an orgy than, say, a baseball game or a barbecue or a tea party or any other damn thing. Instead the whole world here is focused on her, all alone. It's getting overwhelming. 

Mostly this fact, no doubt, is a direct consequence of the third funny-and-unexpected thing she's noticed since she started her walk ... She seems to be the one and only person out here that's actually fully all-out goddamn naked. 

This was supposed to be a nude beach, but nobody except her has got nude! She is the only fucking one. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Most of the girls hadn't even taken their tops off. Some had, here and there, but not many. And as for the fucking guys, she didn't see a single bare bottom or swinging willy. Hell, most of them weren't even in real bathing suits, just regular shorts or cutoffs. 

Hardly anybody was in the water. People didn't come here to swim. She saw just a couple heads, bobbing around out there—couldn't tell if they were girls or guys—and a few surfers, much further out ... they all seemed to be in rubber suits. But the water wasn't cold at all! What the fuck? Maybe the temperature changed when you got out that distance. More likely she figured it was just a fashion thing—you weren't a proper surfer if you didn't dress in the costume.

Ellie felt conned. She wanted to see naked men. She wanted to see hot tight bare asses and dangling jiggly silly cocks. She wanted to see erections. She wanted to be the cause of them. She wanted to see boys get embarrassed and try to hide the things when she triggered the reaction. She had been specifically looking forward to that. 

It's considered a fact that most women don't like to look at dicks. The majority of normal ordinary modern women are supposed to be indifferent to them or think they're gross. It's part of the whole theory/mythology of women not caring about sex, except as a currency for romantic love. The Mars vs Venus bullshit. So many people still buy into that type thinking. They make themselves. They think they have to. They're scared it means they're perverts if they don't fit the fucking molds. 

It's all lies. All of that, believe it or not. Yes, all. 

Ellie liked dicks, dammit. She thought they were neat looking. She thought they looked real cute when they were little, and real cool when they got big. She found them fascinating. How they worked and what they did. 

Was that so wrong? Was that crazy? Seriously, other girls had told her that made her a freak. Her best friend, back in high school: "Normal girls just aren't wired like that. It's just the way things are. Don't feel crappy about being strange that way—it's not exactly a major psychological problem. But it does make you unusual. Like my aunt, she's over six feet tall. And my cousin was born cross-eyed. Everybody has to deal with some sort of funny quirk." Several years had passed, but Ellie still hadn't got her head around that perspective. Probably she never would. She just couldn't buy into it, that entire way of thinking. That whole definition of "normal" for a girl. 

She was every bit as interested in dicks as men were in pussies (and in tits). And in asses too. Men's asses got her steamed up the same way women's asses steamed up men. And she knew in her heart that the same was true of most every other girl across the planet (the straight ones, anyhow). But her whole life, she'd never known another girl that would admit that shit out loud. Hell, they didn't let themselves admit it inside their own heads. Like the skies would fall if the secret got out. 

Men at their worst and their stupidest and their most dishonest didn't drive her to despair half as bad as her own gender did. No—not a quarter as bad. Seriously.

She got more and more pissed, the longer she thought about this. Pissed at all these boys for being too shy and too chickenshit, and pissed because she knew if they all suddenly did whip off their shorts like she wanted, Addy and Mia and every other straight girl besides her on this beach (the few that there were) would all make the same disgusted faces and go "Eww, yuck!" and then turn up their snotty noses. Most of them would really think they meant it, too. The airhead bitches wouldn't even realize they were bullshitting themselves. 

The world sucks. It shouldn't—it doesn't have to—but it does.

5.

And that was when she saw the ice cream van.

It was clearly not exactly an official brand-name operation. This wasn't like the trucks that drive through neighborhoods, playing the tingly psycho music-box music to summon little screeching children. This was just some fat hippy guys with an old van, selling store-bought shit out of a few coolers. Popsicles and ice-cream sandwiches, out of boxes. Cones, too, but pre-scooped, so to speak, and sealed in individual wrappers. The van had eagles and coyotes painted on the sides. Airbrushed, or however they did it. Pretty tacky and cheesy-looking, but slick, all the same. Professionally done. Like something you might see on a seventies album cover. Maybe a van like that is white trash, in most people's opinion nowadays. For Ellie that sort of stuff retains a certain classical cheesedick charm. It takes a kind of iconoclastic ballsyness to drive around a van like that in the modern world. 

If she'd had any money on her, she totally would have gone over there and bought something off them. Seeing them handing stuff out to people gave her an enormous craving all the sudden. Dammit. She thought about running back to the others to dig out a couple bucks from the pocket of her shorts. 

But then she didn't have to. Had a bit of lucky break, instead. Except if she'd been given the choice ahead of time, she probably would have passed on this. 

If only it had been somebody else ... 

"Ellie! Hey!" 

God. It was a guy she knew, running up to her. A guy named Chris. The boyfriend of a friend. Well, not really a real friend. An acquaintance, from school. Brittany. 

Shit. Someone she knew. And someone who knew her, as well as lots of other people that knew her. Who he would talk to. And tell all about this. 

Just great. And this guy, of all guys. Of all the guys it could have been, it's gotta end up this one. Well, of course. Sure. Wonderful.

See, Ellie's always had a bit of thing for Chris. Not real bad, but she definitely dug him. She would have tried to get to know him more, if he wasn't off the market. And now this guy she secretly digs is getting to see her stark naked in the blazing summer sun. 

This possibility had never occurred to her. Funny but yeah—it never crossed her mind. That she might run across somebody she knew in this place, in these particular circumstances. Sure, her roommates were with her already. That wasn't the same thing at all. Not a bit. Of course she knew people would be here from her school—most of these people were schoolmates. Yet only in the most general sense. Never once crossed her mind any of them would end up being people she actually knew by name. She went to a fucking big damn school, after all. Everybody didn't take the same classes. Every day you saw a hundred new faces—a hundred faces you might never see again. 

"Um," Chris said, "How's it going?"

"Oh, you know," she said. As if that meant anything at all. Jesus.

It would have helped considerably if he had been unclothed as much as she was. That would have made this exchange not just less unnerving but much more rewarding, as well. That would have made things exciting and fun—or at least she liked to believe it would have been like that. But no—he had shorts on, like all the other fucking stupid guys out here today. He got to see all she had—she didn't get to see nothing. Except his chest. And it was a pretty good chest, okay. But dammit! She'd seen it before. She wanted to see something else, something more, something new. She wanted to see shit you didn't normally get to see. 

