TWINS RETURN By Merz A young man learns more about his unusual relatives. ******** NOTE: a fan letter flooded in a year ago, praising my story "Twin Trouble" and asking for a followup. It took me a long time to see where that 2003 story might lead, and it led to this one. Thanks to Bob Joe for the encouragement. The reference to an author whose shelf is no longer available is meant as a compliment, I see no resemblance between my character and him or his writings. Anyone wanting to compete for the next Golden Valkyrie award, take it up with DtV. *********** Matt Brooke had mixed emotions about family gatherings. He loved his family, but it was no accident that he now lived several hundred miles away. He had transferred to a college out of state after his freshman year, and had done all his job hunting after graduation in cities he considered a safe distance from home. Or really, when he was honest with himself, from his twin sisters. When they were all growing up they had been part of a normal, happy family. That changed during his senior year in high school, when the girls turned twelve. Just when he thought he was getting his own hormone explosion under control, his sisters began changes he could never have dreamed of. It was as if he awoke one morning to find the two young girls replaced by alien creatures he could hardly recognize. He awoke to find that the strongest people in his family of five were the two twins he remembered as babies and then as annoying little pests. He and his parents had all had to adjust to the fact that discipline in the household now consisted of whatever the girls chose to put up with, that adolescent temper tantrums could now turn into humiliating confrontations with miniature powerhouses, and that in the years to come the balance of power was only going to swing farther in the twins' favor. And now the twins were turning eighteen. Matt felt obliged to come for the family party and hope for as good a visit as they would allow him. Some of his visits home had gone well with careful respect offered in both directions, no excuses taken by the twins to demonstrate how easily they could force him to do their bidding, and no cases of the girls forgetting how easily they could simply flatten their older brother. Matt always noticed that his parents had perfected the art of appearing in charge around the house while the girls were quite good at pretending to listen to their advice and directions. He gave credit for all that to his grandmother. The house was empty Matt when arrived from the airport, giving him a little time to adjust to being back home. He had settled in front of the television in the family room to catch the news when he heard the twins clatter in upstairs. For a moment he considered calling out to greet them, but thought better of it and turned down the volume and hoped he could continue watching unnoticed. Darlene stampeded down the stairs. "Matt! You're home! Matt braced himself for the collision as Darlene swept down onto the couch next to him. One of the first things the girls had learned as their teen years started adding layers of muscle to their bodies was that innocent collisions with Matt could have a bone rattling effect on him. They never got tired of it. CRASH! A part of his brained began searching for the best adjective or metaphor to describe the experience at the same time the wind was being knocked from his lungs. It probably wasn't like getting hit by a car, because no bones were ever broken and he never suffered internal injuries. Probably it was something football players experienced when a fast-moving defender flattened the quarterback. Darlene added a finesse move by throwing her arm over his shoulder an instant before she landed so she could prevent him bouncing away from the impact. Oblivious to whatever damage she may have caused, Darlene gave him a genuinely affectionate kiss on the cheek. "It is soooo great that you came for our party!" The thick arm on his shoulder pulled him in closer, another coiled around and compressed his ribs as Darlene hugged him against her. "Ooops. Sorry," she said as a feeble gasp escaped from Matt. She released him just as Rebecca sprang into the room. "Matt! You're home!" Irresistible force, Matt thought. Immovable object. I'm toast. He tried to get out of the way before Rebecca smashed into him from the other side, her solid body flattening him against Darlene's identical unyielding mass. The heavy, solid arm that still lay across his shoulders held him firmly in place. "OOOOOPH!" The wind was knocked out him even more violently. Hammer and anvil, he thought, and me in the middle. As stars danced in front of his eyes his mind registered the glimpses he had had of the twins before they landed on him so forcefully. Shorts and high heels, nylon t-shirts that moved smoothly against their skin. Bras? He wasn't sure from the brief view, but now as they both hugged him he could tell their fine breasts were unfettered under the thin fabric. Shorts with heels: the muscular legs churned with strength as they had each raced across the floor to him, the calf muscles especially bouncing into prominence with each confident step. "I can't breathe," he managed to gasp out as the twins continued pouring their affection on him. "Please." The last plea sounded so pathetic to his own ears and all the reluctance he felt about returning to his family crystallized. He had to beg for his weakness to be acknowledged or his little