RESULTS MAY VARY---Episode Two By HENSPURS cockscomb@juno.com Ambitious Super-Mom uses son to secure power. Kidney stones. If you've suffered from them, you know how awful they can be. Solids scraping and tearing down passages meant for fluids. But as it turned out, those little pebbles were the key to my salvation. More about them later---they're central to the story, however, I should shed some light about how badly Mom and I were duped. What fucking chumps we were...! OK. So where was the fucking muscle we were guaranteed to grow? Mom and I had been ladling "NUTRA-BOOM" for weeks with apparently no change in our physiques except for some slimming in the waist and a general feeling that we were doing ourselves some good. "NUTRA-BOOM" is peddled in cardboard drums similar to those that contain wholesome oatmeal---but don't look for a benevolent, level-headed Christian Yankee with his "I'm not going to screw you" face beaming on the label. "NUTRA-BOOM" comes in notorious black cylinders with garish orange lettering. The Halloween color scheme should have told me something wasn't right from the get-go. Mom and I were just the fools the makers of this stuff were looking for. Regardless, our lifestyles and diets changed overnight once we started taking "NUTRA-BOOM" regularly. No more impulsive trips to Stronzoni's Pizza Parlor, Cox in the Basket, Krummy Krust Doughnuts, Burger Despot, or even to Dennehy's Diner (proudly serving black folks since 1998). Nope. Those days were over. Mom and I agreed. No more fat-crammed, salt-crusted, sugared-up ulcer-bombs for us; we were going to eat like people who cared for their bodies. Mind you, I got pretty gassy because of the sudden change. "NUTRA-BOOM" swept my insides clean as a whistle; I let rip with a lot of rotten ones. OK. So that just meant that up until we started taking this miraculous nutritional supplement, we had been eating with all the principled discrimination of barnyard pigs, poisoning ourselves with processed muck. So, what exactly does "NUTRA-BOOM" look like? Dull pink powder mixed with dryer lint. It has the consistency of the fluffy manure you find on the floor of an enormous bat cave; if you filled a kiddie-pool with "NUTRA-BOOM" and tried to walk across the surface, you'd sink all the way to the bottom on your first step. If you can ignore the fake fruit flavor, it has a vile, metallic tang--it tastes more like George Washington's hatchet than the cherry tree. I don't have to lie about that. Even the biscuits you give your dog look more appetizing. Once you pop the re-sealable plastic top and pry off the thin metal lid, you see the stuff. Half buried near the brim is a spoon similar to something you might find in a box of powdered laundry detergent. Inscribed dutifully with corresponding marks for Teaspoons, Tablespoons, Ounces and Milliliters. And then it's mixed with skim milk or water and voila, your sensible dinner is complete. Mom bought a few full-length mirrors for the house and together, we fixed up the garage, the back porch and parts of the family room as exercise areas. We were going all out. We noticed, however, we weren't growing healthier. Our waistlines shrank. We lost weight. But no vigor and vitality. Exercise made our bones ache. We got winded even with warm-ups. But we didn't stop taking the pink stuff. I observed actual muscle loss. I peeled the label off one drum of "NUTRA-BOOM", had it enlarged and hung it on the wall to read---just in case I was making a mistake in the dosage and preparation. Nope. Everything looked A-OK. So what was the problem? Tapeworm was just one of the paranoid ideas I entertained during those tense weeks. Only a parasite that big could account for the weird lack of metabolism we experienced. We experimented up and down with the food groups, gorging on everything to keep the weight on. No difference. Not to get too gross, but my crap (and Mom attested to the same) came out in shades of taupe. Oh yeah...taupe is a pinkish tan for those of you not into house paint. And they were smooth. So smooth I seriously considered going around in adult diapers""-the sensation of having loaded bowels and dropping a good log became history. Those ambush bowel movements must have happened to Mom as well; I heard outcries of disgust and frequent toilet-flushing upstairs a few hours after dinner. And why shouldn't I have been concerned? Here's the deal: I was shoveling down protein-rich foods and guzzling NUTRA-BOOM shakes like a madman. So was Mom. We ate breakfast