"So you're in an abnormally bad mood these last few days. I know I'm supposed to be able to read your mind but I'm having a bit of trouble. Mind filling me in? I promise to be good." Karen was the one waiting for me. I guess being a tiny bit obsessed with her makes her a little more likely to show up in m stories and my thoughts. I wasn't sure where she'd gotten her new outfit or why she was dressed up like that. It was definitely out of character for her to be dressed so conservatively. Karen was wearing a black suit and tie with a pink shirt beneath it. The suit actually did an admirable job of concealing her womanly figure, obviously padded shoulders softened the swell of her breasts but her as still filled her pants. The pair of pants that could hide that ass haven't been made.
"If it makes you feel any better it's me not you. The problem is my business. Well specifically my business partner has gone out of business. I don't know where he's moving to but it's not a good thing for me. I can't afford this place on my own and I can't afford to move." I explained to her. Sometimes saying things out loud makes them a little easier for me to get a grasp on. This sadly wasn't one of those times. "I feel betrayed and I don't like feeling betrayed."
"Why do you feel betrayed?" She'd picked up a musket from some place and was amusing herself by twirling it around like a baton, throwing it up into the air and catching it.
"The guy I work with, James is moving out. He didn't tell me, I've got random strangers walking into my office talking about they know he's moving soon but he hadn't told me. It's complete cowardly bullshit! It doesn't give me any time to work out a plan or anything. It's not like communicating is that fucking hard." The background was coming into view, she was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Not a full sized one, it was the kind like I'd been on hat could only handle helicopters. It was still massive, more than big enough for a full game of football on top of just the raise section she was on toward the rear of the boat. The front end was easily a block from where she was standing. "Okay before I move on where the fuck are we and why are you dressed like that?"
"Oh because you've been watching Hellsing too much. I'm supposed to sing in German but I don't know any German. Besides, the suit is kind of a nice change from being nude." Karen explained before performing a quick series of cart wheels then ending with a somersault without losing her musket. Normally she's not much of a gymnast so it caught mea bit off guard to watch her tumbling like that.
"Okay, that's a good enough answer for me." What was I going to do, tell a figment of my imagination that it was insane? I was till scrambling to figure out how exactly I was going to pay all of my bills and keep my business up and running. It's not like the spring of two thousand nine was exactly the time to go looking for a new job. I was seeing plenty of people with honest to goodness degrees that were out of work, this wasn't the time to start playing with fire.
"So you're feeling betrayed. What are you gonna do about it?"
"I was thinking murder." I wasn't really going to murder him, at least I don't think I was. There were lots of perfectly good reasons why I wouldn't kill him. The first and most important was that I didn't have a place to hide the body. Now if I knew there was no chance I'd be caught. . .well he does have a wife and kids that I should take into account. Considering how shitty his business is doing right now the life insurance he's got would probably be a nice thing to have around.
"Well you aren't doing that. Nikki needs you to stay out of jail because inmates can't write other inmates, and the truth is you wouldn't write her if you had to use pens and paper." Karen replied walking into the ship. She was in the living quarters and they were just as cramped as I remembered them being. Triple decker bunk beds that also doubled as storage. Criminals get better housing than this.
"You know I'd been thinking that same thing." Karen said as she walked the halls, they were completely packed with Marines, most of them wearing coveralls but a few were wearing the camouflage utilities that most people associate with the military. They were reading books, and writing letters and in the corners televisions were hooked to Playstations and Xboxes. Oddly they weren't paying any attention to the woman almost literally crawling over them. "They can't see me can they?"
"I guess not. Probably cus this is a memory, not sure why you dredged it up. I don't have much to say about the boat. It wasn't horrible and it wasn't great. I never realized that you could have so many people around and be alone before that. It was kinda nice actually. I think that's why I love cities so much. There's people, hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of them and they leave you alone. It's not like those tiny one horse towns where everybody knows your business."
"Yeah yeah whatever. I actually wanted to ask you why it is that prisoners get treated so much better than the military?" She walked out of the living quarters and down a treacherously steep stair case. When I'd been there I'd clutched that guard rail, a random wave had once sent me skidding down those steel steps on my ass. Once was way more than enough. Karen was easily navigating down them and into the mess hall. "I mean prisoners get rooms with just one person, and they get their own sinks and toilets. They aren't packed in like sardines. They get real food too. I mean I know Nikki doesn't seem to like the food but its real food."
"It's because we volunteered. We signed a contract to defend our nation and we can order pizza. We get to leave and besides when our time is done people look at us in a different, better light." I paused for a moment looking away from her.
"Still doesn't seem right." Nikki responded. I hadn't even noticed that she was there until she spoke and normally they don't appear from thin air.
"Well what are we working on today Sean?" Karen asked as she walked right through a man. "Hey that's kinda neat, why is that again?"
"Because it's a memory, I'm not so much writing this as just remembering and I'll thank you to get out of there. I was browsing the Literotica story ideas and I think I got an idea worth pursuing. So just leave through the portside hatch and we'll be fine." Both girls paused and stared at me in confusion then at each other. Neither one wanted to admit they didn't know what I was talking about so they guessed and started walking to the right. "Other door."
"Well if you'd said the one on the left we would have understood." Karen quipped and then stepped through the door into a bedroom. It was similar to the way her bedroom had been decorated when she was eighteen, there were posters on the walls for Eminem and Linken Park as well as some movie posters. The queen sized bed was covered with stuffed animals, most of them bears. One in particular stood out, a bear dressed up as a gangster, he even had a feathered fedora and a guitar case with a tommy gun inside.
"Cute." Karen paused and looked at herself she was suddenly wearing a red plaid skirt that didn't quite cover her white cotton panties. Her socks came up to her knees and she was wearing red high tops as well. Her shirt was a white button up tied up beneath her breasts and her hair was done in pig tails with big ribbons. "Ok these shoes with this outfit just will not do." She shook her head and walked over to the mirrored closet and opened it. "I'll pick out some shoes, you need to get Nikki in here."
