Carla Finds Nude Travel Tricky! Pt. 03

The first part of Carla's usual routine when she arrived in a hotel room was to get comfortable and set out the things she would need to use that night or in the morning. With basically no possessions with her in the room aside from her phone, her routine went quickly this night; she slipped off her Crocs and set her phone down on the nightstand. She had nothing else on or with her.

"This has to be some kind of record for packing light," she chuckled, but then noticed a couple of things she needed were missing; she'd left her wallet and the cord to charge her phone in the truck, and had left her toiletry bag in the mess in the back of the truck. "I guess I have to make one last trip out of the room before I can settle in for the night," she thought, and headed to the bathroom to get a robe to wear. The bathroom turned out to be robe-free, so she checked the closet, which was similarly devoid of anything resembling clothing.

"I guess this isn't a fluffy robe kind of establishment," she said, eyeing the selection of towels in the bathroom, settling on the largest bath towel she could find. It wasn't big enough by much, but it was way more cover than she'd been making do with all night, so she just shrugged and wrapped herself in it. She picked up her phone and left the room, heading for her truck by way of the stair.

Now at least somewhat covered, she didn't bother checking to see if anyone else was around, going down to the ground floor and out the door to the parking lot as if she walked around outdoors wearing just a towel all the time. She found her wallet and charging cord, but having neglected to put on shoes she decided to leave her toiletry bag, and the sticky debris field it was resting in at the back of the truck, for some other time.

Hoping to rectify her lack of basics such as a toothbrush, on her way back to her room, Carla walked past the stair, going straight to the lobby. She walked up to the night clerk and asked him if the hotel had a small shop for essentials. He seemed surprisingly unsurprised by her outfit, "I guess they see all kinds of odd behavior at a place like this," she thought.

Right around the corner, he said, pointing to a small room with drinks and snacks in a refrigerated case as well as the usual assortment of chips and candy. She found an acceptable toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, and a hairbrush. She decided to give herself a little treat, picking up a small bottle of wine and a cheese, fruit, and cracker platter. She carried her small pile of goods back to the front desk and asked, "Do I pay now or can you charge this to my room?"

"Whichever way you prefer," the clerk replied.

"I guess adding it to my bill would be easier," she said, holding out her purchases.

"I'm sorry, we don't have any bags tonight," he apologized, "and which room is yours?"

"That's okay, as long as I have a free knuckle I should be able to operate the elevator. I'm in 517."

"Ah, that's why I didn't remember seeing you, you were our only contact-free guest to check in tonight. You're all set, I've logged in your purchases. Have a nice night!"

Carla said goodnight and walked to the elevator; the desk clerk watched her every step of the way, wishing the hotel bath towels were a few inches smaller. What he couldn't see from behind her was the fold of the towel holding it closed beginning to work loose. Carla didn't notice it at first either, as she focused on not losing control of her snack, drink, toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, phone, wallet, and phone cord.

When she reached forward to tap the elevator call button with both hands full, the two ends of the towel came apart! She pulled her elbows in to keep the towel from ending up on the floor; her right elbow caught the top edge of the towel, but her left elbow was a bit too slow, ending up pressed tight against her uncovered rib cage as that end of the towel fell away, leaving the entire left side of her body and most of her back uncovered.

Before she had a moment to react, the elevator cab arrived and the doors slid open. Wanting nothing more than to be somewhere else, she hopped into the cab and turned to hit the button for the fifth floor. As the doors closed, she saw the desk clerk staring, stunned and delighted to be seeing basically the entire front of Carla's body for a few wonderful seconds before the doors finally blocked her from his view.

Once the elevator began to move, Carla remembered it was possible someone might have called it from another floor; she held her breath each time it neared a floor. When the doors finally opened onto an empty corridor on the fifth floor she was relieved, but also felt, not disappointed exactly, but somehow deflated when after all her anticipation of being seen she didn't encounter anyone. Still trying to keep the towel from falling off completely, she took one small, cautious step out into the corridor, looking both ways.