and dinner together. Our lunches-""mine at school and hers at the office-""were identical. Still, our bathroom scales (we replaced them numerous times out of sheer skepticism) said we weren't gaining weight. In fact, we were starving to death faster than supermodels. A virtual ammo dump of NUTRA-GORP filled our pantry shelves, crowding out marshmallows, cookies, cake mix, beef jerky, toaster pastries, soup. We had "NUTRA-BOOM" by the pallet in our garage. But it looked like it was ours until we consumed every last can. We couldn't give the stuff away, though our first goal was to get rid of it at a profit. No luck---it was like trying to sell torn parachutes or flat tires. Oh, there were times it looked as if we were going to quit cold turkey with the stuff. I remember one night. We didn't have the gusto to exercise anymore. Our heartbeats were irregular, our skin tone was bad; we got bedsores. Our hair fell out. Our nails were brittle. Our teeth loosened. And we didn't know what was going wrong. Mom missed work, I missed school. We were in bad shape. With my head pounding, I hit the nutrition books, looking for answers. Mom grunted and groaned in the garage like she was trying to cope with a bunch of pulled muscles or a second degree burn or loud Mexican music. And then, I heard her fart; I wonder if the neighbors could have heard it. That release sounded like a huge cow or a plow horse letting go. Long before that sound faded, it was mingled with her pained, sickened yell. She was still giving out minor toots when she came out of the garage with a blender half empty (or half full for you optimists in the crowd) of "NUTRA-BOOM". She looked like she was made of farts. "I'm gonna pour this shit...DOWN THE KITCHEN SINK---!!!" Yeah, yeah. But sayin' so don't MAKE it so. Tilt...tilt...tilt. She couldn't go through with it. No more than I could have had I been the one with the blender. We were addicts. We were unable to part with the treasure, no matter how bad it was warping us. We wants it, we doesss. Wants the preciousss. Like I said, dupes. * * * Now, getting back to those kidney stones: My Uncle Phil, God rest him, on my father's side of the family, went through a terrible experience which should have told me something. The trouble was, Phil's ordeal was so wretched to look at and remember that I worked up a dense mental block and shut it all out until perhaps it was too late. Sweating and afflicted halfway through a card game at our house, Phil struggled to his feet. "Doreen, I'm going to the john. Gotta feelin' it's gonna be a bad one..." Phil had wisely left the bathroom door unlocked. Uncle Phil had reached that age where a lifetime of careless eating and drinking had caught up to him. The devil--or someone just as sadistic--had set up a miniature gravel pit in each of his kidneys, and the output was more than he could bear. "Uncle Phil? Are you all right in there?" "Ahhh""GAKKKKKKKKK!!" He fell with a long, pained outcry and thud, and he was still writhing when I timidly came to the door. There on the dark blue tiles, showing up for its pale color was a kidney stone. A pretty huge one. And there was blood. Uncle Phil was stuffing his aching dilly back in his pajamas. I reached out for the stone. "Don't touch that!" Aunt Doreen picked the stone up with a hand towel. "Doc's gotta see this." Fuck me, I should have tried to remember Uncle Phil. I didn't. Not till it was too late. Mom and I began passing stones, little ones at first, and then larger ones. And we saved them, making natural history museums with them. The terror of the stones helped us take a respite from "NUTRA-BOOM" and we ate regular food again. Bouts of restlessness drove us out of the house. People stared at us at the Coin-Op Laundry; we looked like refugees from a plague. No one wanted to come near us. I made three partially successful trips to the john to pee and only managed a few drops and some blood. I had a stone coming. A big one. I would pass it very soon. I just hoped no one else would be in there when I had to get rid of it. Aching, sweating, unsteady on my feet, I leaned on the nearest machine. Something made a splash in the spilled suds on the floor. A footprint appeared and vanished. Or had it? I couldn't think straight with the stone nagging me. I perused the bulletin board. I saw something interesting. Someone had made a flyer. HAVE YOU TRIED ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS? Susta-Blend Nitro-Gorp Growth-Blast Mega-Meal Nutra-Boom Vita-Pow IF