sisters might destroy him without noticing. Rebecca and Darlene exchanged horrified looks and sprang up. "Oh-my-God." "I am sooo sorry." "Are you all right?" "Is there anything Rebecca can get for you?" "Where did Darlene hurt you?" "How was your trip?" "Have you seen Grandma yet?" "We're talking her into going to Seaside for spring break with us." "Will you be okay sleeping in Rebecca's room while you're here?" "My room? I thought he was staying in your room." "No, he stayed in my room last time." "That didn't count. That was just overnight when he had business over in Springfield." "It counts. I had to move my stuff in with you didn't I?" From being killed with affection, Matt suddenly found himself forgotten as the twins squared off. He took the opportunity to catch his breath and to study the twins with a critical eye, grasping for new descriptive phrases. They were of average height, he thought, much shorter than him. He wouldn't guess how much they weighed, but considerably more than anyone would guess who didn't know them, and who hadn't felt their uniquely muscular composition: more than him. The thick arms, legs and torsos were smooth rather than obviously muscled as bodybuilders were. Unless they tensed like they were doing as if they were about to tear into each other in murderous rage, Matt could almost forget how much more powerful each of the girls was than an average man. From long, painful experience Matt knew better than to jump between the twins or try to hold them apart. That really could result in serious injury to him. "Stop it!" He held his hands up as if surrendering, to prove he posed no threat. "Stop it. It doesn't matter. I can sleep here on the couch. I don't care." The twins exchanged a look, then threw themselves back to embrace him again, more carefully this time. "We'll flip for it." "No, he can have my room if you really don't mind sharing." "Or he could have mine and I'd sleep out here." "Or maybe mom and dad would let me sleep over at Kevin's if his parents said it would be okay." "Oh yeah, I can just picture them going along with that. As if there'd be any sleeping." "It would be better than you and Cooper spending the night under the same roof. Eeuw!" "Who's Kevin?" Matt interjected as a tactic to cut short another escalating exchange. "He's this boy who made Darlene promise not to tell anybody how much stronger than him she is. He's on the wrestling team and she made him cry." "Well, at least he's better than that geeky Cooper you made promise not to tell anyone how strong you are. He writes the most sickening poems about being bashed around by the ocean or an earthquake and anyone could tell he's really talking about getting it on with Rebecca." "Shut up! He is not!" Matt carefully ventured to put a hand on each girl's shoulder. He got the familiar shock when his mind tried to reconcile the rocks he was touching with the normal flesh his eyes led him to anticipate. "Cool it. I think I'll go over to Grandma and Grandpa's. I missed them last time I was in town. We can figure things out later." "Oh-my-God!" "You will not believe!" "Don't go yet, we have to take her out first." "Yeah, he can go now. It won't spoil the surprise." "Go see Grandpa. Just be sure to be there about five when we bring Grandma back for the family party." "We've got a big surprise." "It's almost time. We gotta go get her, but I want to change shoes." "Not me. I love my heels." "Love you!" "Love you!" Another frenzy of words and drama exploded from the twins. The girls gave him one more crushing hug and then abruptly turned and clattered up the stairs, leaving Matt with a rear view of tight buns churning in their shorts and powerful legs enhanced by the heels. He took a deep breath and tried to curb his imagination from drawing a picture of what the bodies under the flimsy clothes looked like. "Thanks for offering me a ride," he thought. His grandparents lived across town and he didn't have a car so he wouldn't be visiting anyone just yet. Alone in the house he decided to look into the twins' rooms to see if he preferred sleeping in one of them instead of on the couch as he had said. Both were reasonably tidy and mostly typical rooms of teenage girls anywhere. Lots of ruffles, lots of pastel colors, several photos of movie stars and musicians, assorted magazines. In each he saw one unusual keepsake. He picked up Darlene's horseshoe and noted it was heavier than he remembered. Possibly it was larger than the last one he had seen. Matt hefted it, then tried futilely to untwist its pretzel shape. He knew better but he threw everything he had into the effort to move the metal even a fraction of an inch. He couldn't have bent or unbent the smallest pony shoes his sisters had learned to twist years before. Some part of his mind kept trying to believe there was a trick involved aside from the simple, phenomenal strength of the two girls. He put the horseshoe back, shaking his head. One of Darlene's t-shirts was tossed over the back of a chair. He held it up against himself and tried to guess how much broader her shoulders were than his, how much thicker her chest. Even if she wore this shirt looser than the one she was wearing now, he felt like a child measuring himself against an adult's clothes. With a sigh he decided sleeping in the family room would be better than in one of the twins' rooms where he would be reminded of their superiority. Matt hated feeling so dependent and so left out. He phoned