310. Dawn on the Bayou
Amy flips through the book and chooses a story at random. No sooner has she selected a story than she feels a powerful suction. She doesn't have time to scream as she's pulled head-first into the book, which clatters to the ground, then shuts definitively.
Everything is black. Amy wonders if she is trapped forever. Then, a thin vertical line appears. The line grows wider and wider, and then-
Ding!
A pair of elevator doors slides open, and Amy finds herself in a busy newsroom. Amy steps out and the elevator closes behind her. Everyone is going about their business and no-one seems to be paying attention to her.
Amy is suddenly very aware of her unclothed state. She shrieks just a little, “Eeep!” and quickly folds her left arm across her chest while placing her right hand at her crotch. To her immense relief, she feels cloth. Placing her hands on her hips, she gets a good look at herself.
She's wearing a white collared dress shirt under a blue skirt suit. On her legs (which she notes with some pleasure are pleasingly long and well-sculpted) she wears a pair of barely-black pantyhose. On her feet are black pumps. She takes a quick inventory of her possessions. A small press badge sits in her jacket pocket. The ID photo is of an attractive blonde woman with green eyes and a winning smile. The badge identifies her as Dawn Meadows, reporter for the Rose Tribune. “Not bad!” she thinks. She also has some pens, a flip notebook, and a set of keys. “And no spare pantyhose,” she finds herself thinking. The stray thought confuses her. “Now where did that come from?” she thinks, “I've never been worried about having a spare pare of pantyhose in my life!”
Shrugging it off, she walks into the newsroom. “I guess my desk must be here somewhere.” As she walks through the newsroom she gets in people's way and generally makes a nuisance of herself. She gets more than a few weird stares as she carefully picks her way through the sea of desks, looking at the name plaque on each desk in turn.
“Hey, Dawn!” Amy ignores the call until the speaker gets right into her face, waving. “Yo, Dawn!”
“Oh!” Amy remembers that she is this Dawn person. The man addressing her is not entirely un-handsome and seems a bit concerned. “Hi, um...” Amy leans over and reads the press badge sitting in the man's breast pocket. “Hi, Daniel!”
The man cocks an eyebrow at her. “It's Danny, and what's with the act? We've seen each other every day for the last five years.”
“Oh, right! Of course, Danny, I was... Umm... Just fooling around!” Amy has no idea what sort of personality this Dawn Meadows has, but she hopes that “girlish and silly” doesn't come across as too out of the usual.
“Anyhow, you're late and the Chief wants to see you. You'd better get in his office, now!” Danny helpfully points to the Chief's office and, after a mumbled thanks, Amy makes her way over there.
“Ugh, these shoes are killing me!” she moans as she walks. “I wonder if anyone'll care if I just carry 'em...” As she says this, the head of every woman in earshot whips around and stares at her disbelievingly. Amy decides that maybe it's best to keep her shoes on for now.
She finds a door labeled “Editor in Chief O'Neill.” Amy takes a deep breath and opens the door.
“Meadows!” shouts a gruff man behind the desk, “Get over here now!”
Amy runs over to a chair a fast as her high-heeled feet will carry her and plunks down into the seat.
“What are you working on? I need a story from you yesterday!” the Chief growls.
Amy has no idea. “Oh, um, well, I'm kind of out of ideas at the moment, maybe you could give me an assignment?” She smiles at the Chief in her most charming, girlish way.
The Chief grunts. “After that run in your hose I should have fired you last week, and now you come in without a story? I tell you, Meadows, you're one screw-up away from getting canned.”
Amy feels compelled to look down at the ground, where she nervously slips off her heels and begins swinging her stocking feet back and forth, like a little girl caught lying in school.
“I do have a lead for you,” the Chief stops to grin, “And you aren't gonna like it. Diamond smugglers down in Louisiana. I want you on the first flight out. I'll e-mail you the details.”
Amy gulps and scrambles to get her feet back into her shoes. “Yes, Chief! I'll have that story for you right away!” She stands and tries to get out of the office as quickly as possible.
“Oh, and Meadows?” the Chief continues, “One last thing.”
“Yes, chief?”
“Since you seem to have such trouble remembering, let me take the opportunity to remind you that, as a representative of the Rose Tribune, you are required to maintain the dress code at all times, even when on assignment, even in the most hostile conditions. That means a business suit, high heels, and pantyhose, ALL THE TIME. No stocking feet, no bare legs, no shorts.”
Amy is struck by his words. A trip to the swamp, in... she guesses it's Summer, based on the heat, wearing a suit and stockings and heels? How can she hope to survive?
She gulps nervously. “Yes, Chief.”