SO, CALL THE NUMBER BELOW: The bottom of the flyer was snipped with scissors into a fringe like on a leather jacket. Between each snip was a hand-written phone number. It was hard for me to concentrate. But I was sure I had read "NUTRA-BOOM" somewhere in that damned list. I was sure. Maybe Mom would want to know about this. Where was she? I was barely aware of her standing at the other end of the place carrying on a conversation with a strange man. He wore sunglasses regardless of the dark, cloudy day. His clothes were black. I didn't hear a word he said, he must have been speaking under his breath, but his body language said he was laying down something serious. Mom seemed completely in a trance over what she was hearing. Crap! I didn't have a pen and paper. None of the strips on the bottom of the flyer were torn off. I would be the first taker. Maybe then, we could get some help. Something took my hand and stopped me. It wasn't an angel. I got a smack---the noise was covered up by the rumble and thrum of the washers and dryers. It hurt, though. Especially since my skin was far more tender than it had ever been since I was born. A welt rose. I didn't see anyone. Shit! I was getting tunnel-vision. "Hands off that paper, Stupid. If you want to live, we have to talk." Just then, I felt the knifing pain of a kidney stone at the base of my dick. "I didn't even see you," I said. "You weren't supposed to." The voice was right next to me. But I didn't see anyone. My judgment was off. I did as I was told. I stepped into the laundry's restroom. The door was shut and locked for me. I wasn't in there alone. The speaker didn't have a low voice naturally; it was forced. Was it a girl? "Take a seat. Try to get rid of that stone while you're at it." I reached out for what I thought was there and got another crack on the knuckles for my trouble. "I'm enough pain---" "Keep your damned hands to yourself. How long have you been taking that Martian Trail-mix?" "Months...I think it's been---" I got a slap in the face. "Shut up." "Hey! What's with the all the fucking slaps?" "Can you see me?" "No...I can't...see you." "Slaps are what I use in place of a stern look. That guy out there talking to your mother. He's getting her to sign your death warrant. You've both been passing stones around the clock?" Having a conversation with an invisible person does wonders in suspending disbelief. I was ready to listen. "Sure." Nothing for a while as another big kidney stone tore up my urethra and stopped halfway. A hand that felt very pleasant took hold of my dick and massaged the stubborn stone to the pisshole. A pebble a half inch in diameter floated in the air, suspended by an invisible grip. I sagged forward on the pot, blacking out. A hand braced me. "Saving them?" "Yeah." Another slap. This one intended to bring me around. "Don't get yours mixed up with hers. If you don't have any on you right now, it's too bad for you. You have to learn the difference between her stones and yours and quick. The moment you get home or wherever the stones are kept, she is going to go through them. You have to get there first. If she gets one of yours before you get one of hers, you're finished. Get me? Finished." "Gets? You mean eat? Put kidney stones in my mouth and eat them? But that's fucking disgusting!" "The stones you produce won't work on you. The same with your mother. You take hers or she takes yours. Get home. Now. Find her stones." "How do you fit in to all this?" "Payback, Stupid. I'd like to help more, but I've got my own problems, see?" "No." Another slap. "Now listen, Stupid. Your mother's stones won't look exactly like yours. Get them. And destroy the ones you passed. That's where all the energy is. That crap you've been taking changed your organs. You both make energy pills. Do you fucking hear what I'm telling you?" The person I couldn't see bent over me and flushed the toilet. I felt a good-sized boob brush my face. "I would tell you not to look for me, but that would be useless. Remember, your mother, your own mother will try to keep you prisoner or kill you. Now go home." Mom was waiting outside the john when the door opened. She wore a bleak, but hungry expression. "Did you just pass a stone, Son?" "Uh, yeah." Her eyes brightened, but not all the way. The running toilet sound was still going on. My invisible friend was keeping my latest excretion hidden from sight. "Did you...keep it?" Mom asked. I looked around. The man in black she had been talking to was nowhere to be