[Axel3.14]

I haven't written for a while, but recently I received the inflatus for a brief and vapid story.

    Homework was complete.  The parents were asleep.  The deed was underway.  Within its plastic vessel, an unctuous fluid seemed to glow under the twitchy flicker of the light.  A quivering hand drew the intramuscular syringe forth and paused.  A grainy hazel gaze descryed the needle as the hand held it in stasis above her thigh, but the tinge of a black eye and the stabbing throb of three broken ribs removed all qualms; Victoria thrust the needle into her thigh, pressed the plunger through a blinding paroxysm of pain, and passed out. 

    Eventually she rose, hardly cognizant of time.  Her mother's voice elucidated, "Victoria, breakfast!"
    The young girl turned on the light and examined herself in the mirror.  The ribs had begun to knit, and the bruise had etiolated with sleep.  Victoria limped up the stairs, ate breakfast readily, and seemed to flee the house.  At the bus stop, she opened her backpack, revealing her books, a large jar of peanut butter, and a phial of pills.  In the dark solitude of the winter morning, she managed to swallow all the peanut butter before the bus arrived.  After she entered the flimsy yellow vehicle, Victoria bumped her head on the ceiling of the bus and sat mechanically on the fourth position on the left side. 

      "Sup, Kelli"

      "I can't believe you showed up today."  A girl beside her remarked.

      She shrugged, "I wouldn't miss band rehersal."
 
      "What about Mika?"  Kelli gasped.

      "She'll be safe, provided that she demurs from her declared course of action."  Victoria ignored Kelli for the rest of the trip, perfectly still except for an occasional muscle twitch.

[Anonymous]

Well…. I can say it's looking promising:) Welll can't wait for a build-up of the main character.

[Axel3.14]

    Victoria passed through the doors of the school anonymously, until she saw a familiar pair of weatherbeaten sneakers.  She looked up and a familiar body.  She glanced up to see Mika, arms folded against her chest.  Victoria moved evasively, but the filing masses would not allow her to avoid the confrontation.  Mika managed to get into Victoria's face, an amazing feat, considering she was five inches taller than her oppressor. 

"You remember our agreement don't you?"

"That was the most liberal use of the word agreement I've ever heard."

"I will be valedictorian, even if by default."

"If you invested more effort into studies than thuggish behavior, you would not need to resort to such contingencies."

    The arrival of the principal truncated this exchange.  Just before her first class started, she furtively swallowed a capsule from her backpack and felt a small spasm wrack her frame.  She sulked into the classroom and collapsed in a chair.  Victoria noticed an adjacent student eyeing her wardrobes.

    "Hand-me-downs"  She mumbled, before reading a tattered library book, tuning out the noise of the importunable gawker, clattering gang skirmishes, and a monotonous lecture from a jaded teacher who stood before a chalkdust-clouded blackboard that had no chalk. 

[Axel3.14]

     Victoria's mind was elsewhere as she waded through the lessons.  This was of little importance to her, as the teaching paraphenalia was outmoded, at times featuring textbooks from the 1980s.  At ten o clock, she nonchalantly consumed a three pound jar of peanut butter.  Nobody paid the esurient girl mind as the aberrant behavior did not concern drug use, violence, or classroom disruption.  Thereafter, nothing of import occurred until music class. 
 
     In the archetecurally perserve performance room, her tuba lay in the rack as per custom.  Victoria hefted it as she had at least a thousand times before, but now the instrument seemed less cumbersome; however it was considerably more awkward, as she couldn't brace it against her chest correctly.  The class proceded without incident until the final number, in which Victoria disgorged air vigourously into the brass device.  The teacher abruptly dropped his baton and glared at Victoria. 
     
     Heat welled behind her ears as he spoke.  "Kandisky!  You're totally off pitch.  What's going on?" 

    Victoria examined her tuba and nearly had a heart attack.  The body of the instrument had been warped with ectasia.  Increased air pressure had perforated the curved surface.  Indentations remained on the keys where her fingers had just hammered out the notes in the school fight song.

  "Uh… It's broken."  She panted.

    The teacher gasped, "That's the most pronounced case of metal fatigue I've ever seen on a new instrument!  Your neglect will cost the school hundreds of dollars!"  Then his face softened as he continued, "Are you ill?  Your voice is a half octave deeper than it was last week."  Victoria coughed a couple times on cue.

    At lunch she sat alone, stuffing her face with a salad plate laden with nuts, brocoli and olives.  Is my metamorphosis truly so transparent?  If Mika suspects anything, I'm dead.  Mr. Davis has perfect pitch and believed that I exposed the tuba to heat, so I should be okay for now.  Still I have to excercise discretion.  Victoria stood and made her way to the trash bin.  This was an unexpectedly difficult task, as her bra undulated and swayed in a foreign manner. Her breathing became shallow under her clothes. 

Accursed peanut butter…. All the fat was diverted to my chest!  This was unexpected.  I avoided food products liable to contain growth hormone all day.   

    Victoria looked down and shrieked.  Her jeans turned into threadbare, misbegotten, undersized capri pants as her legs lengthened and throbbed with emergent muscle.  She waddled to the bathroom and examined herself in the stall.  She could trace the countours of her quadriceps and capped gastrocnemii.  The pants had been torn irreparably.  Victoria pulled them into shreds and flushed them down the toilet.  Fortunately, her once oversized gym shorts clung to her proportionally tight waist, though they would be ruined if she tried to take them off.  Her older brother's T-Shirt now exposed her midriff and admitted a view of her prominent nipples.

