A short story which is basically just the text of a dream I had one night. 
In the dream I was a detached observer who could see the woman's actions and 
hear all her thoughts.


	I got up in the morning and started breakfast: oat bran and orange juice, 
a good healthy start to a bright new day. While my husband and kids were getting 
ready I spent 20 minutes on the treadmill working up a good sweat, then I had a 
shower and got dressed for the day's work.
	It was ten minutes walk to the animal enclosures where I was to start that 
day, mostly up a series of steep stone stairs made by the natives a thousand 
years before we white people ever made it to this country. I climbed these 
wearing the exoskeleton that I had designed and built myself. This consisted of 
a series of levers and springs that were strapped to my legs and waist; the 
springs stored the impact energy of each landing and enabled this stored energy 
to be released on the next step. It was like bouncing on a trampoline wherever 
you went.
	Naturally the people I passed would comment on my appearance and laugh, 
but what did I care, I had a much nicer body than any of these lazy people who 
drove to work. My lean hard body with the cordlike muscles and the veins 
standing out from the skin might not meet their idea of feminine, but it was 
useful and strong. One day all women will aspire to look like me.
	I reached the lion cages and began to direct the native workers to clean 
them out. These people's ancestors had created this great stone zoo, but today's 
Africans needed directions to maintain it, it was sad really. Then came a report 
over the radio, one of the buses would be taking a load of school children out 
to look at the open parks, and they would need a guide. The work at the cages 
had been progressing nicely, the lions were well behaved and hadn't attacked any 
of the cleaners. I located the headman and told him that as it was an easy job 
he should be able to deal with the supervision. I then hopped into the back of 
the cut-down landcruiser and set off to the bus depot. The head man was left 
behind looking pleased that I had allocated him such an important 
responsibility. ("Stupid arrogant white woman", the black zookeeper was 
thinking,"it isn't even as though she is racist. She thinks everyone is inferior 
to her. Over developed ego with a messiah complex, that's her problem, and her 
husband is too nice, lets her walk all over him.")
	The toyota pulled up near the bus in a cloud of dust, and I leaped out, 
landing perfectly on my toes. Grasping my ever-useful light backpack in my hand, 
I strode up to the front of the bus and boarded it. We set off, me telling the 
children the purpose of the park: it was to allow the animals to roam over the 
grasslands in as natural a state as possible, without being able to destroy the 
crops of the farmers nearby.
	Suddenly the bus driver locked up all the brakes and the bus slid to a 
halt in the gravel and dust. I picked myself off the windscreen and inquired of 
the busdriver the reasons for his actions. He mutely pointed forwards at the 
gaping washout where the road used to continue. Great! So now we have to go 
back. I turned and looked down the road we had just come up: one thin single 
lane hemmed in on both sides by the tall fences designed to keep the great herds 
of animals where they were. There was no way we were going to be able to turn 
around, not in a bus. Nor it turned out would we be able to reverse back home. 
The top speed of the bus in reverse was about three kph. The base was 200 km of 
single lane away. 
	So we would have to turn the bus around somehow. I looked at the fence, it 
consisted of great tree trunks embedded in the ground, with strong wire mesh 
strung between them, and other logs joining the tops of the vertical posts. 
Strung through the mesh were strands of thick fencing wire, and barbed wire.
	If we could cut out a section of the wire, then the  bus could back 
through it, turn around, and go home. No problem. As usual, my foresight came to 
the rescue, in my knapsack I had two pairs of pliers, complete with wire 
cutters. So I set to work cutting the strands of wire one by one.
	The strands were very thick, and the pliers weren't designed for heavy 
cutting so the going was slow. After about five minutes I had cut maybe ten 
strands, so I stood back for a rest and looked at the section of fence I was 
working on. There, on the post in front of me, was a giant hinge. This section 
was a gate! The entire section swang open to give access to the paddock. I had 
been wasting time trying to cut through the fence when all I had to do was snip 
the few strands holding the gate closed. This was easily done and I moved to 
open the gate. This was not so easily done. The thick interwoven strands of wire 
acted as a very stiff spring to keep the gate closed. 
	I went back to the bus and looked at the people standing around; while 
they were technically school children, the fact was that some of the older lads 
were 17 or 18 years old, and being negroes were in fact quite large and well 
built. Not to put too fine a point on it, some of them were extremely sexy 
pieces of young manhood, as they stood there stripped to the waist, sweat 
glistening on their bulging shoulders in the hot African sun, with ... Hold it! 
Settle! I am a happily married woman. None of this.
	I got the largest guys to go to the gate and open it. The gate did not 
swing open in one piece, but instead folded back in sections. This was difficult 
to achieve due to the springiness of the wire, but it was definitely easier than 
the 200 km walk back home. Then we held the gate, or rather I supervised while 
the boys held the gate as the bus backed through it, stopped, and then started 
to drive forward onto the road, facing back the other way. At this point the 
driver accelerated and caught the side of the gate, tearing it from the young 
men's grip. Instantly the wire sprang around, catching one of the boys, Stevie, 
between two of the sliding sections. Before we had time to react he was ground 
between the shearing walls of barbed wire. As the bus pulled to a halt on the 
road outside, I rushed to the boy as he lay where the gate had flung him. Stevie 
was alive, but the long sharpened barbs, designed to penetrate the skin of 
elephants and rhino, had given him terrible lacerations all over his body. 
	All the way home I cradled Stevie's head in my arms, knowing that it was 
my fault, I should have wired the gates open, I should have driven the bus in 
such a dangerous manoeuvre, I should have brought a radio to call for help in 
the first place. When we got back to the centre, Stevie was rushed into the 
hospital, while I was left on the curb soaked in his blood, caked in the dust, 
and with tears threatening to flow from my eyes.
	Then Barry turned up, a scientist from the states. He was reassuring and 
sympathetic, and had a house across the road with some drinks in it. I went 
inside, locked myself in his bathroom and had a long hot shower. Luckily I had a 
set of toiletries in my knapsack - I always do - and so when I was finished I 
looked quite presentable.
	As I emerged, wrapped in a towel, Barry offered me a drink, which I 
desperately needed, and that is how my husband Dave found me. Alone with Barry, 
drunk, and naked except for a towel. As Dave drove me home I sensed he was angry 
with me. I tried to talk to him about it but the words kept coming out wrong. He 
claimed he was just upset about the accident, but I knew it was Barry that he 
was thinking about. "I needed a shower because I had been hugging Stevie." No, 
no, no, wrong choice of words. "It wasn't anything, he was just trying to get me 
drunk." Argh! That was worse.
	By the time we got home, Dave was furious with me, and too upset and 
emotional to reason with. It didn't help that Barry was rich, handsome and 
exciting. Dave was well paid, and extremely attractive himself in a much quieter 
way, but it was Barry that appeared to be the ladies man. Another factor that 
didn't help was that by now the alcohol had hit me, and as I got home I was 
feeling nauseous. "That's it," said Dave "I'm not sleeping with someone who is 
going to throw up."
	I woke up the next morning on the couch, with a blanket over me, feeling 
terrible. The children wandered in from breakfast to ask me why I was sleeping 
there and I murmured something about going for a walk at night and falling 
asleep. I managed to indicate that now would be a good time to leave me alone 
and go to school. As they left I heard a car pull up. I looked out the window 
and saw a middle aged, balding man walking up the driveway. It was a man I had 
known all my life. I wanted to burst into tears and say "Daddy, Dave wouldn't 
sleep with me last night, he made me sleep on the couch." But mostly I wanted to 
be alone with Dave and say "I want a Cuddle!"
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