Hot Live Nude Women!
With a title like that, this short story is bound to show up on many Internet searches. Which is exactly the point of the story: certain keywords or "lures" are guaranteed to attract men, against their better judgment. No, this is not pornography. But why not read on anyway? It will only take fifteen minutes off your life... thirty if you're a slow reader.
-A.R.Y.
HOT LIVE NUDE WOMEN!
By A.R.Yngve
Gimme another vodka with a chaser. Last night I saw the truth. You gotta believe me. We're just cattle, man, just cattle. "Hot live nude women!" I saw the sign and I went there like a fly into a garbage can.
That's right, man... insects, that's what we are to them. Has it ever occurred to you that women are really running things, and we men are just putty in their hands? We strut and brag and fight each other and think we're the dominant sex. What a joke on us, man. No, don't go! You gotta listen! It could save your life, man!
Last night... I saw that stupid, stupid sign above the entrance. All in blinking pink neon lights: "Hot Live Nude Women!" No posters or pictures outside, just the sign. Yeah, okay, I'd had a few beers and I had the proverbial monkey on my back and an itch to scratch.
So I went right in... door stood wide open, not even a bouncer there.
Kinda dark and dingy in the lobby. Old furniture, cobwebs, a ticket booth with a "CLOSED" sign in front. And a bit warm in there. I was about to leave, but then this strange lady appears from out of nowhere - I mean, from a doorway - and she puts her hand around my back, and smiles, and says: "Hey stranger, don't go now, the show's just about to start."
The light was dim, so I couldn't see all of her at once, and she kept sorta moving around me so I never saw her entire face, but she had hot hands, I mean hot to the touch. Her hand felt like a cup of really hot coffee. Whatever she was wearing, it clung to her curves like it was painted on, and she had a top hat. Long flowing white hair, too. And a voice like Dusty Springfield.
"What kinda show?" I asked her.
"Just what the sign announced, lover. Hot live nude women."
There was a scent about her, pretty nice actually, like dry wood. The old floor creaked under her high heels.
"What's the cost?"
"Only... one dollar."
"Okay," I said, and gave her a buck, thinking that this must be one of the last old-style burlesque houses in town, running on its last legs... I pictured they had horrible-looking old women on stage, doing pathethic reruns of their glory days. And I was a little bit drunk."
So I let that lady with the hot hands lead me into the theater and I took a seat... saw a few scattered men in raincoats sitting there, quiet, waiting for whatever the show on stage was going to be. The stage lit up, and we could hear a raspy pre-recorded brass band fanfare. When the lights were on, I saw just how run-down the theater really was... rats on the floor, man! And us, the hungry flies, in the seats...
The lady in the top hat from the lobby walked in on the stage, her heels going click-clack, click-clack, and I could see her face. Something was very strange about her clothes... they were black and looked like they were made of chain-mail. And her skin was kind of orange.
Then she shouted, without a microphone, and every perv and lonely guy in the audience listened.
"Welcome, gentlemen, to the venerable old Hot Pants Theater. You are the few lucky ones to witness its final great night, before it will be torn down to make place for a parking lot." She leaned down by the footlights and grinned at us. "We're going out with a bang! Expect the unexpected. We'll show you women, hot live nude women, as you've never seen them before!"
The music played again, a drum roll.
"And now," she said... I could swear her eyes were totally black, but maybe the lighting fooled me... "without further ado, I give you the first act, starring our cat-alicious female dancer... Foxyyyy!"
The top hat lady clapped her hands and darted off as the curtains went up, and some phony-Oriental bellydancer music played. On the stage stood a nude woman... no, not like that. She was a ballet dancer, had that kinda pose, and a ballet-dancer's body. All wiry muscles and springy feet. The top hat lady talked, while the dancer did her act. Dancing. Like ballet. I remember her eyes were totally black. Some guy who sat in the row before me stood up to leave the place. But he stopped and couldn't take his eyes of the dancer. Yeah, she was nude, but that wasn't the thing. She wasn't even really pretty. And she had no hair. I mean, not even eyebrows.
I can't recall everything the top hat lady said to use, and the music was a bit loud in places so I didn't catch some words... but she told us a story. In rhyme, too. I didn't know what to think. She told us about a race of people who went underground to live in caves, more than a hundred thousand years ago. The reason was, they were escaping an ice age.
And they went deeper and deeper, until they came to these huge caverns, miles beneath the ground, where the air was foul with toxic fumes and heat from volcanoes.
Many of these prehistoric people died there, suffocated by the fumes. But some of them survived, and had children, and after twenty thousand years they had adapted to life underground. They grew resistent to immense heat, and could even store heat inside them, and didn't have to drink water anymore - they ate rock, and fungus, and drank oil! Oil that seeped down from vast natural deposits. Then followed thousands of years of harmony, no wars, and great migrations underground, and eventually they dug long tunnels and built cities.