She wasn't gonna get to see nothing. All these boys were absolute chickenshit. So completely unfair. 

"You by yourself?" he asked.

"No, Mia and Addy are over there." When she pointed them out, she was surprised to see how tiny they looked—she'd come much further than she thought. "Is Brittany here?" 

"Brittany is in Belgium," he said.

"Belgium?" 

"It's just for the weekend." Shit. She hoped the disappointment wasn't too obvious on her face. "Some kind of research thing," he explained. Brittany was into economics—not your basic business degree stuff but on a fancier flashier international level. "She explained what it was all gonna be about, but like usual it flew right over my head." 

"Nobody ever understands what she does." 

"Yeah. I came with my roommates, same as you. We're up that way, by those rocks. See them?" 

She could. Chris lived with an engaged couple—Dudley and Bea. Ellie couldn't imagine surviving in such conditions—especially since neither of them was ever very nice to each other or to anybody else. But Chris had known them all his life. Said they were more like siblings than friends. Weird that a guy like him could be so close to people like that. He was always so affable with pretty much everyone, while they both seemed to hate the entire planet and themselves just as bad. Even now, when she looked at them, they seemed to be glaring at her with sour frowns. Frowning at her nudity. They were a good distance away—not as far as Mia and Addy, but still a good way off—but she could still see the judgment in their looks. With expressions like that, they should put on matching pilgrim hats. 




The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 02



They were on the freeway but not moving. A big tanker truck had turned over ahead of them. Everybody was going to be sitting gridlocked for quite a while, and the best part was it mostly all the very same cars full of college kids that had just been stuck on the access road to Shambels ten minutes earlier. This new jam was gonna last much longer. You could see a helicopter was circling the wreck with a searchlight but police and ambulances hadn't got to it yet. 

Rain was hammering them like it was coming from firehouses, with near constant lightning and thunder like a Frankenstein movie. 

Ellie wished she was sitting up in the front of the van next to the charming smiley guy. But another dude was in that seat. She was in the back with everyone else. No chairs back there, you had to sit on the floor. They were drinking beers out of a cooler but the beers weren't cool anymore, they'd been sitting in there too long or somebody hadn't closed the lid tight enough. 

Joints were getting passed around too. Ellie didn't normally go for that sort of thing but in the present circumstances she didn't refuse. She couldn't talk to any of these people. It wasn't only the language they used. They were blasting music, some kind of foreign rap. It sounded pretty awful. She was in no position to complain with the favor they'd done picking her up. 

The girl with the eyepatch sitting next to her, she was also sitting on the lap of another guy. Ellie imagined that guy must be her boyfriend. Except another guy on the other side of the van was playing with the girl's bare feet. Massaging them, and putting some intense concentration into it. You would think the boyfriend would have objected to that, if he was in fact her boyfriend. 

Then the guy on the far side sitting next to the foot massager reached for Ellie's feet with a questioning expression, offering to massage them the same way. 

She cringed. Ellie shook her head, hugging her legs in front of her to pull her feet as far from that side of the van as possible. The guy made a pouty face at her. Eyepatch girl laughed mean. 

"My feet are too sandy," Ellie said. It was a stupid thing to say and he couldn't understand her anyway. She couldn't think of anything better. It didn't matter. 

Ellie was much too ticklish. Some careful guys had managed to give her nice foot massages without tickling her in the process but it was rare. The guy had to be special. Gifted. A foot massage like that actually would have felt real good. Too good, though, if it didn't end up tickling her to death. That kind of thing—sensual massages, applied properly—could real easily rev Ellie's motor out of control. She knew this from experience. If she let something like that get going, trying to act casual and laid back like it was no big deal, pretty soon she'd lose her shit and start whimpering or moaning like an animal in heat. And with no clothes to hold them in, she'd stink up the whole van with her seeping pussy juices. No joke. 

She was revved up in that way quite bad enough already, just from sitting naked with these five sweaty strangers crammed around her. Seven when you counted the two guys sitting up front. That single plain inescapable fact was powerful enough in itself to have her breathless and teetering on the extreme outer giddy edge of self-control and rational thought. 

She had Chris's shirt still but since it was transparent from being soaking wet and didn't have any buttons on it to hold the front closed, it didn't make her feel less naked. Maybe more naked, instead. Although she didn't remove the thing, useless or not, to find out if that was literally true. 

Now the other girl in the group had started making out with the guy that had wanted to massage Ellie's feet. Ellie wished she would stop. She didn't want to have to watch that kind of thing right in front of her. Especially since they appeared to be enjoying themselves a great deal. It was hard to tell because of the music, but she thought she heard some moans. She couldn't tell if it was the girl doing it or the guy. 

It was hotter in her opinion if it had been the guy making that kind of sound. 

Ellie found she was having trouble sitting still. Her butt was itching. It wasn't only her butt. Her crotch felt swollen and oily and inside it was starting to burn. 

Eyepatch girl offered her some pink pills from a medicine bottle. The bottle wasn't labelled and neither were the pills. 

"What are they?" she asked. 

"Ez fine, ez fine," said the girl. Seemed she could speak some approximation of English after all, when it suited her. "No bigga deal." She gulped down three herself, to demonstrate. 

Ellie accepted two, washing them down with beer. 

In her head: Why the fuck did I just do that? That was a really stupid thing to do. 

In the future when she looked back on these events, that was her last clear memory for a while ... mentally berating herself for taking those mysterious pills. Then there is a gap. She isn't sure how long the gap lasts. 

She had a dream, and towards the end of it she realized she was dreaming but didn't immediately wake up when she figured that out. That almost never happened to her. She was not able to take control of the events in the dream, however, like some people say they can do. For her it was like watching a movie, except she starred in it, and it was all filmed looking out through her eyes. 

For a while she was riding on a flying shark through a shopping mall that was also a zoo. A guy in a motorcycle helmet appeared in front of her, and she rode behind him with her arms and legs around him, clinging to him as hard as she could as they flew faster and faster. She was naked. She was also very horny. The shark stopped being a shark and became a motorcycle. The guy in the helmet was Chris. 

