Epi-tit for Epi-tath
By Madison, pinkboybuffet@hotmail.com 
A sailor’s dying request is granted ... and a legend is reborn.


"Pertaters," the frail bald geezer wheezed, looking out the window of the
cabin to the fields.

"Yeah," his portly companion said, spreading his arms apart. "Acres and acres
of’em."

The frail man leaned wobbly on his walker for moment, then gave that odd,
choppy laugh of his. "Ark ark ark ark," he said roughly. "Who’d a thunk Brutus
the bully would end up a vejkable farmer?"

Brutus held his belly, and joined the chuckle. "Yeah, it is kinda ironical,
ain’t it?" But not as ironical as you, ol’ chum, he thought to himself. He
gazed once more at his guest’s poor health. This liver-spotted stick figure,
this skinbag with a frame, this body waiting to die- this was what remained of
a Hollywood legend. Brutus searched his head for a "Before" picture to compare
him too. When did he last see him? Which picture? Was it Greece, on the set of
"Meet Ya at the Spinach Line"? Morocco, during "Casa-blackeye"? His film years
ran together so, a haze of hematomas and broken jaws and cold compresses and
hospital emergency rooms.

Oh, he'd healed. Brutus always healed. Just quickly enough to make the next
picture. To go another round with the ninety-pound wonder of the world. And do
the whole medical drama all over again. And for what? The pay? Bah! He'd've
done it for nothing, and the studio knew it. It was a cancer in his heart,
show business. All three of his wives thought it would kill him. Harpies, he
thought, spitting at their memories. They all thought they could change him,
make him retire. Ha! Only one thing retired Brutus the bully, and that was
Popeye the Sailor.

Or so he’d thought.

The rickety man read his thoughts. They looked at each other a long time.

"So," Brutus asked. "Anybody recognize ya?"

The sailor hung his head. "Forty years ago, I couldn’t wait to be invisk-able.
Now..." the sentence trailed off into the air. Popeye sighed. "Everyone thinks
I’m myth-tical-fied."

Brutus grunted. "Fame," he snorted. "Fickle bitch."

"I could handle amon-it-onomy," Popeye said. "The cartoons was bad fer kids
an’ infinks. I don’t want little kiddies thinkin’ fightin’s da way to solve
stuff. But..."

"But sometimes there’s no other way," Brutus finished. "And I was able to be a
wicked, evil man, who thought he could beat up anybody and do whatever he
wanted, until a man with a wiry body but a good soul showed up and put me in
my place."

The bear put his arm around the aging lamb. "And invisk-able?" Brutus asked.
"Pal, you’re as invisk-able as god. Everyone knows who Popeye is, and the good
that Popeye stands for. Yeah, Popeye fights. But he never throws the first
punch. Sure, he has the power to destroy armies in a can. But he uses it with
the wisdom of Solomon, conscious of when he needs it, and when he doesn’t. And
if he’s not provoked, the lid stays on."

Brutus chuckled. "Ya know who worships ya?"

"Who?"

"Lesbians."

The sailor’s jaw dropped. "But-but-but- not them dames what likes goilz and
stuff?!"

"No foolin’," Brutus. "We got two of’em down by the river. One’s one of them
crazy wimmen boxer types. She idolatrizes you. Gotta tattoo of ya on her back.
I asked her about it when she jogged past one morning. Didn't recog-fy me,
thank god. She’s just a tiny thing, four foot ten maybe, red hair, crew cut,
rail thin, wiry. But she wants ta fight. Fer serious. Wants ta be just like
ya."

"Oooooooh," the sailor groaned, uneasy with modern sexual roles. "This, is
embarraskin’."

Brutus laughed, and sucked at his dentures. He counted to twelve by twos. He
watched the skinbag writhe and loll its head.

"How long?" Brutus asked.

The old man sighed. "Any day," he moaned. "Any, any, any day."

