Karen Gets her Way
by Alpesco
Six foot two inch Karen Sandwood can't be stopped.


"I can't move these barrels," I shouted from the outhouse I had been cleaning out. "They're too heavy. What's in them?"

"They're full of nails, screws and steel fixings." The six foot two inch figure of Karen Sandwood rose from the chair on the porch where she'd been poring through her chest of of medical supplies. "I got them in a bulk lot from a bankruptcy auction."

"Full of nails?"

"Yes. Those two barrels weigh about 150 pounds each," Karen strode up to where I was struggling with the first barrel. She was seven inches taller than me, and a full three inches taller than my boyfriend, Vince, who was working on the far side of this remote forest clearing. Our captor was in her late twenties, with straggly blonde hair that fell to broad shoulders. She was wearing a dark pair of sunglasses against the morning glare. Her long powerful arms unfolded as they reached out to grip the barrel that I had been unsuccessfully attempting to move. Her broad shoulders flexed, and the heavy barrel surged forward, scraping along the storehouse floor as it came out into the open air.

I gasped. Even now Sandwood's strength still startled me. I hadn't been able to move the wooden barrel a fraction of an inch, but she had just moved it forward five feet with one shrug of her shoulders!

Seeing my reaction, Karen gave a thin smile as she turned to face me. Her narrow waist rose out of the training shorts she was still wearing following her early-morning workout. Her abdominals were a dense six-pack of muscle, glinting in the sunlight. The shape and power of her long legs was evident.

"I'd almost forgotten about these," she said. "I think now that you're here, this would be a good time to break them open and sort through the contents."

"Have you got a hammer and chisel?" I asked, "or a crowbar?"

"What do I want a hammer and chisel for?" Sandwood said, reaching down to grab the top of the wooden barrel. She tipped it to one side, then bent and took the bottom rim in her left hand. She straightened, curling the 150 pound barrel smoothly up to chest height in her big arms.

I stood back as she heaved the big barrel upward, almost without effort. I still had no idea what she intended to do.

"Stand farther back," she ordered. As I obeyed, the large muscles tensed along her arms, powering the barrel up to head height and above. Up and up it went, until it was supported on her outstretched arms above her head, fully eight feet off the ground.

Karen's arms seemed big even for her height, and she used them now in an impromptu display of raw strength, lowering the barrel to her shoulders, then raising it back again to full extension above her head. She repeated this ten times. The really impressive thing was that the six feet two inch blonde betrayed no strain at all as she pressed the 150 pound barrel up and down. She just breathed smoothly, her rippling abdominals moving gently in and out as she raised and lowered the huge barrel. After the tenth rep she kept the barrel above her head. She wasn't even sweating or breathing deeply. She looked like she could hold the barrel there for ever.

She looked around her for a rocky spot on the ground, then walked across to it, the heavy barrel still held effortlessly above her head. She took another step forward, then hurled the barrel powerfully down on to the rock. There was a massive crash as the heavy barrel burst apart. Shards and splinters flew everywhere, the inch-thick wood shattering explosively, as nails, hasps and screws spilled out across the ground.

"Wow!" I gasped.

Karen looked down at the wreckage of what had been the barrel, then raised her long arms and flexed. I gasped again. Her biceps were huge! Her arms looked strong enough normally, with dense, heavy muscles running along their length. But when she flexed, two solid hills of muscle gathered in her upper arms, swelling and hardening until they were like cannonballs - each bigger than any bicep I'd ever seen up close. Her biceps easily split the tape at seventeen inches, and they were rock hard

I was twenty eight years old, about the same age as her, but I knew from harsh experience that she could toss me around like a three-year-old kid! Vince, my boyfriend, was thirty seven, and five feet ten tall, but this young woman was just as capable of beating him.

It was over three weeks since she'd forced us to come to this isolated farmstead high in the mountains, close to the Canadian border. It was partly our fault for refusing to help her voluntarily, but when we'd tried to resist her, she'd shocked us both by beating us badly. We'd never imagined that the good-looking, if very tall, hitch-hiker we'd picked up on the road was powerful enough to take the two of us on at the same time, and defeat us both. But that was what had happened. Now we were her virtual prisoners, trapped here until she chose to let us go. And we didn't know when that would be. Our failed efforts to escape had made her lose trust in us, and that was bad. She was clever as well as powerful. A survival freak, who hated the authorities, and had mad ideas about surviving alone in these mountains while civilisation broke down across the rest of the world.

