Finding Goddess Ch. 07

Monday arrived, and Carol had a feeling it was going to be a bad day.

She had no idea why. It seemed like any other Monday she had gone through. Country music would blare obnoxiously into her ear, and she would silence it with a forceful slam on the clock radio from whence it came. Then she'd get up, take a shower, fix herself a cup of coffee, brush her teeth, check her phone for messages, catch up on the news online, the usual. So far, so good, everything seemed pretty typical. So why couldn't she shake the feeling that something horrible was going to come crashing down on her?

Perhaps I forgot something? she mused, scratching her chin as she stared out the window lost in thought. It certainly seemed like something was missing...a light bulb winked on in her head. Oh, right, the garbage! That has to be it. Silly me!

Monday was the garbage day, both metaphorically and literally, and Carol had neglected to take hers outside the previous night. She had been too...absorbed in her book. Fortunately, there were plenty of other trash bags lying on the curb, which meant the truck hadn't arrived to pick them up yet. It wasn't too late. After tying her bag up, Carol hopped into her flip-flops and rushed out the door with the trash in hand. The warm summer air that hit her body was a strong contrast to the cooler conditioned air in her home, but she didn't have the time to marvel or groan at the sensation as she rushed to the street to deposit her trash.

A car drove by. In the corner of her vision, Carol noticed it abruptly slowed down and thought the driver did a double-take in her direction. In normal circumstances, she would have just ignored it and moved on, but a sudden honking of his horn forced her to look up just in time to watch him speed away. The mother blinked in confusion.

What was that about?

Across the street, another person rushed outside carrying a trash bag of his own, clearly having the same issue and idea that Carol had. However, upon glancing up in her direction, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked directly at her, his jaw falling to the ground. Confused, Carol just waved at him before turning away, her mind a big question mark.

Wonder what his problem was? Was there something on my face?

Idly, Carol pawed at her face to wipe off whatever had supposedly shocked her neighbor so much. Upon feeling nothing come off it, she decided to take a glance down to see if there was something weird elsewhere on her body. It didn't seem like there were any problems. Her skin was still a little red from the shower, and her bush could use a bit of a trim, but there wasn't really anything worth getting alarmed about—

Hold on a minute...skin? Bush?!

"CRAP!"

Carol practically warped back into her apartment, her every inch of bare skin coated in a fine layer of sweat.

She couldn't believe it! She went outside butt-naked and didn't even realize it! Just like Henrietta did the other day! It hadn't even occurred to her to put any clothes on.

"What the hell is WRONG with us?" she grumbled, trudging to her room to go get some things to put on, feeling more than a little sheepish.

If I hadn't forgotten to take out the trash...or if I hadn't remembered that I forgot to take out the trash...I might have never realized I hadn't dressed yet. I might very well have gone to work just like this!

Carol shuddered at the thought. She didn't care about people seeing her naked at all, but people seeing her forget to do something as fundamental as putting her clothes on? That kind of humiliation would have killed her!

Of course, now that the subject of clothes had fully entered Carol's mind, she now realized precisely why this was going to be such a rotten day. It meant that her nude streak had to finally come to an end and she had to do her least favorite thing in the whole world: dress herself. It was never an easy thing, and after spending three whole days in her perfect natural state, it would be especially hellish today. But she didn't have a choice; she had work today, and she had to be decent at the office.

So biting her lip, Carol set about the arduous task of covering herself. She did not bother putting on any underwear; she had sworn off bras and panties a long time ago and was perfectly happy to go commando. But that didn't mean she could skimp out on anything else. She had stockings to climb into to at least feign a sense of modesty, a white blouse with a built-in shelf bra to make sure her girls didn't bounce around too much, and a business skirt and blazer in matching shades of black to make her look professional. With the addition of her heels, some makeup, and a good combing of her hair, her look was complete.

Carol stared at her clothed self in the mirror and took it all in. She looked good, or at least she supposed she did in the eyes of the business world. Her suit was straight and unwrinkled. Her lips were glossy and red. Her black hair was sleek, shiny, untangled, and "like she just stepped off a spaceship" as her daughter, Mindy, would describe it. In short, she was the perfect image for the modern day businesswoman.