seen. "No," I said, "It got...flushed." Her expression turned dark. Betrayed. She was now my enemy. But maybe I had a friend. Behind me, I felt the air swish as the invisible informant breezed past me and on her way. Payback, she had said. Some evil corporation was using people for experiments. And now Mom and I were part of that experiment. The game was on. A maze of one way streets stood between home and laundry. She had the car keys. And loads of laundry in the machines. A dilemma. But she had no reason to think I knew anything. She was trying to hide her plan, but her face showed what I feared. I stepped out of the john, adjusting my pants. Could I get home before she could? Get home and find the containers? I gave it a shot. We both got home around the same time. She drove the wrong way down three streets to get home, dodging and honking. I took all the shortcuts I knew, going through neighbor's yards and over fences, draining what energy I had for the chance of getting one of two of those stones. I also had to keep mine out of her clutches while I was at it. Trouble was, Mom had the presence of mind to carry some of the stones around in her purse. Whether she ate some of hers along with mine didn't matter much. In minutes, she wrestled me to the floor and beat on me, belying her haggard appearance. The clothes at the laundry blocks away would stay there; they meant nothing now. Her job, my school, they were all irrelevant. "NUTRA-BOOM" took a long time to pay off and brought us both close to death, but it finally paid off. Mom had just gotten the payoff first. I regained consciousness in bed, naked, tied down. And for the next week, I passed those weird stones that months and months of taking "NUTRA-BOOM" had triggered. Using a pill-cutter, Mom gave me slivers of hers, just to keep me strong enough to keep "laying" like the storied Golden Goose. She wasn't going to kill me so long as I could keep coming up with energy pills. The bitch. In days, she recovered her former appearance and improved on it. She grew, packing on pounds and inches while I languished in bed, serving no other purpose than to make pills for her self-improvement. She began dancing at a strip joint to make money and became the star attraction. When she started looking too different, she pulled up stakes and moved out of the house, renting a huge RV. I was packed along as prisoner, hog-tied with every kind of restraint she could think of. I wasn't family to her any more, just an animal in her own traveling farm. And, oh yes, the pallets of "NUTRA-BOOM" came along with us. Doubtless, she was still taking the stuff, but probably only in small doses. Even though I no longer ate that "Martian Trail-mix", I still made those potent kidney stones. And they did the trick on her body every time. And I made a lot of them. More than I ever supposed she would need. What she was doing with the bulk of HER stones, I couldn't guess. Selling them? But did they work on anyone other than me? The few pills I was allowed made me fit, but not strong enough to break the leather straps and ropes that held me to the frame. Every time I was treated to one, I got a rush of energy. I could only imagine what she felt when she took mine. And she took so many of them. They certainly had an effect. Mom passed the six foot tall mark in two months. Her small bones turned into medium-sized bones. Her face alone took on weight, she longer matched her old pictures. That only enabled her to fake new identities for herself. "You just keep making those pills for Mommy, Son," she told me. "And nothing will happen to you. But if you ever come up dry, it's back to "NUTRA-BOOM" breakfast, lunch and dinner until you start up again. And if that doesn't work, I will gut you myself. So don't ever disappoint me!" She followed the strip circuit for a while and then got into body-building competitions, winning left and right. No one except the hugest males had a physique like hers; she was grotesque with veins and stretched skin. Barbells loaded down with a quarter ton of weights became typical lifts for her. Mom could bite through rawhide with a single chomp. She billed herself as "Dinah Powers." I heard she even did a few porno movies before she grew too big. "Never mind MY private life, Son," she told me with a laugh. "YOUR life is the one that's going to stay private!" And as always, when I showed signs of weakness, I would receive a sliver of one of her fresh stones to pep me up. If only, if only I had gotten a few of her