Turning back, Karen dragged the second barrel out into the open.

"Are you going to do the same with that one?" I asked, standing farther back.

"No," Karen said, lifting it smoothly to chest height and carrying it out in front of the main cabin. She set it down upright on the ground. "Shattering the barrel like that was a bit too dangerous. I'm going to break this one up in a more controlled manner."

As I watched, Sandwood lay down on the grass beside it. Then she stretched out her long, thickly-muscled legs, clamping them around the middle of the heavy barrel, completely encircling it.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"I'm going to crush the barrel," she said.

"You can't!"

"Can't I?" She tensed her legs. They were immensely long, and full of muscle. "Feel that."

I bent and touched her thigh. I drew a breath. It was like stone! The thick slabs of muscle were rock solid! There was no give anywhere.

"My legs are real strong," she said as her ankles crossed and her legs began to squeeze. At once there came a cavernous creaking and groaning from the inch-thick timbers that made up the second barrel! She was certainly strong. I hadn't expected the barrel to give a fraction of an inch. Barrels were specifically designed to resist pressure, so Karen's legs must be like steel. I didn't know if I was imagining it, but I thought I could see the thick struts beginning to bend inward under the crushing pressure. Then I was sure. The struts were actually caving inward!

I glanced at Karen's face. It looked serene and confident, without the slightest sign of strain. She was concentrated, but it was as if she was writing a letter, not applying immense pressure to a solid oak barrel. The muscles of her upper body were thick and defined, but the work was being done entirely by her long, powerful legs. With a slight frown, Sandwood increased the pressure - and to my disbelief I began to hear a low, continuous cracking coming from the barrel timbers.

I gasped. At first I could see nothing, just hear the continuous cracking noise. But the cracking, tearing sound didn't stop. It went on and on as Karen's powerful legs started to move imperceptibly together. And now I could see the thick barrel timbers bowing visibly, beginning to tear away from the metal rings that held them in place. Karen's legs were implacable! They just kept on and on applying pressure. The cracking, tearing noise grew louder, and then louder still, as her legs kept bearing inward. I gasped as I saw the curved timber planks begin to crack and split under the immense pressure. The tearing sound grew even louder, interspersed with loud cracks and bangs as whole timbers started to give way. Karen allowed herself a half-smile as she squeezed again and, one by one, the rest of the big timbers began to crack in half, tearing themselves away from what remained of the metal bands. As I watched, the wooden lid split down the center as the whole barrel simply ceased to exist! It had been transformed into firewood in less than a minute as her long, poweful legs engulfed it. As what was left of the barrel imploded, a mass of nails and bolts poured out onto the ground.

Karen released the pressure of her thighs, and stood. "That was fun. I used to do it to guys, but it got too easy after I turned fifteen."

"Goodness!" I gasped, overwhelmed by Sandwood's appalling strength. She was so much more powerful than me or Vince, or any man I'd dated.

"Both of you can go through the screws, bolts and nails and sort them into separate boxes," she said, pointing toward a room off the main cabin where several large wooden drawers awaited.

We nodded. We had to do what Sandwood ordered. We both knew that. If we disobeyed her, she had a huge choice of ways in which to punish us. On this mountain, we had painfully learned, she was the boss.

We were still sorting through the pile of fixings an hour later when the figure of Mitch appeared on the edge of the clearing. Mitch was a 40 year-old drifter who Karen allowed to live in a cabin lower down the mountain in return for doing a few odd jobs.

"Hey, Ms. Karen!" he called out. "I called up to tell you that the Maxwell's boy's chest infection isn't getting any better. They've asked if you can spare any more of your pills." He reached into her open medicine box. "These look like the ones you gave them last time."

Before his arm had fully emerged from the box, Karen's hand had shot forward and grabbed his wrist.

"Owwww! Owwwww! Owwwww!" Mitch shrieked at once as Sandwood's fingers gripped tight.