And then suddenly they were fucking. Except there were two of them. He had a twin brother she never met before. She was having sex with both of them. She sucked one's cock while the other pounded her doggy-style. Actually, it was in "ironing board." She was almost flat on her stomach. Except for her head, which the other guy was holding up by her chin so she could blow him. She wondered if he was Chris or his brother. It was hard to breathe. Her nose was running and her eyes were watering. Yet she was enjoying herself. She loved the look of pleasure on Chris's face, if it was really Chris. And maybe it didn't matter. It spurred her on. She wanted to do a really good job sucking his cock. She wanted to suck it better than any other girl ever did. She wasn't sure exactly how to go about that, so she tried lots of different things with her tongue and her lips and her teeth. Watching his expression carefully the whole time, to see what worked and what didn't. She wanted to hear him moan her name, but he never let himself make a sound. That got more and more frustrating. It made her whimper. "Urruuhh. Urrmhh." 

Then she heard a girl talking in a foreign language and another girl laughed. This was what woke Ellie up. Except the sex didn't stop. There was still a big hard cock in her mouth and another big cock pounding inside her pussy from behind and above her, because she was stretched flat on her belly. 

She didn't have Chris's shirt anymore. She tried to raise herself up. The man fucking her did not allow this, and he started fucking her much harder than before. He'd already been fucking her pretty damn hard to begin with. Her muffled whimpers changed to muffled yelps. "Ahhaahnn! Uhhnuuh!" 

She looked up at the guy she was blowing and of course it wasn't Chris. It was the foreign guy that had offered her a foot massage. Now instead of that he was choking her with his cock. It wasn't fair.

She'd been enjoying herself so much before. She'd been loving this dick. Both of them, to be honest. 

He came in her mouth, fondly stroking her hair and the edges of her ears. She didn't swallow his come. She spat it out when he removed his cock. Or she was going to except suddenly she coughed instead. The jizz all ended up on her chin and neck. 

She looked over her shoulder to see who was fucking her. It was the guy that eyepatch girl had been sitting on. Why wasn't he fucking her then? Why was the cock eyepatch girl was sitting on and teasing with her ass buried inside Ellie instead? 

Ellie was about to yell at him to stop and get off of her, but then she realized how good he felt. The fucking had felt wonderful in the dream, and in reality it felt the same, even though it wasn't the person she wanted it to be who was doing it. 

If she didn't make him stop right now she was going to have an orgasm. She had to make him stop ...

She didn't. She opened her mouth but all she yelled was "Oh you—You!" You what? She couldn't think of anything else to say. She couldn't think of anything else at all, because now she was coming ... "Ohh ooh oohhoohhuuuhh!"

The man came pretty much the same moment she did. A little of it went inside her; he pulled out and shot the majority on her butt. He covered both cheeks with the splatter. He cheeks clenched and shivered under the barrage. 

Everyone else in the van cheered him on as this happened. 

Ellie took notice of the two girls after this. Eyepatch girl was fucking the guy that massaged her feet. It had been a smart ploy, looked like—he had won her from the other guy's lap with his enticing erotic caresses. Not that the other guy was left dangling, it seemed. Eyepatch girl was doing him in reverse cowgirl, to use the porno terminology. So she could watch Ellie getting railed while she was working. The other girl wasn't watching Ellie because she was too busy blowing another dude whose presence confused Ellie for a second because she didn't remember where he came from. Then she figured it out—he had been in the front passenger seat beforehand. 

Where was the smiling guy, who had been driving? The one she liked best of the whole bunch. 

As if she summoned him with her thoughts, he grabbed her shoulders from her other side and rolled her over on her back. Then, before she knew what was happening, he had lifted both her legs up and propped her heels on his shoulders, and jammed his cock inside her. 

With her legs elevated, he hit her G-spot from the first stroke. Dead on the money. "Guhhhaaahh! Shit!" Then he kept doing it, over and over, fast as he could go. 

It was almost too much, too intense. Almost. Her toes curled next to his ears. She felt sand grind and crackle between them. 

"Wh-what the ... What are we doing? Wait! WAIT! What are you doing to me?" 

God, the stupid shit that gushes out of our mouths when we can't think of anything to say. Like there was any big mystery to the situation. What was happening, Mr. Smiley was fucking the living shit out of her, same as his buddies just had. Also as a matter of interest, he was about to make her come. 

She tried to hold it back when she felt it starting. She didn't want to give the guy the satisfaction. Not immediately. She held her breath and tightened inside. This was a bad move. This had the exact opposite effect than she intended. 

The orgasm exploded in her pussy, flooded her entire being, and shattered her soul. The breath she was holding in burst from her mouth with enough force to blow back Mr. Smiley's bangs. And it came out of her in a funny owl sound: "Hooooooo!" He laughed through his nose, a disgusting snort of glee and triumph. The man had just taken ultimate possession of her, and he knew it. She could see in his eyes that he knew. She was left utterly spent, quivering, boneless ... she felt like a fish on a hook. She felt humbled and overwhelmed. If fish had the brains to recognize the fisherman that caught them, they would get the look on their faces that she was giving Mr. Smiley. 

Then he pulled out of her to come on her belly. All she could do at that point was watch it happen with wide and wondering eyes. 

The first shot he let fly on its own, not touching his cock when it squirted. Only a tiny bit emerged. And it didn't exactly blast out. Instead it oozed from the tip in slow bubbles. She was reminded of the beads that form on the tip of Elmer's glue bottles when you're trying to be careful and not squeeze out too much and make a mess ... In this case, a big sloppy mess was what the guy wanted, like in a porno. He made a frustrated noise, a sort of bark, and then grabbed both her hands by the wrists and made her grip and pump on the cock. That got much more jizz to spew out, and it flew much further every time it did. Though she tried aiming it all downward at her stomach, in his ecstasy he was thrashing his hips too much to maintain control, and the thickest shot managed to reach her face. 

Everybody got a huge laugh out of that. Even her, actually. Or she pretended that she did, playing along, despite her blushes. 

It was a coping strategy. She prevented the event from feeling degrading and traumatic by refusing to acknowledge to herself or any of the group that it was. 

And it had been a hell of an orgasm. Her second in minutes. She was flooded with endorphins or whatever the things are called. Her brain had drugged herself with its own pleasure chemicals. It chilled her out. Spaced her out, more like. That floating, detached, ghostly feeling. Like nothing matters, everything that's happening is happening to somebody else that happens to look like you and you're just watching, enjoying the drama or the comedy as a spectacle. It helped her accept what had happened rather than burst into tears. 

