Be Kind, You Aminals! by Madison Marbury Girls love horses. Girls love spinach. Popeye’s not the only one strong to the finach. madisonmarbury@hotmail.com It was a hell day, a day when July seemed less a page on a calendar than a curse hurled from on high. Popeye trudged down the hot cobbled street, moaning like a prisoner on a forced march. He mopped his brow with his hat, then when it was wet and full, desperately flung his mouth open and wrung the sweat back into his mouth. "Come on, Pops!" came the tug at his pants urging him onward. He cast a sullen glance down to Olive’s twelve-year old niece, Diesel. "We gotsta see the horses! You promised we’d see the horses!" Her freckled face beamed, and her long red curly hair bounced off the shoulder of her frilly pink dress in excitement. "Oooooooo, ya can lead a kid to horses, but they’ll drive a man to drink," the sailor muttered to himself. "Why I’m seeing horses during the day when you can have a good night mare later, I don’t know." But when they got to the park, the stable was deserted, save for a short stocky policemen who was nailing up the following sign: Due to Extreme Heat Wave ALL HORSES HAVE BEEN TAKEN HOME ON ACCOUNT A IT’S CRUEL AND DISHUMAN By Order of Our Old Gray Mayor (He Ain’t What He Used to Be) "Well whaddaya know, Son of a Sea Biscuit," thought Popeye as the cop waddled away. "If I’d’a known I could stay indoors, I’d’ve been born a horse a long time ago." "Aw, this stinks!" Diesel said, kicking a rock. "If I wanna see horsies, they should make’m stay outside!" "Hey!" said the sailor, scolding. "That ain’t no way to talk! If ya really loves an aminal, ya gotsta proteck its welfare!" Diesel folded her arms and pouted, but the sailor persisted, bouncing in rhythm as he sang (to a tune a passing young strongwriter heard, liked, and stole for his future hit, "If I Could Talk to the Animals" ). Ya gotsta FIGHTS! for the animals guard their interests treat’em like they were your kith and kin feed them when they’re hungry water when they’re thirsky Doing any less would be a sin! You gotta FIGHTS! for the aminals RIGHTS! for the aminals Never show no SPITE for the aminals! But before he could finish the last verse, the air rebounded with a startling CRACK! Laboring down the road came Bluto’s ancient fruits and vej-kibble cart, overloaded and heavy laden. And it was being lugged by his po-o-o-o-o-o-o-or old underfed filly, Gluebait. The horse drooped and sweated, severely dehydrated, on the verge of collapse from the burden and the heat. Yet atop strode Bluto with his huge leather whip, raining down lashes and cruel shouted epithets. "Get a move on, ya lousy nag!" the beast yelled, cracking his whip. It opened a bloody gash down the animal’s hindquarters. Gluebait let out a pained whinny, and affecting a final swoon, collapsed in a lifeless heap. Diesel’s face twisted in horror. "Horsie!" she screeched, bolting from Popeye’s side to come to the aid of the beast. Faster than lightning, with no regard for her safety, she flung herself onto the horse’s neck, hugging it, using her body to shield it from the whip. Bluto stopped for a second, and growled. "Outta the way, brat!" the bully bellowed, cracking the whip across the little girl’s back. Diesel yelped- the pain was like razors being drawn across her skin- but better her than the poor defenseless animal! She bit her tongue, and did not budge. "Have another!" Bluto sneered, and cracked the whip again. "Diesel!" Popeye cried, his hat flying off as he flew to grab the girl. "You’ll get yourself killed to death!" This time when Bluto cracked his whip, Popeye grabbed the other end of it, and yanked him down head first to the pavement. The bully bounced lazily up, landed on his feet, and shook his head clear. "Wrrrrrrgh," Bluto growled. "You two get your hands off my property!" "He’s not property, he’s a living aminal!" Diesel wailed. "Yeah, one youse gotsta treat like a fellow human being!" Popeye said, getting in Bluto’s face. "All right, I will!" Bluto said with a snarl. He reared back and snapped his whip so hard against Popeye that it encoiled him like a snake. "WHOA!" Popeye shouted. "I think we better wrap this up!" Bluto then jerked the whip back and sent Popeye spinning like a top. He then peppered him with punches, sending him crashing into the fruit cart and rebounding back to his fist as he sang: "To everything, turn! Turn! Turn!" The cart took a bit of a pounding, as apples, oranges and bananas flew everywhere. In the ruckus, Diesel tried to slip over to Gluebait’s harness and release him. But Bluto saw her. He gave Pops one last punch, then left him spinning out of