Oops!

A short time after the first dress that Liz Sherman had picked out burnt up, the dress shop clerks stopped smiling at her and by the time the fifth one went up in flames, only one such clerk dared to be in the same dressing room as her.

Not that Liz Sherman minded that much. This wasn't the first time that she had felt like an outsider. Nor would it be the last, she feared.

Still when the clerk started cracking wise about how Liz would be better off buying an asbestos dress or maybe going to the high school prom in one of those outfits that female fire fighters wear, Liz could not resist the urge to just smile at her and ask, "Have you ever experienced a first-degree burn?"

"No," said the clerk.

"Would you like to?" asked Liz.

The clerk looked around the room nervously and then suddenly decided that she needed to take a coffee break.

While she was gone, Liz looked around the room and wondered if she should bother to try on another dress. She had thought that picking out a prom dress would be easy. And theoretically it was -- for other girls. For her, of course, it was different.

But then for her, everything was always different. And she was getting sick and tired of it.

She had already resigned herself to having to go commando when she left the dress shop. Yes, she did possess fireproof underwear -- indeed, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense had provided her with a whole bunch of fireproof items including a fireproof clutch purse, fireproof high heels and of course, a whole range of fireproof clothing. However, most of the fireproof underwear she owned sucked. It was okay to wear in private but if she was going to be continually trying on dresses in front of store clerks, she wanted to be wearing something pretty. So today she had chosen to wear the non-fireproof lingerie -- and of course, when she first flamed up in the middle of trying on her first dress, her black lingerie had gone up so fast that she might as well been wearing tissue paper.

For that matter, her fireproof dresses sucked. Sure, they were functional and they covered all the essential body parts but every time she wore them, she felt that she might as well be wearing a burqa. And she most definitely did not want to be wearing a burqa to the prom. She wanted to be wearing something pretty.

Oh, well, she thought, as she put on the dress that she had worn when she had first come to the shop -- a dress which, unfortunately, was not fireproof but had been far enough away from the flames to survive intact. At least I'm not naked.

Then one of the security guards came in and told Liz that she would have to leave.

Liz contemplated making a scene but decided it was not worth it. She was already picturing the trouble she would have explaining to the Bureau's bookkeepers about her need to pay for five dresses that were now ashes. She hardly needed more trouble on top of that.

Still as Liz walked home carrying her fireproof purse and smoothing out the wrinkles in her non-fireproof dress, she could not help obsessing about the whole situation. It was not her fault that she was this way. She was born this way. And it didn't help matters to have people constantly stare at her like some kind of freak. Or to treat her like some kind of joke.

Indeed, the more Liz thought about the way the clerk and the guard at the dress shop had treated her, the more it burned her up. In fact, she could almost smell smoke -- that's how mad she was about the whole thing.

Wait a minute!

She did smell smoke.

And it was coming from her dress.

Instantly Liz pulled her dress off and ducked into a nearby alley. She threw her dress on the ground and tried to smother the flames with dirt and gravel.

But it was no good. The fire that she had started did not burn out until the dress she had worn was nothing but ashes. And unfortunately, she had nothing else on her person with which to cover herself save for her shoes and her purse.