Chapter 6: Of Women, Girls and Supergirls

October was nearing its end, and I was starting to slip. My performance at the mill was getting worse. All I could think about was the Finklestein house, that lesbian coven of weightlifting and murder. Every so often I would see Rachel driving past, and she would laugh. But I hadn’t seen Becky since last Saturday when she almost killed me for endorsing the wrong Fraggle. Sherry and Andy were away again and I was back in the garage. I thought about lifting weights, but when I examined the bar I thought of Becky Finklestein curling my max bench. For a warm up.

So I went back to the bench where I had spent the past few days absent-mindedly whittling a little figurine of Smurfette. The Finklesteins had infested my every thought. They were all I could think about. Then I heard the garage door again.

“Hey Mishhhter Parker, what are you doing?” called a sweet, chirpy little voice that chilled me to the bone.

I turned around to see Becky Finklestein, in baggy corduroy pants and a baggy pink sweater. In the baggy, ill-fitting clothes she looked like a round, fat little girl, but I knew better. If I looked closely I could see the slabs of muscle move beneath the fabric. If Rachel was trying to dress Becky to conceal her Olympian physique she had better start buying circus tents. “I’m doing some whittling, Becky,” I said.

“Well you better shhhtop,” she said. “It’s time for me to beat you up.”

“Becky-”

“You will call me Princess Becky, Queen of the Univershhhe,” she ordered. “Now come over here!”

I walked toward the four-fout-tall muscle girl, slumping over in shame as I did. Becky held her hand out, locked her middle finger in place with her thumb, and flicked me in the stomach. I screamed in agony as I fell back against the workbench. She knocked me off my feet with a flick of her finger, a flick that felt like a shotgun blast. She popped a big pink bubble as she advanced on me. I could imagine her body under the baggy clothes, mountains of bulging, pulsing muscle straining against her freckled skin. “Please, Becky—I mean Princess Becky, Queen of the Universe. Please Princess Becky, Queen of the Universe.”

“I’m going to flick you two more times,” she said. “Then I’m going to get serioushhh. First I might use your car to work on my squats, though.”

In a desperate attempt to appease the preteen muscle goddess, I reached back onto the bench and gave her the Smurfette that I had been carving. “I made this for you, Princess Becky, Queen of the Universe.”

Becky’s eyes lit up and her posture softened as she took the whittled figurine. “It’s neat,” she said. “I’m a little too old for Shhhmurfs, though. Could you make me a horse?”

“I could,” I said.

“I can’t even watch the Smurfs at home,” she said. “Mom doesn’t like me watching TV. She just wants me to read math books and science books and books about gender theory.”

“Sherry has some old Judy Blume books, if you’d like to borrow them,” I offered.

Becky hopped with joy. “Really!? Thanks, Mishhhter Parker.”

I took a deep breath. This is what being a father was all about. It only took a few seconds of actual parenting to undo all the psychopathic eugenics that Dr. Rachel Finklestein had been subjecting her daughter to. “I’ll go get them,” I said.

“While you do that I’ll go get my Halloween costume to show you.”

A few minutes later I had returned downstairs with some of Sherry’s old books. Becky was probably too old for most of them, but it was obvious she had missed a lot of her childhood. She appeared again, her frizzy hair straightened out a bit, covered in a red cape. “Look Mishhhter Parker, I’m Supergirl,” she said, and threw the cape open.

Becky Finklestein was wearing a blue spandex outfit that was stretched so tight over her swollen musculature that it might as well have been painted on. I could clearly see the lines of a training bra that strained against her blossoming bustline, her overdeveloped pubescent breasts stretching the “S” on the Supergirl costume into an unrecognizable shape. She struck an archer pose, and her body erupted with muscle. But the spandex held together. “You look like a superhero,” I said.

But that wasn’t true. Even the Incredible Hulk looked skinny compared to Becky Finklestein. She looked in the garage mirror and examined her profile as she flexed her bicep. I wanted to look away. I was afraid that she might turn angry at any moment and attack me. But she didn’t. She kept flexing her monstrous muscles, admiring the way that they bulged through the spandex. She put her hands behind her head and flexed her abdominals. The spandex rippled to life as her incredible midsection hardened in a waterfall of muscularity. “Mishhhter Parker, why won’t my mom let me show off my muscles?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Becky,” I said.

And I didn’t. Dr. Rachel Finklestein seemed to enjoy humiliating men at every turn. And if anyone could humiliate a man, it was her daughter Becky. Becky, who could humiliate a Mr. Olympia lineup and the Olympic power lifting team with one massive arm. Becky, whose superhuman physique was straining against the blue spandex of her Halloween costume. Finally the spandex gave, and Becky’s bicep burst through the sleeve, bulging like a mountain of freckled skin in the afternoon light that filtered into the garage. “Oops,” she said, but she smiled, as if she had wanted to explode out of the costume all along.

And then Dr. Rachel Finklestein burst through the back door to the garage, wearing a tennis outfit, with Lisa and Alika in tow. She looked at the torn spandex and stomped her foot, shaking the garage and everything in it. “Rebecca Esther Finklestein!” she shouted. “What did I tell you about that? You promised that you would only wear this today to humiliate Mr. Parker, but now...” Rachel trailed off as she saw the Judy Blume and Babysitter’s Club books by the door. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head and taking off her jewelry. “Not in a million years do you give my daughter this tripe. I am going to destroy you, Parker.”

“But mom...” Becky protested.

In a matter of seconds, Rachel Finklestein was wearing only a string bikini and tennis shoes, Lisa and Alika holding her clothes and jewelry. She stood up tall and thrust out her imposing chest as she stretched her sinewy limbs. My heart sank. I wondered if Rachel Finklestein ever disrobed in front of a man without battering him. I guess I was going to find out. “Mr. Parker, I think it’s time you really felt what a strong woman can do to a weak man,” she said. Then she flexed her incredible arms. The arms that snapped tow chains like shoelaces.

Then, with a blur of blue and red, Becky stood between us. “No!” she shouted. “Mishhhter Parker is my friend!”

“You are not allowed to have male friends!” Rachel hissed, and slapped her daughter. But the slap that knocked Gary Ross to the ground like a sack of bricks only reddened Becky’s cheek. “Men are only fit for slavery and insemination! Now move!” the doctor said, jabbing her finger into her daughter’s massive pectorals.

“No mom,” Becky said. “I’m tired of you telling me what to do.”

And with one swift motion, Becky Finklestein grabbed her mother by the arm and threw her across my garage. Lisa, Alika and I gasped. Rachel kipped up from her back, her incredible core muscles rippling with power. She fixed her hair and straightened her bikini top, which had slipped off of her ample mammaries.

“I’m tired of you telling me what to wear,” Becky said. And with that she reached her arms up and flexed every inch of her inhumanly powerful body, sending shreds of spandex flying all over the garage.

I heard the doctor’s tennis outfit and jewelry hit the ground and Lisa and Alika shuddered. Becky stood in the garage, clad in a pair of pink underwear and a pink training bra, her muscles twitching and flexing with every breath. “I’m tired of you, mom,” Becky hissed, and brought her arms down into a crab pose that made her physique erupt into a solid wall of brawny flesh.

“Well I suppose I should have seen this coming,” Rachel mumbled to herself. “I think it’s time I adjusted your attitude.” Then, looking around the garage, the older woman grabbed my axe hanging by the door. She twirled it in her hand with the practiced skill of a martial artist. “I think I’ll start with those arms you seem so proud of.”