Green Desert - Chapter 1.3.5 - Pí‘oro

Vata was taking her sweet time getting to the door. Perhaps she had taken out her hearing aid. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. I pounded some more. “Vata!” The crazy foreign kid was making the girl strip at gunpoint. This was just too weird. Maybe if I went around to the bedroom window, I would wake my wife.

“Shoulders,” the gunman ordered like it made a lick of sense.

But the skinny girl seemed to understand. She turned around and lifted her shirt to expose a perfect, tapered back, bare from neck to waist.

The foreign kid said, “Front,” and the girl started to turn and I felt blood pulsating in places where it hadn’t in years.

Her sweatshirt hid her face but revealed a pair of pert breasts so beautiful I felt like I was ten again. I floated forwards, breathing deep.

“Sleeves,” the gunman snapped.

Behind me, Vata squawked, “What in the name of Nutíní is going on out here?”

The blonde girl pulled the sweatshirt over her head and off each arm, holding it out at arm’s length to the side.

“Pí‘oro?” Vata’s voice crackled.

Using all my composure, I yanked my eyes from the vision in my driveway and faced my wife. “Um. . .”

Vata looked past me, clutching her bathrobe tight around her.

“Call the police,” I said.

And then I heard the siren.