Merry Spinach To All And To All A Good Fight
By Madison
pinkboybuffet@hotmail.com

How else to celebrate the 4th of July, but with a Christmas Story?

	Dee tilted her head back, and rattled out an short expectant gasp.  She 
loved the rough, reckless nature of Anton's kisses, as he pinned her with 
all 250 pounds of his fine, brown, chiseled body to the Wilsons' bed.  He 
almost tore his football jersey pulling it over his bald head.  Oh, god, Dee 
thought, his chest was deep, broad and soooo magnificent.  His gold tooth 
glinted as he smiled wickedly, and ripped at her collar like an animal, to 
reveal more of her silky white-
	"DEEEEEE!"
	She sighed.  Kitt was crying.  Before she could move to rise, Anton slapped 
his hand against her shoulder and pushed down.  "No," he said gruffly.
	"I'm babysitting," Dee said resignedly.  "I have to-"
	"You're mine, sugar," the dark-skinned high school linebacker said.  "You 
go when I say."
	Dee giggled.  Anton almost sounded serious.  She gazed into his unsmiling 
eyes.  Heck, he even LOOKED serious.  She shook her head, and placed her 
left hand on his bottom rib.
	"When you say?" she said pleasantly.  She pushed him off.
	To his shock, Anton flew two feet in the air, and onto the floor.  The 
small of his back hit with a sharp, solid whack.
	"I'll thank your say to stay at bay," Dee said as she adjusted her clothes 
to presentable condition.  "If you want to play later today.  And I hope we 
may."
	Stunned, all Anton could do was groan as she left the room.
	When Dee got downstairs, she saw ten-year-old Billy flailing away at his 
six-year-old sister Kitt, who was cowering in the corner, trying vainly to 
cover herself from the wild windmill punches.
	"Stop it!" Dee yelled.  She was on them in two bounds, yanking Billy by the 
arm and raising him up off the ground to meet her in the eye.  "What do you 
think you're doing?"
	"Learning her a lesson," the boy protested resentfully.  "She called me 
stoo-pid!"
	"Oh?" Dee said, giving the arm a jerk.  Billy howled in pain.  "Hitting 
your little sister the night before Santa Claus comes is a SMART thing to 
do, Billy?  Hmph?  Tell me."
	"No," Billy said over tears.
	Dee released him, or maybe, threw him to the ground.  "Go to your room!" 
she commanded.  "Stay there 'til your parents get back from church.  Move!"
After a moment or two to recover, the boy slunk upstairs, muttering and 
grumbling all the way.  Dee kept her glare on him until he was out of sight, 
then quickly turned to his sister.  Kitt was still covering her face, and 
sobbing.
	"Come on," Dee prodded, stroking her hair.  "It's OK.  Let me see."
	"No!" Kitt blubbered, with a nasal quality Dee didn't like at all.  "Id's 
all swo-den."
	Dee reassured the girl while prying her hands away from her face.  There it 
was.  Her nose was ballooning, most probably broken.  Two black eyes 
couldn't be far behind.   Dee gave the girl a great big hug, all the while 
gritting her teeth and counting to ten.
	"Don't tell mom," Kitt said.
	"I'm not gonna tell your mom, honey," Dee said, patting her.  "It's OK.'
	"Mom be mad.  We were godda ged pig-zers took."
	"It's OK."
	"Pig-zers wid Sanna Claus."
	"You can still see Santa Claus, sweetheart.  I promise."
	The young child sniffled.  Dee broke their hug and held her firmly by the 
shoulders.  "Now tell me what happened," she said.
	"Billy's stoo-pid," the girl almost spat.
	"Why did you call him stupid?"
	"'Cuz he is!" she pouted.  "He don't know about muscle-toe."
	"Muscle-toe?" Dee took a pause to look at the green sprig of cheer hung 
above the foyer to the dining room.  "Muscle-toe, like that muscle-toe?" she 
said, pointing.
	"Yeah," Kitt said.  "He tol' me I di'n't know nothing, and he hit me."
	Dee translated.  "You told him it was 'muscle-toe'."
	"Yeah."
	"And he said it wasn't."
	"Yeah."
	"So you called him stupid."
	"First I tol'im why it was muscle-toe.  Then he called me stoo-pid.  He 
called me stoo-pid first!"
	"OK!"  Dee said, trying to calm her down.  Moving a futon to the foyer, Dee 
cautiously stepped atop it to reach the holiday sprig in question.  "Tell me 
what you told Billy," she said, bringing the plant down.
	The youngster, by now completely forgetting her nose, gathered herself, 
almost like a grad student before her dissertation.  "It's muscle-toe," she 
said.  "Girls and boys kiss under it, and if the girl likes the boy, they 
get married and buy a pony and move to France.  And if the girl don't like 
the boy, she eats the muscle-toe and grows big muscles.  And then she beats 
him up and he leaves her alone.  And that's why you call it muscle-toe."
	Dee chuckled.  "Sweetie," she said, "that's very cute, but I need you to 
understand.  This is mistletoe."
	"No," Kitt said.
	"Yes, it is," Dee said.  "I need you to listen to me.  This plant is very, 
very poisonous.  Any little girl who eats this is going to get really, 
really sick.  No one gets muscles from eating mistletoe."
	"You BITCH!"
	Dee turned to the human fury rushing down the stairs.  Anton, all six feet, 
five inches of him, was glaring like grizzly bear with a gunshot wound.