The bully straightened a bit. "And you're here?" Brutus said. "What the f-
jeezes, Pops, why ain'tcha with Olive and Sweets?"

"'Cuz this is more importants!" the old man said with sudden strength before a
dire coughing fit. He covered his mouth with his fist, which was soon dotted
with a rusty, viscous phlegm. "Olive knows," he wheezed at last. "She knows
how I feels, she knew I had to come here. Didn't like it, but knew it."

The bully steeled himself. This was it. He curled his fist up, tensing. He
sensed the absence of the question, but the old sailor man wiped his hand off
on his shirt, slowly, deliberately, before continuing. "Can’t leave the bar
widdout settlin' up, ol' chum," the bald sailor said. "And dis old man is
hearin' his last call."

"So, pal o'mine," Popeye said, achily drawing himself up, "I wants ya's to
deck me."

Brutus's hands fell open. "What?!" he boomed.

The old man raised his chin, and nodded. "Settlin' up," he said. "Fer all dem
broken bones and hospicles. I wronged ya. Now ya's gotta unwrung it."

The bully grabbed his stomach again, and laughed long and loud and clear.
After all his fear, all his dread that this collapsing husk was going to try
to hit him one last time, eat his spinach one last time, feel young one last
time, and how awkward and impossible it was going to be to decline. After all
that... this.

"A free shot?" Brutus said, still laughing. "You want me," indicating his
still appreciable size, "to give you," indicating the old man's lack, "a
wallop to the brainbox?"

The old man nodded, slower than casual. Brutus kept chortling, as he ran this
situation through his gut and back again. A deathwish, perhaps? he thought.
The old man doesn't want to wait for the reaper, he wants to go out nice and
clean? Or would he smack the sailor man, just to find he still had a spinach
trick up his shirt? Hm, yes, now this was a concern worth concerning.

"How do I know I won’t be hearin' a certain theme song after I deck ya?" the
bully asked slyly.

The sailor sighed. "None left."

"None?"

"None to worries about."

"To worry about?" Brutus said, rainsing an eyebrow.

The sailor began sputtering. "W-w-well I gots ta keep some of it!" he
protested. "Fer emergencies! Get meself back to Olive in one piece, just in
case."

"Oho!" Brutus said, pointing. "I gets it. You eat your spinach after I smear
ya, just to 'get better', then you beats me up so bad I can't even walk around
my farm in me old age-" Brutus put tears in his eyes. "Bedridden!" he
lamented. "Helpless, alone... for shame, Popeye!"

"No no!" the sailor said, holding up his hands. "Ya gots it all wrong,
Brutus!"

"Sorry, chum," said the bully, turning away. "Go play your settling up game
somewhere else. I'm not buying."

"But-but-but it's my last wish! A dyin' man's gots ta have his last wish!"

"Why?" Brutus said, spinning back with a sneer. "What's the dying man offering
me?"

There it was. The old man looked back into the solid gaze of a devil, and the
devil's price just had to be paid. It scared him. The old man swallowed, and
hesitating, fumbling, moved his hand inside his shirt, pulling out an open
can. The bully snatched it away, and held it up to his eye.

Not much left, he saw. One mouthful. But oh, the power in the mouthful. There
were a few times in the pictures when he was privileged, blessed enough, to be
rewarded with a taste of the stuff. Usually it was because the sailor punk
would force it down his throat, because the circumstrances of the story
dictated that Popeye wanted to get beat up (what sick perv wrote that script?
Brutus had always wondered). Now those salad days had come again. He put a
tear in his eye again.

"Gee," he lied, sniffing. "Thanks, chum."

Brutus ate the spinach.

It wasn't even a mouthful, really. But then, Brutus had a big mouth. He chewed
it only a couple of times. It seemed a bit much to swallow in one gulp, but
that was how the sailor runt always did it, and damned if Brutus wasn't going
to do exactly the same. He forced it back. It was like trying to choke himself
with a salty dishrag. He gagged, but steeled himself, and willed his old,
feeble gullet to work, push, accept, relent.