The tears came later when she finally got home, and she was taking a long shower. Neither of her roommates were there. Very mysterious. Maybe they'd gone back to Shambels looking for her. She was grateful to be by herself. Not prepared for that confrontation. She was bound to blow up at them and they'd blow up at her. 

She had to step out of the tub for a minute to throw up. She left the shower running while she puked and then gargled with mouthwash to clear the aftertaste. Then she got back under the water for another ten or twenty minutes and cried some more, getting it all out of her system as much as she could. 

Then in her bed she kept reliving the whole thing, inevitably. She felt queasy again but didn't cry anymore. 

The strangest part was she was turned on again. She couldn't stop rubbing her pussy. 

Ellie had made the wrong choice getting in that van. Things could have gone much worse but it didn't change the fact that they had ... taken advantage of her. She decided she wouldn't use the r word. She probably should—no, she definitely should—but she didn't want to. They hadn't really hurt her. Not like they could have.

She'd come for them. That was the most shameful part. They'd given her the fucking of her life. It would have been the best damn sex she ever had if they'd only have asked permission first. But they didn't. They just took what they wanted, and still, she hadn't hated it like she should have. 

Because of her nakedness, they thought she was some easy piece of trash when they picked her up and so they went ahead and used her like one. And she gave up orgasms for them as if they were right to think what they did. She really had been easy and she really was a piece of trash. No! Giving her orgasms was no justification. They'd got her wasted and they'd ... they'd gangbanged her. They'd fucked her without her consent. That was a crime. Making her come didn't erase the fact. 

Why hadn't they just asked her? What would she have done if they had? Horny as she'd been, she might have turned them down. She probably would have. Like when she wouldn't let the guy massage her feet, even though she'd yearned to feel the pleasure of it. If they offered outright sex, she would have rejected them, too chicken to take them all on. Too ashamed of how slutty and trashy it would look to them, and in her own eyes. Well, now she'd never know. They'd been too evil and too cowardly (or too realistic?) to leave her the choice. 

When she woke up from the drug-induced stupor, and later when the fucking was all done, none of them showed the slightest trace of guilt or worry about any of it. The whole crew of shitbags didn't seem to care or realize they'd done anything wrong. Or at the very least they put on a damn convincing act. Nobody seemed scared she'd call the cops on them or anything like that. Nobody made threats or tried to give her more drugs. It was crazy. It was surreal. 

She started eventually to wonder if she said something while she was out of her mind that led them all to think the gangbang was her idea. 

Didn't matter if she had. They gave her the dope and the alcohol and the other shit, whatever the fuck it was. That put all the responsibility on them. She'd took the stuff willingly, though. But only because they pressured her. Plus she wouldn't have ingested all that crap if she knew what it was going to do to her. Nobody warned her what the pills would do, on top of the other stuff. In fact the eyepatch girl had gone out of her way to make her think the pills were safe. "No biggah deal," were her exact words. "Ez fine, ez fine."

She'd come so hard and huge for the last guy. Couldn't get it out of her mind. She'd been awestruck by it, no denying. The other one had made her come too before he spooged all over her booty. Not as huge but he'd done it. 

She kept remembering the feel of their sticky jizz all over her naked body and it was hot. The horrible memory was hot. Humiliating too obviously but she still wanted to feel that way again. Right now. Because it made her so hot.

I'm such a slut, she thought. I'm such a filthy slut. I really am. I hate it and I love it. It makes me so hot ... 

She fingered herself in her bed, imagining herself back in that van with the three foreign men all fucking her same as they did before, only worse. Harder, dirtier. And all three taking her at once, claiming all her holes. 

And Jesus ... Jesus ... she was going to come again ... Jesus ... she needed this ... she needed this! It would make everything okay again. Wipe out all the bad shit. 

And it did. Worked exactly how she hoped. She forgot everything but the pleasure ... Except only while it lasted. Only five seconds or so. 

Shit. Dammit. Shit. 

Fine then, she'd just have to go again. 

Plus if she kept at this she was bound to tire herself out soon and then she'd be able to sleep.



The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 03



1.

No sooner had they finally reached the freeway than all the traffic stopped dead again. 

"Shit," he said, "Looks like we're gonna be stuck a long time again. I think that's a truck across the road. Can you make it out?"

"Not really. Too many SUV's in the way."

"Yeah, it sucks driving a little car anymore when everybody else has those huge fucking things towering over you. You feel like an insect everybody wants to squash. Anyway, I can see a truck and it's fucked up. They're not supposed to lie on their side like it's doing."

"Yeah, I guess that would be kind of a problem."

"Especially when it's lying crossways like this one is. It's a fucking wall across the entire road." 

"Great, great." Lightning flashed, thunder boomed. "Such gorgeous weather too." The rain sounded like bullets on the roof of Chris's car. 

"Sorry about the radio not working," he said.

"We couldn't hear music over this storm anyhow." 

"I might have a deck of cards in the glove compartment," he suggested. 

"Strip poker?" she said, and then wished she hadn't.

"Hardy har," he said, "I gotta say I wish you'd put the shirt back on. Or why don't you wrap my towel around yourself." 

"Jesus, what's the point? You've seen everything. The shirt's soaked. It turned completely see-through when it got that way, and it's also not comfortable while it's dripping wet. It's icy and it sticks to my skin and it doesn't have frigging buttons!"

"I know, I know. But why don't you use my towel then?

"'Cause it's sopping wet too, and cold and scratchy. And like I said, there's no reason for me to act shy. I went to a nude beach of my own free will. It wasn't like it happened on accident. The damage is done. Now you know what I look like stark naked. I'm fine with it. The world is not coming to an end - well, maybe it is, from the look of this storm. But as for my nakedness, what's the problem?"

"The problem is, if you need me to spell it out for you, it's driving me a little crazy. More than a little. You're hot, Ellie. I'm sure you're aware of the fact, and proud of it too, or you wouldn't have gone to Shambels. But we're stuck in this dinky car together and ... well, shit. I'm getting really turned on. It's embarrassing and uncomfortable. I'm serious. Please be understanding and stop tormenting me, all right?" 

"You really think I'm hot?"

"Christ, of course I do. Gimme a break! Hey! Hey! What are you doing?" 

She'd just reached over and put her hand on his crotch. "Wow," she said, "You weren't kidding around. I can see why you're so uncomfortable. Well, I can feel why, anyway. But let me see it. Take it out and show me."

"No. Ellie, I can't do that. Don't mess with me. You know I have a girlfriend."