Carol could only sigh at it. She didn't want to look like the perfect modern day businesswoman! She didn't want this suit to look straight on her, she didn't want her lips to look so red, she didn't want her hair to be so tidy. She wanted to wrestle the whole ensemble off her body and hurl it to the ground. She wanted to latch onto the cutest person she could find and leave lip marks all over their skin. She wanted her hair to get tousled and tangled just to tell everyone that she was a wild girl who craved fun and excitement!

She wanted to live like those women who served the Goddess, Zenriah!

Unrestrained!

Free!

Naked!

She had spent a lot of time yesterday reading the Scripture, and those Zenrist girls of ancient times really had it made. It seemed like they didn't have to worry about a thing, save how they were going to get, or give, their next orgasm. Everything about their lives was all about enjoying their bodies and being in love. The thing that every girl would and should ever want. If ever there was an afterlife, Carol hoped it would be like that.

Uh, not that she believed there could ever be an afterlife. Let alone a paradise where women just lived completely naked and had sex with each other and a goddess all the time.

It sure would be nice though.

Carol turned away and marched out of the room, intent to get as far away from the mirror as possible. If she thought about it any longer, thought about her hatred of clothes, or Zenrists, or the book lying on her bed any longer, she might feel the urge to just rip her suit off right now and start masturbating. She already wasted enough time thinking about them.

***

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...

Her fingers danced gracefully across her keyboard. Her eyes swung back and forth like pendulums across every word that flashed on her screen. Sentences were highlighted, underlined, and deleted with every scurrying motion of her mouse.

But inside her head, Carol was completely dead.

Yes, it was another droning day in the office, full of ennui, humdrum, and piles and piles of textual mush to slog through. Just like it had been last week. And the week before that, and the week before that.

Unfortunately, it was even worse today. Everything felt...tighter around Carol. More constraining. More claustrophobic. Like she was trapped in a cage built entirely around her whole body. Every now and then, she found herself absently tugging at her collar, pulling at her sleeve, or rubbing her legs together to loosen the fabrics closing in on her form, giving her skin a few precious seconds to breathe. But it wasn't enough.

Damn it, she cursed as she pulled at her blouse, which was making her feel especially itchy right around where her nipples were. This is what she got after spending such a long time without any clothes on. Her body always needed to take some time to get used to being wrapped up again, but it was really bad today. If it didn't let up anytime soon, she...she...she didn't even want to think about what would happen.

"Hey, Carol! Working hard, or hardly working?"

"Huh?" Carol half-gasped as she looked up to see just who had so rudely interrupted her anxiety. "Oh. Hi, Harold."

Harold beamed at her with that annoyingly friendly smile of his before he took a sip of his coffee. Though swallowing his drink caused that smile to mercifully flicker away, if only for a moment. "Bleck, coffee's especially bitter today," he said, pulling a retching expression before taking another sip.

"Then why are you drinking it?" said Carol, who decided she could use the small talk, if only to provide a distraction from her discomfort.

"Didn't get much sleep last night. Let's just say we ran into some car trouble on the way home from my son's grandparents that delayed us for...a little while," he grumbled, adding some unintelligible cursing under his breath.

"Is your car starting to break down?"

"No, the problem wasn't the car," Harold sighed, embarrassment starting to seep into his voice. "The problem was that...I couldn't get it out of the driveway." Upon saying that, he took another swig of his drink, doing so in a way that was far more fitting for a bottle of scotch than a mug of coffee.

"I...see," said Carol. "That must be quite the story."

"Yeah, one I could do without telling right now. But that's the story of my weekend. How was yours?"

Carol froze. Her weekend. That was the one thing she didn't want to think about right now. The one thing she couldn't afford to think about right now. Because if she did...she just might...

"It...was good," she stated robotically.

"You do anything fun?"

"Um..."

I spent three days straight totally, completely, and utterly naked? I walked around in public without a stitch of clothing on? I met some brilliant women and had sex with them? I learned about a crazy cult consisting of nudist lesbians?

