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Copyright Oggbashan July 2006
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
This story is not eligible to win the Nude Day Story Contest 2006 because I am a recent contest winner.
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It was my own fault. I saw the signs, read them, and ignored them, thinking that I knew better.
It was a very hot summer day. I had driven from London towards my rented holiday cottage for hours and I was within a few miles of my destination but early. I was due to collect the cottage's keys in a couple of hours yet I had only ten minutes driving left to do.
I stopped at a viewpoint over the river, got out and perched myself on the low fence beside the steps leading down to a lower level. I was hot. I eased my breasts in my bra, holding my top away from my body so that air could circulate and cool me down. It worked, a little, but I still felt sticky and sweaty. I could hear the waterfall about fifty yards upstream. If I were to go down the steps I could walk to the waterfall. I started down.
At the lower point I could see a dark pool out of the main stream. It looked so cool and inviting. Despite the warning signs that told me the dam upstream could discharge water at any time, I thought I could risk a swim. Why not? I had my swimming costume and several towels in the car, there was no one around, and it was hot.
The area was suffering from a water shortage and a hosepipe ban was in force. Surely they wouldn't let water out of the dam during a water shortage? I was wrong.
I changed, slid my car door key in the concealed pocket between my breasts, put flip-flops on my feet and walked down to the river's edge.
There was a wide rock ledge below the bushes. I kicked off my flip-flops, sat on the edge and dangled my legs into the water. The water was wonderfully cool and refreshing. The depth before me looked shallow but I knew pools could be deceptive. I stood up, walked a few paces to a gravel beach and waded in.
As the water gradually edged up my body I could feel the heat and tiredness draining away. When the water was up to my waist I leant forward and started to swim with a gentle breaststroke. I turned on my back and floated, moving my arms and legs idly to keep me in position in the centre of the pool. The current was so weak that a few hand-flips counteracted it.
I was almost asleep when I first felt a change in the current. I thought that I must have drifted closer to the main stream of the river so I rolled over and kicked towards the bank. As my head came out of the water I sensed a change in the note of the waterfall. What had been a trickle was now a roar. Within seconds the flood hit me and washed me out of my disappearing pool into a raging torrent of muddy brown water. My head went under just as I was about to yell for help. To whom? There had been no one around when I entered the water.
The next few minutes I struggled to stay alive. I took a breath every time my head was above water. That wasn't often. The river bashed me against rock and dragged me through tangled branches. One of those branches snagged the back of my swimming costume. The torrent rose over my head as I was held in place. I wriggled out of the shoulder straps and pulled my costume down to my hips. The material held for a few seconds before it tore away leaving me naked but with my head free of the water. I gasped for breath.
I was growing weaker as I tried to avoid the worst obstacles. I thought I saw a vehicle close to the water's edge. I yelled, "Help!" before my mouth was filled with water again.
A heavy splash beside me was followed by a fierce grip on my arm. We swung across the current. My rescuer took the impact of our crash against the bank then unceremoniously hauled me out like a wet rag doll.
Without a word he unfastened the rope around his waist, picked me up and ran for his Landrover. He threw me into the passenger seat, ran to the tow hook and detached the rope. He shouted, "Hang on!" as he started the engine and gunned up the slope ahead of us. Dirt flew from all four wheels as he powered the Landrover up the rough track. I was bouncing around and hanging on to the doorframe.
On higher ground he stopped.
"Are you OK?" he asked.
"I think so," I said dubiously. "I'm still in one piece, thanks to you."
"You need some first aid," he announced. "Hang on again, not so hard this time, and I'll drive us to the cottage."
He drove slower but confidently for a couple of minutes until we reached a scruffy cottage with sagging thatch. As he drove, I studied him cautiously. His clothes were wet and plastered to him, showing a muscular torso and large biceps. His blond hair, cut short, had a reddish tinge. His face had a trace of stubble. His skin was tanned; his hands strong but marked with several new cuts oozing blood.
Blood? I started to examine myself. I was bleeding from many cuts and abrasions including a large gash near my left nipple. The bangs and crashes I had endured in the river were being to hurt. I shivered, not just with the effect of my wet skin, but with the thought of what I had endured and survived, thanks to him. I was also covered with mud from the bankside that he had dragged me across.
As he stopped I was shaking like a tree in a high wind. I was shivering, my teeth were chattering, and I couldn't think straight if at all. He opened the door beside me, lifted me out and carried me to the cottage's front door. He kicked it open ducked his head and entered. He went through the building and into a bathroom. He set me down on the closed toilet seat, leaning me backwards. I clung to the edges of the seat as if they were my lifeline.
He started the shower and checked its temperature with his hand. When he was satisfied, he grabbed me and stood me under the shower. I tried to resist but my limbs were too feeble. He rinsed the mud and blood off my body and then rinsed my hair.
"This is going to hurt," he said calmly as he poured a shampoo on my hair.
I screeched as the detergent entered my cuts. He ignored my objections, washing my hair twice and then using shower gel on my body. At last he rinsed me off with cool water, turned the shower off, towelled me down gently and wrapped me in a white bathsheet with another towel as a turban around my head.
He swung me into his arms, carried me from the bathroom to a bedroom and put me down on a large double bed.
"Stay there!" he ordered. "I'm going to get the First Aid kit."
I stayed. Apart from feeling weak and still shaking, he had wrapped me so tightly in that bathsheet that I was almost mummified.
He used antiseptic cream on my minor injuries and covered the larger cuts with plasters. He treated the gash on my left breast with a pad and strapping, holding it in place with a sling like a single sided halter around my neck. I was an unresisting heap, still not wholly aware of who or where I was. All I did know was that I slightly resented his casual handling of my body as if I was just an inanimate object. When he had finished he wrapped me as tightly as before.
"Stay there until I've cleaned myself up," he said as he left the room.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again the shadows showed that several hours had passed. He was sitting beside the bed wearing another shirt and clean faded jeans.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Alive," I replied, "thanks to you. Who are you? I'm Anne."
"Hello Anne. I'm Gary."
"Hello Gary."
Then we both smiled. This was a ridiculous conversation for a nude female who owed her life to a stranger.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I don't know how you came to be in the river," Gary answered, "but I was crossing the ford when I saw the flood coming. I stopped just above normal flood levels and tried to speak to the dam control but my mobile phone battery was low and I couldn't raise them. I put it down as I saw a white body in the flood – you. I knew that I couldn't swim in that current so I attached a rope to the Landrover and to me and jumped in just before you came within reach. The level was still rising so I knew we had to get out of there before the Landrover was swamped. We just made it."
"Thank God you were there."
"I nearly wasn't. A few seconds later crossing the ford and I would have been swept away too. How come you were in the river?"
Ashamed of myself, I explained.
"That was a really stupid thing to do, Anne. It nearly killed you, and me too. Those notices are there for a reason. I have to cross the river to get here. Usually I check before I do and if the engineers are releasing water at an unexpected time they ring and tell me. They couldn't raise my mobile and couldn't delay the water. There has been a massive thunderstorm upstream. The water coming down is higher than anyone has ever known and the thunderstorm knocked out part of the electrical grid. They had to let the flood water through and generate electricity to replace that lost by the grid failure."