Amy wanders in a daze back through the newsroom. Danny rushes up.
“What'd he say? What happened?”
“He's sending me to the Louisiana bayou, and get this: He wants me to wear a suit, AND heels AND hose the whole time!”
Danny shrugs, “So what else is new?”
“And people just put up with this?”
Danny smiles, “Well, YOU certainly complain about it! But bad things seem to happen to people who break the rules. Besides, it's not like it's that big of a deal.”
Amy fumes, then brushes past Danny on her way to the elevator.
Danny calls after her, “Hey, while you're down there, eat a shrimp po' boy for me!”
Amy resolves to do nothing of the sort.
The elevator door closes and Amy's world fades to black. When it fades in again, she's opening the door to a wooden shack. By the moisture hanging in the air and the sweat on her brow, Amy figures she's scene transitioned to the Louisiana bayou.
An unsavory sort sits behind a ramshackle desk. He seems to be missing a few teeth and wears a baseball cap, a stained white tank top, and a ratty pair of jeans. He sits up when he sees Amy.
“Well, howdy, Ma'am! What brings you to Chuck's fan boat rental?”
Amy wonders if her answer is too obvious, but she goes ahead anyway. “I'm here to rent a fan boat.”
“Well, sheeeiiiit, ain't that a shame? We're all rented out right now.” Through a window in the back of the office Amy can see a fan boat sitting tied to the docks.
“What about that one?” Amy points.
“That? Oh, that's my personal boat. But I'm afraid it'll cost you a little somethin'... extra.”
Amy gulps. She has a bad feeling about this...
“Them's purty shoes you got there. Maybe you could see your way to givin' em to me, and then I might let you have that fan boat for the afternoon?”
Amy is, frankly, relieved. She can dump her shoes and, hopefully, the Chief will be none the wiser. She gladly agrees and hand over her pumps.
“Thankee kindly, Ma'am! Pleasure doing business with you. Now, you ever run a fan boat before?”
Amy hasn't, but something in her compels her to respond, “Oh, I won't be needing any help. I can handle it all by myself.”
“Suit yourself. Gets mighty dangerous out there with them gators, though. Why you want to go out in the swamp, anyway?”
Amy has no reason to disclose her mission, but for some reason does it anyway, “My name is Dawn Meadows, I'm a reporter for the Rose Tribune. I'm looking for diamond smugglers. I hear they're operating in these swamps, and I'm here to shut them down.”
The man can only laugh. “Well, good luck with that! Lemme just set one thing before you go...”
The man leads Amy out to the dock and clicks a little button on the fan boat's dashboard. A light starts blinking.
“That's the beacon for when you get yer fool self killed, so I can find my boat and bring it back. Have a nice day now!”
Amy feels worried as she hops into the boat. She wiggles her stocking-clad toes, glad to be out of those uncomfortable shoes, but nervous about what peril her unprotected feet might get in.
“I hope these are reinforced toes!” she finds herself wondering, for the first time in her life.
Amy steers the fan boat out into the water and begins searching the swamp. Soon she is hopelessly lost, with no idea where she's going or what she's looking for. As the minutes turn to hours, Amy slowly drenches herself in sweat. It must be a hundred degrees today and humid as all get out. Her white shirt turns translucent as it soaks through. Her sticky hose cling to her legs and make her feel like she's encased in a furnace. “If I don't get out of here soon, every drop of moisture in my body is going to leave through my pores!” Amy thinks to herself.
Just as she's about to give up and head back-
BANG!
A bullet ricochets off the fan behind her. Amy looks for the source and sees another fan boat in the distance with a sinister-looking driver holding a rifle.
“Get outta here, Yankee!” the man shouts, then steers his boat away.
“I'll bet that's one of the smugglers!” Amy thinks to herself. She guns the fan on the boat as fast as it'll go and takes off after the other boat. The mysterious gunman is getting closer. 50 feet away... 30 feet... 20 feet.... 10. She can almost touch the other boat when-
POW! WHUP WHUP Whup... Whup... whup....... whup..... whup.
The motor powering the fan blows, over-heated by Amy's attempt at pursuit. If Amy had gotten instructions on fan boat operation, she would know that she can't go full throttle too long without blowing the engine. With the fan dead, the boat has no way of moving and Amy is stuck. She watches the mysterious gunboat disappear in the distance.
“Nice going, Amy,” Amy thinks, “NOW you've done it!”
Amy leans over the side of the boat and dips her hand in the cold, muddy water. She begins trying to paddle the boat, perhaps thinking she can steer it all the way back to the boat rental shack. The boat does actually begin to move, and Amy smiles to herself. “Looks like I'm not done yet!”
SNAP!
