As she cautiously drives toward Lakeside Shopping Center, petite Susan Cassandra is somewhat apprehensive. She is going to a large shopping mall in another city that is a 35 minute drive from her home. She is leaving Hicksville, a small, Louisiana town of 2,000 residents and traveling to the 'big city.' She's saying goodbye to country living and driving to New Orleans, a thriving metropolis of over 1,000,000 people. She's not leaving Kansas in order to meet some magical wizard. But she is going to meet a total stranger, a sorcerer of a man who has captivated her spirit. It's her faith and her dream that he is a gallant prince who will whisk her off to Never, Never Land.
It's her first time every venturing out of the city of her birth. Her mother's water broke and she went into labor about eight o'clock one morning. For some unknown reason, she immediately went to her gynecologist's office, instead of the local hospital. Not having time to call an ambulance, the doctor delivered the baby girl with bright red hair twenty minutes later in her own office. The following morning, mother and child went home to the open arms of numerous relatives and well-wishers. Amongst family, friends and classmates in this rural, southern town is where electricgirl grew up; that's the only world she has ever known.
It wasn't until the submissive got into middle school that she learned that there was a difference between a large metropolitan area and the small community in which she lived. It was then that she learned that big cities have skyscrapers, ten, fifteen and twenty stories high, more fast food restaurants and full service eateries, bars, liquor stores, and franchises than a person cold count. They have vast apartment buildings and condominiums, marble courthouses accompanied by law offices, numerous lawyers, police and security guards, several types of banks and loan offices, each with drive up windows and ATMs. Big cities have immense air conditioned shopping centers with specialty shops, jewelry stores, department stores, gift shops, food courts and thousands of employees, customers and custodians, along with snarled traffic jams of strangers trying to get into them. Some centers even have movie theaters. Every one of them has three, four, five or more high schools, dozens of middle and elementary schools and private schools for the affluent.
The tallest structure that the bachelorette has ever seen is the town's water tower at the left end of the main street. Her home town has seven fast food restaurants, three that serve mainly hamburgers, two that sell fried chicken, one that offers only pizza and the other tacos; none of them deliver. There is one small condominium complex and one set apartment of buildings. This latter are three buildings on the left end of town, each two stories high with ten units on each floor. All of them are two bedroom one bath apartments and almost all of them have tenants that rely on government subsidized housing.
The main street has a wood frame courthouse. The mayor's office is on its right and the sheriff's office and a barber shop are to its left. The sheriff has two deputies, one office secretary and three squad cars. To the left of the sheriff's office is a law office with one attorney; he has a paralegal working with him. The only other law office is on the other side of the street by the condominium; that's where the female attorney lives. She works alone and does all her own paralegal work out of an office she has above the only bank, which is next to the doctor's office. The bank has one ATM outside the building; it's not drive up. Both attorneys are civil court lawyers and both also occasionally represent clients in traffic court, which is held every Thursday unless it's a holiday. If a defendant needs a criminal court attorney for a serious crime, he or she must hire one from out of town.
Farther left of the sheriff's office, there is a hamburger fast food restaurant, a combination gas station and convenience store and a fried chicken fast food eatery. Next door to it are a drug store, the post office and an Italian restaurant. At the far end of the street are the pizza restaurant, the other two hamburger fast food restaurants, right next to each other, and then the water tower.
Across the street from all this is the town's "shopping center." Going left to right are the only bar and pool hall - it opens at four in the afternoon and closes at one in the morning - a Chinese restaurant, a dry goods store that sells mostly women's and children's clothing, a general practitioner and the gynecologist who doubles as the town's pediatrician. The two doctors have their own offices in the same building. He has a nurse; she works alone, but they share the receptionist. Next to them, there are the bank and several more buildings, each housing a chicken tender fast food restaurant, a hardware store, a BBQ restaurant and the dentist office. He has one assistant and one dental hygienist, Susan. Going farther right are a movie theater, a taco restaurant and a combination toy store and gift shop.
The theater has children's matinees on weekday and Saturday afternoons starting at three o'clock, regular movies beginning at six o'clock on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings - two shows each night. On Sunday afternoon it has one showing at three o'clock. Patrons can also rent movie discs, including adult movies during regular business hours.
There is one traffic light in front mayor's office on the right end of the town. On one side, the crossing street leads to the homes of the dentist, the general practitioner, the mayor and a few of the more affluent residents. On the other side of the street across from the toy and gift shop is the condominium complex.
The gynecologist lives in the condominium complex. She frequently dines with the older of the two police officers. They are both divorced; he has one child who lives with his mother. Sometimes he sleeps with the doctor at her residence.
The high school building and the middle school building are on the same campus, on the outskirts of the town. The one cafeteria and school yard separates the two schools. Further out of town are the two elementary schools. There are no private schools.
The town is no different than Mayberry, U.S.A. When she gets to her destination, the maiden will be an alien being in an unfamiliar land.
Susan's elderly mother, several of her coworkers and her friend Katie - she lives in the same condominium complex as the bachelorette - all warned her about going to this particular mall today. They each told her that she should not be going to meet some mysterious character she knows only through an Internet chat room, especially a real-time online chat room where everyone communicates with each other using erotic terminology. Conversations that concealed individuals type, while sitting at their home computers. They are afraid that her online relationship can only end up getting her raped or killed or worse, getting her kidnapped and sold as an unwilling sex slave.
She understands their concern. She knows that they care about her and are only thinking of her safety. The submissive even purchased a small can of mace as Katie suggested. She has it attached to her key ring. She will use it if her online male friend is not everything he said he was; if he attempts to abuse her in any way or if he tries to abduct her. She also has every intention of calling Katie as soon as she meets her Master.
Her cell phone buzzes; it's in a cup holder of her automobile's console. The caller ID indicates that it is Katie. It's the second time she has called within the last twenty minutes.
"Hello Katie," she dryly answers it, putting the phone on speaker.
"Have you arrived yet?"
"No, I haven't gotten there yet. I've still got another ten minutes before I have to turn off the Interstate. I . . ."
"Susan, please call me the minute you get to the shopping center. I'm worried about you."
"Yes, I promise you, I'll check him out before I introduce myself to him and I'll call you the moment I see him. Now, will you quit worrying about me? I'll be alright."
