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  Sudden Lockdown

  Amos Talshir

  Copyright © 2019 Amos Talshir

  All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Translation from the Hebrew: Yael Schonfeld Abel

  Contact: [email protected]

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  About the Author

  Message from the Author

  1.

  A mighty olé rang out suddenly, then another, followed by many more from the stands close to the turf. The sound was perfectly in tune with the referee’s whistle, signaling the end of the game. The players hurriedly disappeared into the exit tunnel leading to the dressing rooms. The fans’ whistles and applause mounted until the reason for this sudden excitement was revealed. A nude woman had bounded out onto the bare turf of the playing field, still illuminated by bright floodlights. The crowd cheered her on enthusiastically, and it appeared that she would manage to circle the entire circumference of the pitch, a feat seldom achieved by such crazy spectators. Usually, the ushers would run at them from several directions, roughly dragging them out of the stadium. Simon focused his camera on the woman as she continued her run, snickering in embarrassment.

  “Do you see anything, Simon?” the father asked.

  “I’ve got a massive zoom, Dad. She’s really pretty.”

  What should have been a brief, fleeting moment of glory carried on uninterrupted. The woman completed a full pass around the soccer field, and no one stopped her. Hundreds of cops and other enforcers who should have stormed at her, perhaps brutally, failed to do so and were nowhere to be found on the sidelines. She continued to run naked until she grew winded. The crowd kept egging her on with applause, whistles and a spirited rendition of the Sportive Club anthem. Obviously tired and cold as she raised her arms to thank the cheering audience, she finally stopped in the center circle. She stood there, nude before a hundred thousand spectators, accepting their vocal compliments with a joy tempered by fatigue.

  Her breasts rose and fell with her heavy breathing. Her hands, waving to her admirers, dropped to the sides of her body. The cheering and cries of encouragement faded away before dying out, and she was left on her own in the center circle, her eyes seeking out her next move. Her breath sent out billows of warm air into the frost enveloping the stadium. The beams of the giant floodlights scrambled the air she breathed out, turning it into white rays curling over a head adorned with thick black hair. Her tan face scowled and her proud stance began to falter. Her palms fumbled out, tentative, to shield her pubic area. The cries of olé were supplanted by awkward chuckles. The intimate exposure was gradually being interpreted as utter lewdness, sending an odd murmur through the stands. The woman’s knees leaned in toward one another and she kneeled down on the turf until her somewhat large, dusky rump, bearing a white two-word message, landed upon heels that were lighter than her tan body. She remained on her knees, attempting to cover all that she had been willfully displaying only a few moments ago. She tried to tuck her breasts in with her elbows and conceal her nipples. Her heels barely covered the crack of her bottom, peeking, dark and gleaming, beyond her feet.

  She had not believed she would manage to round the entire pitch without being stopped. Not a single one of the hundred thousand spectators had foreseen this possibility. It had been obvious to her and to any of those admiring her beauty and daring, or those feeling contempt for her debauched ways, that she would only succeed in running a hundred yards or so into the playing field before the paunchy guards caught up with her and laid their hands upon her. Some of them would trip with embarrassing clumsiness, their legs tangling in the uninhibited slalom of the speeding gazelle, until they landed roughly upon her. She was supposed to have been hunted down and led off, covered with an ugly blanket that would conceal her beauty and the inscription of protest upon her buttocks.

  Simon continued to film her constantly.

  “Dad, she wanted them to catch her, right?”

  “I think so,” Charlie replied.

  “Why didn’t they catch her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know what it says on her ass,” Simon said.

  “You can see what it says on her ass?”

  “With a zoom lens like mine?” Simon boasted.

  The woman continued to kneel on the turf for a while until she began to shiver in the cold, and then tilted over onto her side, shaking and trying to contract her body into a ball around which she could wrap her arms. Simon continued to shoot, beginning to shiver as well. He removed the camera from his eye, scanning the stadium in concern. The crowd was on its feet, observing the woman laid out in the spotlights. The shiver that had seized control of her body increased gradually, then suddenly stilled, her body lying limp on the frost-covered grass.

  “Dad, can you die of cold?” the boy asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I saw it in the movies. But those were movies.”

  “I want to help her.”

  “You can’t help her. We have to get out of here and make it to our flight in time.”

  “Dad, you know we’re not going to make it back to our flight, right?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Something weird is going on here,” Simon said. “There’s a reason why we’re not leaving the stadium. Something’s happening here.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I do. You should think, too. Why isn’t anyone running in to get her off the pitch? Think why there’s no one on the sidelines. Where have the cops disappeared to? Think about how it’s been fifteen minutes since the game ended and we’re not leaving. Come see something.”