The spinach went down his throat.

A heat welled in the farmer's stomach. Could it work that fast? Well, of
course it could. Brutus knew that all too well. But after living outside the
spinach world for so many decades, Brutus renewed his awe of the stuff. No
medicine worked like this. No pill got results in two seconds. Yet this
greenery, this plant so common it was practically a weed, was pulling tight
his bloated abdomen. Brutus lifted his shirt up to look. The pot belly was
retracting like water down a drain, leaving behind the marble-hard washboard
of his youth. The skin itself became less chalky and sick, liver spots
receding to memory. His chest and back were expanding.

"Yes," Brutus crowed, chortling from a dark place. He raised his arms. Sinews
spread like ropes from his shoulder. He clenched a fist and felt new muscle
bunch beneath his shirt. He rolled the sleeve up, and saw his old bicep
pulsating with energy, exploding up and down like a piston engine. "Yes!" he
roared again. He was, for these few moments, a god.

If Brutus even registered the shaky, backpedaling form of his old friend, it
was as a flea, a picnic ant, an annoyance to be tortured and crushed. Soon
enough he overcame his reveling, stepped up to Popeye with two blindingly
quick strides, and set to work with a fighter's efficiency.

"Chum, I'm proud to fulfills yer last request!" Brutus said, laughing. He
swung his fist like an axehead down on top of the sailor. The lapsed hero got
exes for eyes. He thought out a final prayer before collapsing like a broken
ceramic doll.

Popeye the Sailor might have been dead that instant, but Brutus was too far
gone to care. His spinach rush was enrapturing. He kicked the sailor's head as
it fell, back up to his fist, punched it back down, kicked it back up, so fast
as to be a blur, a blur with blood spattering out. Brutus yawned, this was too
easy. It was like those kid’s games with the paddleball and rubber band. His
free hand was bored, so he twirled it behind him, then swung, rocketing the
sailor’s body through the window, through a support post on the porch with a
wicked crunch, a quarter-mile down the dirt road, then head-first into a
hardwood tree. He collapsed like an accordion, and fell inertly back to the
earth.

Brutus held his follow-through for a moment. Then he flexed his mountainous
bicep, and sang mockingly to himself. "I'm strong to the finish, 'cuz I ate
the spinach of Popeye the Sailor Man! Ha ha!"

He laughed to himself for a good, long minute. When his breath came back, he
looked at the broken window and the blood on his clothes. "Shit," he thought
to himself. This don't look too good. And what if that sailor squirt really
did die this time? Hoo, Nellie. Brutus ran to look outside, and stopped dead
in his tracks.

The lesbians.

They were both there. The nice, leggy blonde named April, and the short runty
boxer with her red-dyed buzz cut. They'd been jogging, and must've seen. They
were huddled over the sailor’s body in horror, and looked warily over to the
potato farm. Brutus saw the boxer make a harsh whisper to her lover, and April
made like a sprinter back up the mountain trail.

Brutus swore. He was in it now. No escape from this. He'd spend the rest of
his life in jail- if they didn't execute him. Nothing for it. In for a penny,
in for a pounding. He started to run after the blonde.

The boxer saw him, and with a steely glare, ran to intercept. Brutus checked
her up and down as she approached. "Red", he had dubbed her derisively. She
was in shorts and a sweaty tank-top, so no place to conceal a weapon really.
All she had were her fists. She probably fancied them weapons enough. She was
in for a rude awakening.

"Where do you think you're going, huh?!" Red taunted him as they approached.
She held her hands up for a shove. "What do you-"

Brutus put out a hand and grabbed her throat. He could tell she was shocked.
He picked her up with one arm, all ninety pounds of her. Red kicked, Red
thrashed, Red gasped. He locked into her gaze.