"Don't even look at my medicines without permission!" she said, drawing his arm out of the box with one hand and twisting it backward. "These things can be dangerous!" Mitch was a bulky guy and nearly as tall as Sandwood, but she seemed to be much stronger.

"Owww! Owwww! Please. I'm sorry!" Mitch howled as Sandwood tightened her grip on his wrist. He dropped the box of capsules, which she caught in her left hand. But Karen still didn't release him. The muscles in her forearm defined as they continued to pour on pressure.

"I've told you about this before," Karen said, examining the packet as he fell, moaning, to his knees. "I don't like it when people disobey me. And these aren't the right pills. They're not even close."

"I won't do it again!" Mitch pleaded. "Please! You're breaking my wrist!"

"Listen to me." Karen frowned. "This is serious."

The thickset man nodded vigorously. He seemed to be in even more pain, Yet Karen looked completely relaxed as her hand maintained its grip on his wrist. "Owwwwwwww!" he moaned. "Yes. Yes! I understand!"

Okay." Sandwood released her grip on his wrist almost as an afterthought, letting it drop to the ground. Mitch gave a sigh of relief, seizing his lifeless right hand in his left and massaging it.

"I can't move my hand!" he said. "I think you broke it!"

"Don't make such a fuss!" Karen said, "And stand up. I'd know if I'd broken your hand, and I haven't. I was only using about sixty percent of my gripping strength. You should be able to use your hand again in a few minutes, and it will be as good as new in a day or two. No," she said, poring through her medicine box. "I'm out of the best antibiotics and antivirals." She fished out a large packet of capsules from her medicine box. "Take these back to the Maxwells. I think now's the time to go and acquire a real good stock that will last."

As soon as Mitch was gone, Karen told me to get in the passenger seat of her battered pick-up truck. Ordering Vince to continue working, she went to the house to change her clothes. But the moment she was inside, I saw Vince creep over toward the truck.

"She'll be going somewhere we can get help," he whispered, looking round furtively. "I'm going to hide in the back, under the tarps, and sneak out when she stops." I watched nervously as Vince clambered in the back of the pick-up.

I prayed that Karen wouldn't notice that Vince was missing as she emerged from the cabin. But she seemed in a hurry. She had changed into a black miniskirt and dark red top - an alternative to her normal jeans

"These will be more suited to where we're going," she said as she climbed into the drivers' seat. "You're coming along with me, but you're not to speak a word to anyone at all unless I tell you to. Understood?"

I nodded.

We drove for half an hour along the bumpy trail down the mountain, and then turned south on the metalled highway for three hours. Karen was driving at around fifty, so we were quite some way from her farmstead when we came to a mid-sized town. There were plenty of cars and a good sized center. Karen drew up across the road from a modern plaza with a shopping mall, a hotel, and what looked like a medical facility.

"Come with me," Karen said, getting out of the cab. I followed, glancing back to see whether Vince was visible in the back of the pick-up. I saw nothing.

As I followed Karen across the road toward the hospital, I kept looking back. There were a lot of people here. What would happen if I called out for help? I wondered. But Sandwood's presence was so dominating, I didn't dare think about it. "Don't speak to anyone. Don't look at anyone," Sandwood said. "Even if they speak to you, say nothing. I'll do all the talking."

That settled it. Sandwood was in charge. I wasn't going to say a word now. I glanced back once more, just in time to see Vince climb out of the back of the pick-up truck, and run across the road toward the shopping mall. A car swerved to avoid him, honking its horn. Sandwood turned round and saw him for the first time. With an angry scowl she strode toward him. But there were thirty or forty people milling about the front of the mall. Vince was over the road and approaching a group of people. Surely our captivity was over. Once Vince had alerted those people, Sandwood wouldn't be able to force us back!

I remained rooted to the spot as Sandwood strode toward him. But surely it was too late? What could she do to him in this crowded plaza?

Vince had grabbed someone in the crowd and was talking agitatedly, waving his free hand wildly. The man was not reacting well. Vince looked a disconcerting sight, unshaven, dirt-faced and grubby, dressed in torn work pants, his top rumpled and travel-stained. I heard him say, "Stop her! She's holding me prisoner!"

