Early Saturday- The Calm Before The Storm

“Where are our sheets?!” I yelled, finding my hotel room inexorably empty. The only explanation was a little note. “Sorry. We had a fire accident in the laundry machine! Your luggage was burned, but don’t worry, we already reimbursed you for the trouble. Un-fucking-beliveable!”

“D-does that mean we don’t have any clothes anymore?” Annie lamented, squeezing her fingers.

Yup. It wasn’t enough for our tormentors to make us live through a medieval **** all day, or to make us the town’s laughingstock. There always was another way for them to twist the knife, huh? How are we even going to enter the airport now, huh? Ugh...

And tomorrow, or rather, today, was that stupid festival as well, which would mean that the streets were going to be extra crowded... Maybe it was better to just ignore it all.

“What are we going to do now?”

“First... I’m going to take a shower.”

At least the shower still worked. No offense to my aide, but I really needed to get her sweat off my skin. So, I did, Annie followed afterwards, and then, sadly, without bedsheets, we had to cuddle together in the night again...

The only cover we had was a copy of the evening newspaper, which starred, you guessed it, a picture of us on the Maiden... Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.

As Annie’s head leaned over my shoulders, I closed my eyes and lost consciousness... I guess I really needed some rest after all that “excitement”.

--

“Boss... wake up!” It was the crack of dawn, apparently. I was woken up by a naked Annie shaking my shoulders. “I... think I solved the mystery!”

“Bwa?!” I said as I blinked.

Annie raised the newspaper. “Look! It’s like the magician said. The clues were here all along.”

I yawned. “Annie, I really don’t feel like staring at my tits again...”

“The article, not the pictures! Read between the lines.”

Yawning again, I decided to humor Annie. The article described our imprisonment in excruciatingly mortifying detail, including interviews with locals who opined on our bodies and compared us, talking about who was hotter (usually me, obviously) and... huh.

There was another common thought line among them.

“The locals are saying they are glad we got made into another example of what happens when someone breaks the rules? That implies we aren’t the first unlucky tourists...” My eyes widened. “That’s it. The pranks! The town itself is trying to run troublemakers off their precious lawn!”

“All of the incidents happened after we broke some of the town’s rules!” Annie said. “There is a method to their madness.”

“Method? More like a whole damn conspiracy!” I said, wrapping my arm over Annie’s warm shoulders. “The hooks that stole our clothes. The town’s fans kept blowing our towel away... It´s all an elaborate scheme to humiliate us into leaving and to make an example to keep the locals in line!”

I turned the page of the newspaper to see if I could gather more clues. Sadly, the written section of our article was quite short compared to the photo album that preceded it... But, there was something else.

An article talking about their precious festival and its history. How did I not notice it before? We weren’t the only naked women in today’s paper. There were photos of previous festivals starring other unlucky naked souls being covered in honey, feathers, and being made to run the streets to suffer the town’s unrelenting mockery.

“This town has a tradition of humiliating its rule-breakers during the festival!” I said, my lips caressing Annie’s cheeks. We went back to huddling in a cold and shaky embrace as we read the newspaper at the same time. “Remember what the magician overheard about the guards and a certain redhead?”

Annie turned around, her little nose almost poking my eye. “Cordelia! She is today’s target! She sold us Halloween costumes out of season and ultimately did give us breakfast despite you not wearing shoes. We have to help her!”

Ah, the pure little sweetheart Annie. Of course that’s her first instinct, to leap to save that annoying girl. Normally, I would caution against it. It would be smarter to just leave the town to its weird customs.

But that would mean letting the town win.

After they ruined my vacation.

I just can’t let that happen.

“Let’s go!”