"In Belgium. Come on, Chris. You think you're the only one who got turned on? If you do, you're a moron. Take out your cock. Just do it, man. This will pass the time while we're trapped in this horrible traffic jam much, much better than any card game you can think of." 

"Please stop this, Ellie. Please. Ellie, listen! Why won't you listen?"

"Stop me if you want me to stop. You're not stopping me, Chris. You're just sitting there not moving while I unzip your shorts. Here it goes. I don't think you really want me to stop. I think you want me to do this." 

She lunged and put her mouth on his cock. 

"Ellie! Ellie! Oh God. Oh my God. God! Ellie!" 

She took a breather after three or four minutes, peering up at him sideways from his lap. "Are you real close to coming or can you last a while yet?" 

"I don't know. I guess I can last. I think I can last." 

"Good." She clambered the rest of the way on top of him and, after a little fumbling, took him inside her pussy. "Ahhhaaahh there we go. Now you better not come too soon or I'm gonna get really ticked off at you. Keep that in mind, okay?"

"Ellie I don't have a condom on! We can't do this! Please stop!" 

"Just warn me if you get too close. I'll go easy on you. We'll take it nice and slow. Like this. See? Nice and easy. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's what I need. That's perfect. Chris, I've wanted you so long ... and now I finally have you. Finally! I have you right where I always wanted you. All ... the way ... inside ... me ..."

"Ellie! Oh, Ellie! Ellie! Ohhoohh!"

"Just a minute, all right? Just ... one ... more ... minute! There! There it is ... Chris! Your cock is perfect! Huh! Huuhhaah! Huuhhaahhuuuh!" 

"Ellie I'm ... I'm gonna ..."

"I know, I know. It's all right." She pulled off his cock, but remained kneeling on his thighs. She took his cock in both hands to finish him off. "Shoot it on me! You can shoot it all over me! Does your girlfriend let you do this? Do you like my hands? Do you like the way I jerk you off! Who jerks you off better, your girlfriend? Or me?"

"Ellie! God, Ellie! My fucking God! Gaahhuuhhuuhhaahh!"

"Yes, Chris! Oh yes! All over! All you got! Yes! Beautiful! Cover me! Cover me! Cover me all over!" 

2.

It's about an hour later. They've reached her apartment building. She hasn't got out of the car yet. 

"Don't be mad at me, Chris." 

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself. I can't believe I just cheated on my girlfriend. I'm such an asshole. I love her, Ellie. But I went right ahead and cheated on her anyway." 

"It'll be all right. She never has to know."

"I have to tell her the truth eventually." 

"No you don't. Everybody has secrets, Chris. How do you know she isn't having all kinds of crazy secret adventures in Belgium?"

"She wouldn't do that." 

"You don't know for sure. Nobody does. Come on now, everything's gonna be fine. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. That wasn't why I did what I did." 

"I know. I wish things were different but they aren't. And I'll never be able to stop thinking about this. It was ... it was really good, Ellie. I'm so ashamed of myself." 

"Did I fuck you better than your girlfriend does?" 

"It was ... it was incredible." 

"Why are you crying? Stop crying! Why don't you just break up with your stupid girlfriend? Then you can go out with me."

"Is that ... is that what you want? I thought you were only ... only fooling around with me. I mean, I didn't think it meant anything to you." 

"I told you while we were doing it. I've always wanted you."

"Now you had me. But is that gonna be it or do you want more from me?"

"Why don't you gimme a call after you break up with your girlfriend, and then we can see." 

"I can't break up with her over the phone. It has to be face to face. Will you wait for me? She's not gonna get back for a pretty long while." 

"Just call her and get it done, Chris. Don't be a pussy. I'm sure she can find somebody in Belgium to make her feel better. Plus think how dishonest it will be if you wait. She calls you all the time. Think of all the conversations you'll have until she comes back. You wanna lie your ass off that whole entire time?"

"No. Of course not. But ... I just ... God, this is gonna be so hard." 

"Yeah, but soon as it's done ... then you get more of this." She reached over and grabbed his cock again. "So much more! How hard is it now, huh?"

"Ellie, wait. Please don't. I can't ... I can't stand it!"

Jesus, the moment she'd touched it had shot up like a rocket again, straining against his zipper. "Let's take it out again. Lemme see it. Lemme feel it properly." 

"Ellie, if I do that ... I swear I'll go crazy." 

"I know." She unzipped him and fished him out. "I like it when you go crazy. Don't hold back. Don't even try. I won't let you!"

"Ellie! Ellie! Not so hard! Christ! You're doing it so hard! If you don't slow down I'll ... Oh Christ! Ellie!" 

She did slow down, but not until the very last moment. She got the timing perfect. He made it easy for her with all the noise he was making. She could tell exactly when he was about to pop, so she could ease off and prevent him. 

"What are you ... What? Ellie! Don't slow down now! Not now! It's not fair! Ellie!"

"You told me to, didn't you? You just told me."

"I was right about to ... Christ, Ellie! Don't torture me like this! Ellie, do it fast again! Do it fast and hard like before!" 

"Ask me nicely and maybe I will."

"Please, Ellie! Please! Harder! Harder! Please God!"

"You gonna come for me? You wanna come?"

"Yes, Ellie! Please! Please make me come! Please I need it! I need it! Ellie! Ellie!"

She made him drench himself. He hit his own chin with it. Which was maybe the hottest damn thing she'd ever seen. The power trip of making him do that to himself ... It had her panting like a dog. 

He was very embarrassed but she wouldn't let him wipe up the mess. Not until she'd reached orgasm herself. She used his fingers, guiding them with her hand. She used his left hand like a dildo to fuck herself.

"You're mine now," Ellie said, between gasps, "Aren't you? Aren'tcha? Tell me! Say it!"

"I guess I am," he said, "You've taken total control of me. As long as you want me, I guess I belong to you now."

She laughed as she was climaxing, so the exclamations came out as "Ha! Ha! Ha! Haahhuuhhhh ..."



The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 04



1.

Now that the scary storm was full force, she had abandoned Chris's shirt. No point any longer. Useless in this driving rain as tissue paper. 

Actually she didn't completely abandon it. She carried it loosely in one hand, dragging it behind her on the ground like Linus's blanket. No, that was wrong—Linus would never let it drag, would he? She couldn't remember. Regardless, she shouldn't let the shirt drag across the soaked sand, getting it more and more filthy. She still intended at some point to return it to Chris. A reasonable excuse to go see him again. She shouldn't let the thing get destroyed. So she shifted it up over one shoulder. That was much more Linusy, wasn't it?