She stayed close to the open elevator, scanning the corridor in both directions, keeping open her option to hop back in if she wasn't alone in the corridor. Seeing no one, she held her assortment of items tight against her bare belly with her right hand and forearm, freeing her left hand to reach around behind her, trying to grab the loose end of the towel and wrap herself back up before heading down the corridor. She spun back and forth a couple of times, trying to get it to swing far enough for her left hand to get hold of it, with no success.

Carla suddenly felt a strong pull on the end of the towel her right elbow had trapped; looking back over her shoulder explained her left hand's lack of success in catching the loose end of the towel. Her spinning had swung the loose end of the towel into the gap between the elevator doors, which had closed tightly on the towel. She watched helplessly as her makeshift cover-up was pulled away from her body, held between the doors and sliding down. In less than ten seconds the last bit of white terrycloth disappeared through the narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the floor!

Before she had time to process what was happening, Carla found herself nude, again, this time in the middle of a hotel corridor, having been stripped naked by an elevator. Stunned by the sudden unexpected exposure, she headed off the wrong way down the corridor, moving farther from her room with each step. A bit more than halfway to the wrong end of the corridor, she finally realized her mistake and burst out laughing, saying, "Well, why the hell not just wander around naked? If that's what the universe wants me to do, who am I to argue?"

She turned to go towards her room, setting most of her collection of odds and ends down on a small table near the elevator on her way, keeping with her only her phone and wallet. After a leisurely walk to her room, she went inside. A minute later she left her room again, strolling down the corridor and carrying a pillowcase but still not wearing anything. She came back to where she'd left her in-hotel purchases, put them in the pillowcase, and headed back to her room, with a short detour to have a look out the window at the end of the corridor, forty feet or so beyond her room.

Before getting ready to turn in for the night, Carla enjoyed her snack and a couple of small plastic cups of wine while watching some mindless TV, a combination that usually made her drowsy. Usually, but apparently not after the crazy situations she'd been in over the last few hours. Though still wired up, she tried to settle into something like a normal night's routine; she brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

Still wide awake as she was about to turn off the light, she looked at the nightstand and frowned. "Something's not right," she said. Seconds later she remembered what was missing; she always kept a glass of ice water on her nightstand, her nightly routine concluding with her having a few sips just before closing her eyes. "No reason not to do the same here," she said.

Without bothering to put on a towel, she picked up the ice bucket sitting on the counter in the bathroom and went out the door. Despite her recent experience with walking around in the corridor completely naked, she shuddered when she nearly locked herself out, remembering just before closing the door that her phone was on the nightstand. She picked up one of her Crocs and used it as a doorstop, then headed to the ice machine, across the corridor from the elevator.

Quickly reaching the ice machine unseen, Carla congratulated herself for daring to make the trip without even a towel. Her latest jaunt was the first time since she had first reached her room and its rack full of towels that her nudity in the public areas outside her room had been her choice right from the start. She felt a weird sort of pride at being so bold.

As she began to fill her ice bucket, she paused, thinking, "this was really too easy, at this hour it's extremely unlikely I'd be caught." While she still dreaded actually being seen while naked, she was beginning to recognize how much running a risk of being caught undressed excited her. She went back to her room without filling the bucket, promising herself she'd find a way to make getting some ice a little riskier.

Carla sat on the edge of her bed, looking around for some sort of inspiration, some idea of how to make going out for ice in the quiet hotel more exciting. She ruled out a trip to the lobby. Knowing she would be seen if she went there took away all the suspense, and she was coming to crave uncertainty. The two things she was sure would make a naked outing more exciting were being at risk longer, and greater distance from any place of refuge.

Since her only real refuge was her room, getting farther away from the safety it provided would be a simple way to make a naked jaunt more exciting. She decided to get her ice from a machine on a different floor; simple enough, but not so easy, she thought with a shudder. She had a hard time coming up with any way to stretch out her time naked in the corridor very much; even traveling to all four upper floors would only take a few minutes, and the perfectly normal urge to hurry might shorten her trip considerably.