an old friend to ask for a ride to a car rental agency so he could at least get some mobility while he was in town. From there he drove to his grandparents' house where the family would be gathering later for cake and gifts for the twins before they went out to celebrate with friends. The car the twins shared was parked in the driveway when he rang the doorbell. "Matt! Great to see you, boy!" His enthusiastic grandfather, Tom, greeted him warmly and led him through the house. Finally Matt felt at home again. His grandfather always seemed more youthful than his years, curious about Matt's activities and bubbling over with his own news and activities. "Your sisters and grandmother just got back from a trip to the beauty parlor or whatever. Rebecca and Diane are in the bedroom getting some surprise ready. Or maybe not because Diane didn't seem sold on whatever the idea is. Say! I read that story you sent to the Valkyrie. Good descriptions! You really know your metaphors!" Mat blushed. He liked his writing efforts to be private, but his grandfather had seen his earliest stories and not only knew the pen name he used when posting them on the internet, but guessed when he chose a new one for somewhat more sexy stories. "Come on into the back room. Darlene and I were just getting comfortable." The backroom had once been an attached garage, but now served as part office and part gym. Against one wall was Tom's PC with its printer and scanner, a file cabinet, and a table with electronic odds and ends Tom liked fiddling with. Along the back wall were two home-made weight lifting stations. The floor was littered with two barbells, a couple pair of dumbbells with different amounts of weights, and gym mats. It made a cluttered space, but one Matt thought of whenever he thought of his grandparents. Rebecca sat at one of the stations, awaiting Tom's return, and smiled when she saw Matt. Matt saw she had changed her heels for flip-flops, and that her hair had been styled since he saw her earlier that day. He knew the system of pulleys and cables connected to a short-legged wooden chair had been devised by his grandfather to double the resistance, to give the user more of a workout for a given amount of weight. Tom happily sprang into the short wooden chair. With her right hand Darlene gripped the wooden handle attached to the rope and braced herself against the frame. She pulled smoothly and the chair rose off the floor, her grandfather grinning broadly as he scrutinized the effect on her right arm. Matt was staring as well and felt his stomach go queasy and his knees go weak. His little sister was using one arm to raise roughly a hundred and sixty pounds, although the pulleys should be making the weight equivalent to over three hundred. Her shoulder, upper arm and forearm all swelled dramatically, the muscles in her upper back seethed under her thin shirt. "Isn't she something!" Tom chirped. "They're both growing up so fast and strong. When all three of them are at it, I can finish my crossword sitting here before they get tired taking turns. And then they go to the bench press station I built." He was practically bouncing from excitement. Just as Darlene switched hands and began another series of one-arm rowing exercises, the door to the house burst open and Rebecca leaped in. "She's going to do it! She likes the suit! She's going with us for spring break! I got her pumped up with pushups and sit- ups and isometrics and she's ready for the floorshow!" Darlene nearly let her grandfather drop to the floor in her excitement, but at the last moment caught the handle and eased the chair the last few inches to the floor. Then she jumped to her feet and raced to embrace her twin. Matt winced as their solid bodies made a thud from the impact but he still didn't understand the excitement. Then his grandmother, Diane, entered. Matt sank limply onto the low chair his grandfather had just vacated. "Isn't she super!" the twins called out together as Tom beamed. Diane stood for inspection in the tiniest thong bikini Matt had ever seen, balanced on the high heeled shoes Rebecca had evidently loaned her. "Four percent body fat, and she's been at that for months now." "We are so going to knock Seaside dead!" "This will be better than when she goes to the mall after a workout in just her shorts and halter and knocks 'em out." "In a hat and sunglasses she's walked right past people she knows and they don't recognize her, even though they're staring their eyes out." "Or practically drooling on her." "What do you think, Matt? Not bad for an old broad." Diane's face creased into a wide smile as she paraded to the middle of the room. She appeared to be completely comfortable wearing almost nothing while displaying a physique of incredible muscularity. While the twins were noticeably thicker and more heavily built, their bodies were sleek and smooth, the muscle disguised below the surface and only hinting at their power when they tensed or exerted themselves. By contrast, Diane seemed to have every individual muscle fiber straining to burst free of her skin. Matt nearly fainted. Diane's arms bulged with muscle and crawled with pulsing veins. Her stomach looked like corrugated metal, tier upon tier solidly stacked beneath tight skin. Her legs were vascular and intricately defined from her thighs to her diamond-shaped calf muscles. She gave a little model's turn to show off the wide back and taut glutes and then stood relaxed with a hand on