"Uh, Carol? Are you okay?" said Harold as he waved a hand in front of her face.

"I...I..." she murmured. She needed to find something to say, something to satisfy her co-worker's curiosity, something that didn't involve her unclothed weekend hijinks. It wasn't an appropriate thing to bring up in the office after all...and it was once again making her feel tight all over as her yearning to return to that perfect state of being started to come back in full force.

Desperately, she darted her eyes toward every possible direction she could, hoping to find something to latch onto. She did, in the form of the little black mug in Harold's hands. "C...coffee."

"Excuse me?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I...I went to New Deastone with a friend!" said Carol. "Yeah. A new coffee shop opened up there, and she wanted to check it out."

Yeah, that sounded good. She went to New Deastone over the weekend for "coffee." It was a good lie because it was completely true! She and Henrietta did stop by a coffee shop after all. And they had plenty of "coffee" on the way there. Hot, exotic, sexy, permanently naked coffee...

"Sounds like it was a pretty relaxing weekend for you then," said Harold. "I take it you're able to trust leaving your kids alone in the house?"

"Huh? Oh, Mindy and Erin? I didn't need to worry about them. They weren't home. They took a trip with their friends to Duny Beach. They'll be gone for the week." Already, Carol could feel her inner tensions ease up. She just dodged a bullet, and redirected the conversation to other matters. Matters that had nothing to do with sex or nudity. Her sanity was safe.

"Duny Beach, eh? That's nice this time of year. Oh, if only I could be in school again and enjoy these sweet summer vacations. Wouldn't mind catching some waves myself." Harold suddenly paused and furrowed his brow as a ponderous expression poured over him.

"What's going on?" said Carol. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no, nothing's wrong," said Harold. "It's just...I heard that they recently opened up some nude beaches there."

Carol froze again, so stiffly even her heart stopped. "What?"

"Yeah, there are nude beaches there. Or maybe just clothing-optional ones. But yeah, either way, there are places in Duny where you can just take it all off and run around in the altogether."

Take it all off. Carol really wanted to take it all off. Her clothes were beginning to close around her again. She could feel her blouse tightening around her neck, threatening to cut off her air. She tugged at her collar.

"Wh-what are you saying?" she stammered.

"I'm not saying anything," said Harold. "Just that, if your daughters aren't careful, they might find themselves out of their swimsuits. Especially if they're friends with some dirty little devils." He chuckled good-naturedly as he took another sip of coffee. "Don't be surprised if they come home flustered with some funny little stories they have no intention of telling you."

"Ha...yeah. I'll...keep that in mind," said Carol, speaking slowly so as to take long, deep breaths between her words. It was getting hard to breathe in her clothes. Hell, it was getting hard to exist in them. Her breasts were pressing so hard against the fabric of her top that it hurt. A strip of cloth was starting to drip in between her buttocks that they started to itch. Her legs felt so stiff that she unconsciously rubbed them together just to remind herself that they were not clamped within a vice. And the light scratching sound of her nylons grinding against each other was like nails on a chalkboard.

"Not that you need them to tell you anything," Harold continued. "You could probably find plenty of similar stories online. Would you believe that there actually exists this subgenre of fiction on the internet where people, usually women, lose their clothes and get stuck running around naked? It's the silliest thing ever. I would have never guessed such a thing existed if my son hadn't accidentally left a webpage to one open on his laptop. And all this time, I thought he wasn't one for reading. Shows how much I know about my own kid."

Things were getting really unbearable for Carol. Her vision was starting to blur. Her head was growing heavy on her shoulders. Her clothes were getting tighter all around her. If she didn't do something about them real soon, either they'd crush her body into a squishy mess, or her body would break them apart at the seams.

"I won't confront him about it, though. And I won't tell his mother either," said Harold. "It's just regular teenage curiosity. Not our business and we've talked about these things a lot with him in the past. But I have to wonder what he would actually do if he did find a girl like that? A girl who'd be willing to strip down and run around naked for him at a moment's notice."

"I gotta go!" Carol cried, shooting up to her feet so forcefully she blasted her chair straight into the wall.