control as he advanced on the terrified girl. "Errrrgh! YOU started this mess!" Bluto bellowed as he grabbed her and a nearby box. He put the box in front of his horse, her on top of the box, and her head directly in front of Gluebait’s, and unleashed a straight left jab to her face, following through so that he also punched his horse. He then continued with a right, and a left, and a right, with no concern that the carnage he was inflicting was on a defenseless little girl. Finally he simply picked her up and tossed her to the curb near the back of his cart, where her head cracked the concrete as her limp body emitted a final groan. Bluto grabbed his horse by the scruff of the neck. "Now I’m gonna drag you straight to the glue factory, where they’ll boil you into things that make things stick to other things! Ha, ha, ha!" Meanwhile, by the back of the cart, Popeye was finally starting to come to a stop from his spin. "Whooooooa..." he groaned, as his dizzied head could not stop swimming, and his feet slapped to the ground in random places. "Someone get the number of that cross-town bus." He knew what he needed, and in the corner of his eye he could see it- a big, big crate labeled SPINACH was stacked in back of the fruit cart. All he had to do was get it. "Wait’ll I get my spinach," he lolled as his disoriented body took him ten feet this way, ten feet that way. Finally he could grab a plank on the crate, and he pulled. And pulled. And pullllllled until the crate suddenly yanked free. But Popeye was so out of it, he didn’t see the crate was the only thing supporting seventeen 50 lb crates of rutabagas, the product of the biggest bumper crop of rutabagas ever produced in a cartoon harvest. And now that crop truly was bumper, as a torrent of rutabagas bump-bump-bumped! Popeye square in the puss, burying him in a waxy, purple avalanche. A stray rutabaga tumbled a short distance away, and knocked into the tiny girlish hand of the unconscious Diesel. The hand slowly grabbed the root vegetable, and the girl stirred. She saw a ten-foot high mountain of rutabagas between her and the cart. "Ugh," she thought, trying to remember what happened. "Did I just fall off the turnip truck?" But then she heard Gluebait, whinnying as he clambered to escape his master’s hold. But was too weakened from his beating and poor treatment. The bully was dragging him easily, and taunting. "I’ll have a Glue Christmas without you!" he sang. "Ha ha ha!" It looked like the end. Diesel scowled. Popeye would put that bully in his place! But where was he? She looked high she looked low, she looked at the mountain of rutabagas, she looked at the large crate of spinach that had spilled open right next to her. Oh, Popeye could sure put that to good use! She looked behind her, she looked beneath her. She looked at the large crate of spinach that had spilled open right next to her. She looked at the bully getting away with murder. She looked at the large crate of spinach that had spilled open right next to her. "You gots ta fights for the animals," she thought to herself. "You?! That’s me!" And with that, the familiar fanfare started playing, as Diesel buried her head deep in a mound of spinach and started eating. Voraciously she licked and chewed and chomped and swallowed and gulped and nibbled- NAM NAM NAM NAM- until she just about thought her tongue was going to fall off. Finally she polished all twenty pounds of it with a huge GULP! Almost as soon as she swallowed, a bell rung in Diesel’s head and she snapped to her feet in a growling "most muscular" pose. Thick sinews snaked down out of her frilly pink sleeves of her dress. A thunderous tearing sound could be heard from her chest, as her pectoral muscles spread practically grabbed the fabric and tore themselves free, unveiling monstrous striations and pit-deep separation. Shuddering with power, the "little" girl let loose the deafening roar of a queen lion on the hunt. The furious growl shook the ground like an earthquake, causing the bully to stop in his tracks, flummoxed. "Hwuh?" he muttered. He then turned to look back just in time to see the girl-shaped blur tackle him with all the force of a cannonball, causing him and his assailant to tumble seventeen blocks down the street. Bluto felt like he’d been suddenly thrown in a cement mixer with a dozen fist-sized rocks, as he never knew which way was up and was hit every which way; his head, his ribs, his left eye, his stomach, his right eye, his back, the left of his jaw, the right of his jaw, his-his-his CRO-O-O-OTCH! When finally he came to a stop, he was curled in a fetal position on the street, moaning, hardly able