"What do you mean..?" the man struggled to free himself. Others in the crowd were looking more alarmed than helpful at the sight of this raving, unkempt figure.

And then Karen was behind him. I noticed her right hand draw itself into a large, heavy fist. She took a long stride forward. Her left arm took his shoulder and spun him round to face her. Then her long right arm powered upward and across.

CRRAAACKK! People nearby gasped at the force of Sandwood's blow as it crashed into the base of the five foot ten man's jaw. The noise of the punch seemed to ring round the open plaza, echoing back from the nearby buildings. I cried out in alarm as Vince's body was first stretched upward, and then hurled violently backward by the awesome force of the blow. The big man groaned and crumpled, collapsing like a rag doll as he lost consciousness.



In a fraction of a second, Sandwood bent, catching the falling figure in her arms almost before he hit the floor. She shuffled the limp body into a cradle, and then straightened, lifting him high in her strong arms.

The watching crowd were clearly startled by what had happened. Surely they couldn't let Sandwood get away with this?

But the tall young woman had already turned back to the startled onlookers. "I'm sorry if you were alarmed," she said, as the unconscious body of Vince lay like a giant rag doll in her arms. "I'm a psychiatric nurse, and this man is my patient. He just OD'd on some drugs and broke out of the secure unit."

"Oh." People in the crowd nodded and began to look reassured.

"I had to render him unconscious," she went on, "..before he hurt someone. But don't worry. It's okay now. He won't give you any more trouble."

I watched, open mouthed, as the people seemed to accept Sandwood's words without question. She sounded so calm and believable! And she looked the part in her neat top and short black skirt. What other reason could a tall young woman have for so efficiently knocking out this wild, bedraggled looking man?

"Did you have to be quite so brutal?" one woman asked.

"We're trained to apply swift and effective restraints ma'am," Karen said, turning away. She shifted the dead weight of Vince slightly in her powerful arms. "He presented a danger to the public, so I am authorized and trained to use necessary force. I'm pretty strong, so one punch is usually effective to do the job. That's to protect both our patients and the public. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get him back to the hospital before he starts to come round."


The crowd drew back, forming a corridor to let Karen carry the unconscious Vince toward the hospital building. There was nothing at all he could do about it. Karen had knocked him out stone cold with just that one huge punch, and now she had him helpless in her arms. He could no longer object or even give his side of the story.

She began to walk toward the main clinic building. I couldn't believe that the watching crowd were just letting her get away with this, and carry Vince out of there. They believed her every word, assuming that she had just calmed a potentially dangerous mental patient. She looked so efficient in her short black skirt - and so powerful. As she strode toward me, I considered crying out for help, but I knew that Sandwood could knock me out with even more ease than she had done Vince, and I would have gained nothing. We'd both be unconscious, and Sandwood would be free to explain her actions away anyway she liked, with neither of us able to contradict her.

"Follow me," she said as she carried Vince up a flight of steps to the upper level, Behind us, the crowd slowly returned to their business.

Karen walked into the hospital by a side door. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. I wondered what to do as she carried Vince along a series of busy corridors. I'd hoped more people would stop Karen and question her, but the people we passed barely seemed to notice her carrying the still-unconscious Vince. Surely a tall, blonde young woman carying an unconscious, fully grown man in her arms should attract more notice? But everyone seemed so busy and wrapped up in their own concerns that it didn't.

"Is he okay?" someone said at last.

"He's fallen off a ladder," Sandwood answered, striding past. "I'm taking him to casualty."

"Do you need a trolley?"

"It's easier for me this way," she said. "I've done this lots of times. I'm quite strong, and I have to climb some stairs!" She turned and climbed a stairway to the next level, and then to the floor above that, ensuring that I was walking in front of her.

"Is he okay?" I asked, looking at the unconscious figure in Sandwood's arms. "He's still not moving!"

"I hit him pretty hard," she said. "He'll stay out for some time, and when he comes round, he's going to hurt pretty bad for a few days, but he's breathing okay."

It was quieter on the second floor. This was the Admin floor, but most of the staff had already left work. We walked toward a pair of doors labelled, Pharmacy. Karen walked right through into a large room divided by a broad counter.

