Carla Finds Nude Travel Tricky! Pt. 02

Her nervousness began to fade once she had slipped into the black shirt, fully dressed for the first time since she'd stripped at the first hot spring pool in the park. She'd taken the tags off everything she'd put on right there, thinking that since she had duplicates of everything she was wearing, she could just have the cashier scan items twice to account for what she was wearing. She picked up a black hoodie and carried it and the rest of her new wardrobe to the only register open.

As she waited for the couple in line ahead of her to be checked out, Carla was happy to have concluded her own personal version of "Naked and Afraid", though she also felt kind of proud to have managed to overcome the many challenges she faced. Though she'd be happy to never be so exposed and vulnerable again, she'd begun to enjoy how freaked out her being naked made people!

When her turn at the checkout came, Carla heard a man standing at the end of the checkout say, "Maureen, don't scan this woman's order," then turning to face Carla, say, "I'm with store security, and you've been observed shoplifting several items. You have two choices. You can return everything and agree in writing to be banned from all of the company's stores, or you can wait here for the police to charge you."

"But I haven't stolen anything, I was just about to pay for it all!" Carla protested.

"Removing price tags is accepted in this state as proof of intent to steal," he said, "and we have video of you doing exactly that."

Carla's head was spinning as she thought about what their video showed, what an arrest would do to her ability to ever work in a bank again, and how she'd explain any of this to her parents. For all she knew the local police might have already been called about her various appearances in the nude earlier this evening. She knew which option she needed to take. "So if I return everything, I'll be free to go?" she asked.

"Yes, after signing the agreement to stay away, you can be on your way," he replied.

"And the video, what happens to that?" she asked.

"The store manager will review it. These things are usually deleted once they've been reviewed."

"Usually? Not always?" Carla asked, looking the security guard straight in the eye.

"No, not always, but you don't need to worry about it ending up online or anything, the company wouldn't want that," he replied, "any more than you would."

She thought she detected a bit of a smirk after his last reply, and wondered exactly how many people would get to watch the video of her naked shopping expedition, but agreed to sign his form letter. He handed her a clipboard and a pen. She looked the form over, and seeing nothing but what he'd described in it, she signed it and handed it back to him.

"Now for the hard part," she thought, noticing for the first time the five customers lined up behind her, watching and eavesdropping. Somehow, though the idea of stripping with this audience just a few feet away was more embarrassing than walking through the store already naked had been, she wasn't as nervous as she had been when she first walked into the store.

Trying to seem as relaxed as if she was at home getting ready for bed, Carla slipped off her Crocs, plucked her wallet and phone out of the rear pockets of her jeans, which she immediately unbuttoned, unzipped, and slipped off. She bent over to pick them up and handed them to the cashier, who had already put the rest of her items in a bag for restocking. Carla pulled her t-shirt over her head and off, then dropped it into the bag.

She tried to hide the effect putting on this show was having on her. She was less embarrassed by stripping for her shocked audience of late-night shoppers than she was surprised by the realization that she was finding it exciting!

Carla noticed some whispered conversations and comments from the other customers and turned to face them as she undid the hooks on her bra strap. It occurred to her that the other customers watching her strip couldn't have expected to see a fellow customer get topless right in front of them any more than she had expected to be stripping for this random audience, and they were likely to be even more shocked to see the young woman ahead of them in line totally nude.

Sizing up her audience, she was pretty sure at least two out of the three men in line were glad they'd decided to go shopping when they did. She was less certain how the third man and the two women watching felt about the unexpected show, so she gave them fair warning, announcing,

"If any of y'all are gonna be offended by me getting naked, you should look away for a while, because unfortunately, that's what's about to happen!" She pulled the shoulder straps down her arms quickly, drawing a few gasps and one long, slow whistle as she stood still for a minute with her bra hanging from one hand. She smiled as she noticed her warning hadn't cost her any audience members.

Carla dropped her bra in the bag the cashier was now holding out like she was trick-or-treating for clothing, then hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and tugged them down slowly, alternating sides an inch at a time. Once her ass was completely uncovered and her light blonde pubes were in view she let the panties drop to the floor, turned her back towards her audience, bent over at the waist, and picked the tiny black cotton garment up.

"I believe that's everything," she said as she dropped the panties into the bag. She slipped her feet back into her Crocs, which once again had become her entire outfit. "So, I'm free to go, right?" she asked the security guard.

"Yes, and you need to be off the property in five minutes," he grumbled.

"Gladly!" she shouted over her shoulder as she walked away. Somehow no longer worried about being recorded despite now knowing that she was, she put on her best strut during her return to her truck. She left the parking lot with a minute to spare.

Once she came down from the high her unexpected strip show had given her, Carla pulled into the parking lot of a closed furniture store to try to think of a way to get, and this time keep, some sort of clothing. After a solid half-hour without a single practical idea, her phone buzzed, alerting her to a new service available at the local Target store; she was about to delete the email when she noticed the phrase CURBSIDE PICKUP, promoting their contactless delivery option.

She read the email and laughed hysterically, realizing her entire fiasco at Walmart could have been avoided. She logged into the Target website, set the store just down the street as her local store, and spent the next 25 minutes happily filling her online shopping cart with enough clothing to get her to the end of her road trip. She filled out the payment section, chose the all-important CURBSIDE PICKUP option, and hit the submit order button.

