Turn on the TV

Hm, flickered Josh's eyes unassumingly.

Nothin'. It was a fantasy after all. But of course it was. How old was he, 12?

For a second, Josh stood there, in the middle of his room, blinking apart morning crust from his eyes. Then, he felt it...

rumble, rumble

"Argh," he placed a hand against his stomach, as if to assure its being looked after, "am I hungry."

Humming to himself, he pocketed his phone, the app already a perfunctory trifle in his mind. After grabbing a box of cereal and pouring out a sufficient level of milk into a bowl in its steed, he rolled onto the couch and with a yawn, reached for the remote.

click

bzzt

"...nd a wonderful, clear-skied day, out here in the park, Jim!"

A news program was on, currently, and he recognized the anchor, along with the familiar company brand logos dotting the corners of the screen. The program was at present fixated on a community event of some kind at the nearby park. Deciding to just see what they were going on about, and too lazy to go channel surfing for the time, Josh sat back and drew a spoonful of cereal into his mouth as he watched.

"As you can see," the news woman chirped, a peppy blonde woman with the enthusiasm of a person who's been well-trained in the art, "we have a more than competent grill-off taking place here to our right, while here on our left, as you can also see, the auction segment of the Seasonal BBQ is going quite smoothly..."

Josh was mostly indifferent, if pleasantly indifferent, about the live documentation before him. Until, that is, something caught his eye, which he rubbed, then again, to confirm whether it was really a catch or simply a fluke of his imagination, pulling his head forward for a closer look.

Right there, in the corner upon the grass, sat a woman -- a decent-looking one. One you'd note from the peripheral of your eye while walking up the steps to a courthouse or throwing groceries into the trunk of your car, but nothing particularly special. She looked to be around young-mother age; 30, maybe 35. She had on sunglasses and snug capris with her legs tucked under her, hands resting on the spread out picnic drape from behind.

And that was all. Perhaps Josh was just old-fashioned. Perhaps he was immature.

But if that wasn't a woman going topless in public, on live television, in a prominent news broadcast this very moment, then he didn't know what was. He didn't know if it was a trick of the light. He didn't know if he was just plain hallucinating.

But he knew a pair of jubilant breasts if he'd ever seen one.

Is this some kind of nudism promotion or something? Josh found himself gaping, though that didn't stop him from sticking another spoonful of crunchy oats into the culpable orifice. He narrowed his eyes. Wait...

He tuned back into the reporter's words.

"...with their friends and family, and as you can see once again," boy she liked that phrase, "many have gotten comfortable; some women already going bare-chested and the guys slipping out of those shoes on this lovely, fun get-together and, well, it's just all a good, communal time..."

What?! Placing his bowl down, Josh stood up. Then, realizing he didn't have a place to walk to, he sat back down.

Relax, he thought. Maybe he misread it. Maybe this was what happened when you stumbled into things completely out of context. Maybe this was what it felt like to be out of the loop all the time, like his cousin Gerald.

"Still," he grained under his breath, "to think they'd show breasts like that so casually on morning television..."

Chuckling voices dripped through the TV set. The setting had switched back to the main newsroom, as the two anchors there laughed, as genuinely as artificial laugh lines could make it seem.

"Thanks, Lyla," cracked a clean-shaven, bald-headed man to the right. "Not quite as shocking as the folks who got comfortable in that 'barefoot beach' we got a look at yesterday, but I'm sure folks out there in Reverb Park can exercise some casual restraint."

"And they sure look to be enjoying themselves, Paul," the woman to the left turned forward, continuing seamlessly, "Up next! We take a look at the recent controversy of a disastrous oil spill on another gulf, stay tuned."

A coffee commercial flickered on.

Josh sat in silent paralysis. The bowl of cereal he had planned on consuming quietly shimmered under the glare of the morning light, which shimmered through his curtains. On normal days, nothing got in the way of him and his cereal bowl.

Today, however, had gotten off to a weird start already, and he felt like it was only about to get weirder. Not the least of which being because he was still hungry.

Curiosity taking hold of him, he rose to his feet and rushed into his bedroom. Once he took a seat in front of his computer, he pressed the power button and sat back. As he waited for it to boot up, his eyes dawdled about the room, and they promptly landed on an old poster he had of Heidi Klum; a provocative pin-up, but one that was otherwise harmless, part of an old magazine nearly two decades ago now. Safe for home, at least. And a young man's self-accessorized bedroom.

And so it would've been, or should've been.

As Josh's eyes slid over and past the length of the poster, it widened and darted right back.

It wasn't his imagination, just like that news segment wasn't.

Whereas before, the poster had featured Heidi Klum on her side, side of her face cradled upon her hand on a generic red-orange gradient with only her face and upper half of her body (in a string bikini top) showing, now, it looked a little different. Marginally so. Considerably, even.

Now, it was a full body poster. The left strap of her bra was unhooked, leaving her left breast and nipple exposed. She sat on a chair, smiling at some unseen thingamajig behind the camera, probably.

But this time, the focus of the poster wasn't exclusive to her upper body; rather, this time it seemed oriented on her feet -- the soles in particular being raised up for an unadulterated view for over third of its dimensions. Her full body filled the rest of the poster, but the angle made a clear indication as to why; it was trying to get a certain pair of bottom bodily limbs in the frame.

And the even funnier thing was...

"...footwraps?" Josh cocked his head at the sight, but indeed, there they were, wrapped around Heidi's feet -- however, they only covered the upper part of her feet while leaving her toes exposed. But the tightness of the wrap and the way it punctuated each foot's shape was definitely titillating for Josh, and he grew aware that something else was growing that moment -- particularly within his own pair of coverings.

"That... definitely was not there before," he finally croaked, as his computer screen lit up.

The welcome jingle rung briefly. Josh, however, sat there like a chicken crossing a forked road. Something did seem different... and with the way he worded that line of text in the app from earlier... coincidence or not, he couldn't help but wonder...

He looked at his computer. Then at the door. He had a mind to check the raunchier parts of the web -- for research, of course. However, he also had an itch to step outside and see this possibly new, yet ever familiar world for himself. Or, he could just call up someone he knew and (subtly) ask them about it.