Ellie had decided she would not bother finding shelter. Like wearing the shirt, it was pointless. A joke. Once the rain hit it was the wrath of God out here, and in two seconds she was as drenched as it was possible for a person to be. She couldn't have got any wetter if she dived in the ocean again. It was a little hard to breathe. Seriously it was pelting down that thick. 

No good spots to huddle anyhow. Maybe the trees might have helped a little, if she dared to leave the access road. But it looked real nasty down in there. On the one side was that uncrossable ditch with broken glass and flattened barbed wire mixed in its weeds. Plus the ditch was bound to be flooded now on top of all that dangerous shit. The other side of the road didn't have a ditch and that didn't matter, it looked no better. The undergrowth was really thick and scary looking. The wall of thorns around Sleepy Beauty's castle. 

Back again on the beach itself there was those clusters of big rocks on the upper slope. She thought about huddling down under one of those if she could find a good one angled the right direction to give her some cover. Only it wasn't likely to work very well, not with a storm as hardcore as this, and since she was already drenched she soon threw away the notion. 

She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be defiant. Instead of cowering like a rabbit under the rocks, she climbed on top of the biggest one. Or at least the biggest one that was climbable. That took her a few different tries. The rocks were smooth and slippery because of the rain. Surprisingly warm to the touch. The stone was still holding on to the heat of the day it absorbed from before while the sun was blasting them. Ellie wondered how long it would take the rain to kill that. 

She spread Chris's shirt out like a towel under her butt. The top of her rock was much lumpier and grittier than the sides. She laid flat on her back and watched the sky. The clouds were moving like one of those time-lapse films. The lightning was awesome. Beautiful, in fact, just so long as none of the bolts ended up nailing her. If it happened, she'd probably never realize. Many worse ways to go. What with not being a religious person (most of the time), Ellie didn't mind the idea of dying without realizing it as opposed to something slow and drawn-out. If everything was gonna go black either way, she'd rather not have to fuss over it as it came. 

This was not to say she wanted lightning to strike her. Far from it. She just wasn't gonna let herself freak out over it anymore. Or about all the other things that had gone wrong today and spoiled her experimental exhibitionist adventure. She was done freaking out and feeling sorry for herself. Now it was time to act like a grownup and deal. She was just gonna lay there perfectly still on top that big fucking rock and let the storm throw whatever it wanted at her nakedness and not let any of it ruin her serenity, no matter what. Just to prove she could. 

Some of the stormclouds thrashing around up there looked like dragons. Like they were fighting with the lightning, or maybe using the lighting to fight each other. Yeah! 

And with storm-dragons flying over her, she was reminded, since she was naked on this rock, of the Greek myth where they try to feed a princess to a sea monster and a hero has to fly over at the last moment and slay it to save her tasty fanny. They used it in a couple movies, though they jiggered with the details like they always do. In the myth the guy has sandals with wings on them; in the movies they had him on a winged horse 'cause that looks much cooler. If you know your myths, that horse really went with another guy in a whole different story. Gets killed by lightning trying to get to heaven. 

What was the princess's name? Was it Persephone? No, she was somebody else. It was a space name. They had named a constellation for her, or a planet, or something like that. In the myth, she gets chained naked to the cliff. She isn't naked in the movies. They weren't bold enough for that. Can't sell lunchboxes to kids if you make that kind of movie. She remembers when she first read the real story, the book was illustrated and the princess wasn't naked in the picture either, though the writing said she was. Well, in fairness it was one of those introductory collections for kids. In museums and in art books she'd seen some paintings and statues where they did it right. Although the girl was always pretty dumpy like they preferred them in those days. So strange (and sad) to look at that type stuff and know it used to get guys excited and now modern guys don't want to look at a girl unless she's pretty much anorexic. Ellie is no better than them; she's had the same standards drilled into her. That's the strangest and saddest part. Ellie's no starving stick figure, not anymore—she used to be back in high school. Nowadays she's still slim enough to count as hot. She'd hate herself if she was as chunky as the princesses in those old artworks. No getting away from it. 

The myth has stuck in her head since childhood. The detail about the nudity. It's only now that she fully recognizes why. It's 'cause the idea, the image, turns her on. It must always have, even before she was mature enough to realize. 

Now she's finally experiencing what it's like. She's the naked princess on the rock, offered as a sacrifice to a monster. Except she's not chained down. And it's a bunch of storm dragons overhead instead of a sea serpent coming from below ... Minor details. The essentials are all checked off. Her solitude, her helplessness. Her nudity, displayed at full stretch for the eyes of the monsters. 

Nobody's coming to rescue this poor princess. Ellie will have to fight the monsters herself. Maybe she'll fail. Maybe they'll carry her off, screaming. They won't eat her, not right away ... there are a ton of other things they will want to do with her first. The monsters will want to play. 

Ellie barely has to touch herself to make herself come. The rain does most of the work. About all she has to do is spread her labia open for it. It's just about the same as holding her pussy against one of those massage jets in a hot tub. Every girl tries that at least once in her life. Ordinary rain wouldn't be coming down hard enough. This ain't ordinary rain. This is God's own personal firehose. She spreads herself for the stream and it drills her to an orgasm in less than ten seconds. 

She pretends it's the stormdragons doing it with their forked tongues, or their magic lightning breath. 

She isn't sure afterward if she screamed or not. She couldn't hear herself over the thunder and the wind and the waves. She probably did, or tried to. It might have been one of those comes that takes away your voice until it's passed. 

A minute or two later, with a bit more manual assistance, she achieves another one. Not quite as much a monster as its predecessor. Darn close, though. 

She falls asleep for a while. Or gets so spaced out she might as well have. Been a long time since an orgasm melted her brains out her ears that much. Like it does for guys practically every time, leaving them stupefied and useless. She's just somehow or other given herself a man's orgasm. Except without the messy spew. And also there was the doubling that occurred. Guys can never get those, at least not with that fast a turnover. 

Ellie's really cracking herself up with these thoughts. She almost falls off the top of the rock from giggling so much. 

