La Granita Part 4: Miranda Triumphant
By Merz
Me, my wife, the body and our daughter


Isabel had been Miranda's confidant in the months she had spent building her
physique and stripping it of anything that hinted of softness. For a while
Isabel accepted the role of acolyte to the body, but that wasn't normal for a
young woman starting to come into her own. At first Miranda encouraged Isabel
to work out, but soon grew impatient. Then they developed a routine where
Isabel knelt to massage her mother after a basement workout or when Miranda
returned from the gym. Nude or in her tiniest of bikinis Miranda would sprawl
flat on a blanket and let Isabel stroke and knead the amazing ropes of her
muscles. Isabel described her day at school or her activities with friends. As
long as the body was receiving attention from Isabel's hands, Miranda was
content to lie quietly listening and commenting with advice or sympathy.

I don't know which of them I was jealous of. Isabel had that time in intimate
conversation with Miranda while I had to compete with a steady monologue about
exercise and the current state of female bodybuilding competitions when I
wasn't being pulled into exhausting and sometimes painful sex. Miranda had the
devotion and respect of our daughter for the incredible physique that Isabel
had watched being created.

After a few months, though, Isabel became busier with her own friends and
activities after school. When I was home to offer up the service I eagerly
accepted the job of masseur, but had a harder time keeping focused on daily
events, family matters and my own activities that I used to share with her.
Instead I would be overcome by either amazement at the body, by lust, or by a
shock that never diminished when I compared this body with any other woman I
knew or had seen. Or felt: my forearms and hands would ache after a session of
working on her dense, powerful flesh. I wondered if it wouldn't be easier to
massage the tires on our car, and marveled Isabel had been able to keep up her
massaging as long as she had.

In November Miranda entered a regional physique contest. Like her, I expected
she would dominate because she simply put to shame even the women I saw in
magazine articles about these events. She finished fourth out of six heavy
weights. She was by far the most muscular, and that earned her loud applause
from the audience. But I could see that her posing wasn't as imaginative as
the other contestants. They played to the audience and had more flowing
routines. Miranda simply presented the body for our admiration. No flirtation,
no rhythms from pose to pose, just her unbelievable size and development
standing and flexing on stage. She would have lost points for that alone, and
I was told by a fellow sitting next to me that her muscularity was greater
than the judging panel wanted to see. Being too much would be graded against
her as well.

Miranda lost about a pound or two preparing for that contest, primarily due to
dehydration. The body, you see, was always in peak condition. That's just the
way it had to be. Her weight plateaued then somewhere between one hundred
seventy pounds and one-seventy-five. About five pounds more than me, who was
six inches taller. Her strength, naturally, put me to shame and she was always
seeking ways to demonstrate it. Not to embarrass me. Comparisons with me or
anyone else were irrelevant as far as she was concerned. The body just needed
to show what it could do, why it existed, what a miraculous thing it was.

Then in April we were called to talk with Isabel's teacher. Miranda went
reluctantly because it took the body away from exercise. As the teacher told
us about the changes she had noticed in Isabel's habits and performance at
school, Miranda seemed to be only half listening. She was feeling up and down
her forearms as she tensed and relaxed them. She hooked her elbows in the
chair arms and tried spreading her own arms to see how much of her strength it
would take to rip the chair apart. She rolled the sleeves of her warmup jacket
to her elbows and studied the thick veins that tangled along powerful
forearms. Displayed like this, with the sleeves tight above her elbows, even
I, who had studied every inch of this incredible body, was stunned at how
thick and powerful her forearms looked. With the equally massive upper arms
hidden in the jacket I felt like I was seated next to Popeye the Sailor. The
teacher paused to stare and swallow hard before continuing, her eyes straying
back a couple of times to watch Miranda rub and stroke the bulging muscles,
flex her wrists to make the steel cables twist and crawl under the tight skin.

