Making a Scene

Dorothy felt bad about smearing her gross jizzy hand across the elevator buttons that others would have to touch, so she returned with some paper towels and cleaner.

She did it totally naked, of course. Her robe was in the dirty clothes hamper. At any rate, the roll of paper towels was large enough to keep her concealed, if someone showed up. Sadly, she completed this task without any interruptions.

Those paper towels came in handy when she got back to her apartment, as she jerked herself off for a third time. She couldn't remember the last time she'd done it three times in one night. Even then, the last one was normally disappointing, more a testament to not wanting to go to bed than anything else.

Not this time. The ropes of jizz blasted well past the paper towel. Whatever the quicker, picker-upper was designed for, they didn't have this in mind.

Dorothy slept soundly that night, even the light from her computer failing to keep her awake the way it normally would.

--

Back to work. Cha-ching.

At Lyman's, all employees enjoyed a generous 20% discount on everything. If this was ever taken away, Dorothy wondered if Lyman's would shutter from all the employees suddenly taking their business elsewhere and not buying that seventy-cent can of diced tomatoes for fifty-six cents.

Surprisingly, an employee of Lyman's was not allowed to buy something WITHOUT the employee discount. It might have been some way to track what employees bought while on the clock, but like most things here, it probably had an innocent explanation, if not necessarily a good one.

During a quiet moment, Dorothy looked through the selection of sunglasses on the squeaky rack near the registers. She put on a pair of dark brown aviators with gold-painted frames.

"How do these look?" She asked Tom, who had not abandoned his register.

Tom chuckled. "Fine, I guess? I have those Transitions lenses, so I don't own sunglasses."

She replaced them and modeled a new pair, a more traditional black frame with dark lenses.

"Mr. Anderson..." She growled in her unconvincing baritone.

"My name... is Neo." He responded.

Dorothy removed them. "His name is Thomas in the movie, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is. I'm so glad that my last name isn't Anderson. That would have got old."

"Yeah, what would someone named Dorothy know about annoying movie references?" She set them back. She turned the rack as gently as possible, but it still released a nasty squeak as she did. "Do we still have that WD-40 in the office?"

"Maybe, but nobody ever touches that thing anyway. I don't think I've ever seen any of those move."

She eyed the new set of sunglasses and found something that caught her eye: a pair of white offset oval frames with gray lenses. They were clearly retro-styled. Maybe they had sat here since a time where they the height of fashion, back in the days before Lyman's disappearance.

Dorothy slid them off the molded plastic nose rest and put them on.

"Check it out!" She leaned over towards Tom again.

If Tom had been drinking something, he would have spit it out. He tried to smother his laugh, but it came out as a raspberry.

That was the reaction she had been looking for. "Alright, you talked me into it. I'll buy them." She set them on his conveyor, letting them slowly ride up to him. He found the UPC tag on the temple and scanned it. He tapped in her name into his keyboard and knocked the price down a cool ninety-five cents.

Dorothy removed the tag and put them back on, looking at her faint reflection in the glass case where the baby formula was locked up for unknown reasons. "I think they're very fashionable."

"Whatever covers those bags under your eyes." Billy mocked from a short distance.

Tom glowered at him. Dorothy removed them and hung them in the placket of her polo.

Someone soon came into her aisle and rang up forty dollars of groceries before realizing that their payment card was in their car... parked quite far away. Based on how long it took them to return, she assumed he found a parking space somewhere in Bosnia.

At her first job at a hardware store, their system was advanced enough that someone running away mid-checkout could simply be suspended. The receipt printer would print a barcode that would summon the interrupted transaction when scanned. It was a very useful system.

Lyman's was not this advanced. Dorothy would normally delete the offending items or ask Frank to void the entire transaction. But... someone somewhere was keeping track of how many items were rung up and subsequently deleted. Evidently, deleting products was a vector for unscrupulous cashiers to steal from the till. There was some narrow threshold of product deletions that the store wasn't allowed to exceed in a certain amount of time. Frank swore that even he didn't know the exact levels he was allowed to reach.

In practical terms, it meant that she was stuck standing there like a dope until this customer returned. She flicked her numbered light off and waited for this customer to return.