    "The model predicted nothing like this.  Where was the externality?  Oh no…"  Victoria answered her own question as an empty milk gallon in her refrigerator glimpsed in her mind.

The cow that supplied the milk must have been infused with artificial hormones, causing a synergistic effect.  This could be messy.  I can't be seen in this state.  I'll wait in this stall until I can make a discreet move.

    Thus Victoria waited in the increasingly cramped bathroom stall, counting the seconds by the dripping of the sink.  She pondered the hours away.  At least I took that pivotal test that Mika was desperate enough to kill me over.  I can be certain that neither Mika nor her thugs got the formula right, lest she would be large enough to step on the school about now.  Still, she will definitely come for me.

    That afternoon, Victoria was diverted from her compressed reverie.  She held her breath, but it continued.
"O-ocupied."  Victoria stammered.

  "Open up, bitch.  you can't hide forever."

  "I see that you are still implaccible,"  Victoria croaked.  "Desist.  I won't be applicable for the scholarship after my truancy."

  "Fool, I don't care about that.  I was going to kill you anyway.  You took something from me, and no one steals from my gang!" 

    "Please don't."  Victoria's voice assumed a pleading edge. 

    "Get the hell out here!  I'm tired of playing with you."

  "As you insist."  The dingy tile splintered as Victoria slammed her size 18 feet onto the bathroom floor.  She brushed the flimsy metal partitions aside, inadvertantly crushing three gangsters.  Relieved to finally stretch her limbs, she took a full breath, which peeled aside the remnants of her clothes.  The rest of Mika's gang opened fire on the gargantuan teenager, but she extirpated a toilet from its base and subjected the other criminals to a stercorious porcelain demise.

    "Apropos"  she commented, examining the feces coated corpses.

    "Remember me?"  Victoria turned around to see Mika examining her.  "How did you make the formula work so well?"  Mika was not as tall as Victoria, but her neanderthal-esque physique was still dangerous.

    "If you had patience to read the lab report concerning that formula, you would have discovered that the serum was created for a gorilla.  Reverse engineering the process with a sample of human DNA optimized the augmentative effect!"

    "I'll still tear you apart, weakling."  Mika struck Victoria with an uppercut that mangled her jaw.  She was about to follow up with a blow to the solar plexus, but Victoria countered, and jerked her arm.  Blood spouted from a compund fracture.  Mika went for a shiv in her pocket, but she did not live long enough to use it, for Victoria snapped her neck with a deft motion.  After scanning the empty corridors, the wounded girl carefully dismantled the door to the infirmary and bandaged her bleeding jaw.

       

[Axel3.14]

     The next couple months blurred as a barrage of newfound attention immersed Victoria's days.  She was aquitted of murder on account of self defense.  After the trial, she faced an even more exacting tribulation.  Agents from dozens of companies beseeched her to endorse various products. 
     A rapacious economic imperative drove the young woman to plunge deep into the realms of corporate stardom.  Commercials, television programs, and even a couple of movies separated her from her academic life.  She graduated a semester early and soon became a popular millionaire.
     The next year, the radiant starlet had burned into obscurity, her fortune vanished, putatively spent on steroids or some other illegal coomodity.  Victoria's name vanished from Hollywood discourse.  One fateful day, her agent found a fluviatile suicide note in her apartment, but no one found a body.

     One decade later, a disruptive freshman was being dismissed by a principal.  The woman returned to her office duties until an interruption from a custodian.

    "Dr. Kraft, the air conditioning unit has arrived."  he offered a clipboard.  The principal read the forms and looked out the window. 

"It's not here."

   The custodian withdrawed, wringing his hands.  "Actually, ma'am, it was delivered on the wrong side of the school.  Approval for a crane will be necessary to…"

   "Such frivolous spending will not be tolerated."  She cut him off. 

   "But- how can we move?"

    "Don't worry about it."  She answered nonchalantly and rose to her feet, stretching her mountainous arms.  She flipped a switch by the desk, and a wall retracted.  The ground quivered briefly with each pace she made as she lumbered into the fall.

"Olympia!"  Her secretary called to her. 

"Hold my calls.  I'm stepping out."

"The cafeteria has some surplus food again."  The secretary said.

"Excellent!  What's on the menu this time."

"It's peanut butter and jelly day."

"I'll pass."  She shuddered.

  Her vascular frame flexed, towered, and bobbled its way to the entrace used for service vehicles. 

                     FIN     

[Axel3.14]

Nearly 1500 views and only one comment… Have I jumped the shark? 🙁

[David]

Nope. I just haven't read it yet. Oh I slimmed it but I usually wait until it's finished to actually read the stories.
Sorry.

[Cowprobe]

Porcelian demise, priceless.

Very nice short story that gives all the information nessicary while still being entertaining.

Enough clues for the reader to make the connectons without being force fed into linear narrative.

Cool stuff.

[ze fly]

I usually wait until it's finished to actually read the stories.
Sorry.

Quite the same, here: I was waiting the end to post a comment…  :-[

[Axel3.14]

Thank you.  I find your feedback reassuring, but I have difficulty conceiving of narrative as anything other than linear.  ???

[Author]

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