her hip awaiting Matt's response. Tom began a flurry of activity while Matt fumbled for words. "Glory be! That's the most beautiful sight I've ever seen! Here, take this and turn kind of sideways." Tom grunted as he lifted a thirty-five pound dumbbell. Diane accepted it without question and held it easily in her right hand. "That's it. Now bend the arm like you're going to punch somebody, and hold the other hand out. Perfect. Tense up a bit. Give me a snarl." The ease with which his grandmother held the weight and the abrupt rolling of her biceps into a gleaming ball reminded Matt that she had been the twins' first role model for feminine strength. Meanwhile Tom was clicking photos with his digital camera from various angles, suggesting slight variations on the pose, and trembling with obvious excitement all the time. "Okay, one of you girls, kneel down and act frightened." Tom snapped Darlene from a couple angles. "If you can just stay pumped up for another second, honey, I want to show Matt how it works. Oh, I can't get over you in that get-up." Diane dropped down and began cranking out pushups while Tom jumped to the computer in the corner. He connected the digital camera, glanced through the pictures he had taken, and selected two to print. "See, this is how I won the Golden Valkyrie prize for best illustrated story last year. I take a photo, then trace it and add a costume - or, heh heh, maybe take one off! Then I write in some story line and dialogue to tie the pictures together and presto! Instant masterpiece! I'm not as good with just the words as you are, but folks really like to see pictures. Tracing from Diane or your sisters makes it a snap to get a realistic picture because it mostly is real!" Tom pulled the pictures from his printer and laid a sheet of tracing paper over them. He deftly outlined the familiar contours of his muscular wife, thick veins shown coursing over the bulging biceps, and his powerful granddaughter. A few marks to suggest a grimacing expression and a youthful face for Diane, a little shading on the jaw line to transform Rebecca into a beefy, bearded man cowering at her feet, and he triumphantly held up a finished drawing. "Now I just scan this into a file, paste it into my story along with eight or ten others, and send it off." The spry old man was jubilant as he waved his finished product. Matt, on the other hand, felt sick to his stomach. "I knew you wrote stories, but I never knew you were posting them on the internet. So you're Diogenes? You wrote all the Milly Muscles stories? And the Tamara the Conqueror series?" The first time Matt had jacked off in front of his computer it had been inspired by Milly snapping a villain's lasso by flexing her biceps. His head reeled as he realized that insistent hardon had been produced by his own grandmother's body, as drawn by his grandfather. How many times had the outlines of his little sisters turned him on in the same way when Tom featured them in their own stories? She was even more spectacular from the low angle where Matt sat angle. "This is disgusting!" He finally found words. "I have a family of freaks! And now I find out you're all advertising the fact to the whole world! Grandma, you can't be serious about going to a public beach looking like that. Can't you see your family is turning you into a cartoon?" Diane blushed to the roots of her hair and looked down across her rippling muscles. Rebecca and Darlene exchanged one disbelieving look and then both reached for Matt with obvious murderous intent. Panic seized him as he realized he had no defense and was too frightened to move. "Now, just settle down, all of you." Tom stepped quickly between Matt and his sisters. "Remember, this is our Matt. If anyone else talked that way about my wife or my granddaughters, why, I'd probably give 'em a good bop in the old breadbasket myself." Tom spun abruptly and shot his fist into Diane's flat, bare midsection with a resounding smack. "Grandpa!" the twins and Matt all exclaimed together. Diane's only reaction was to stare at her husband as if he had lost his mind. He gave her a sly wink in response. "That's what I'd do to anyone who wanted to hurt any of my girls. And come to think of it . . ." As Matt sprang toward him in shock, Tom punched him nearly as hard as he had done to Diane. Matt doubled over and crumpled to the floor. "Come to think of it, it's not a bad idea for him either. Why don't the three of you give us about five minutes alone for a little man-talk." He ushered them out the door and bent to pinch Matt's ear, painfully pulling him back upright. "Listen, Buster. Nobody gets to insult my wife while I'm around. Don't blame that boner you've got on her, it's not her fault. You know she and your sisters are stronger than normal folks. We'd been married three years before I found out she was stronger than four of me. She thought I wouldn't love her so much if I knew she was different, but it just makes me love her more." Tim gave Matt's ear a twist and then released him. Matt stood stupidly, rubbing his ear and staring at his grandfather. He had never seen the old man so angry. "She's been working with your sisters so they'll grow up proud of what they are and will make the most of it. Instead of just letting nature take its course, those girls have been working like crazy to get just as strong as possible, and Diane's been right in there with them, doing higher reps with less weight and eating proper and the whole nine