to breathe. Diesel stood over him, hands on her girly hips, laughing. "Ha, what’s the matter, can’t you pick on someone my own size?", she said, sticking her tongue in his face. Bluto dropped his jaw in disbelief. Huh? No way that little punk girl in that pink frilly dress disrespected him! "Grrrrrr! Back for more, ay?" he snarled, getting to his feet and rearing his fist back. Diesel giggled. "Oh, boy! My favorite game!" she taunted. The 300-lb bully unleashed the same titanic punch that crushed her face just one minute ago- but this time, the 50-lb little girl reached out her hand and caught the punch, pushing back with just enough force to stop it cold. She smiled. "Huh?" the surprised bully said, struggling. This wasn’t logimical. He punched with the other fist. Diesel caught it too, smiling. "Now we can really play!" she said. And with that, Diesel clenched tight on the bully’s fists, and used them to pummel him in his own face! WAPWAPWAPWAPWAPWAPWAP the blows rained in quick succession like ice stones in a hailstorm. Bluto reeled and backpedaled from the pounding, and flailed his arms to yank them free. But Diesel kept him at her mercy. Throwing these lightning-quick, bone-crushing punches was as easy as skipping rope! She even started chanting, "Strawberry shortcake, cream on top! This girl’s gonna beat you til your punk ass drops!" On the last two syllables, she shot his left fist into his nose and broke it, then shot his right as an uppercut clear through his jaw, sending him off his feet with such force he was like a flag flapping in a hurricane force wind. She was barely able to keep hold of his hands, which made her giggle. "I’m almost stronger than meself!" she thought. When the force of the blow was spent, Bluto melted to the street in a heap. He moaned, he groaned, he was beaten, but that wasn’t the end of this, Diesel thought as she grabbed his chin by her finger. Oh no. Not for this creep. She scowled as she lifted him up to his- well not his feet, she was too short for that, not even his knees. But she brought him up to his torso, and humming a Gwen Stefani song, carried him that way over to a nearby construction site, where solid brick wall was being erected. She stuck her face right up to his barely conscious mug. "I’m done horsin’ around!" she shouted at him. With that, she extended her arm straight out while holding the bully up just by keeping her index finger under his chin. As if a drumroll were playing, she grit her teeth hard and slllllooooowly curled him up and watched her bicep grow. Her arm shuddered and rumbled, as the bully went up, and up, and her peak rose one inch, two inches, three inches. It was a lemon, then an apple, then a grapefruit, then a cantalope, then finally, incredibly, inhumanly, the size of a whole watermelon. The peak rise higher than her forearm, so high that Diesel simply moved her finger sideways, and let the bully’s chin rest on her monstrous spinach-engorged bicep as she twirled her other behind her back. "Here comes the coup d’girl!" she shouted. "WHAM!" She unleashed the blow across his jaw like mortar shot. In a flash Bluto snapped face-first into the brick wall, embedding his whole body. With an effortless backflip, Diesel leaped to the other side, and with a purple crayon , traced the protruding outline of the bully in brick. She then drew a little heart right where his heart was, and inscribed inside it, "Diesel Loves Spinach!" She then reared her fist back one more time. "Tag, you’re sh*t!" she said, and unloading one last unbelievable blow, the little girl punched the brick wall at the crayon heart. The wall exploded. Bluto sailed through the air, tumbling helplessly as a volley of bricks hit him serially in the head with a hollow BONK! BONK! BONK! BONK! Moaning piteously, he fell like a sack of lead back to earth right back in front of his fruit cart, crashing into Gluebait’s harness and bouncing onto all fours in a daze. Diesel laughed in victory. She ran up to Gluebait and picked the enormous horse up in her arms like he was a teddy bear. The horse whinnied in delight and licked her. She blushed. "C’mon," she told him, carrying him back to the cart. "Our chariot awaits!" And in no time at all, Diesel was driving Bluto’s- or what used to be Bluto’s- fruit cart. A beaming Popeye was on her left, and a delighted Gluebait was sitting on her right. Struggling to pull them all was Bluto, harnessed like a horse and whimpering as all three whipped him in time to the song Diesel sang: Ya gottaFIGHT for the aminals! MIGHT for the aminals! Throw a mean left-RIGHT for the aminals! Just like that spinach-eating Popeye, sailor man!