"Too easy, runt," he growled at her. With his free hand, he shot five
lightning-quick jabs to her face. It went from alert, healthy tan glow to
lolling, puffy bruise in an eye blink.

"And now," Brutus said, almost mothering the barely conscious bag of meat in
his hand, "for the last lesson you’ll ever learn." He tossed her lightly in
the air, then with a roundhouse punch, shot her into the same tree as her
idol.

"HEEEEELP!" Brutus heard April screech, laboring up the mountain ahead of him.
"HEEEELP!"

This was too fucking familiar, Brutus grumbled. But with no Popeye, the ending
would not be repeated. He gamboled after her, leaving his two lifeless victims
lying face down in the meadow.

For all the previous commotion, the pasture was now still. A pair of
chipmunks, curious, popped up from behind a tree root, and sniffed the limp
forms on the grass. The old man? Dead, very dead. The young woman? Might as
well be. A gentle breeze rattled the branches of the trees, filtering the
light that fell down on the woman’s broadly muscled back, flickering on a
tattoo.

A tattoo in the image of Popeye the Sailor Man.

Perhaps it was just the flickering light, perhaps it was something in the
plaintive terror of the screams of a person who is someone’s one true love.

Perhaps it was just cartoon law.

But for whatever reason, the tattoo popped to life.

It heard the screams, popped its eyes open in alarm, and then scowled,
twirling its pipe in fury.

Fists clenched, the tattoo popped off the woman, and strode over to the
lifeless sailor. It reached down the body’s shirt.

Yes, Popeye had had to keep some of the spinach. Some, for emergencies. And
here it was- the real honest and for true last can of spinach.

The animated tattoo held the can up in one hand, opened the unconscious
woman’s mouth, and poured its contents inside. He moved her jaw to help her
chew, then waited for the mass to slide down her gullet.

Something deep within her awoke, like a dead primal memory of some basic fact
forgotten. She swallowed with a resounding gulp. The mass of spinach shot down
her throat and to her feet so fast, the momentum snapped her from the ground
and planted her firmly on two legs. The boxer came to, feeling like an atomic
bomb was exploding inside her, but she couldn’t worry about that now. April
was screaming for her life. "HEEEEEEELP!" she heard her cry. With a surly
clench of her fists, Red shot like a cannonball towards the noise.

At the top of the mountain, the blonde was screeching in terror. Behind her, a
sheer cliff. In front of her, a slowly advancing 400 pound maniac, grinning
and chuckling like the devil himself. She trembled, taking uneasy steps
backward. She grabbed at rocks and threw them, but they bounced off his head
like gnats.

"Here, girlie girlie girlie," the brute taunted.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed.

Brutus laughed. "Ha!" he said, still bursting with strength. "Who’s gonna make
me?"

And now another memory entered Brutus’s head, about how he never enjoyed
reading lines like that in the script. It was a cue. Everyone watching the
cartoon knew what came next.

Today, he felt a prodding tap on his shoulder. "Excuse me?" a polite female
voice said. Brutus turned around.

The boxer reared her fist back. "I believe "no" means no," she said as her
punch exploded to his chin. A crack came like thunder. The ground shook as
Brutus erupted from gravity’s hold and shot off the cliff.

Red flew to her love, who collapsed in her arms. Grateful she had arrived in
time, she kissed her quickly, then laid her gently out of harm’s way. "Forgive
me, darling," Red said, stealing one last quick kiss of her brow. "But I have
some unfinished business."

With that, Red scowled at the plummeting form of Brutus. She adjusted her
breasts in her tank top, and launched herself right down after him.

She shot like a missile. You could almost hear the whistling of her travel,
and see afterburn trailing behind her.

In no time at all she caught up to the falling bully. As they both dropped,
she grabbed his collar, and yanked his face to hers. He seemed groggily
conscious of her words. "YOU?!" she bellowed. "YOU dared kill Popeye the
Sailor Man?!".

