Well, of course it is Peter

Eric was not sure if it was meant as a disguise or not, but even with a different hair color, a trimmed beard and some thick rimmed glasses he had no problem recognizing Peter sitting behind the front desk at the company archive. But before Eric had any chance to say anything, Peter quickly rose from his chair and said, “Good, there you are. I was told you were the guy to ask when we needed to move some heavy weighted boxes. You’re not exactly hiding your muscles, so I can tell they were right,” he continued, giving naked Eric a little wink. “If you could just follow me. And you,” turning to Erics ever present guard, “you can help yourself to some coffee, and don’t be shy with the chocolate.” The guy knew that there was no way to escape from the archive other than through the front desk area, so he gladly accepted the chance for a break and sent Eric off with Peter.

Eric followed Peter with a confused look as he tried to figure out what was going on. What the hell was Peter doing here? When they reach the far end of the large archive, hidden behind several racks of filling cabinets, Peter turned to Eric. “Ok, I haven’t been in many onboarding processes in my professional life, but none of the few I have been to have had a section concerning the naked guy in the office. I know everything now, Eric, so maybe you can tell me the truth about what is going on?”

It took Eric a few seconds to understand what Peter was saying to him, that he actually knew the whole secret about his naked life, but then he began to tell. Slowly and uncertain at first, jumping back and forth in time, but as he spoke, he felt how good it was to finally tell someone the whole truth about his living nightmare. Eventually the whole story was pouring out of him, as he finally could put words on all the pent-up fear, frustration, and anger he had felt for so long. When he finished his story, he was shaking and had tears in his eyes, and Peter who had listened in silence the whole time stepped over to him and gave his old friend a long hug. They stood like that, hugging each other, for several minutes, but eventually Eric got himself together, and asked Peter, “But hey, what are you doing here?”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly convinced by the little Oscar-performance you gave me when we met, and I wasn’t prepared to just give you up. Especially after what I promised your mother,” he began. “I have been hanging around for weeks, trying to get anyone inside the company to talk. Casually starting conversations at the bars at their after-work beers, or in the queue at the lunch places, but every time I started to ask about how strange it must be to have a naked guy working at the office, they always changed the subject, walked away, or asked me to fuck off and mind me own business. Then suddenly this position at the archive opened, and here I am,” Peter said smiling at Eric. “It’s time to get you out of this mess. Whatever you did, this is not right. It’s only cruel and sadistic to treat a human being this way.”

Eric listened to Peter with a strange feeling inside. It felt so good having finally told someone the truth about his sudden turn to nudism and having someone talk to him with sympathy and compassion. Still, he couldn’t make himself believe it was possible to get out of this mess. The grip Mr. Andersson had on him was too great.

“Yeah, I know it won’t be easy,” Peter said, sensing Erics skepticism. “Even if I was told about the reasons behind your naked presence in the company, it was nothing in writing, not any videos, or anything. I wasn’t even allowed to take my phone into the meeting.”

“But” he continued, “I think that if we could dig up evidence of your fraud, it should prove that this whole thing of you suddenly becoming a nudist is Mr. Andersson’s sick way of punishing you. Besides, I’m sure a company like this have its fair share of skeletons in the closet. I have tried to investigate, but there’s not many lawsuits, corruption charges, or anything. But you used to work in sales, didn’t you Eric? You must know something about dirty sales tricks, screwed customers, or something. If we could find evidence of that too, we could really light a fire under Andersson’s arrogant ass.”

Eric was still skeptical of the whole plan, but at the same time the possibility of screw Mr. Andersson was something really got his heart racing. Besides, his old friend had gone into all this trouble to help him out, and what did he have to lose? If this worked out, he could be wearing clothes again and hopefully clearing his name. If not, what else could they take away from him? So, for the rest of the night Eric told Peter every detail of his fee scam and pointed him towards where he could search for evidence. He also told him about the secret sales playbook the company was using, and all the customers they had scammed and screwed through up the years.

That night Eric slept like a stone for the first time in months. He still had a nagging feeling deep down, that this wouldn’t work, and that Mr. Andersson would come tumbling down on him any minute. But as the days passed by and nothing happened, and as Peter slowly uncovered new pieces of the puzzle in the case they were building against Andersson, he started to believe that they could really pull this off and that he actually could be out his naked nightmare soon.