She had the tool to fix her predicament... but she couldn't use them.

In her jeans, she felt her package stirring. Just one more tool she wasn't allowed to use. It was sitting right there, the key that could unlock any door, and she just had to squish it into its silk prison and pretend it wasn't there.

Not that there were any good uses for this in Lyman's. But in the world of Internet pornography... maybe this would be her way out of this little box she was standing in.

It certainly couldn't hurt.

--

At home, in front of her full-length mirror, Dorothy again modeled the white sunglasses she had bought earlier that day. This time... she was free of other distractions like 'professional responsibilities' and 'clothing.'

To be honest, with her pecker out, she didn't even notice the bags under her eyes.

As she watched the public nudity videos this website produced, and many others besides, she noticed some patterns emerging. Some of the women chose to wear sunglasses to slightly obscure their identity. One bashful woman wore a scarf that covered the lower half of her face. Dorothy wasn't sure why that was allowed. Surely, their facial reaction was part of the experience. A few acted shy, balling their hands together in front of their groin. Their facial expression, devoid of reddened cheeks or embarrassed grimace, betrayed that it was all an act.

Then again... maybe she was just cold.

Luckily, this pair of sunglasses paired fashionably... with nothing. She would wear shoes on the big day, but she was currently posing barefoot. Some of the models did do their walk without shoes at all, but she would not do this unless they asked her to. After walking around those sketchy alleys and the dirty sidewalks, litter blowing around and the concrete dotted with black spots of decade-old gum like moles... she'd have to scrub her feet with Borax afterwards.

Dorothy turned in place, inspecting her form. Considering how hard the road was up to this point, she still considered herself reasonably good looking. She had tried to cut out snack foods and started jogging up and down the stairs in her apartment to try to shed a little bit of belly fat, but it was hard to conjure the energy after lots of standing still at Lyman's. She wanted to look her best for the upcoming shoot, which was about a week out. The comments never seemed to complain about the women's weight, even when the models were legitimately on the chubbier side.

To be honest, she had never given the rest of her body much thought, as she was blessed or cursed with something that made the rest of it seem irrelevant. Her cock hung like a kielbasa between her legs, her balls nestled below them. The woman she saw walking had a nice one, too... but how did she remain flaccid? Was she not aroused by the thought of every eye on that street glaring in awe of her cock? Just thinking about doing this made Dorothy hard. On the day of... could she possibly keep in control for that long?

Dorothy's hand crawled over to her newly erect cock, grasping it with two fingers and a thumb. She slowly tugged... while looking at her reflection. After all, if she didn't think she was alluring enough to be seen on the Internet, why would anyone else? With the sunglasses over her eyes, she could almost pretend it was someone else... some other futa that looked a lot like her and had an apartment as lousy as hers...

Dorothy's phone rang.

It was a college friend she hadn't seen in a while. They were in the area for the night and wondered if she wanted to get dinner with some of her other ex-classmates.

Dorothy probably shouldn't be having an entrée from a chain restaurant while trying to lose a few pounds. Besides, she was nude and erect and didn't feel like getting dressed.

Then again... she eyed another garment she had bought in anticipation of her walk: a lovely red wool coat with big black buttons. She found it at that classiest of classy boutiques... Burlington Coat Factory.

She sat at the edge of the group. She didn't want to feel pinned in as her friend and the other acquaintances shared the updates in their lives. She thought about whipping open her coat and let them judge her body however they would... but they would have to wait for the premiere and pay for it like everyone else.

No, that wasn't the reason she didn't do it. She knew the truth.

If humiliation was really what she wanted... she'd just tell her friends how the last four or five years had gone. That she was still working an entry-level position at a grocery store. Not even a cool trendy one, where all the white girls had dreadlocks and the bathroom always smelled like weed. Lyman's. The uncoolest grocery store of them all. It wasn't even 'hip' when people still used the word 'hip.'

All their careers were flourishing while hers struggled and spun in place like a truck stuck in snowy mud. They had stories of the vacations they took to exotic locales all across the globe. The most exotic place Dorothy had been this year was probably a Wendy's. They talked about their hobbies. Dorothy didn't even watch TV. What happened in the world was of no interest or relevance to her.

