The Helter Skelter

Emily held her T-shirt down over her legs as she walked up the long spiral staircase inside the tower of the Helter Skelter, glancing down to make sure the people beneath her on the stairs weren't looking up. As long as they saw her straight on, nobody could tell she wasn't wearing anything underneath the shirt, but from below she was ****. It would be pretty embarrassing if anyone caught on to her state of undress, she thought. She'd probably get into a lot of trouble! If only she hadn't spent most of the day losing her clothes, she wouldn't be in this situation now.

Well, there was nothing she could do about it. She'd just have to soldier on, finish this one last task for Mr. Jackson and go home quickly, hoping nobody spotted her secret. Nobody else, anyway. A few too many people for comfort had spotted her already.

"Hi," she said, to the man at the top of the tower. "You must be Frank."

"Shoes!" barked Frank. He was a short, balding man in his early forties, and his eyes roved up and down her body as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Eventually, they came to rest on her feet.

"Pardon?"

"Shoes! You're not wearing them!"

"I guess not," said Emily, who'd completely forgotten to think about what she had on her feet. "They must have come off at some point. Or maybe I forgot to put any on in the first place. Silly me!"

"Unsafe!"

"Sorry!"

"No shoes! Unsafe!" Frank tapped a sign behind his counter that showed all the rules of the fair. "Can't come up here without shoes! Put these on!"

"Okay," said Emily, taking the pair of green flip-flops he handed her and slipping them onto her feet. "Can I test the slide now?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Can't go down with shoes on!"

"But..."

Frank pointed to a wooden bin. Emily took her flip-flops off and put them in the bin, feeling a little puzzled. "How about now?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Need a mat to ride on! Can't go down the slide without a mat!"

"Can I have a mat, please?"

"Did you bring one up from the bottom?"

"I didn't know I needed one."

"No mat, no slide!"

"This is ridiculous," Emily complained. "First you make me put shoes on, then you make me take them off, then you tell me I can't go down the slide at all? Mr. Jackson only wants me going down once, to make sure it works."

"Very dangerous to go down without a mat. Not allowed."

"Well, you know what?" Emily stuck out her tongue at Frank. She wouldn't normally do something like this, but today's disasters had her feeling rebellious. It was time to have some fun at somebody else's expense, for a change. "I'm going to go down anyway."

"You can't do that!"

"Yes I can." Emily took a step forward and stood at the top of the spiral slide, wrapping around the outside of the tower, going all the way to the bottom. She felt a rush of vertigo. It seemed very tall all of a sudden. Still, she'd said she was going to do it, and she was going to keep that promise.

"Very dangerous! Girls lose a lot that way!"

"You don't tell me what to do," said Emily, and plonked her shirt-clad bottom down on the slide. In less than a second, she was off, whizzing down the spiral at top speed, a **** to the forces of gravity, her heart pounding as she careened towards the bottom of the tower.

Unluckily, something else was off as well. Gravity had fought with friction, and friction had won. She was speeding down the slide. But her shirt had stayed behind.

In the first second it had ridden up to her waist. In the next second it had ridden up to her breasts. In the second after that it had peeled off her arms as if stuck to the slide, rolling up over her head and straight off her body.

Which meant poor Emily was going down the slide completely naked.

It wasn't exactly what she'd planned.