She reared her fists back again. Now she shot right-left-right-left lightning
jab combinations, and did them while aiming straight down to the ground. Each
punch increased the speed of their descent. They were a blur, 400, 500, 600
miles per hour. She was punching so hard and heavy that they didn’t even
notice the ground when they hit. They destroyed the sound barrier, shattered
it with an enormous, echoing boom. The ground blew up like and atomic bomb had
hit. But Red barely noticed. She just kept punching like a piston, as they
shot straight down through the earth like an arrow, bursting down, down, and
still she punched, faster and faster still.

Brutus was barely conscious, but felt everything. The blows were like hammers
caving his face in hundreds of times per second. And being driven through the
earth itself was like getting punched through a brick wall, to hit another
brick wall, and another, again and again to infinity.

Soon Red had delivered so much punishment she had nearly punched him straight
through to the other side of the world. Instinctively knowing what to do, Red
gave Brutus one more overwhelming punch, so dominating it burst him all th
eway to the surface- but he only came half-way through. His arms were pinned
to his sides. He just hung there, his bloody head rolling, his eyes all but
swollen shut, tongue hanging out, stars and birds orbiting around him.

Red punched herself a side tunnel to the surface, so she could stand right
beside her conquered foe.

And now, Red casually swatted some dirt out of her short hair. Brutus wasn’t
dead. He couldn’t be. This was her cartoon now, her real life cartoon. She
could feel Popeye’s spirit deep within her. She played by his rules now. Her
opponents would be conscious as long as she wanted, take as much punishment as
she allowed them to take. And the last punch would always be hers.

"I’m not going to linger long," she taunted the bully, lifting his lolling
head up. "I just wanted to really, really show you your wonderful gift."

She extended her left arm, and grunted as she flexed. An impossible bicep
rose. Barely a third of the way into the flex, the bicep was easily the size
of a cantalope. She grit her teeth and flexed harder, to half-way. A second
peak rose, of equal size, ON THE SAME ARM, right next to the first one. Harder
she bore down, and brought her forearm to 90 degrees, forcing the two huge
biceps to merge, into the biggest, most unbeleiveable double-headed bicep
anyone had ever dreamed. And with on, last, massive gasp of effort, she
brought her her fist toward her chin (or as close as the engorged muscle would
allow!) and to even her own astonishment, a THIRD peak rose, right on top of
the first two. It was a fifty inch bicep on a girl not even five feet. It was
easily bigger than her own head.

Her tattoo of Popeye now appeared upon it, and stared defiantly at the fallen
potato farmer.

"She’ll be strong to the finach, if she eats her spinach like Popeye the
Sailor Man." it said.

The boxer nodded, reared back, and gave The Final Punch.

Brutus exploded into orbit, circling the globe sixteen times before falling to
earth at the exact spot he left, where Red was waiting. She stood tall, arms
at her hips, holding her tank top just up to the bottoms of her young, perfect
breasts. Her abs, striated and cut like diamond, awaited him. A tattoo of a
brick wall had formed upon them, showing a picture of a six-foot-thick,
impenetrable brick wall, because indeed it would have been easier to move The
Great Wall of China than to move those perfect abs. Brutus rammed into those
granite-solid abs head-first. It seemed like he froze in the air when he hit,
and had cracks form along him like a vase when he fell to pieces.

At the other end of the world, April was starting to come to, when suddenly-
the earth rumbled! A mound started to push itself up in front of her. April
clutched a boulder in fear for her life- now what? An earthquake? A volcano?

But.out of the mound popped Red, carrying her fallen opponent, easily three
times her size, with one arm over her shoulder. Bursting from of her skin with
joy, the blonde ran to her lover, stopping just a moment to drop her jaw at
Red’s new spinach-charged physique. Red smiled, slyly, and popped her bicep.
The blonde ran her fingers along it in amazement as she ravished Red with
kisses.

"You know", Red said, chuckling. "Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman."

The tattoo of Popeye chuckled along with her.