As the teacher went on about her concerns for Isabel, Miranda sat back and ran
her fingers over her tensed, washboard stomach, then felt the Caesarian scar
through the light top she wore under her warm-ups. That seemed to anchor her
again in motherhood because as she felt the scar she asked a couple of
clarifying questions and studied the teacher for the first time. "You describe
steroid effects. You think Isabel is using drugs. Where would she get such
poison?"

That caught me completely by surprise, and startled the teacher as well. "Now,
we shouldn't jump to conclusions. There could easily be another explanation."
The teacher quickly shut the file folder she had been consulting and looked to
me for support as Miranda sat forward and gripped the edge of the desk. "I
certainly have no proof of any drug use, and I haven't heard of any girls in
our school using steroids."

"Then tell me who are the boys who use such things. I will start with them."
Miranda's voice snapped, her face snarled as a vein began pounding in the
middle of her forehead. "School is over now. Is there a place here where
students can lift weights after school?"

"Well, the gym is open until five. We let some older students from the high
school use our facilities after football season so their teams can train on
their own equipment without being disturbed, but I really can't believe you
would suspect Isabel of being involved in anything like this."

Miranda abruptly stood and turned toward the door. "The gym - I remember it is
down the hall and then down another hall." She strode from the room leaving me
and the teacher staring at each other in amazement. Mumbling some apologies
for the abrupt end of our meeting I set out after my wife.

I walked as fast as I could but didn't catch up to Miranda until she had
crashed open the door to the school gym. On a balcony overlooking the main gym
floor we saw a half a dozen kids gathered around barbells and other exercise
equipment. Isabel was the only girl in the group and looked much younger than
the boys she surrounding her.

Miranda took the stairs up to the balcony two at a time. She didn't hesitate
for an instant but hopped up on the supports of a weight bench where a bulky
kid was benching what looked like a couple hundred pounds. Miranda grabbed the
bar when he lowered it to his chest and began pressing it down. "Tell me who
is selling steroids to my daughter or I will crush you like an insect." The
kid instantly began struggling against the pressure but she held him pinned in
place.

The bystanders stood shocked for a couple moments as they absorbed the scene.
Some of them recognized Miranda as Isabel's mother, although I don't think
many of them had seen the transformation of her body. Isabel recovered first.
"Mother! What are you doing? Stop that or you'll kill him." A couple boys
started reaching for Miranda and a couple others tried lifting the bar against
her pressing force.

In an instant Miranda reversed tactics. Standing over the kid, who was about
half choked by now, she suddenly bent her legs and snatched the bar up and out
of his hands. She boosted it up to her chest and stood with it held there in
perfect control. "If any of you touches me, I will drop the bar on him. Step
away. Now answer me. Who has given poison to my daughter?"

"It isn't poison." A big sandy haired kid spoke up. "And look at you. You
can't tell me you can lift that much weight without using some sort of juice.
Isabel told us you had gone all Arnold, lifting weights and going crazy for
bodybuilding. That's all we're trying to do, too."

If three of kids hadn't jumped forward to catch the barbell Miranda would have
dropped it across the neck of her victim lying on the bench. She basically
just let it go and sprang at the kid who was talking, like a tiger jumping at
a rabbit. "Never!" she snarled as she grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt
and drove him backwards. "Never would I cheat the body, never would I deny it
the chance to claim its full glory. Never would I take a shortcut or risk
harming what I have built."

Her sudden charge surprised him so it looked like she drove him backwards
easily. Then he started pushing back but I couldn't see that his resistance
made any difference at all. She drove him backwards half a dozen steps until
he crashed against a wall. Letting go with one hand she drove her fist into
his stomach and he folded up at her feet. "I will ask one more time: who is
supplying this drug?" Doubled over at her feet his head was still level with
her chest. He must have weighed two-fifty easily, but Miranda stood
triumphantly over him, holding him in place with one hand gripping his hair
while cocking her fist to hammer him again.

