April Fool's

[JohnAubrey]

Hello to all and many belated thank yous for the kind comments.

I've had barely any time at all to write so far this year but, given the day, I thought I should make the effort to knock up another quick instalment of this story.

The next chapter will arrive this time next year. (This may or may not be an April Fool's joke.)

Enjoy!




I was still gazing into Katy’s eyes a few seconds later, totally mesmerised by the self-assured way in which she was staring me down. I tried to cast my mind back: teenage girls weren’t this confident or this aggressive when I was that age, were they? They definitely hadn’t wanted muscles like the ones I knew Katy was hiding underneath her hoodie - thick, beefy, powerful muscles.

I tried to imagine a teenage me flirting with Katy… Girls were meant to flutter their eyelashes and coyly avert their gaze when they were with a boy they liked, not look at you like Shelob deciding that you were only a dollop of brown sauce and two slices of bread away from making a tasty breakfast sandwich.

She looked so proud of her strength, so pugnaciously defiant; she was in competition with a taller, heavier man, but there was absolutely no sign of any weakness, no self-doubt, no sense of inferiority.

She was a teenage girl who knew she was freakishly, unstoppably strong and she loved it.

A teenage me would have been terrified of Katy, stuck somewhere between worry and worship, paralysis and priapism.

To be honest, I was terrified of her now. I had known that she was strong, but not so strong that she could control three of my limbs without apparent effort, all while she was sitting casually in a chair and adjusting her ponytail with her free hand.   

And then I became conscious of another sensation, an entirely unwanted one: it was the feeling of the back of my hand pressing against the hard surface of the table. Katy was so strong that she had eased my arm into such a controlled descent I hadn’t even noticed I was about to lose.

I was like a lobster in a pot. The water had slowly come up to a boil and, before I even knew what was happening, I was cooked.

It was over. I had lost. Katy had won. There was a dreadful silence, waiting to be filled.

Not daring to speak or to move, my eyes darted sideways to glance at Rosie. She was still staring at her phone and hadn’t yet seen what had happened. Maybe this was the last chance saloon? I might not be able to stand up yet, but if Katy let go of my hand before Rosie noticed I had lost, there would surely still be some way I could bluff my way out of this.

After all, I was an intelligent man, capable of thinking on my feet and improvising to meet the situation; a subtle and ingenious solution was surely only a flash of inspiration away.

I felt sure that I could extricate myself from this situation with a minimum of fuss and embarrassment while maintaining an aura of dignity, my air of suave sophistication intact.

And so I prepared to shout Oh god, I have diarrhoea! and make a run for the toilet as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

I looked back at Katy and my heart sank: she was also staring at Rosie, and she seemed annoyed that her victory had so far gone unnoticed. Katy definitely didn’t have the look of a girl who was about to modestly let her physical prowess go unremarked.

We both remained sitting silent and still at the table and there was no indication that Katy was about to relax her grip; if anything, the force with which my hand was pinned down was gradually increasing, as if Katy were growing more resentful by the second about being ignored. 

Now it was Katy’s turn to look back at me. She noticed the mortified expression on my face.

Please? I silently mouthed, trying to pull my hand free.

At once the intimidating Amazon warrior sitting opposite me was replaced with a much more familiar-looking mischievous teenage girl. Katy’s frown disappeared as she smothered a laugh and then stroked her chin, looking theatrically pensive, tilting her head first one way, then the other, as if weighing up a decision.

Eventually she couldn’t hide her amusement any longer: a giggle bubbled up and broke free from her lips.

In my peripheral vision, I could see Rosie lift her head…

At this point, several things happened in quick succession.

First, the doorbell rang. Katy emitted an Oh! as her expression immediately turned to one of shock; before I knew what was happening, she had unwound her legs from mine, released my hand and jumped up from her chair, dashing out of the room.

At much the same time as Katy leaped up, Rosie made eye contact with me.

If Katy’s look earlier had scared me, this was worse. This was a look with which even the most uxorious husband was familiar; a look universally dreaded by the male of the species; a look which could only be delivered by a wife to her other half.

It was a look that said Oh, you’re for it now, mister.

And I would have been - for it now, I mean, and probably for it for a considerable time afterwards into the bargain - if only something else hadn’t happened that very second, something miraculous.

“GET IN!” bellowed Dave, leaping from the sofa, throwing his arms aloft. “FUCKING GET IN! WHAT A FINISH!”

Like a whale spouting water, a spray of beer left the can in Dave’s upthrust hand and arced through the air, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine that bathed the room in glorious light.

(“ABSOLUTE THUNDERBASTARD!”)

In a moment of numinous beauty, it formed an ephemeral rainbow, the reflecting light coruscating and dazzling me as I watched open-mouthed, deeply moved by the majesty of the serendipitous evanescence flashing before me. 

(“HE MUST HAVE A FOOT LIKE A TRACTION ENGINE!”)

And then I gave thanks - not for the rainbow, but for the pot of gold at the end of it: in this case, a generous slosh of cheap lager splashing all over Rosie’s face and hair like she was the participant at a bukkake party who would be having an awkward conversation with a dry cleaner the next day.

“SHIT! Sorry, Rosie!”

As Rosie spluttered and wiped away the beer cascading down her shocked face, I knew I had immediately been demoted from the position of man with whom she most wanted to have some stern words.

“I’m really sorry, Rosie, I didn’t mean to… Uh, come with me and I’ll grab you a towel.”

A hangdog expression on his face, Dave led my wife from the room.

My spirits soared higher than Dave’s beer. This was my chance! I gave Dave and Rosie a few seconds to leave the hallway and then I tiptoed to the door, ready to dash to the privacy of the toilet and take off the infernal bra and thong. I could beg forgiveness from Rosie later - she’d been talking about Mustique recently and I suspected the only way she might not kick me out of bed would be if it were king-sized and located in the beach-adjacent luxury suite of a boutique hotel.