Then there were headlights. They didn't shine directly on her, thank God. Nowhere near. She only noticed them as a flash in her peripheral vision, and only a second before they got switched off. Somebody had just pulled around into the parking lot up that way and then turned off their engine. When she sat up for a better look, it turned out to be a cop car sitting there. Actually more of a SUV or a minivan. Kind of thing they can load a bunch of people in the back. A paddy wagon. They probably didn't ever call them that themselves no more. They'd have made up some hi-tech militarized sounding acronym for the modern era. 

She saw two cops get out of the front and go around and open the back doors. They both clambered in and then they didn't come back out. Even weirder, and Holli wasn't a hundred percent sure about this, when the cops walked around the vehicle they both used the same side of it, and it looked like they were holding hands after the one came around from the passenger side. 

Holli pulled Chris's shirt back on. Worthless as it was, it was better than nothing if she was gonna go over there. And she had decided she was. Her stupid roommates were never showing up. Unless she wanted to spend the whole night alone here with nothing to eat, she needed to go to those cops and get them to help her ass. 

This was gonna be embarrassing. Really bad. They'd probably pick on her and give her the third degree. Want to make sure she wasn't high or nuts. She'd have to play on their pity. She would need to make herself seem as pathetic and desperate as possible, so they wouldn't give her too rough a time. Maybe she should tell them she'd been with a guy and he was mean to her. Got too grabby, tried to slap her around, so she'd had to run and hide. That would play better than the truth about her friends just ditching her by mistake or rather because another girl had (more than likely) conned them into it as a cruel prank. 

Police are supposed to help people in need. That's what parents tell you when you're little. When you're lost or whatever, you're supposed to go up and tell them. Their real job is not all just about the guys roving around with their guns racking up parking tickets and murdering black people when they feel like. Whether or not they agree with that idea is, sadly, another discussion. Ellie sympathizes with the shit cops gotta take day after day. She understands how and why this turns the majority of them into fascist douchebags. She knows if she was a cop the same thing would happen to her. But even with that understanding she hates dealing with them and all their bullshit. Understanding and sympathizing with sharks or cockroaches doesn't make them any less scary to face.

Ellie knocked on the open back door of the paddy wagon before she stepped around it to see inside. She didn't want to startle the cops and get her head blown off. "Excuse me," she said, "I—Oh! Oh ..." 

She should have waited longer after her knock. 

The two cops in there turned out to both be ladies. Real tough looking chicks, like you expect with female cops. Both were older than Ellie but not by very much. And they were also a pretty good looking pair. Hard-edged as they seemed, that fact didn't make them ugly. They could have starred in their own action movie or TV series together. 

It would be a pretty lurid one. When Ellie interrupted them, they were in the middle of making out. Actually they had moved beyond that stage. They had most of one another's uniforms off, except for their peaked hats and shiny mirrored sunglasses.

And their gunbelts, Ellie noticed. They still had both those on. 

"Shit, I'm sorry," Ellie sputtered. "I didn't mean ... I didn't know! I'm so sorry! Shit!" 

2. 

Once they got calmed down from their initial shock, and buttoned their shirts back on, one of the cops took the turn of events in much better spirit than the other. She held on to her sense of humor. The other one did not. Actually Ellie doubted she possessed one to start with. 

Ellie told her story over and over—the version she'd come up with where she got stranded in this place because of an abusive jerk trying to molest her. The cops didn't seem to understand what she wanted from them. They were willing to fill out a police report on the guy that had tried to assault her. When she turned that down—since obviously he didn't exist—as an excuse, she made the mistake of saying she didn't know the guy's name to explain why it would be pointless, and the cops jumped all over her for that, 'cause how stupid could she be fooling around with a guy at a nude beach if she didn't know so much as his name? In Ellie's opinion, though she didn't verbalize it, you would never want to know the name of a guy you fooled around with at a nude beach, unless he turned out exceptionally wonderful and you wanted to meet him again in another setting. Not that it was a thing she would have actually done herself. On her craziest day (well, this one) she wasn't that crazy, not really. She wished she'd given the cops a different story or just told the more embarrassing and harder-to-believe truth. 

When the conversation finally worked around to where she could ask them for a ride home, both the women looked at her like she had antennae growing out of her head. The nicer one kept the smile on her face; even so Ellie could still plainly see she thought the request was as loony and out-of-line as her scowling partner did. 

"Have you mistaken us for a taxi service, miss? Did you not recognize the uniforms?"

"Be fair now, hon," the other joked, "We didn't have them on when she first popped up."

Her partner glared at her and then swiveled the glare back on Ellie. As glares go, it was a winner. Made her shrivel up inside exactly like it was intended to. 

"Now please tell me again what it is you would like us to do for you, miss." 

Ellie wasn't sure how to respond. The idea she had to justify her self-evident need for assistance left her gobsmacked. How do you begin with people like this? If they won't or can't see the right thing straight off the bat, they're never fucking gonna. 

"I didn't see anything, you know." As soon as she had said this, she regretted opening her mouth. "And I wouldn't talk about it to anyone if I did. Which I didn't. So you don't have to worry about anything like that." 

Scowling Cop's scowl only worsened. "Just what the fuck exactly is it that you think you didn't see and won't talk about?"

"Nothing! Nothing! I just told you!" 

"Now, now," said Smiling Cop. Talking to her partner, not to Ellie. "It's all good. It's all gonna be fine." 

"I know it is," returned the other, "Because one way or another we are gonna make damn sure." 

"Are you actually threatening me?" said Ellie, "I don't believe this! Jesus! I'm sitting in front of you stark naked! I came to you for help! You're supposed to help people!" 

"You got a mouth on you, little girl," said Scowling Cop, "You should watch how you use it. Especially with police." 

Smiling Cop put her hand on Ellie's shoulder and squeezed. It was that horrible kind of thing that pretends to be comforting and is actually just to assert control over you. "Don't mind her, girl. She's just grouchy. Can you guess why? It's 'cause you interrupted us before she got what she needed. Now I know you didn't mean to do that. But she's not gonna get any nicer unless we give her a reason. Trust me, when she's all wound up like this, there is only one sure way to sweeten her." Then the cop leaned close and whispered in Ellie's ear. "I think you know what I'm suggesting." 

"No. No I don't. Wh-what are you suggesting?"

"Well, think it over. She says she doesn't like your mouth. But I bet if you tried, you could change her mind. You could do that real easy. It wouldn't take long, either. Not when she's this wound-up. Like I said, that's the root of the issue. We just gotta get her to unwind. Now I could do it myself. But I think since you're here—since you're involved—you should fully participate. Then we can all be good friends with no reason to be mad at each other. 'Cause we'll all know we can trust each other. Intimately. You can trust us to take you home safe instead of to jail. And we can trust you not to talk any shit about stuff that nobody would believe anyway. Am I right?" 