"What are you doing in here?" a tall man in glasses demanded. "And who's that guy? This area is for hospital staff only."

"I am staff," Karen said, raising Vince a little higher in her arms. "This man has just collapsed, and I need to get the following medicines," She put Vince down on the wooden counter, then turned around, producing a handwritten list.

"You can't get any of those without authorization," the man said.

A second man entered the room in the uniform of an orderly. "Is anything wrong?"

The first man shrugged. "I don't know. Have you seen any of these people before?"

The orderly shook his head.

"Then I think we'd better call security, and check these people out."

"No security." Sandwood said. "Just give me the damn medicines!"

"I think you'd better just wait in that corner." The two men approached.

"Don't touch me," Karen warned, stretching out her long, muscular arms as the two men closed in on her.

"Watch out!" I yelled, hoping that the two guys would have a chance against Sandwood, "She's real strong!"

"So are we," the first man said confidently.

But then... "Oooouuurrrgghh!" he suddenly made a horrible gurgling noise as Sandwood acted. Her blow impacted fiercely, just below his ribs. Her long arms had allowed her to hit him before his outstretched hands had reached within a foot of her. To my dismay, I watched him double over, clutching his stomach, and gasping for breath. He fell to his knees, continuing to groan in pain. Karen's punches were so brutally effective! I saw a brief smirk of satisfaction pass across her face.

But the expression only lasted an instant. Within a moment, she had swung round on the other assistant, drawing her long, bare arm back as she did so. I had hoped that the second guy would have time to get in a shot. But Sandwood was not only strong, she seemed to be an expert in combat. And before the guy had figured out what to do, her arm had unleashed another crushing blow. The shot moved so fast that it cut through his defences to explode like a free-falling rock into the side of his head. I gasped at the noise the blow made. Karen's arm was so strong! It could hit with devastating force. The man spun round in a 180 degree turn as the sheer power of her blow sent his whole body hurtling sideways into the counter. He crashed into it noisily, and then dropped like a stone. He was out cold, before he hit the ground. Not even pausing to look at him, Karen turned back to the first man, who was still moaning in pain on the floor. She reached a long arm down and dragged him back to his feet by his collar.

"Do you want any more?" she asked gently.
"N...No!" the man stammered, trembling with fear. The second guy was still laid out stone cold in a heap beneath the counter, every bit as unconscious as Vince.

"Good." Sandwood said. "Now go and get me the drugs I asked for."

"I can't!" he spluttered. I was shocked to see how much this guy was shaking with fear. The pain from that one shattering punch of Sandwood's had reduced him to a quivering jelly. He was so terrified of receiving another one, that he would have done almost anything. "The system is computerised. You need the correct codes." He pointed to a terminal.

"Oh." She put on her sunglasses, then wrapped her left arm around the butt of the male assistant, lifting him off the ground with that one arm, and carrying him over to the terminal.

"What's your entry code?" she said.

"AZ245963D," he answered at once.

"That better be right." She continued to demonstrate her power by holding him upright in one arm as she punched the code into the computer with the other. The screen flashed into life.

"You still won't release the products," the man said. "You'll need the surgeon's authorization codes."

"Give me a few names, home addresses and dates of birth."

He did so, and Karen began typing. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm working out the sequence," she said. "Most of these codes and passwords are easy. Just a few simple substitution cyphers should do it. There... Bingo!"

There was a deep click and a hum from the back of the room, as packets of drugs began to pour in on a conveyor belt. Karen let the assistant slide back to his feet. "Pack them up in that box." She ordered, pointing to a large plastic container beneath the counter.

I helped the assistant to pack up the boxes of pills and ampules of liquid into the container. Sandwood had ordered a lot of materials as the packages just kept on coming. The three foot square container was two thirds full when the far door opened and a large man came in.

"What's going on?" he demanded. "I'm Jed Kirkby, Head of Security."

"She's stealing drugs," the assistant said. "Stop her!"

"Right lady," Kirkby strode toward her. "Put your hands behind your back and face the wall."

He was a big man. He was Sandwood's height, and must have weighed 300 pounds to her 180. Surely now she had met her match?