Amy pulls her hand up just in time as the water around it explodes. Where once was still water there is now a giant alligator, snapping its jaws in an attempt to grab the tasty morsel that Amy had dangled out for it.
Amy scrambles to the other side of the boat, getting up onto the edge and trying to put as much distance as she can between her and the gator that now eyes her hungrily.
SNAP! Amy feels herself pulled backward! Looking behind, she sees that a second gator has attacked from the other side of the boat and now has a death grip on the back of her blue jacket. She thinks fast and slips her arms out of it, sacrificing her expensive suit to save her life.
Amy stands in the middle of the boat, biting her fingernails and looking back and forth from one gator to the other. She clutches her hands together and bounces nervously on her stocking feet. “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”
The first gator lunges from the water onto the edge of the boat, tilting it over and sending Amy falling backwards toward it. “EEEEEEEK!” She shrieks. SNAP! Amy winces, but once again feels no pain. She looks back into the closed jaws of the hungry gator; its teeth are embedded tightly in the fabric of her white dress shirt. She quickly scrambles to undo the buttons and get out of it before the beast takes another bite.
Meanwhile, not wishing to miss out on a meal, the other gator lunges out of the water and hangs on the other side of the boat. The boat slowly rights itself again, now with two gators on it. This buys Amy the time she needs to undo the last button on her shirt and slip out of it. She's now facing the two gators in a white bra, skirt, and pantyhose.
The combined weight of the two gators is making the boat pitch forward. Amy sees that her only chance to keep her head above water is to climb up to the top of the fan. She hops up and gets a grip, then hoists herself up. She's now bent over the top of the fan, her butt sticking out as she tries to scramble up and get a foothold.
SNAP!
One of the gators, she's lost track of which one, takes the opportunity to leap up and snag Amy's skirt. Before she can react the skirt has been ripped off of her. Amy ignores the loss and keeps moving. Soon she's standing on top of the fan as the boat slowly sinks below her, the twin gators eying her hungrily.
Amy takes a bare moment to notice her current state of undress. White bra, barely-black hose, and a pair of white thong panties. She notes some writing on the crotch of the panties; in big black block letters, the words “ALL YOU CAN EAT!” Amy rolls her green eyes at the situation. “It's like this chick was put on Earth to get killed in embarrassing ways!”
Returning her attention to the deadly peril she finds herself in, Amy looks around and sees a moss-covered vine dangling just out of reach. “Well, looks like the only way out is up!”
Amy takes a deep breath, bends her knees, then leaps to the vine. She manages to grab hold, but soon discovers it's not nearly as stable as it seemed. It dislodges from whatever is gripping it, causing her to fall three feet down, placing her stocking feet dangerously close to the snout of one of the gators.
Amy's eyes grow wide with terror, then she starts climbing.
SNAP!
Amy winces, but again feels no pain. She keeps climbing, but finds her movements slowing as something is pulling her backwards. She looks down and finds that the gator has snagged the reinforced toe of her pantyhose in its mouth.
Amy considers her situation. “I can't afford to let go with one hand to loosen the pantyhose at the waist,” she thinks, “I'll just have to keep climbing and hope that the gator pulls the pantyhose off.
She climbs and climbs, the effort growing more strenuous with each handhold. Looking back, she sees that her pantyhose have stretched out fully four feet from where her toe is. She pulls and pulls, but the hose show no sign of giving. Her arm muscles ache as the the backwards pull from her hose gets stronger and stronger. Soon she can make no forward progress against the elasticity of her barely blacks; all she can do is cling to the vine for dear life. At last, she can hold no longer and her arms give out.
SPROING! SNAP!
The pantyhose spring back into shape, pulling Amy backwards straight into the waiting jaws of the alligator, which quickly open wide and snap shut around her. The crocodile grins, a grasping hand and a tuft of blonde hair sticking out of its mouth as it sinks below the water.
The next day, Chuck and his brother, Buck, steer their rental fan boat out to the point indicated by the beacon. They find the boat sunk, nose tilted down into the muck.
“You were right, Chuck, that Yankee ditz sure made a hash of it.”
“I wonder what happened to her?”
Just then a big, cylindrical alligator turd floats by. It's wrapped in a tangled pair of barely-black pantyhose. Half-stuck in it is a tiny white g-string with the words “ALL YOU CAN EAT!” written on the crotch.
Chuck fishes the pantyhose and undies out to join the high heels in a little memorial display he's putting together back at the rental office. Then he and Buck have a good laugh about the foolish Yankee reporter who wound up a gator turd as they set up the rigging to haul their fan boat out of the muck.
Amy is in no state to continue this adventure or her life.