Monday arrived, and Carol had a feeling it was going to be a bad day.
She had no idea why. It seemed like any other Monday she had gone through. Country music would blare obnoxiously into her ear, and she would silence it with a forceful slam on the clock radio from whence it came. Then she'd get up, take a shower, fix herself a cup of coffee, brush her teeth, check her phone for messages, catch up on the news online, the usual. So far, so good, everything seemed pretty typical. So why couldn't she shake the feeling that something horrible was going to come crashing down on her?
Perhaps I forgot something?
she mused, scratching her chin as she stared out the window lost in thought. It certainly seemed like something was missing...a light bulb winked on in her head.
Oh, right, the garbage! That has to be it. Silly me!
Monday was the garbage day, both metaphorically and literally, and Carol had neglected to take hers outside the previous night. She had been too...absorbed in her book. Fortunately, there were plenty of other trash bags lying on the curb, which meant the truck hadn't arrived to pick them up yet. It wasn't too late. After tying her bag up, Carol hopped into her flip-flops and rushed out the door with the trash in hand. The warm summer air that hit her body was a strong contrast to the cooler conditioned air in her home, but she didn't have the time to marvel or groan at the sensation as she rushed to the street to deposit her trash.
A car drove by. In the corner of her vision, Carol noticed it abruptly slowed down and thought the driver did a double-take in her direction. In normal circumstances, she would have just ignored it and moved on, but a sudden honking of his horn forced her to look up just in time to watch him speed away. The mother blinked in confusion.
What was that about?
Across the street, another person rushed outside carrying a trash bag of his own, clearly having the same issue and idea that Carol had. However, upon glancing up in her direction, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked directly at her, his jaw falling to the ground. Confused, Carol just waved at him before turning away, her mind a big question mark.
Wonder what his problem was? Was there something on my face?
Idly, Carol pawed at her face to wipe off whatever had supposedly shocked her neighbor so much. Upon feeling nothing come off it, she decided to take a glance down to see if there was something weird elsewhere on her body. It didn't seem like there were any problems. Her skin was still a little red from the shower, and her bush could use a bit of a trim, but there wasn't really anything worth getting alarmed about—
Hold on a minute...skin?
Bush?!
"CRAP!"
Carol practically warped back into her apartment, her every inch of bare skin coated in a fine layer of sweat.
She couldn't believe it! She went outside butt-naked and didn't even realize it! Just like Henrietta did the other day! It hadn't even occurred to her to put any clothes on.
"What the hell is WRONG with us?" she grumbled, trudging to her room to go get some things to put on, feeling more than a little sheepish.
If I hadn't forgotten to take out the trash...or if I hadn't remembered that I forgot to take out the trash...I might have never realized I hadn't dressed yet. I might very well have gone to work just like this!
Carol shuddered at the thought. She didn't care about people seeing her naked at all, but people seeing her forget to do something as fundamental as putting her clothes on? That kind of humiliation would have killed her!
Of course, now that the subject of clothes had fully entered Carol's mind, she now realized precisely why this was going to be such a rotten day. It meant that her nude streak had to finally come to an end and she had to do her least favorite thing in the whole world: dress herself. It was never an easy thing, and after spending three whole days in her perfect natural state, it would be especially hellish today. But she didn't have a choice; she had work today, and she had to be decent at the office.
So biting her lip, Carol set about the arduous task of covering herself. She did not bother putting on any underwear; she had sworn off bras and panties a long time ago and was perfectly happy to go commando. But that didn't mean she could skimp out on anything else. She had stockings to climb into to at least feign a sense of modesty, a white blouse with a built-in shelf bra to make sure her girls didn't bounce around too much, and a business skirt and blazer in matching shades of black to make her look professional. With the addition of her heels, some makeup, and a good combing of her hair, her look was complete.
Carol stared at her clothed self in the mirror and took it all in. She looked good, or at least she supposed she did in the eyes of the business world. Her suit was straight and unwrinkled. Her lips were glossy and red. Her black hair was sleek, shiny, untangled, and "like she just stepped off a spaceship" as her daughter, Mindy, would describe it. In short, she was the perfect image for the modern day businesswoman.