"You better just sit down over there and let me leave," Karen said. "I don't need any more hassle."

"You're going nowhere," Kirkby said, pressing the button of a remote unit in his hand. "You see what I've just done? I've sealed off this whole floor of the building, and that order can only be countermanded from my office computer. Now just put your hands behind your back and wait for the police to get here."

"Stay back!" Karen warned, taking a stance as she raised her fists into a defensive stance. "I don't want to have to hurt you."

"Think you're tough, little girlie?" the large man spat, drawing his right hand into a heavy fist. "I may just have to spank your britches." He made a surprisingly quick move forward, lashing out with his left. But Karen avoided it with a limber sidestep and swerve of her long body. Then she unloaded.

Karen's first punch struck like a sledgehammer. I could see that Kirkby was shocked by its speed and power. The accuracy was pretty good too. The blow crashed noisily into the side of his head, sending him staggering three paces sideways and grunting with pain. And she followed through immediately. Her long arms landing a sequence of massive, shuddering blows.

It didn't really matter, since I knew, after the first blow, that the fight was already over. Kirkby was a big man, but sandwood hit so unbelievably hard that just that one punch had left him dazed and disorientated. Already blood was pouring down his face from his nose, his mouth and a cut beneath the eye. He was unable to recover quickly enough to have any chance of victory as he tried to cope with the pain, dizziness and shock. Instinct made him try to protect himself from Sandwood's follow-up sequence of harsh, powerful blows, but his short, heavy arms seemed incapable of hitting Karen's slim, fast-moving body, or even of shutting out Karen's devastating chain of blows.

Sandwood's long, arms just picked him off at their pleasure. They powered in from what seemed well out of range, striking where they pleased. And they delivered shockingly heavy blows. From the studied and deliberate way she delivered them, it didn't look like they should land as hard as they did, but they plowed in to his body with bone-numbing force. As I watched, two... three... four... five... six... big blows slammed into him. You could tell by the heavy crump of the impacts that they were doing a lot of damage. Karen looked almost relaxed as her powerful arms did their work, each blow eliciting a deep moan of pain, and making his whole body groan and shudder. In a way, Kirkby's size and his strength were acting against him. A smaller man would have crumpled and fallen quickly under just two or three of those shattering blows. But his heavy body just absorbed the punishment that Karen's arms were handing out.

I shivered. The power with which Karen hit did things to me inside. Nobody seemed able to withstand her crushing blows. This guy was much bigger than her, and she was just punishing him now! Three more massive blows crashed home. And this time I heard bones crack, somewhere deep in his broad chest. He staggered backward, raising his arms in a vain attempt to shield himself. But with the ninth massive blow Kirkby buckled. His knees gave way and he sank to the floor.

Sandwood drew a deep breath. "Okay!" she said coolly, "I guess that's about enough for the moment. Now you're going to unseal this floor."

"It can only be done from my office." Kirkby mumbled, blood from his face running down his shirt to the floor.

"Where's that?"

He pointed through a door. "Along the walkway. But I don't think I can get there.."

"No problem."

Karen bent, wrapped one arm beneath his legs, the other around his back, and lifted. The 300 pound security chief came up as smoothly in her arms as if he had been a small kid as Karen straightened. The half-conscious man was amazed.

"You can't do that... Nobody can pick me up..."

"I'm very strong" Karen said, taking his 300 pounds securely in both arms. "There's not many people I can't lift."



I could see that he hated being carried, but he didn't dare resist her now. Sandwood took him out through the door he had entered by, then out along an outside walkway to his office.

Once she had unlocked the floor and tied Kirkby up, she came back to the pharmacy. I carried the big container of drugs, which must have weighed around sixty pounds. Karen studied a map of the premises, picked up the still-unconscious Vince and led the way, along empty corridors back to the pick-up.

It was dark by the time we were ready to leave, and Karen drove out of town without incident. Vince remained unconscious for most of the journey back, slowly beginning to come round on the bumpy track to Karen's farmstead. Sandwood's punch left him woozy for most of the next day. But since the pain and bruising didn't subside for nearly a week, she decided to relent a little on his punishment, only ordering him to do a couple of hours extra gardening work each day.