"How Gods Come To Be"

"Can you believe she's wearing those?"

Greg flashed out of his day dreaming and looked to find a man sitting across from him at his sidewalk cafe table. Oblivious, he asked, "Excuse me...? Wearing what?"

The man glanced toward the unbelievable woman Greg had been transfixed upon, then leaned toward the 30-something, bored with life, perpetually single bank teller and waved his opened palm upwards before his face as if raising a stage curtain. He tilted his head toward the woman again and answered, "Those."

"Jesus Christ!" Greg murmured, looking back to the shapely redhead and finding her not in the flashy red dress that had so hugged her figure a moment earlier, but in a panties, bra, and garter belt set that looked directly out of the Victoria's Secret catalog. He stared for a long moment at the beauty; she was flawless, just as he'd imagined she be ... when she still had clothes on. He was finally able to pull his eyes away from the woman, looking to his visitor and asking, "How did you do that? You DID do that, right?"

"Do what?" the man asked with a knowing smile.

Greg pointed to and looked toward the woman simultaneously -- disappointingly finding her back the way she was, fully dressed, albeit in a dress that had been sexy enough to get Greg's blood a'boiling earlier. He thought for a moment about what happened. Had it actually happened? Did he imagine it? He looked to the man and wondered, Is he a hypnotist? Maybe he just MADE me think I was seeing--

"You were seeing her without her clothes on, Gregorivich," the man said. "Yes. I know your name. Your real name. Not the one you tell everyone is real, plain old simple Greg, because you want people to see you as a plain ol' American guy, not ... not who and what you actually are."

"What do you want?" Greg asked, suddenly feeling nervous about having this stranger know so much about him. "And ... how did you--"

"Would you like to be able to do that again?" the man asked, standing and fishing a twenty out of his wallet as he gestured the waitress over. When she arrived, he paid Greg's bill, told the young beauty to keep the very handsome tip, then repeated his hand wave in front of Greg's face.

"Thank you very much," the waitress said, flashing both men a smile. She hesitated, looking at Greg's shocked expression, and asked, "Are you okay, sir? Did you enjoy everything?"

Greg was in shock, staring at the waitress, who was now naked with the exception of a tiny red thong and her modest working heels. He tried to answer, but all he could manage was, "Fine."

She turned and returned to her work station, her bare ass wiggling in full view.

Greg turned to his guest, tried to speak, couldn't, turned to get another look at that unbelievable ass, and found himself looking again at a slightly unflattering uniform. He looked back to the man--

"It only lasts as long as you're looking directly at them," the man informed him, knowing what Greg's question was to be.

"And I can do this now? All the time?" He quieted his voice a bit, continuing, "See women naked?"

"No," the man said simply. He waited a moment, until he thought Greg was going to explode without clarification. "No. Before I make it possible for you to do this AT WILL ... I want something."

"What?" Greg responded quickly, his excitement obvious. His life -- particularly his sex life -- had been one continuously mundane episode after another for three, four, maybe five years. The thought of having this ... this ability ... this POWER ... Even if it was just a form of voyeurism, it was incredible and Greg wanted it! "Anything. Just name it."

"Yuli Breen," the man said bluntly. "Where is he?"

Greg's excitement vanished in an instant. He'd been worried enough that this man knew his real name; the thought that the stranger knew who Yuli Breen was, let alone the fact that Greg knew where he was, was simply frightening.

The man stepped behind Greg, reached out before him, and swept his hand across Greg's entire field of view. Everything before Greg changed in an instant: people in every direction were nearly naked; a seemingly typical man in a cheap suit was packing a concealed pistol and holding an envelope through which Greg could see the big red letters "Classified, Eyes Only"; at another table, a man Greg recognized as a City Councilman was being slid a folded newspaper by a shifty looking man, and inside the pages Greg could clearly see dozens of hundred dollar bills. And as he shifted his gaze this way and that, he realized that it was as if someone had taken a potato peeler to world and scraped away the top layer.

"This is only the start, Gregorivich," the man said. "You are only beginning to see what lies underneath."

"There's more?" he said, his excitement returning.

"That depends."

Greg turned and studied the man for a moment, then said knowingly, "On whether I tell you where Yuli is ... and ... and I assume more."

"You will be able to do things no mere mortal can do, Gregorivich," the man said leaning over closer. "You will become a god."

Before Greg could answer the man told him he'd be in touch, spun, and departed...

Ten minutes later, he dropped into a booth at a dive of a bar and asked, "It's been two days. What have you decided?"