A look around the bathroom provided her with an idea that would provide her with more than enough uncertainty, and also slow her down. A lot. "Maybe too much," she thought, "but that 'maybe' is where the fun is!" Despite her very real misgivings, she began to prepare for one last bit of mischief for the night.

Leaning against the open door to her room a few minutes later, Carla was still not sure she could make herself go through with her plan to fill her ice bucket all the way down on the second floor. She noticed the feel of the cool steel door against her exposed skin, from her shoulders all the way down to her ass, but knew her goosebumps were due less to what she was feeling than to thinking about what she was about to do. She raised her phone, already recording video, extending her arm and tilting it to try to take in her entire body. Panning up from her bare feet to her bare everything else, she knew how strange she looked with just one small area not exposed.

A photo she'd taken a few minutes earlier during a test of her latest idea had confirmed that as well as being effective, her improvised toilet paper blindfold looked pretty odd when she finally had wrapped enough layers around her head to render herself sightless. With the ice bucket in one hand and her phone in the other, she took a deep breath and stepped out into the corridor, letting the door close behind her.

Carla's plan was to walk all four levels of the hotel with guest rooms; starting out from her fifth-floor room, she planned to take the stair near her room down to the 4th floor, then work her way down to the second floor, crossing most of each level, going between the stairs at either end of the corridor.

She headed to the stair near her room, but couldn't go very fast with no ability to see where she was going. "You wanted to force yourself to move slowly, mission accomplished," she whispered to herself, walking slowly, running a finger along the wall to know when she reached each door. She had studied the diagram inside her room, so she knew there were three doors between her room and the stair door; she found the stair door easily and opened it, the sound of her footsteps on the stair's concrete floor and the echoing of the door latching behind her confirming where she was.

Carla reached tentatively for a handrail and cautiously swept the floor ahead of her with her bare right foot, looking for the edge of the first stair tread leading down. Once she found the first stair tread she had no real trouble getting down to the fourth floor, though she kept a death grip on the handrail all the way down.

She opened the fourth-floor door slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. With no way to see if anyone was out in the corridor, she stood still and listened for any sign she might be about to surprise a fellow guest, "Or maybe guests, multiple," she thought, "the way the carpet muffles footsteps, I'd have no idea!"

With no vocal responses from anyone as she emerged from the stair and began her trek to the stair at the opposite side of the hotel, Carla assumed she was, at least for the moment, alone. She picked up her pace a bit, easily recognizing the distinctive door opening at the elevator. She stopped dead just after passing the elevator, realizing she hadn't counted how many rooms were between her current position and the stair she was looking for.

She didn't want to randomly try door handles, hoping to find the unlocked one at the stair, imagining someone coming out to see who was messing with their door. She didn't move for a few minutes, then remembered that, unlike the regular rooms, the stair doors had small windows. She began walking again, gently sweeping her fingers over the surface of each door she came across until she found the right door.

Even after successfully making it down to the fourth floor, Carla never stopped being frightened by stepping down to an unseen stair tread. She almost gave up on completing her naked tour of all four occupied floors, but pressed on, traveling across the space between the stairs without any complications. She descended to the third floor and had only one bit of difficulty traveling between the two stairs, bumping into and almost tumbling over a lounge chair near the elevator.

Methodically making her way along the corridor, Carla was tormented by thoughts about having to explain what she was doing if someone happened to come out of their room and see her this way. "I can't understand it myself," she thought, "without a doubt, this is just fucking nuts!" Feeling her legs go a little wobbly as she heard the sound of a couple arguing coming through a door as she passed by, she thought, "but so damned exciting!"