"What the fuck-" he howled, confused and beyond control.  "You fucking hurt 
my back!  I got a fuckin' game tomorrow!"
	"Anton, dear," Dee said, with deliberate beats between the words.  "Please 
stop cursing in front of sweet little Kitt."
	The lummox sneered at her, and roared directly into little Kitt's face. 
"Fuck shit asshole lesbian cunt!"  he screamed, to the flinching horror of 
the girl.  "There," he said triumphantly.  "Now she be acclimatized."
	Anton put his hands on Dee's chest and pushed her roughly on her butt.  "As 
opposed to you," he said, advancing slowly, rolling up his sleeves, "who 
gonna be traumatized."
	Little Kitt was terrified.  The big bully outweighed the slight Dee by a 
hundred twenty pounds.  She was going to be snapped in two, unless...
	Kitt grabbed the mistletoe, and shoved it in Dee's hand.  "The muscle-toe!" 
she screamed.  "Eat the muscle-toe!"
	At this, in spite of her sore butt, in spite of the fear, in spite of the 
testosterone-spewing monster hovering inches in front of her, Dee had to 
laugh.  It was her infectious, melodic laugh, and it made the linebacker 
stopped for a beat, in puzzlement.  Dee used the confusion to get up off the 
ground.  "Oh, that's just Kitt," Dee said, holding up the plant.  "She 
thinks mistletoe is 'muscle-toe', and eating it will give me muscles."
	"Awwwww!" Anton said, blushing.  "Ain't that the cutest thing?"
	Dee nodded, smiling.  "I was trying to explain to her, little girls don't 
eat mistletoe to get big and strong."
	"Nope," Anton said, giving a patronizing smile to Kitt, "they sure don't."
	"They eat this!"
	Anton turned in confusion, to see Dee reach down the front of her blouse, 
and smoothly withdraw, despite the sheer volumetric impossibility of it all, 
a two-pound opened can of spinach.  She tilted her head back and poured the 
contents, juice and all, into her mouth.  How she held it all, he couldn't 
say.  It made him wish he'd been more insistent about having her suck him 
off.
	With three chews, and a gigantic swallow, all of the spinach was gone, save 
for an enormous bulge that traveled down Dee's throat, fell to her feet, 
then bounced up through her arms to her fist.
	Dee grit her teeth and flexed her left bicep.  From her thin, coke-can 
diameter arm, shot up a bicep the size of a bowling ball.  Anton could 
almost see a tattoo of an erupting volcano on it, intimating its sheer 
unbridled destructive power.
	"Oo, I wish there were music for this!" Dee cooed.  "It feels like there 
should be music."
	"What do you think, Anton?"  she prodded, taking a deliberate, yet casual 
step towards the dumbstruck lineman.  "Lights Out!  Uh-huh!  Dance, dance, 
dance!  Lights Out!"
	With that, she reared back and socked Anton square on the chin.  The 
lightning quickness and inhuman force produced a physical flash of light, as 
250 pounds of linebacker were sent hurtling sixty miles per hour back-first 
into the opposite wall.  The wall cracked, and  Anton 
bounced-slash-staggered forward, still on his feet for a millisecond.
	Dee pounced like panther, and leapt to the big man's shoulders, straddling 
him with her legs.  "Now this may hurt a bit!" she prompted, as she grabbed 
the hair on either side of his head, and yanked it out like tissue paper.  
Anton howled, but was powerless.  Dee raised her left fist, and in the blink 
of an eye, brought twelve mighty blows to the right side of Anton's head.  
The sickening cascading thuds sounded like rapid machine gun fire.  The 
bully now looked like Two-Face, the hideously half-scarred villain from 
Batman.  Glass-eyed, he fell to his knees.
	"Oh, how horrid!" Dee said apologetically, not moving from his shoulders.  
"How can I leave you looking like that?"
	Her right fist came up.  And just as before, twelve incomprehensibly fast 
blows came, this time to the left side of his head.  The babysitter admired 
her work; he looked like three pounds of ground beef with hair.
	Casually, she dismounted the disfigured boy.  He tottered and teetered, and 
gave out pitying moans, but somehow stayed upright on his knees, as Dee got 
his coat, and lovingly draped it around his shoulders.
	"Don't forget your scarf, honey," she said, wrapping it loosely around his 
neck.
	"Oh, and Anton darling?" she said as she put his baseball cap on backwards, 
and fussed 'til it was just so.  "Those little love taps?  They were all 
just for cursing at Kitt."
	Suddenly Dee scowled darkly.  She rolled up her sleeve, as cable-like veins 
snapped down her arm, and her fist grew to the size of a lit bundle of 
dynamite.
	"This is for even thinking of hitting a woman!" she hissed.
	She catastrophically socked him to the chin.  The unconscious Anton crashed 
through the double-pane picture windows, and soared like a guided missile 
off into the distance.
	Miles away, a storage silo stood, oblivious, as a dot of a completely 
beaten man shot down from his trajectory.  He plummeted through its roof, 
and plunged head-first into its contents.  Outside, a weather-beaten sign 
bore its legend:
			MUNICIPAL ROCK SALT STORAGE
	A piercing scream echoed through the still, abandoned structure.