Isabel ran to me, begging me to take Miranda away, to make her stop. As if I
could. "Not that I'm admitting anything, but what if I'm doing it? What are
you going to do about it?" If the teenager at her feet was large, the one
stepping forward now was enormous. Not tall, so much, but broader across the
shoulders than any kid I had ever met in high school, thicker around the neck,
bigger around the arms. He would have made two full backs from my day. Miranda
turned away from her conquest to face the new challenge.

Staring coldly, she peeled off her light jacket. Not nearly as large as the
guy slowly approaching her, but more defined, infinitely tighter and leaner in
her incredible muscularity. "Isabel, the body has never needed anything but
work and attention. These fools think they know a better way. If you want to
follow the path of the body, I will help. I will lead you beyond where you can
dream of going. But not this one's way." The two now stood face to face, the
boy a foot taller and much wider with his fists clenched and a taunting sneer
on his pimply face.

Without shifting her eyes from where they were locked on the teenager's,
Miranda slugged him right in the nuts. I couldn't believe how fast and hard
she had struck. The force of the blow shook the kid like an earthquake before
the indescribable pain could even register. A punch like that might have
knocked him cold if she landed it on his head instead of between his legs. All
he could do was give a loud whoosh as he expelled all his air, then start
gasping to regain some breath so he could begin screaming.

"Hormones. You think you don't have enough to become a man. Now you are right.
I have crushed one egg because you have challenged me. Tell me now: you are
the one who gives steroids to these school children?" Most of these "school
children" looked pretty well on their way to NFL careers, but I didn't say
anything. I just hugged Isabel tightly against me as she recoiled from seeing
her mother destroying three weightlifters. The body I felt under her sweat
suit was not the one I associated with my thirteen- year-old daughter. It was
hard and muscular, more so than I could credit to the results of normal
exercise at her age. My heart sank as I realized Miranda had guessed correctly
about steroids.

The big guy had collapsed against Miranda, who appeared to be holding him
upright as he tried to fold in around his damaged groin. "Yes," he finally
gasped out. "I didn't mean any harm."

If anything, the second time Miranda slugged him in the balls the impact was
even greater, knocking the kid sprawling backwards before he curled into a
quivering, sobbing ball.

"You see his acne? That is not the natural sort. You will see more of it on
his back I am sure. It tells me he has already damaged himself inside. Now he
is gelded, his manhood will be denied to him as his punishment before he can
hurt himself or anyone else any more. This is the body as it should be, built
as it should be built," she gestured at herself. "Come Isabel. We must go
home. We must talk." She looked at the stunned little group standing
speechless around us. "Don't make me come back," she told them in the most
menacing voice I have ever heard.

We drove home in silence. Isabel ran through the door first and rushed to her
room where she slammed the door. Miranda and I came behind her. When we were
inside Miranda stood in front of the large mirror above the couch in our
living room and watched herself again remove her jacket: the body, again. She
scrutinized the bulging arms, clenched her fists to make the muscles stand
even more, then smiled a cruel, triumphant smile as she flexed her arms again
and again to pump them up for her own pure pleasure.

Seeing her like that, like some wild beast that had just killed to protect her
young, like a purely physical force of nature, like a body that couldn't be
restrained by laws or morals or normal human feelings, touched a wildness
inside me. I wanted her. I wanted to worship the body as she had always seemed
to assume I would - as she thought everyone should. And I could tell by the
way she held herself, by the gleam in her eye, possibly by a scent beneath my
consciousness that she was so turned on she could fuck a jackhammer and look
for more.

I touched her arm and tried to pull her close to me, but she resisted. "My
daughter needs me," she said simply and dropped her pose. "I am her mother and
she needs me." Miranda walked down the hall to Isabel's room and softly
knocked.

The body wanted to be worshipped for its triumph, on top of the worship it
always desired for simply being as magnificent as it was. But my wife's will
to take care of her daughter was a steel even the body couldn't bend.