Not long after the new clothing law forcing females to wear long baggy dresses was passed, the winds came. The males took to perching along street curbs, shouting and ogling, hoping to catch a glimpse of underwear when the gusts sent skirts flying. It didn’t matter to them that, by law, the females could no longer wear lacy panties or thongs, because the cotton bloomers and the wonders they hid were somehow more enticing. 

Females stopped leaving their houses, knowing they could get everything they needed online. Males stood on sidewalks and leaned against buildings, coattails flapping and hats flying off into the sky, complaining about the lack of females on the street. When the next election rolled around, they voted for the candidate who promised to ban online shopping, at least for females. The females, who had lost voting rights the year before, caught one another’s eyes across streets when they peeped out from behind flapping curtains before they shut their windows. They pointed and twisted their fingers skyward while nodding their chins, because they knew the males hadn’t noticed that the rain had stopped months before. 

The dust came, swept up off farmers’ bone-dry fields where no plants grew to hold it back. The females stuffed all the house cracks and crevices with cloth and wool, let none of it inside. So, the dust took to the streets, settled on the males lining the sidewalks and curbs, piled up and up until they resembled giant dusty potatoes. 

The females then shoved open windows and doors, signalled one another, danced and danced, mouths spitting thunder, hands raised skyward, fingertips spouting lightning that sliced open the clouds until the rain came. A rain that turned the dusty potato males into muddy ones. When the females were ready, bags packed and stowed in cars waiting in attached garages, they danced the clouds away.

Finally the sun came, baked the muddy potatoes until the males were caught like rot underneath leathery mud skin, their buggy eyes blinded by the dried muck. The females backed the cars into the streets, rolled opened the windows to let baggy dresses and cotton bloomers fly out as they drove away, at speed.