When I awoke, I was encased in sand except for my head. Took a minute to figure out what happened. “Okay, *veeery* funny,” I said to anyone within earshot, hoping someone would fess up to the crime. “Veery funny indeed.” I moved around a bit and my left “sand tit” partially collapsed in the effort. Soon it was all gone, the fake body with no alpha indeed, as I worked my way free. I brushed myself off — Wendy’s dress, exposed arms and legs — of the remaining sand as best I could, looked around. Difficult to tell from facial expressions who the guilty one (or guilty ones) was (or were)… since everyone around me had what appeared to be *bowling balls* for heads. What gives? I asked myself. I walked up to the nearest one. “You there, er, sir. Did you see what someone did to me over there?” I didn’t want to indict the person just because he was closest to the scene. I checked his arms and legs — any sign of digging? None that I could tell. But of course he could have just washed them off in the water.
“Ask Okema,” spoke a muffled voice from the dark ball head of the man. He pointed in the distance to a crowd of ’em playing volleyball. Sumo wrestlers on a break from their regular sport?
It was time to find out who Okema was. Or did he say Omega? I decided to slur the name when I said it to be safe.
“Okay, chumps, who of you lot is named Okemga?” Jeez, one of these f-cks isn’t even wearing a cloth or whatever they call the undergarment, I thought. No one spoke up, just kept silently playing volleyball, with the only distinct sound coming from the ball itself contacting either hand or sand.
“Behind you, young Wendy,” finally said the true “Okemga”, which actually turned out to be his name. I’d morphed Okema and Omega into the correct word. What are the odds?
As he spoke, I remembered earlier. I was putting suntan lotion on my pale pink legs while Okemga looked over, no bowling ball in sight. Regular head — just staring. He admitted he was disappointed that I was wearing that masking dress in the water so he decided to create a pretend body with sand while I later (soundly) dozed on the beach. “Did you like it?” he said with amusement, ball gone now in the present too. “Enhancements — you should think about it, ha.”
I met him again 2 days later in town while walking around the red topped building one last time, big dreams for it shattered. I might have asked him out then and there (I can admire bodies too!) if it weren’t for Newt and the information about human DNA in the dogs. “5 percent?!” I shouted when he laid down the bad news at the Pink Hippo the night of March 1st. In like a lion indeed. I’d have to leave town with my tail between my legs. Back to Old Hen to shut down the original Wendy’s too. I’d have to start over… somewhere. I thought about vegetables and salads for the first time in a long while.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 