Kevin only wanted to buy some underwear

Kevin had done it again. Waited until he was down to his last pair of clean drawers.

Which meant it was time to go shopping again.

The department stores would have what he wanted, but really, if all you need is a multi-pack of drawers, why deal with parking and those crazy lines when you can go into what his parents liked to call the “junk” store and get what you need?

With that in mind, he walked a few blocks to what passed for the main drag in his town. A few stores in, where he had expected to find one of those "everything" stores, there was a brand-new store, Telotech. He had heard about this company by that name that made athletic wear and other clothes with all kinds of technology available to be built into it, but he’d never heard about them having their own stores -- as far as he knew it was a web-only shop.

He stepped inside and, surprise, it was mostly casual clothing rather than athletic stuff. He spotted what he came in for and grabbed a pack. But perched right next to the register was…

An invisible plus-sized mannequin? There was a tan, long-sleeved top and matching stretch pants, clinging to a generously curvy figure, but there was no visible mannequin. Nothing stuck out of the neck hole or the ends of the sleeves, and there was nothing visible supporting this outfit from below. In fact, the sleeves were positioned as if unseen hands at the sleeve ends were in the process of pulling up (or down) on the shirt’s bottom hem, and there was nothing visible holding the shirt or the pants in place in the midriff area.

He stepped up and waved his hand above the collar, finding nothing there. “Hmm,” he sounded, as he reached where there should have been a midriff and found empty space there, too.

From there his eyes locked onto the shirt’s chest. It was large, but not grotesquely so. He looked around, for reasons even he was unsure of, and then reached for the swell of the shirt’s chest, squeezing gently.

Since it appeared to be some kind of invisible mannequin, he expected it to feel like there was a hard surface beneath the shirt -- but instead it gave, just like a…

Like a woman’s chest? He hummed again and squeezed both boobs, again marveling at how whatever was filling out this shirt provided some resistance, though he had just seen for himself that the shirt was empty.

“Enjoying yourself?” said a female voice, as the sleeves crossed themselves just below the shirt’s chest. Kevin squawked and jumped back.

“Wh-who said that?” he said, looking this way and that and seeing no one.

“I did,” said the voice, which seemed to come from the empty space above the shirt’s collar. “Do you act like that with everything that catches your eye?”

“B-but there’s nobody there,” he said, just a little defiance in his voice. “Where’s that voice coming from?”

“Excuse me?” the voice countered. “You were just squeezing my body like it was OK.”

“Look, I’m sorry, OK?” he said, raising his hands defensively. “I didn’t know you were… I don’t know what’s going on here. Can I just buy my underwear and go?”

“Not a very sincere-sounding apology,” the voice said. “I don’t think I can let you go just yet.”

Kevin heard another voice call out, “That’s right girl, you tell ‘im!” as the pull-down security gate inside the store entrance began rolling down.

“OK, who said that?” asked Kevin, looking and feeling very much like a scared cat.

“What are you so scared of?” the voice from the clothes said. “You were so bold just a few moments ago.”

The second voice spoke out again. “Wendy, you can go take care of him. I’ll finish up here.”

Kevin looked on in fear and curiosity as he watched a padlock hover from behind the cash register toward the front door, where it locked itself onto the pulldown gate.

“You sure?” said the outfit, looking toward the front door.

“I got this,” the voice answered. “Maybe I’ll join you when I'm done here.”

“Is all of this for real?” Kevin said. “I mean, am I on some hidden camera show?”

“The cameras don’t hide in here, honey!” the second voice replied, this time from Kevin’s right. Kevin turned toward where he heard the voice to see… a device that looked like a mobile phone, slightly thicker than the usual, hovering in space with its lenses pointed toward him. “Smile for me, OK?”

“And to answer your question,” the outfit said, “this is very much for real. This store has a state-of-the-art security system, namely me and Siri here. You picked the wrong store to come in poking and prodding like it’s OK.”

“OK,” Kevin conceded. “My bad for that -- but how is that a security violation?”

“Well… you didn’t violate security, exactly, but you violated the system -- meaning me -- and that’s a situation I have to handle, with some help from Siri here and my friend Dora a bit later.”

“Siri?” he said. “You mean the floating iPhone here?”

“Hey, don’t confuse me with that imitation from Apple,” said the voice from the phone. “That Siri couldn’t have managed closing the front gate, or locking it. Or this.”

Kevin yelped when he felt a hand give him a hard slap on his butt.

“Hey! Easy there!” Kevin said. “I didn’t slap anybody! All I did was-- Look, just let me pay for my stuff and go, and I promise I won’t do it again!”

“Oh, I know you won’t,” Wendy, the voice of the outfit, said. “Not after I teach you a little… lesson.”

“What are you gonna do to me?” he said

“We’re going for a little ride,” she said. “So you can see what happens when guys get grabby with girls like me without permission.”

“Girls like you?” he said. “All I see is clothes!”

“Well, there you go,” the voice said derisively. “You’re one of those folks who think everything is supposed to be the way you choose to see it. A shame too, because our interaction could have been completely different if only you hadn’t been so grabby.”