Descending cautiously, and glad to be done going down stairs blind, she reached the second floor, as planned. As usual, she used her method of staying in touch with the wall to find the elevator door. When she reached the elevator she turned to face the opposite side of the corridor, knowing that somewhere over there, not too far away but invisible to her, there was an opening in the wall leading to a room with an ice machine.

Carla took her hand off the wall she'd been using to orient herself, and instantly felt like an astronaut doing an untethered spacewalk! Her only points of reference to the world were her bare feet on the fuzzy carpeting and the sound of air rushing through ducts above her. She stepped cautiously across to the other side of the corridor, one hand outstretched to find the wall. One, step, then two, three, and four didn't bring her close enough to reach the wall.

"Where the hell is it?" she grumbled, certain she should have reached the other side of the corridor by now. Taking one more step provided her with a clue to her location; her outstretched hand still felt nothing, but her right knee did. A few seconds later her heart skipped a beat or two as she realized she was standing at a balcony railing overlooking the lobby!

Carla held on to the railing and followed it all the way to the wall at the right side of the balcony, hoping the guy working the front desk didn't happen to look up. She worked her way back to the corridor and finally found the space with the ice machine. She crept cautiously into the room, feeling her way around to find the ice machine, which cleared up the mystery of its location, suddenly kicking on with a loud hum less than three feet from where she was standing!

Once she calmed down she filled her ice bucket and crossed the corridor, ready to finish the rest of her walk across the second floor, disappear into the stair and climb straight back up to her room on the fifth floor.

A couple of rooms past the elevator Carla heard a TV playing some sort of action movie, with lots of shouting, gunfire, and explosions. Then she heard other voices, clearly NOT from the TV, loudly discussing the action onscreen. She'd heard a few sounds from rooms she had passed during this journey, but they had all been muffled and hard to make out. These sounds were different, as clear as could be.

She was baffled, then frightened, realizing that she had almost passed by a room with its door wide open; a room with several people wide awake inside. Her fright intensified when she heard a man say, "What's taking Bill so long? He left to get beer a half-hour ago!"

Realizing she was in between the elevator, which the guy making the beer run would surely use, and the room he'd be heading to, she backtracked as quickly as she could without losing track of where she was. She desperately wanted to get out of the corridor before beer delivery guy stepped out of the elevator, but stubbornly refused to tear off her blindfold to allow her to sprint to the safety of the stair she'd left a few minutes ago.

Still just a few feet past the elevator, Carla silently cursed herself for not giving up the blindfold when the elevator chimed, announcing its arrival on the second floor. While she was at least no longer on a collision course with the guy bringing beer, she was no more than six feet from where he'd be stepping out of the elevator. She flattened herself as tightly to the wall as she possibly could.

She heard the doors slide open and a man talking, apparently on his phone, explaining to his friends why it had taken him so long to come back from his beer run. As his voice grew more distant, she was thrilled to realize he must have just turned toward his room, never glancing her way. "But what if he notices me when he turns to go into the room?" she thought, "it's not very far and I don't exactly blend in!" she worried.

Knowing there was no way she'd make it back to the stair before the beer guy reached his room, Carla went to the only hiding place available, scampering into the nearby elevator just before its doors shut. Relieved she had managed to narrowly avoid being discovered, she thought a direct trip to the fifth floor and the privacy of her room made more sense than risking any more time wandering the corridors and stairs.

Switching her phone to the hand already holding the handle of her ice bucket, she ran her free hand lightly over the buttons for all the floors. Finding the highest button on the panel, she pressed it and felt the elevator begin to move. Lost in thought, replaying her latest adventure as she waited for the doors to open, she finally heard the chime and the sound of the doors sliding apart.

Carla already had one foot out of the elevator before she noticed the other sounds. The very much not fifth-floor sounds; water gurgling in a fountain, some instrumental jazz background music, and the sound of someone giving directions in a phone conversation. She froze part of the way out of the elevator as she gradually grasped what the combination of sounds was telling her, then leaped back into the elevator as soon as it dawned on her that she was in the process of strolling into the hotel lobby stark naked!