Carol could only sigh at it. She didn't want to look like the perfect modern day businesswoman! She didn't want this suit to look straight on her, she didn't want her lips to look so red, she didn't want her hair to be so tidy. She wanted to wrestle the whole ensemble off her body and hurl it to the ground. She wanted to latch onto the cutest person she could find and leave lip marks all over their skin. She wanted her hair to get tousled and tangled just to tell everyone that she was a wild girl who craved fun and excitement!
She wanted to live like those women who served the Goddess, Zenriah!
Unrestrained!
Free!
Naked!
She had spent a lot of time yesterday reading the Scripture, and those Zenrist girls of ancient times really had it made. It seemed like they didn't have to worry about a thing, save how they were going to get, or give, their next orgasm. Everything about their lives was all about enjoying their bodies and being in love. The thing that every girl would and should ever want. If ever there was an afterlife, Carol hoped it would be like that.
Uh, not that she believed there could ever be an afterlife. Let alone a paradise where women just lived completely naked and had sex with each other and a goddess all the time.
It sure would be nice though.
Carol turned away and marched out of the room, intent to get as far away from the mirror as possible. If she thought about it any longer, thought about her hatred of clothes, or Zenrists, or the book lying on her bed any longer, she might feel the urge to just rip her suit off right now and start masturbating. She already wasted enough time thinking about them.
***
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...
Her fingers danced gracefully across her keyboard. Her eyes swung back and forth like pendulums across every word that flashed on her screen. Sentences were highlighted, underlined, and deleted with every scurrying motion of her mouse.
But inside her head, Carol was completely dead.
Yes, it was another droning day in the office, full of ennui, humdrum, and piles and piles of textual mush to slog through. Just like it had been last week. And the week before that, and the week before that.
Unfortunately, it was even worse today. Everything felt...tighter around Carol. More constraining. More claustrophobic. Like she was trapped in a cage built entirely around her whole body. Every now and then, she found herself absently tugging at her collar, pulling at her sleeve, or rubbing her legs together to loosen the fabrics closing in on her form, giving her skin a few precious seconds to breathe. But it wasn't enough.
Damn it
, she cursed as she pulled at her blouse, which was making her feel especially itchy right around where her nipples were. This is what she got after spending such a long time without any clothes on. Her body always needed to take some time to get used to being wrapped up again, but it was really bad today. If it didn't let up anytime soon, she...she...she didn't even want to think about what would happen.
"Hey, Carol! Working hard, or hardly working?"
"Huh?" Carol half-gasped as she looked up to see just who had so rudely interrupted her anxiety. "Oh. Hi, Harold."
Harold beamed at her with that annoyingly friendly smile of his before he took a sip of his coffee. Though swallowing his drink caused that smile to mercifully flicker away, if only for a moment. "Bleck, coffee's especially bitter today," he said, pulling a retching expression before taking another sip.
"Then why are you drinking it?" said Carol, who decided she could use the small talk, if only to provide a distraction from her discomfort.
"Didn't get much sleep last night. Let's just say we ran into some car trouble on the way home from my son's grandparents that delayed us for...a little while," he grumbled, adding some unintelligible cursing under his breath.
"Is your car starting to break down?"
"No, the problem wasn't the car," Harold sighed, embarrassment starting to seep into his voice. "The problem was that...I couldn't get it out of the driveway." Upon saying that, he took another swig of his drink, doing so in a way that was far more fitting for a bottle of scotch than a mug of coffee.
"I...see," said Carol. "That must be quite the story."
"Yeah, one I could do without telling right now. But that's the story of my weekend. How was yours?"
Carol froze. Her weekend. That was the one thing she didn't want to think about right now. The one thing she couldn't afford to think about right now. Because if she did...she just might...
"It...was good," she stated robotically.
"You do anything fun?"
