It had been a perfect day up until five minutes ago; we had a great table on the pavement outside a small Spanish bar and we were just sitting, enjoying a cold beer and watching the world pass by on the beach in front of us.
Perfect that was until the parasites found us.
The parasites, or to give them their real names- Dave and Sandra Adams, were a couple who had attached themselves to us in the hotel bar on the very first night of our holiday and refused to let go. It was our own fault for being so friendly towards them but that's just in our nature and besides, we were caught off guard as we were both tired from the long journey and they had seemed quite amiable on first impressions. After that they just seemed to be everywhere we went.
It wasn't like they seemed to be making a conscious effort to follow us; they just seemed to appear by supernatural means wherever we were and then stick to us like glue, sucking the enjoyment out of everything we tried to do and feeding off our good nature. It had come as a blessed relief then, when two blissful days ago, Dave had contracted a dose of food poisoning and had been unable to move more than a couple of feet from his bathroom. Even that came with a price though, after installing himself and his wife on our table and ordering beers (just for themselves) from the waitress (he didn't really say 'shaken, not stirred' did he?), he was now recounting his illness in graphic detail to us (and most of the other patrons of the bar, the man had no volume control). I switched to autopilot and nodded and smiled in the right places as he told us for the third time how he had been afraid to cough and repeated something about him being able to crap through the eye of a needle. Sandra just sat sipping her Babycham and lemonade, moronically repeating the last word of all his sentences.
After finally stopping to draw breath, Dave sat back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head, his personality substitute 'comedy' T-shirt riding up to reveal his hairy beer gut in all it glory. Sensing he was about to ask the inevitable 'so, what are you pair up to for the rest of the day' question, I desperately searched for an answer that would enable us to get rid of them. I was coming up blank and beginning to panic as he asked, but Jane was already well ahead of me.
'We're going to the nude beach Dave, wanna come?'
This was news to me too but I had no choice but to go along, besides, it was worth it to see Dave almost falling backwards off his chair, beer leaking from his nose as he choked. Jane just sat smiling at the two of them, patiently waiting for an answer while Dave composed himself. Sandra had taken a sudden and deep interest in the pattern on the paper napkin under her drink. This was a stroke of genius on Jane's part, Dave and Sandra were two of the biggest prudes we had ever met, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if they had never even seen each other naked, the thought of going to a nude beach would be totally out of the question for them. We had already gone to the regular beach with them earlier in the week for a very uncomfortable couple of hours, they had both sat there fully dressed for the whole duration and they almost died of embarrassment when Jane removed her bikini top.
Dave looked visibly flustered and turned to his wife for inspiration but she seemed engrossed in watching a stray cat under the next table.
'Nah, I think we'll give that one a miss mate, I don't want to get my wedding tackle sunburnt' Replied Dave with an idiotic laugh as we stood from the table.
'OK' I said, 'you know where the beach is if you change your minds'
With that we walked gathered our beach gear and walked away.
As soon as we were out of sight and earshot we both burst into fits of laughter and after composing myself I turned to Jane and asked
'Where are we really going?'
'The nude beach'
'Your kidding right?'
'I was at first but I quite like the idea now. Besides, if we don't go the Adams family back there will only find us again'
I paused for a while and considered the options and said
'OK then, I'm up for it'
We walked down onto the main beach and made our way towards the far end where a large rocky outcrop formed a natural divide between the textile and nude areas. We scrambled to the top of the rocks and surveyed the scene in front of us.
'It looks a bit quieter down the far end' I remarked and we began to ascend down to the beach below.
We made our way along the beach, it was quite busy and it seemed that most of the people in the immediate area were not fully nude but as we went deeper into the nude section the costumes became fewer and further between until everyone was completely naked. I suddenly began to feel very overdressed.
'This seems like a nice spot' exclaimed Jane as she set he bags down on the soft sand.