“Come on, you don’t really mmf--” A shiny, brightly-colored scarf stuffed itself into his mouth, while another pressed itself against his mouth and wrapped around his head, knotting its ends together behind him.

“I’m glad you stuck around,” Siri said to the outfit. “I don’t normally get to have any fun with the bad boys and girls.”

WIth that, he felt something against his wrist. He looked down to see another scarf snaking around his wrist. It then pulled that arm behind him as the other end stretched out toward his other arm.

He raised it defiantly, only for a glove to grab it and push it down to his side, then behind him where the scarf grabbed it and wrapped around both wrists, tying its ends together.

“You may as well hold still and cooperate,” Siri’s voice said. “All resisting will do is make things worse for you.”

Something poked at his knees from behind. His knees buckled, leaving him unable to try to run as more scarves wrapped themselves around his ankles. A shirt came up behind him and caught him before he could fall too far backward. The empty space in the shirt’s cuffs held his attention at first, to be replaced by the feel of large but soft mounds pressing against his upper back.

“This could have been so much more fun for all of us," a breathy female voice said, right by his ear. He could feel soft warm breath on his ear as the words were being spoken. “But you had to go and be a bad boy.” The shirt raised him back onto his feet once his ankles were tied.

He couldn’t help stealing a glance at the shirt that kept him from falling to the floor. He turned to see it was in fact, not a shirt per se, but a shirtdress animated by an invisible form inside. The dress was moving away from him but it turned to its side, as if the invisible wearer was looking back over her shoulder at him. Most of the shirt seemed quite flowy, except for the chest and hip area, giving the appearance of a buxom invisible woman even curvier than Wendy's form.

“Shana!” Wendy’s voice called out. “Why do you always want to play with the bad ones? You could at least try to put some fear into them!”

“I dunno,” the shirt replied with a shrug. “Girl’s gotta have some fun.”

But beyond Kevin's hearing range, Shana continued, "I don't know why you play tough with people when we all know you love it when they get all touchy-feely."

"Yeah, well, they don't have to know that," Wendy replied.

He turned back around, expecting to be picked up by someone or something and carried away, but instead, he was picked up by… nothing. He rose a few inches off the floor, allowing his sneakers and socks to remove themselves from his feet. The socks settled into his sneakers, which tied themselves and walked off.

The athletic outfit then walked to the back of the store, with Kevin hovering along behind it. Lights inside the main store area clicked off as soon as Kevin cleared the doorway.

“See you in a little bit,” said Siri as the back door of the sales area closed behind Kevin and Wendy.

As they passed through each area of the storeroom the overhead lights turned themselves off. Kevin thought maybe there was a timer, but then he noticed a definite click from each set of light switches.

Finally they reached the back door, which the outfit opened and stepped aside, allowing Kevin to float out of the store first.

“After you,” Wendy said as Kevin floated out into the open space behind the store. There were still a couple hours before sunset, but with all the buildings in the area they were already deep in the shadows.

"Where is she?" Wendy said. "Dora was supposed to be here when we came outside." Just then a maroon SUV with a metallic sheen pulled up.

“Seriously?” Kevin said. “Dora the Explorer?” And yes, the SUV was a new-looking Explorer, with no visible driver guiding its course. Both right side doors swung open; Wendy got into the front passenger seat, while Kevin was airlifted into a floating position above the back seat.Dora locked her doors, shifted into gear, and was about to pull off, when a voice outside the SUV called out, “Hey, don’t leave me!”

“I almost forgot!” Wendy said. “Siri had said something about joining us.” Dora lowered the window of the door Kevin had just come through, allowing the device to hover inside.

“Are we all ready?” came Dora’s voice from the speakers, as the open window was closed. Wendy and Siri both indicated that they were, so Dora released the brake and pulled into traffic. Meanwhile Siri floated right in front of Kevin’s face, allowing him to see a digital representation of a curly-haired, olive-skinned smiling twentysomething woman.

“Remember me?” The 3D woman said, the image syncing perfectly with the voice Kevin had heard in the store.

The outfit in the front seat turned toward the rear-seat occupants. “Why are you guys flirting with him? We’re supposed to be teaching him a lesson!”

The device tuned its display toward Wendy. Kevin wasn’t allowed to hear the exchange between Siri and the outfit.

“You really should stop, Wendy,” Siri said. “We all know we’re taking him to your safehouse so we can all have some fun with him away from the store.”

“Yeah, but he’s not supposed to know there’s gonna be any fun,” Wendy retorted. “And it’s not meant to be fun for him, anyway. If it works out that way, then good for him.”

“You’re a piece of work, Wendy, you know that?” Siri said, turning back to Kevin.

“We all are,” Dora added. She and Siri laughed audibly. Wendy just hummed an acknowledgment, not wanting to give anything away to Kevin. He didn’t know she had been watching him closely since he set foot in the store; he kept sneaking glances at her, though, so she had to keep him from seeing any evidence of her unseen hands rubbing or squeezing parts of her fabric body.