And the glimmer of hope, the tiny glint of light in the distance that was currently pushing her through the front-facing customer service drudgery... was to go into Internet pornography.

A few of her friends talked about the toils of being a new parent. No couples were present tonight, as one half of the marriage had to stay chained home and coddle the wailing diaper-clad gremlin. Dorothy remembered when these friends swore they'd never have kids. What changed? Was creating new life really a price worth some getting some tush? Kantian ethics says that individuals should be treated as ends in themselves, not as means to ends. So creating a life is unethical if the only reason you did it to keep your bed stocked up on mediocre, lukewarm and mostly disinterested pussy. I remember this from Intro to Philosophy, it was the only semester I wasn't drunk most of the time, so why don't YOU remember it, ROGER?

What WAS she even doing here? At least once during the night, she thought that she was brought out here as some sort of pity move, to try to include the human disaster and help her feel included and worthwhile. Sometimes, she didn't know if it was an act of great kindness or cruelty.

Then again, what would she be doing at home right now? Probably masturbating. Maybe spread out in bed, clutching her other pillow like it was someone else, some charitable figure who could tolerate her bitter mood and pornography addiction. Or maybe she'd just be running through the bad customer encounters of the day, massaging them until she could believe that she did no wrong. The bad experiences ached in her stomach like an indigestible bezoar, or maybe a thumbtack. Her body would coat it in layers of self-loathing and fantasies of outbursts the way pearl farms put jagged pebbles in the mouths of oysters.

At the end of the night, her friend thanked her for coming out and hoped that they could do it again sometime.

Dorothy agreed... but hoped it wouldn't be TOO soon.

--

Doctor Morgan entered one of his waiting rooms with a file ready under his arm. It was hard for most doctors go get to know patients or give them special attention in the modern era, but there was one whom he would always know the moment he heard her name.

"Hello, Miss Mercia." He said as he entered. "I can barely get you in here for a checkup, so there must be something wrong. What seems to be the problem?"

Dorothy was standing in front of the bench, which struck Dr. Morgan odd. She wore an oversized windbreaker with her bare legs sticking out.

"I have a rash." She said, holding her coat shut with both hands.

Dr. Morgan raised an eyebrow at that. "You might want to go to the Sexual Health Clinic for something of that nature."

Dorothy threw the coat off. She had a red rash over her entire torso, upper arms, thighs, buttocks... even her penis. It was so even and bright, it looked like a red garment.

"You ever see an STD that looks like this?"

"Oh, my goodness." The doctor leaned back.

"Is there anything in my file about me being allergic to wool?" Dorothy asked testily, resisting the urge to put hands on her hips in case they'd start itching again. "Because that's news to me."

"This happened after you wore a garment for the first time?"

"Yeah. I had this brand new..."

Dorothy stopped herself. If she said 'brand new coat,' the obvious follow-up question would be: 'why were you naked underneath your coat? Were you planning on flashing people and then recording it for the Internet?' It might not be that specific and damning, but Dr. Morgan was quite observant.

"...dress, and I'm allergic to it."

"Did you wash it? You could be allergic to something that got on it when they made it, or some kind of weird soap they used."

"I'm almost positive it's the wool." She said. "I need this to clear up as soon as possible, both because I have something coming up next week AND I want to stop using up all my sick time."

"Are you looking for a hydrocortisone injection?" He asked. "Your rash is widespread, but it's not that bad. Your skin isn't blistering. If it WAS just from a garment, which seems right, since there's a pretty clear line of delineation where the hem of the dress was on your legs, it should fade in a few days."

"Doc, I can't sleep like this." Dorothy insisted. "The sheets rub up against it and wakes me up and drives me crazy. It was either come here or buy some silk sheets. And silk sheets aren't covered by my insurance."

"Have you taken any Benadryl?"

"I haven't tried it, because I assumed this was bad enough to bring out the big guns. I NEED this gone before next week. I have... to be in some photos."

"Will any of this be exposed? Maybe you could wear a sweater?"

Of course, ALL of this would be in the pictures. That was the whole point. But she couldn't say that. She couldn't even think about it, the mere IDEA of doing this would make her hard. It was difficult enough to get to her doctor's in the windbreaker without getting hard, the cold and inert vinyl tickling her nude skin.