The dancer bowed to us, and the other guys clapped their hands, like I did, but you could hear we were more than a little bit confused. I felt this heat radiating from the stage, my clothes were soaked with sweat. Just thinking about it makes me thirsty. Buy me another drink, and I'll tell you the rest...
The top hat lady returned, and said to us: "Now we move on to the second act, in which hot live nude women illustrate the story of The Oil Crisis. Give a great applause to the tantalizing, titillating, lubricated... Lilllyyy!"
The second dancer came on stage. This one was sexy, I'll give her that. Great body, great dancing. She was all covered in this oily stuff, made her look like living bronze. The top hat lady kept telling her story. I was in a trance, man. I just took it all in. She told us that many years ago, the underground people discovered the first oil drills that came down from the surface world.
Around that time, she explained, the underground people had forgotten what the surface looked like, and they didn't like the air up here, so they never made contact with the "aliens" on the surface. The undergrounders were pretty surprised when the drills began to suck in their oil and pump it away from their wells and deposits.
But there was lots of oil in the ground, so they didn't worry... until the wells ran dry. Turned out the drills from above multiplied and went deeper. The undergrounders tried to break the drills, but it didn't help - the surface-people just built new ones. Now the underworlders were facing starvation, they had to work harder and harder to find oil to drink, and they organized an expedition to the surface, to try and stop the oil drills.
The first underworlders who reached the surface went blind. Their eyes couldn't take the ultraviolet sunlight, and those who didn't go blind had trouble breathing. But they quickly found out that one could steal or buy gasoline and all sorts of oil and flammables, so they could live and breathe if they drank the right toxic stuff... toxic to us, I mean, not to them.
The dancer on the stage took a can of black oil, right there and then, and drank it. I felt sick. Then she lit a match and spouted fire into the air, for a long time, made circles of fire while she was dancing.... looked amazing. And she bowed, and it was the end of the second act.
By this time I was excited, scared, confused. But I couldn't up and leave, not just yet. I felt there was an ending to the story we've been told, and... and I was scared of not hearing it. Scared of hearing it, too.
The fire-breathing dancer stayed on stage, and the first dancer joined her, and the top hat lady with the long hair. She took off her hat, and her hair - it was just a wig. And the second dancer, she took off her wig too.
They all looked at us, three bald women with orange skin and completely black eyes.
"We hope our little mating dance has impressed you," she said. With those eyes and no eyebrows, I couldn't read her expression. But her voice sounded... shrill. Too cheerful. I wondered how long they'd been on the surface. Maybe they had lived a long time. None of the women seemed older than forty. "We'll need a few members from the audience for our third and final act. Three manly men! Do we have three real men in the audience, who are not afraid of three women?"
Then I understood. They wanted to mate. For real. Maybe their males didn't last long on the surface. Or maybe they wanted to create a new cross-breed that could live on the surface. But why the stage show? Was it their idea of a real mating dance? Must've been a cultural misunderstanding. Look, I'm as fond of the ladies as the next guy, but this was too weird. I ran for the exit. They shouted at me to come back. The front doors were locked, and I heard them coming for me. I ripped out an old brass bar from the wall and started to bash the door in. That's when I accidentally knocked loose a few old wires from the wall. Sparks flew, and some draperies and old carpets caught fire.
The whole damn place went up in flames. It must've been dry as cinder. Flames all around me, screaming men in the distance... and laughing women, running through the flames like fire couldn't hurt them. I think they laughed because they enjoyed the heat. I ran into a room and found a boarded-up window, bent them up with the brass bar and jumped. Fire brigade was coming, but it was too late for the old theater. I stood and watched the place collapse. No one else came out but me.
I couldn't have made this up, man. It was too crazy to be made up. Hot live nude women! If you see that sign anywhere in a town, it could be them - the underground people. Don't look at me like that. I've had a few drinks, so what?
What the hell, I'm not forcing you to sit and listen to an old barfly like me. But before you go, here's a tip: go check out the old Lantern Theater downtown. I'm going there tonight. Wanna come along? You'll recognize it by the new billboard above the entrance - it says: TONIGHT ONLY - THE AMAZING FIRE-BREATHING LAVA LADIES! LAST LIVE SHOW ON EARTH BEFORE THE GREAT CLEANSING. FREE ENTRY - ADULTS ONLY.
Hey, it's free... I gotta have one more look at those ladies. It's their last show... gonna be a real killer! I mean, hot live nude women!
(c)A.R.Yngve 2003. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