"Store closed. Pickup available at 9:00 AM. Continue?" came up on her screen, drawing a howl from Carla as she tried to think of what she could do with herself for the next ten hours. She went ahead with the transaction and began to think about where she could safely wait for her order to be ready. "I'd like to be in a nice comfy hotel room, given the choice," she said to herself, "but I don't think the front desk staff are likely to check me in in my current state." Fifteen minutes and went by, but none of her ideas promised a safe and restful night.

Her recurring wish for a hotel stay eventually bumped up in her mind against her clothing delivery scheduled for the morning; the critical word, contactless, brought forth a memory of a hotel stay earlier in her trip. The desk clerk had offered to help her set up the chain's app on her phone, telling her, "Using the app, you can check in from anywhere, choose your own room, and even use your phone to unlock doors."

Carla had dismissed his pitch pushing the app as nothing but a way for him to make his job easier and declined his offer, but now she thought the app's capabilities might be just what she needed!

Carla found and downloaded the app, filling out the usual info, then logged in to find the nearest available location. She found a hotel in one of the chain's brands less than a mile away and reserved a room. Once she had chosen a room with one king-size bed, a diagram showing available room locations popped up. She had hoped for a first-floor room since she didn't think using an elevator was advisable, but the only available rooms of the type she had chosen were on the fifth floor.

"Oh, well," she said, "after all I've been through tonight, climbing a few stairs isn't such a big deal." She chose her room, the closest of her options to a stair, then checked a box choosing the option to use her phone as a key.

During the short drive to her hotel, Carla couldn't stop smiling. She was thrilled to be able to not only find somewhere to spend the night but to possibly, with a little bit of luck, be able to make it into her room without showing her body off to any more people than she already had.

She found the hotel easily, and drove all the way around it to locate the door allowing for the most direct route to her room. Once she was sure of where she was headed, she parked her truck as close to the door as she could, which as usual considering the vehicle's bulk was not all that close. She sat for a few minutes to see if the door was as little used as she hoped, and seeing not a single person go in or out, committed to her plan, opening the section on the app for unlocking doors.

Carla opened the door of her truck and stepped out, thinking, "Funny how even after having God only knows how many people see me in the nude today, it still sends a shiver up my spine just to risk having it happen again. She set off for the door at a trot, reaching it without anyone noticing her as far as she could tell.

She looked at her phone just in time to see the app shut down, forcing her to log in again. She had no trouble remembering her username and password, but standing naked at the mostly glass door, in a pool of light from a fixture right above her, she was a little shaky in entering the information.

She managed to get the app opened again, followed the directions for using her phone to unlock doors, and was rewarded by a green light at the handle and the metallic click as the lock released its hold on the door frame. "I'm IN!" she whispered to herself, looking down a corridor all the way past the open area where the front desk, lobby, and elevators were, all the way to a matching door at the opposite end of the hotel.

So close to being safe in the private space of her room, Carla was shocked to have to tamp down a sudden urge to go down the corridor far enough to have a look at the lobby. She could picture herself passing the meeting rooms and breakfast area and peeking around the corner to see whoever was working at the front desk. She imagined herself stealthily crossing the wide-open space if the person working the desk appeared to be looking away, reaching the relatively more safe space of the opposite corridor, still unseen. Or, quite possibly, seen.

She was able to shake the idea off, but not before she had gone ten feet beyond the door she needed to open, to the stair. She backtracked to the stair and began the climb to the fifth floor.

Once she was moving up the stair Carla felt her anxiety spike, along with her excitement, every time she neared another floor, more specifically the door at each floor; if anyone happened to come through one of those doors at the right time, she'd have nowhere to hide. Her pulse was pounding more than she'd expect from climbing a few steps by the time she reached the fifth floor.

She tried to peek out the small window in the door to see if anyone was in the corridor, but she could only see a small area. She took a deep breath and opened the door, sticking her head out to have a good look down the corridor. "All clear," she whispered, "Now I just need to find my room."

The path between the shelter of the stair and the safety of her room seemed much, much longer in real life than it had on the screen of her phone, but Carla didn't hurry. Somehow, the quiet of the empty corridor, combined with the knowledge of how close she was to the safety of her room allowed her to relax and actually enjoy these last few moments of being exposed!

She calmly made her way to room 517, counting down room numbers as she passed them, "511, 513, 515. There it is, room 517!" She paused to take a few selfies, both tame and NSFW, showing her, the room number sign and the long empty corridor over her shoulder.

She was so intent on getting just the composition she wanted that she didn't notice until she turned to unlock the door that a young couple was approaching from the far end of the corridor, their footsteps silent on the carpeting.

She leaped into the room the second the lock clicked open and slammed the door shut, then looked out through the peephole. There was no doubt the couple had noticed her, as they paused to look at her door before backtracking to the elevator lobby.

"Oh, crap," giggled Carla, leaning back on the door and reviewing her nude selfies, the last few including a surprised man and woman inadvertently photobombing her best shots. "I guess they win the 'last people to see Carla naked tonight' prize." She wondered what the prize would be, deciding as she checked herself out in a full-length mirror that seeing her like this was prize enough!