  Simon rewound the recording in the camera and leaned in toward his father, who remained sitting. Together, they watched the feed from the moment the woman had gone down on her knees. The camera scanned the stadium cheering her naked run before falling silent. It focused upon her tan body and the buttocks clinging to her heels. The lens then ascended to examine the roofs over the stands and returned to the woman, already lying on her side.

  “There’s writin
g on her ass?” the father asked.

  “Yeah, in white,” the boy said.

  “What does it say?”

  “Free world, one word on each cheek,” Simon replied.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That it’s a free world, or free the world; it depends.”

  “That’s what it says on her ass?”

  “Dad, look at the roofs over the stands, not at her ass. I have to help her,” Simon said, leaving the camera in Charlie’s hands and setting off with his backpack on his back. Charlie nearly grabbed onto Simon’s shoulder with the pincher of his well-practiced hand but held back. Suddenly, he sensed something different. Simon’s independent initiative wasn’t the only thing that was odd; it was the entire scene around them. Charlie was used to an unusual life: an orphaned boy in a house on a bluff across from the sea, a long-distance swimmer heading for the heart of the sea, clearly knowing that even if he didn’t return, no one would know. But something else was going on here: his son was leaving him to go to that woman, and he was about to raise his hand to stop him from doing so!

  He focused his eyes on the camera screen and saw dark figures fanning out across the roofs covering the stands. He switched the activity dial from scrolling to recording, aiming the zoom lens at one of the figures lying prone on the edge of the roof. Someone was aiming a sniper rifle at the audience within the stadium.

  2.

  Simon made his way out of the row of seats in which they had been sitting, bumping into the spectators’ knees and apologizing to those on their feet, who continued to watch what looked like a corpse tossed out on the turf. He made his way down the bleacher aisle to the playing field, crossing the area seating fans of the visiting team who had come to the soccer game just like he had. He walked parallel to the edge of the field in order to get to the halfway line, where he planned to cross the turf at the point closest to the naked woman laid out there. From the moment the multitude of locals spotted the yellow Athletic Club scarf wrapped around his neck, the hometown Sportive fans began to jeer at him. Meanwhile, opposing cries of encouragement from the fans of the visiting team rang out. He hastened his steps, trying to ignore the rhythmic cries accelerating the pulsing of his heart. The calls of the camp cheering him on were swallowed up by the growls of tens of thousands of throats accompanying him in the local language, which he could understand thanks to television broadcasts he watched. Gradually, the growl grew unanimous among all the locals, and the call of “Ass-walker” repeated itself like an impassioned mantra. He grasped the double entendre in the slogan. In soccer lingo, it was a humiliating insult to a team entrenched in its rear quarters, or in other words, a bunker defense. He realized the crowd was reveling in the call due to the dual meaning unique to this moment: after all, he was walking directly toward a naked woman’s ass…

  Simon had never seen a naked woman. Maybe once, he thought he’d glimpsed something on one of the girls at school. It had happened when he was fifteen, and his entire high school grade had gone on a trip to the lake district. He focused briefly on the distant memory to enhance his self-confidence against the howling of the masses. He forged ahead, fantasizing about that summer.

  ***

  For an entire week that summer, they had toured the lakes of what had once been Northern Italy and was now the northern border of the Mediterranean Mara Land Coalition. He remembered feeling truly awful that week. Perhaps because he had drifted far from the sea and sun of his home, perched on a bluff across from the beach. The buses wound up the narrow roads between the mountain ranges, and the boys feigned excessive jostling in order to fall into the arms of the girls. The tension was diffused in frightened giggles and brief embraces. Simon was frozen in his seat. The girl he liked, with whom he didn’t have a chance, was sitting in a distant seat, staring out the window at a sprawling lake on the valley floor. The girl sitting next to him tumbled into his body, and he felt her arms brushing against his own. She blushed, and he encouraged her not to be afraid, as the ride was almost over. She said she was not afraid and was actually having fun. But Simon continued looking at Annette, the girl he loved. She, meanwhile, continued to look at the sun breaking over the water, smiling. Simon saw the light glinting on the lenses of her sunglasses and yearned to see her eyes. He remembered they were blue but had never dared to look at her directly. Annette was shy, and he didn’t want to embarrass her. He also didn’t have the courage to look directly into her eyes.

  The buses parked at the edge of the lake and dozens of boys and girls burst out, flushed from the fumbling embraces and the intense heat. They hurried to wade barefoot in the cold water, splashing each other. The cheery roughhousing from the buses was transported to the bank of the lake. They all frolicked in the shallow water, shedding excess layers of clothing. Simon took off his shoes along with his coat and shirt. Keeping his pants on, he ran to the water. He felt good; being close to the water, or perhaps his height or his muscular body, a result of his swimming practice with Dad, imbued him with confidence. He was swept up in an intense bout of energy, buoyed on the wave of gazes tracking his foray into the cold water.

