Homeward Bound

Anne is Military Police. For six months she enforced other people's rules in a country where skin was a liability: baggy camo, sports bras, segregated bunks, no fraternisation. When the books ran out she found erotica. Billionaires did nothing for her. Exhibitionism did. Not the lazy office-forgot-to-get-dressed kind. She wanted a version that could actually happen.

So she planned one.

Satellite maps. Named legs: Back Alley, the Promenade, Hell's Corner, the Sunken Path. After midnight. Away from her own front door. Clothes and a key stashed at the start. A second key at home. Enough chance of being seen to make it worth doing; not enough, she told herself, to ruin her life.

She lies to the other MPs on the flight home. First thing she will do is sleep. That is not what she does.

The town is in a heatwave. The public holiday has shifted the bins and the traffic. Bare feet on concrete after half a year of combat boots. No bra. A police car that does not stop. She makes it to the park, finds the paper bag she hid that afternoon, and closes the cuffs behind her back. Extra nude. No hands to cover anything. The way back is the same path she just survived.

Then a phone light on the sunken path.

Homeward Bound is contemporary ENF erotica: embarrassed nude female, public night streak, self-bondage, clothed strangers, the planning mind versus the body that wanted to be seen. Military discipline on one side of the page. A suburban underpass on the other.

She told herself it would be the perfect crime. Nobody hurt. Nobody who knew. She was only right about the first part.