Chapter 1

Everything about her looked different compared to the costume in which she hid. The plush head that unscrewed like a deep sea diver helmet presented features of a chubby adolescent, blonde hair in pigtails, with apple cheekbones and a cruel smile. Lifted up and removed by two assistants, it revealed the top of her actual head where wispy brunette hair had been shorn in uneven lengths between three and four inches. Bangs plastered from sweat to her broad forehead formed complicated curls. The plush costume body of pale skin wearing an unflattering pink tank top over small breasts and an expanse of plump tummy beneath it before stretchy light blue slacks covered everything below the navel seemed to get even plumper when she removed the shoulder supports and the costume lowered to her shoulders folding at the breasts and hips like oval baffles. Lightly tanned and freckled, her face had a well defined shape, an oval wide at her cheekbones that pulled together at a strong but not jutting chin. The freckles and the eyes, remarkable eyes, big and expressive with a vibrant green like the unmown grass of spring that demanded cutting in the front yard of my parents' house on the northeast edge of Minneapolis, brought out threads of auburn in the brunette. Her small rounded nose gave cuteness to her features, but her stare and the straight line of her mouth with its thin lips, even the half I could see not hidden by the microphone of the headset looped around her dainty right ear, spoke of intelligence and seriousness found in a dedicated thirty year old woman belying any suggestion that cuteness represented an empty headed innocence.

Carefully hidden buckles where the baffles held support for the costume having been unbuckled by her assistants, the costume opened enough for her to step through with a ripping noise of Velcro separating along the carefully hidden seam. At last her body revealed, like her face it left me breathless. Her maroon cotton t-shirt and shorts, both advertising a Los Angeles gym, clung to her from the sweat, revealing a slim, petite body with narrowish hips carrying a pleasantly rounded butt and surprisingly full breasts unrestrained by a bra, barely sagging, with quarter inch long nipples disturbingly pressing out and pointing at me. Disturbing because staring at them and not the pretty, serious face of the woman would garner me no points in her attitude towards me. Or so I thought.

Except for being tall, like the serious, petite brunette woman beneath the fleshy, silly blonde teenager, my costume presented an opposite figure, a tough thick teen with short red hair and round face and smirky attitude—a bully. I have shoulder length light brunette, almost blonde hair and a narrow face with a long broad slightly bulbous nose. But my actual six feet six inches height has a narrow frame. "Tall drink of water," pronounced the big bouncer who worked at the rock and roll club I worked at. Aside from the fact that he was bordering on forty, he actually looked like the bully my costume portrayed.

The ripping noise announcing my escape from the costume, I revealed my skinny self to her. My disobedient eyes lifted from her deliciously chewable nipples to see her staring at my middle. Her sexy presence caused engorgement and embarrassment. The warm up pants did little to hide it since nothing beneath them restricted my rather long and fairly thick cock. However when her eyes rose to mine I saw the twinkle there and reddening of her cheeks. And having removed the mic'ed headset from her ear, I saw her tongue sweep across her delicious mouth.

"Joseph," I introduced myself.

"I know," she said shyly, eyes darting away.

Barb, the director who had interviewed me and allowed this final audition entered the room. Like the cute woman's costume, she was opposite to her: Tall and a bit heavy and blonde and supremely confident. "Take a shower and meet me on stage," she ordered me.

"Yes ma'am," I replied obediently, exiting the large workshop space and heading to the men's dressing room where my street clothes awaited.

Everyone I passed looked surprise. The stage crew glanced back with mystified expressions at center stage where the petite woman and Barb sat on metal folding chairs, their backs facing the empty seats of the auditorium, a small wooden table containing paper stacks in front of them. I saw the petite cutie looking downwards, nodding her head and shaking her head while Barb spoke into her ear with animated intensity. Barb caught my eye and waved me to the empty chair opposite them.

Only when I sat did the petite woman look at me with those gorgeous green eyes and her lips smiling.

"Joseph, this is my partner Molly O'Gara," Barb explained.

"Oh," I stated unimpressively. I looked at the stacks of paper on the table and saw the script I had been given to memorize, at least the scene I performed earlier, and under "Plush Buddies Presents" and the title, "When Plush Comes to Shove," and the subtitle "A Fable," appeared her name, "By Molly O'Gara." I finally articulated, "You wrote this?"