  He was not used to being the focus of his classmates’ attention, mostly because he did not have too many occasions to spend time with the other kids from school. At the end of the school day, he always hurried toward the intercity bus that returned him to the house on the bluff. He did not stand out in class, and in any case, due to his height, he was seated at the back of the class so he would not block the other students’ sightline. During recess, he remained in class so as to hide his lack of coordination on dry land. The awkwardness of adolescence was especially prominent in Simon. He hoped to be able to show off his swimming ability one day but was also not certain whether he could stand to have his classmates’ attention focused upon him. He knew he was a shy boy but often felt as if he would like to change this trait.

  Several yards from the bank, before his feet began to lose their hold on the ground, he leapt boldly into the water. A wave of heat rose from his body into his head as it entered the water, emitting the sound of liquid meeting white-hot metal. A cool peace imbued his body as it dove swiftly into the depths of the lake. After several dozen yards had chilled his initial underwater enthusiasm, he surfaced and surveyed the bank. All of the other students were standing there in their clothes. They had stopped their splashing games to watch expectantly as he emerged from his overlong dive. Simon knew it had been a prolonged submersion that might cause concern in someone who did not possess his athletic ability, and perhaps even impress the spectators. He could not spot Annette among those watching him. In any case, it was too cold to go into the water. Only he, out of all of them, had grown used to swimming at night during the winter with his father and was able to ignore the chill. He turned toward the heart of the lake and continued swimming.

  Some of his classmates knew that Simon lived on the bluff overlooking the sea. They knew he was a good swimmer. Annette didn’t know. Her family was one of those living in the mountain estates located far from the sea. Simon now paddled forward energetically, his body feeling warm and strong. He really wanted Annette to see him swimming. He was good at it, as good as anyone could be. She did not attend computer classes with him; her major was art, and therefore she could not gain a true impression of him. He didn’t play an instrument, sing or draw like her fellow art majors.

  He swam an immense distance, feeling most of the spectators’ eyes tracking him curiously. When they became small, unidentified spots on the bank of the lake, he dove back toward the coast. He was certain Annette would be highly impressed. Under the surface of the water, the blue underwater hue enveloped his lanky body, merging with Annette’s eyes in his imagination. He seemed to be diving into those eyes, rounding out the gestures of his paddling until he felt himself caressing her face, as smooth and cool as the water. His strong lungs accommodated the air he blew out with precision, releasing small bubbles through his
nostrils in order to prolong his dive till the end, till the bank, where Annette might realize how long his dive had been.

  Suddenly, he was certain that Annette was above him. He raised his eyes. While his body tore through the deep water, he recognized the butterfly embroidered on the pocket of her jeans and felt certain she had gone into the cold water for his sake; after all, no one else had gone into the lake. He floated slightly toward her body, which was bobbing gently on the water, and then it happened. Annette didn’t notice him beneath her, but Simon looked at her from below and saw the thin blouse floating around her body, exposing the outline of her small breasts. He did not look away or close his eyes. He tried to hold back but found himself staring at the first real breasts he had ever seen in his life. He swallowed water, lots of water, and had to surface abruptly. He floated to the surface under Annette, startling her.

  “Where did you come from all of a sudden?” she asked, amazed.

  “I dove through the whole lake. You didn’t see me?” he replied, his ears boiling in the cold water. Without meaning to do so, he looked into Annette’s blue eyes and she did not look away. She actually gazed at him with a pleasant smile, her upper lip rising slightly into the hollow outlined under her nose. The tender dip in her upper lip was bordered by two lines climbing up to her delicate nostrils, which were dripping with lake water. She wiped away the drops from her nose with a soft palm, laughing in embarrassment. Her wet eyelashes splashed droplets of water onto her elongated cheeks, ending in two dimples near her chin. These, too, had filled with clear, cool drops of water.

  “I didn’t,” Annette said. “I was splashing around. I heard you’re a great swimmer. Would you teach me how to swim one day?”

  Simon could have sworn this was the first time he had ever feared he was about to drown. His heart stopped beating, and he pledged to teach her to swim if only he didn’t drown right now. He wasn’t sorry that she hadn’t seen his miraculous dive, since that way, he’d actually had a chance to see her little breasts. Maybe one day, when he taught her to swim, he would tell her he’d seen them. No, no, you didn’t say that kind of thing, even if you thought it had been nice. Maybe when he returned home from the stadium with Dad, he’d invite her over to his sea. It hadn’t happened yet.