"Well, you try telling that to the bride."

He stood there, inspecting her rash. Dorothy REALLY hoped that lie would work.

"I'll be back in a bit." Dr. Morgan left, leaving her file behind.

Dorothy wondered what secrets that file held. What observations it made about her and her past... whether she was ornery or untrustworthy... whether she would try to steal anything of value in the office if left unsupervised.

She left the file where it was. What was the point? Even if there was horribly unkind things in there... at least he really WAS trying to help. It's more than she could say for her probation officer.

Dr. Morgan returned with a pharmaceutical bottle between his two fingers, and a single sheet of office paper in the other hand.

"I need to show you these side effects that hydrocortisone injections can cause." He handed her the neatly bulleted list.

Dorothy glanced at it. "Increased appetite, upset stomach... trouble sleeping... nothing new there. Unusual hair growth? That WOULD be surprising. I don't grow hair anywhere but my head..." She scanned the rest of the document quickly and set it down. "Blah, blah, blah. I don't really have a choice."

"If this doesn't help, I can't give you any more." Dr. Morgan said. "You'll just have to wait for it to clear up. But I will give you a note to get out of work until you feel up to it. Turn around."

Dorothy complied, but she realized his intentions. "You're not going to..." She stopped herself. "I was about to say, 'you're not going to stick me in the butt, are you?' But that's not what I meant."

The doctor chuckled. "I was going to give you the injection in your buttock or thigh."

One of the other lists of side-effects was 'injection site redness.' The last thing she wanted was a big red welt on her butt when she was prancing around the city in a few days. Maybe it wouldn't happen, but... where would the injection site be hidden if it did?

"Could we do it... here?" She brushed her hair to one side and pointed to the corner where her neck joined with her shoulder.

Dr. Morgan touched the spot with his finger. "Here? I don't know..."

"I don't want it in the butt. All I do is stand at work and sit at my computer. I don't want to ruin my time off any more than this has already."

It was a bad idea to lie to your doctor, and she'd done it quite a bit in just a few minutes. Nevertheless, he complied. The injection took some time, as she clenched her fists and tensed her body as he performed the injection into the muscle of her shoulder. He held a cotton swab to the site for a moment before covering it with a tiny dot bandage.

"You're the only former drug user that I treat that I'm not worried about relapsing into something worse."

"My fear of needles probably saved me. No matter how messed up I was, I wasn't willing to go that far."

"Well, it's not like anyone comes in here for a hit of hydrocortisone." Dr. Morgan handed her a signed letter that explained her predicament to her employers. "For now, just rest, clean the skin of any remaining allergens, moisturize if you can... and get rid of that dress. This would probably clear up in a few days without treatment anyway. If it gets worse, come in immediately."

The idea that this could actually get worse scared Dorothy to death. But it was too late now.

Luckily, the rash was mostly cleared up by the next morning.

Dorothy still didn't go back to work until the next day.

--

Back to work. Cha-ching.

The rash was completely gone, her skin back to normal. Unwilling to risk another outbreak like this, Dorothy would have to settle for her old windbreaker as her garment of choice for the day of the walk. It wasn't much longer now...

And yet it felt so damn far away.

Her terminal at work had a clock up in the upper-right corner of the screen. In white system-font text on the black screen, in military time... with a seconds column. Thus, Dorothy could watch as...

Every.

Single.

Second.

Crept by.

It wasn't that there were no customers to serve. There sure were. There was a line of four or five people with cartloads of food waiting to be rung out. But they were stymied behind a single old woman, picking through her coin purse to see if she had EXACTLY ninety-four cents. It was essentially the largest amount of coins she could have to look for: three quarters, a dime, a nickle and four pennies.

Most sensible people would simply take back the nickel and penny and move on with their fucking day. Not this one, and as it seemed, not most of Lyman's older clientele. Evidently, their loss of bone density left their arms so weakened, that if their coin purses were labored with even one more metallic disc with the profile of a dead president, just ONE more... that her arm would be sheared off at the shoulder and she'd have to use the left-handed slot machines when her nursing home would shuffle her to to fritter away her great-great-grandchildren's inheritance.