"Oh, well, yeah, I guess I should too. Nice talking to you."

Carol paid him no mind as she rushed off as fast as her heels would allow. She knew it was rude to run off like that in the middle of a conversation, she knew she was likely drawing stares, but she couldn't help it. She had to get away, she had to hide, she had to find the one place in the entire office that would grant her sanctuary.

She found it as she all but ran through the door of the ladies room, causing a couple of women exiting it to leap to the side in surprise as she blazed past them.

"Whoa! What's got into her?" said one.

"She must've had Mexican for breakfast."

Carol ignored them as she dove into one of the toilet stalls, thankful to see they were all empty and clean. Upon slamming both the door and the toilet lid shut, she wasted no time in beginning the frantic task of taking her clothes off, or at least her top, where the worst of her discomfort was. She hatefully hurled her blazer onto the floor, quietly relishing the whipping sound it made as it collided with the toilet before hooking her fingers onto the bottom of her blouse and pulling them upward.

"Ahhhhhh!" she sighed as she felt the air pour over her breasts the second the fabric was pulled completely away from them. They bounced freely in the air once, large and proud, the nubs of their nipples standing tall and at attention, before settling down to a gentle jiggle and coming to a complete rest upon her chest.

"Mmmm," she murmured as she ran her hands over them, just to see for herself that they really were bare, really were free, the way she liked them to be. They were. So soft and warm and squishy, save for her nipples, which were hard and pointy enough to pop a balloon. Words could not describe how much she loved her breasts, loved to touch them, loved to be touched on them, by either human hands or the elements. It was good to have them out, good to have them exposed. It was like they could breathe, come alive, and enjoy life with her.

She wasn't as naked as she liked to be, but it was nevertheless the panacea she needed. The tension all around her dissipated like fog in the wind.

"Phew, thought I was going to die," she mumbled. "I wonder what that was all about?"

Now that Carol wasn't feeling so claustrophobic, she was able to think rationally again. Wearing clothing was always discomforting for her, but it never got that bad before. Was it because she hadn't had a naked streak that long or that...public in over twenty years? Or ever for that matter? Did she not give her body enough time to acclimate itself to clothing? Did the Zenrists in New Deastone have an effect on her?

The Zenrists. Just thinking about those nudist lesbian cultists made Carol sigh wistfully. It always came back to them. They got to enjoy such an unprecedented level of freedom, the likes of which she could only dream about. If I was Zenrist, this wouldn't be a problem. I could just come into the office naked as the day I was born. I wouldn't have to worry about dressing right, dressing neatly, or getting dressed at all.

She looked down at her bare boob and squeezed it tenderly. I could let my girls jiggle and bounce all they liked. I could even play with them all I liked! That thought brought a smile to her face and prompted her to flick her nipple around playfully. The feeling was good, it was arousing, and more than anything else, it was strangely calming. The fact that she could find time in the day to pleasure herself slightly like this seemed to fill her with a sense of peace. Much like how she imagined the Zenrists felt when they pleasured themselves, knowing they were fulfilling their purpose to Almighty Zenriah.

But I can't ever be one. I can't believe in the Goddess like they do.

Carol's smile melted into a frown. Here she was, a nudist, an exhibitionist, a woman who hated clothes, who would gladly shuck them off forever if she could, but was doomed to spend eternity stuck within them. All because she was not a religious woman. The Zenrists got to run around naked all the time, and she had to hide in a bathroom just to enjoy a moment of relief. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all.

There's nothing I can do about that though, she thought with a sad shake of her head. So there's no point in even thinking about it. I need to focus on what really matters: my job.

Yes, her job. Which she had to get back to sooner rather than later, and hopefully without having another freak-out. So with a heavy heart, Carol picked her blouse up off the floor and slipped it over her chest, almost wincing in pain as she felt her boobs get smothered in the hated fabric once more. Her blazer quickly followed. After taking a moment to primp her hair in front of the mirror and make sure she was tidy, the wannabe nudist exited the bathroom, intent to put every thought about Zenrism and nudity behind her.