	Her work done, Dee turned to an awed Kitt.  "You see, sweetie?" she said.  
"Don't let anyone hold you down or beat you up just because you're a girl.  
Girls can grow up big and strong, if they want to."
	"I want to," Kitt spluttered.
	"OK," Dee said, clasping her by the shoulders.  "Then you have to commit.  
Work hard, harder than you ever thought you could.  Believe in yourself.  
And of course," she continued, placing the nearly empty can in the hands of 
the little girl and winking, "always eat your spinach."


	There was a knock at the room to Billy's door.
	"Go away!" Billy said, lying on his bed in a pout.
	"We needa talk," his sister's voice said, strangely insistent.
	"You're stoo-pid!" Billy yelled.
	From behind the door, nothing for a moment.  Then, softly, barely audible, 
Billy heard Kitt say, "Come to the keyhole."
	Billy grumbled, punching the bed.  He got up, stomping all the way to the 
door, and straining to keep one eye closed, peered through the tiny space 
beneath the knob.
	"I was stoo-pid," Kitt's scowling face said, framed by the hole.  "But I 
ain't stupid no more!"
	She then brought the can of spinach up to the keyhole for Billy to see, 
before tilting it back into her mouth.  He narrowed his eyes, bewildered by 
her labored chewing and difficult swallowing.  The bulge that formed in her 
throat when she swallowed creeped him out.  He took a step back from the 
door, wary.
	"I don't care if you choke yourself on spinach," he pouted.  "I won't let 
you in."
	Suddenly Kitt's tiny little fingers poked beneath the bottom of the door, 
and grasped it.  Grasped it with an alarming crunch!  Billy jumped at the 
sound.  He shook his head- did the wood just buckle from his little sister's 
grip?  No, it couldn't be!  But now he heard her give a long, gutteral 
grunt.  And then, she yanked the door up.
	The sound came like a gunshot, as the hinges exploded from the wall, and 
the door cracked in pieces falling behind his sister.  Billy took a shocked 
step back.  Kitt stood there staring at him, her nose swollen and her two 
eyes blackened, her Xmas dress barely containing a colossal upper body Flex 
Wheeler would envy.  She scowled, spread out her left lat, then spread out 
her right lat, making herself into a thick, dangerous "T".  Her shoulder 
were at least a foot wider than before, on a girl who was barely a foot wide 
to start with.
	Billy's eyes bugged right out of his head as his sister grabbed him by the 
shirt.  "DEEEEEEE!" he cried in panic as she lifted him off the floor.
"Yes Billy?" the sitter said.  She was already there, arms crossed and 
leaning interestedly against the doorway.  She watched as Kitt balled up her 
tiny fist and punched up into Billy's gut, making him exhale all his air and 
double over her.  That had to hurt.  Dee didn't even think he'd be able to 
speak after that one, and indeed he had difficulty.  But without any breath 
at all, he managed to splutter out a final plea as Kitt threw him on the bed 
and straddled him, fists raised.  "Make her stop!" he managed to splutter.
	"Why?"  Dee asked innocently, as the sounds of punches and pleas and 
snapping bones came fast and furious.  "After all, she's just 'learning you 
a lesson'!"
	Dee laughed her melodic laugh, and went to get the ambulance the boy would 
so desperately need.  That, of course, and a camera...


	The family Xmas card photo soon became the talk of the town.  In front of a 
beautiful sparkling tree, stood little Kitt, smiling as happy as could be, 
despite two black eyes and a puffy nose.  In her left hand, she held a teddy 
bear.  In her right, she held up her barely conscious brother, also with 
black eyes and puffy nose, but also with multiple contusions, badly swollen 
lips, and a number of missing teeth.   His weight caused her bicep to bulge 
like a grapefruit through her ruffled short sleeves.
	The caption?
		"You'll have a great Christmas
		if you eat your spinach
		like Kitt the first grader can!"