whole stones! Yeah, and if I died, her supply would dry up. Death was easy. It was the living that was killing me. I didn't look for help. It was nowhere in sight. * * * "Wake up, Stupid." I hadn't been asleep, just drained. I got a few slaps in the face all the same. Mom never called me "Stupid". That only left one person who could sneak through Mom's defenses. The RV had served its purpose. Mom had me locked up in a an old industrial area in a city completely strange to me. The warehouse had been fortified to keep people out and in at the same time. I was an investment worth a fortune. As usual, I was secured in a heavy frame that could have penned in a small dinosaur. I felt a flask at my lips. A fluid that would make sewer water taste mellow went down my gullet. I tried to spit out, but invisible hands went under my chin and pinched my nose shut. I swallowed and screamed. "Shut up!" The hands relaxed from my face. "Fuck! What was that?" "Plan B. I got here too late, and this place is rigged too seriously for Plan A. Your mom is running out of stones. She's on a plateau. Leveling out. She's having to take more and more to strut her stuff. That skunk piss you drank will give your next few stones a wallop on her system. And when they do, that's the time to make a run for it." "A run to where? I don't know this place!" "Birmingham. I can't go with you when you make your escape, and you'd better escape. Fifty of your mom's stones are in a test tube." "Where's the test tube?" "In your rectum. Don't clench." "What about this escape?" I got the details. I would have to run twenty blocks at least---naked---to the train yard. I didn't know it at the time, but it was late at night. Maybe I wouldn't get caught. It was more than worth the chance. I would live as a fugitive for the rest of my days. If I was careful. Mom, all of six and a half feet tall, came pounding in to where I was restrained. She wore a bikini that looked out of place strung over all those muscles. Her clitoris was erect and made a little node in the lower front of her bikini bottom; getting those energy pills from me had become her top fetish. Playing business as usual, I yielded up a stone and she popped it in her mouth right then and there and swallowed, patting her stomach. She began to outline her plans for the month---and then the whole speech cut off like a phone conversation when the line is severed. She had swallowed a veritable booby trap. Choking, foaming, she fell down on the hard concrete floor with a thud that shook the frame I was tied in. On her back, she writhed and whacked the floor with her fists, having a fit. Her clitoral erection wilted. This was the first time she had ever faced resistance. She was used to getting her own way and any setback was intolerable. That made her mad. Her eyes blazed as she turned over and crawled toward me, drool pouring from her lips. Finger-thick veins crawled under her skin like snakes waking up from winter. Her joints cracked audibly. Mom was still strong and wasn't about to quit---perhaps realizing this was the first stage of a robbery. Someone was stealing me away from her. In seconds, the bonds were released and I was free for the first time in seasons. I felt all wrong for not having been allowed to move. The thing was, I had to move. "I'll...kill...you!" My mom sprayed, trying to get at me, flailing blindly. Her reach was amazing now, I underestimated it and was swept off my own feet. "JUST LET ME GET MY HANDS ON YOU...YOU FUCKING PIECE OF LIMP-DICK SHIT!!!" I didn't recognize her as my mom anymore. And how could I? She was an extension of a chemical made by a vile laboratory. She was inching her way closer to me; the last of the straps in the restraint harness was loosened. "ALMOST...THERE!" Clawing her way ever nearer, my mom took hold of the steel frame I was in and hauled herself upright. "Make tracks, Stupid." The voice in my ear told me. For all that, the sympathy factor made me delay. I made good my escape, never again looking back. Halfway across town, I arrived just in time to clamber into an open boxcar as the freight train pulled out. Luckily, the test tube up my tail-hole didn't crack. I had the means to get my strength back. Thanks to Mom. Then began the long, slow process of getting back to normal and then on from there, knowing with less than a hundred of my mother's stones available, I would only be a shadow of her strength. Those stones had to be enough, they just had to be. But then again---RESULTS MAY VARY THE END.