yards." Tom paced back and forth. "She decided she'd build herself one of those body builder bodies, really go for the look that matches the strength even though the girls aren't ready for that. They're stronger than their grandmother now, but even though they're proud of it, they want to fit in with other kids." Tom punched his palm, his eyes still sparking with anger. "When your grandmother gets herself pumped up like she is now, her muscles swell up and take out any loose skin that happens with someone her age, she looks twenty, thirty years younger and she likes that. She likes it mostly because she knows I like it. I hope she keeps it up until she's eighty, if she's willing to keep an old coot like me hanging around her." He swung on Matt and shook his boney finger in the younger man's face. "And now you come along and pretend you got other ideas about how women ought to look. I've read your stories, Brooksie. You used to show them to me even before you started sending them in to the Valkyrie. And I've read those sicko ones you write as Mr. Peeper, and I can tell some of them were using things you saw your grandmother or your sisters doing, but all twisted and sadistic. You don't know the first think about women or love in real life, do you?" Matt hung his head. "Not really. I had a couple girlfriends in school, but I guess they think I'm too weird when I check their muscles. But I can't tell them my little sisters make have more strength in one hand than they have in their whole bodies. Nobody measures up to what I imagine a woman could be." "And then you go and embarrass your grandmother because she does measure up." Tom shook his head. "You'll be better off telling people what you do appreciate about them instead of looking for their faults. Can you do that starting with your own gol-darned family?" Matt was able only to nod his agreement. "Now come here and help me pick up this barbell." Tom darted to a bar with a hundred pounds of plates on it and stooped by one end. "It's okay, you can come in again," he called out loudly. When the three women returned he nodded for Matt to lift his end. "Come on, Diane, show the pup those muscles aren't just there to look pretty. No. no, keep the shoes on. Lordy, look at those biceps pop! Matt, come and feel them!" The look he shot at his grandson made clear that this was no mere suggestion. Diane's eyes expressed pure gratitude as she accepted her husband's worship. "You've never seen muscle like this up close, have you Matt? Just in your magazines and websites. Believe-you- me, the real thing is a whole heap better." Tom was wrapping both hands around one of his wife's arms and giggling as the expanding biceps burst through his fingers with each repetition. The third time, Diane relaxed into a broad smile for her husband. Swallowing hard, Matt put a hand on her other arm for her fourth rep. On the fifth he, too, had both hands wrapped around the stone-hard muscle as it erupted to its full diameter, and then he felt up to her shoulder and down her back where the muscles were layered two inches deep. "What I really meant, Grandma, was that this is all the sexiest thing I've ever seen, a real work of art. You know how I feel about strong women, you've known all along. It's just that I never thought I'd see one in real life like this, or that she'd be so sexy and so super, and that it would make me jealous of my own grandfather!" "Thank you, Matt. That's the sweetest thing anyone has said to me." She held the barbell to her chest so her biceps stood at their quivering maximum and smiled like a school girl as Matt tried unsuccessfully to make a dent in the round mass. "Oh, lordy, that's enough of that. Let's go someplace private, Honeybunch. Take this, Becky," he directed his granddaughter. Rebecca obligingly stepped forward and accepted the barbell in her right hand. Matt swallowed hard as he watched her carry it one-handed back to the place he and his grandfather had hauled it from. Diane kicked off the high heeled shoes and accepted Tom's hard embrace before allowing him to lead her through the door and into the house, their grandchildren suppressing laughter as his hand rubbed her round butt. The twins turned on Matt, crowding him into a corner. "Well, that will take care of them for hours. Grandpa gets horny as an old Billy goat because of Grandma's muscles," Rebecca remarked. "And she can keep him going longer than you'd ever believe," Darlene added. "Then they both fall asleep for another hour or two." "I'll call mom and dad and let them know we're all on our own for dinner, and then we're going out with our friends." "So much for the family party," they concluded in unison. Their broad shoulders touched to form a solid wall he couldn't hope to break through. "I'm sorry." Matt hung his head in embarrassment. "I know I was being dumb." "That's okay." "We have some good news and some bad news." "The good news is that you're going with us when we go out with our friends tonight." "That's good for you, even if you think we're all a bunch of kids compared with the big college graduate." "That's the bad news, too." "We'll introduce you to our friend Marcy." "She's almost as strong as we are, and she likes making out." "You'll find out how fun that can be with a real muscle woman, instead of the sicko ones you think up." "And you'll find out how much that can hurt when your puny body gets what you've always wanted." "Your job has health insurance, doesn't it?"