Her grip slid from Ellie's shoulder to the back of her neck, and now she started pushing her head toward the other woman, and downward. 

Scowling Cop pressed a fingertip on Ellie's forehead to stop the descent. "You sure this is the best idea?" she asked her partner.

Smiling Cop chortled. "No. But I think it's hot. So why don't you shut up and sit back and unzip your pants again. Let's put this pretty little piece of ass to work down there and see what she can do." 

"Well," said Scowling Cop, "I guess it's less messy than shooting her in the head."

Ellie jerked in the other's grip. "Now, now," said Smiling Cop, "Just shush. She's only kidding. We wouldn't have done nothing like that to you. Just took your naked ass to jail, is all. Write it up like we found drug on you, or that you were hookin'. Would depend how much fuss you tried to make. But none of that is gonna be necessary, is it? And it would have been a crying shame. Such a wasted opportunity. You're one hell of a cute little thing, you know. All naked and panting and dripping wet. And you're randy as hell, aren'tcha? Just the same as us. Of course you are. That's what brought your pretty ass to this place where you could show it off to everybody. You would never have ended up in this situation otherwise, would you?" 

Ellie had never gone down on another girl before. She had kissed a couple girls, on a couple different occasions. She had fondled the breasts of those girls while they had been fondling hers. Pretty stereotypical college stuff, just fooling around at parties. Almost embarrassing in its clichéness. Nothing had progressed further than making out. There had not been much passion in either encounter. Nothing close, in fact; they only happened because of dares during drinking games. 

She had often imagined she would have full-on sex with a girl at some point in her life, if and when the right person came along when she wasn't involved with somebody else. At least once, she figured, it was eventually bound to happen. Kind of a bucket list thing. It wasn't a major fantasy of hers, and she never felt a great sense of urgency about it, but at the same time it by no means grossed her out either and she'd probably feel wistful when she was a wrinkled old lady if the way stuff worked out she never had got around to sampling that side of things by then. 

Well, now it was happening. Too bad it had turned out in such dark and twisted circumstances. On the one hand, this wouldn't count. Getting molested by two female cops was not at all the kind of encounter she had envisioned. Beyond the question of plumbing, this was a whole different business. On the flipside, it might still put her off ever wanting to try again because of the negative associations. She decided she would not to let that happen, if she could control it. She would not let these evil bitches put a taint on same-sex relations for the rest of her life. 

Probably what she ought to do after this was go to a gay club soon as possible and get a nice girl or a nice girl-couple to pick her up. That shouldn't be hard; individual gay girls and gay girl couples had tried that often before when she went to those type places with friends. She should go back alone tomorrow night and say yes when she got approached again, and then hopefully create a happy experience to bury this nasty bullshit under. Forever. 




The Ice Cream Cone & the Pickle Ch. 04



Ellie decided that was a pretty darn good plan. And having made a plan like that helped her get through the present moment. As nasty as things got, she now had a kind of redemptive context for it in her head. Focusing her imagination on a rosier future. 

She'd think: "I hate licking this dyke's stinky pussy. It's horrid." And then she'd imagine how much more fun it was going to be to eat out the much nicer-smelling pussy of the lesbian she intended to hook up with in the future ... Who she decided would look a whole lot like Angelina Jolie. And if it was a couple she went home with, the other woman would look like Cate Blanchett. 

The two evil cops, as was already mentioned, weren't hideous hags. Far from it. But they weren't radiant movie goddesses either. Not quite. The next women she had sex with would be. This was Ellie's resolution. Whether or not she followed through with it was almost entirely irrelevant. All that mattered was making it and then having it to hold on to. A steadfast anchor point for her will inside her mind and in her heart. 

The cops couldn't make her cry anymore after that. 

They did make her holler a whole lot, though. Soon as she got her bent over, Smiling Cop went to town on Ellie's pussy with her fingers. Those fingers didn't have any trouble pushing inside her. Some of that was technique, on the cop's part. She had skills. She was aggressive and merciless without ever getting brutal. The fact Ellie was still soaked all over with rainwater was another factor, probably. And also—no use pretending it wasn't true—her pussy had been lubricating itself internally since she arrived on this beach. It had been doing that at a pretty much constant rate ever since. Let alone the masturbation she had indulged in before she spotted the paddy wagon. 

The embarrassment and fear the evil cops were subjecting her to had not and did not dry her out inside. She had thought it would—she thought it would hurt when Smiling Cop started jabbing her slot with her fingertips. It hadn't. No cruel force was required. Ellie's pussy accepted the entry with ease. And with pleasure, too. Sort of. Ellie didn't want that to be the case but could do nothing about it. Her pussy didn't care what she thought or wanted. It decided the cop's fingers felt good and that was that. Dirty and shameful but still goddamn fucking good. It was gross and sickening how good it was. Made her really mad at herself. 

The disgust and the anger didn't stop her coming. Might have made it hit her harder when it did. 

"Shit! Shit! Motherfucking Jesus! Shit!"

"The mouth on you," said Scowling Cop, "Just like I said." She pushed on Ellie's hair. "Be quiet now. Eat me! Eat it all up!"

She had piercings in her pussy. Rings in her labia and another through her clit. Ellie couldn't imagine letting somebody do that to her parts. But people wouldn't get it done if they didn't like how it felt. So you had to wonder if you'd like it yourself, if you only had the guts to get them put in. 

The trick seemed to be to make the rings spin with her tongue. Of course you could only push them a little tiny bit at a time; the flesh gripping the loops resisted the motion. She wasn't entirely sure they were really rotating—it might just seem like they were. All she might really be managing was bouncing them around a lot and getting slobber on them. But either way, Scowling Cop sure loved how it felt. She finally quit scowling, in fact. 

"Fuck yeah! Fuck! That's it! That's it! Fuck! Yeaaahhhaah!"

"There you go," said Smiling Cop, "There it is. Good job, girl. Now she's gonna love you forever."

"That's right! That's exactly goddamn right! Don'tcha stop yet! Don'tcha stop! Fuck that's amazing! Fuck!" 

"You ever gonna let me get a turn?"

"You're gonna have to wait, bitch. This was your idea. Sorry but ... Jesus God! You're gonna have to keep waiting ..."