I quickly stopped worrying about expensive holidays as I stealthily eased the door open a crack and established that Katy was standing in the hallway, in excited conversation with the mystery party who had rung the doorbell.

Cursing my luck, I threw caution to the wind, aware that my time alone could be brief. I quietly closed the door, withdrew into the middle of the room and pulled off my shirt; I’d have to risk getting changed here and now.

My fingers fumbled with the bra hooks as I contorted my arms behind my back and desperately tried to free myself. Never mind wearing these things - how on earth did women manage to take them off? I flailed around without success, looking like a drunken hula hooper who was yet to realise he may have had the hula down pat but that he had forgotten all about the hoop.

I heard movement on the stairs and began to hop from foot to foot with anxiety. This proved to be one piece of additional choreography too many and I lost my balance and toppled backwards onto the sofa.

I was out of time! In a moment of desperation, I started to roll the bra down my torso, squawking with pain as chest hairs, caught in the twisted material, were ripped from my body as I frantically tried to escape my lacy cage. 

The door swung open.

I froze.

The conversation in the hallway continued, no louder or closer than it had been before, and no one walked into the room.

It must have been a draught! I relaxed.

Then I heard Rosie and Dave talking in the hallway. I panicked again.

The bra had reached my hips. I improvised, pulled my trousers down, dragged the bra below my waistline, hoisted my trousers back to full-mast, flung my shirt back on and collapsed into my chair, a panting and sweaty mess trying his best to look insouciant.

Rosie and Dave walked back in.

Dave headed directly for the sofa, eager to renew acquaintance with his bag of Monster Munch and to make sure he hadn’t missed any action. My wife, on the other hand, headed directly for me, crossed her arms and glared.

Even Elsa would have been considerably less icy than Rosie right now. And, unfortunately, I don’t think Rosie was about to let it go.

I gulped. 

“So…” she said.

“So… what?” I asked, doing well to maintain the insouciant facade while concentrating very hard on preventing my right eye from developing a twitch.

Rosie snorted.

“Oh, you know. You know. For reasons that are beyond me, you think it’s funny to pretend to lose an armwrestle to a teenage girl. Well, if that’s the way you want to play it, you know what happens next. Lose the shirt...”

“Wait, I wasn’t pre-”

“Or else,” she said, hooking a finger in the front of her dress, leaning forward and squeezing her breasts together with her arms. Seinfeld once joked that looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don't stare at it. It's too risky. But when it comes to my wife’s breasts I am Captain Pinbacker. I couldn’t not stare at them: they’re magnificent. The thought of not being able to see them, or indeed to kiss them, to fondle them, to run my tongue around her erect nipples, to motorboat them, to squeeze them as I brought her to climax, was too much to bear.

I stood up and pulled off my shirt.

“Fine. Is this what you wanted?” I said angrily and, as it turned out, much louder than I had intended.

It was at this exact moment that Katy reentered the room. She stopped as she saw me, a look of confusion on her face. But that was nothing compared to the look of shock on the face of the pretty little brunette standing behind her, her hand half-raised in greeting.

There was another dreadful silence, waiting to be filled.

I cleared my throat...

[jbeast]

I haven't been reading stories here in awhile, so I was pleased to stumble across your story. PLEASE continue. Wonderful!

[brave_archer]

The chapters to all of your stories are always worth the wait, even if the time between them is often unbearably long. Here's hoping to see more of all of your currently in-progress works soon.

[jeffbeans]

So happy to see a new chapter....and an Alan Partridge reference!! 

[JohnAubrey]

I'm definitely aiming to continue all my stories - this one was always intended to be shorter chapters knocked out more regularly, even if that hasn't ended up being the case! Anyway, here's the next instalment; hopefully the wait wasn't too long this time.

No Alan Partridge references, but more silliness ensues...



All that clearing my throat managed to achieve was to make Rosie, Katy and the mystery girl regard me expectantly, as if I’d just stood up and tapped my glass with a spoon at a wedding reception.

Even though I was only shirtless, as their eyes bored into me, I felt totally naked.

I wouldn’t have thought twice about walking around with my top off at the pool or the beach, or even in the park on a sunny day, so why did standing bare chested in the relative privacy of a friend’s living room make me feel so uncomfortable?

It must have been all the women staring at me. Macbeth probably felt much the same way when he was in conference with the Three Witches. I was being subjected to a level of female scrutiny that would have made me uncomfortable even if I had been fully clothed.

Right now I couldn’t even take much solace in the fact that things would have been even worse if I hadn’t managed to remove the bra. Or if someone had declared me Thane of Cawdor.

I gave a start as a mysterious hissing noise broke the silence.

My brain started to leap to conclusions: was it my wife, expressing an almost feline fury at my emasculation at the hands of a teenage girl? Perhaps Katy was trying to suppress a snigger as she mentally compared her own powerful, virile form with my own? Or could it be the new arrival, reading the room and simply deciding it would go down well if she heckled me?

Any way you looked at it, I was exposed, embarrassed, and the subject of some form of female contempt. Most men think that the ultimate humiliation is to be mocked by a woman; as Margaret Atwood once wrote, men are afraid that women will laugh at them.

Of course, some men know that, actually, the ultimate humiliation to be feared is to lose an armwrestling match to a teenage girl while wearing women’s underwear, and then to be denied sex by your wife, but we can forgive Margaret Atwood for trying to keep her truisms universal.

Besides, realistically, how many men are unlucky enough to have ever found themselves in a situation where they’re being performatively dominated by a cute but cocky blonde girl with an impish sense of humour and a hyper-mesomorphic ability to build muscle?

Apart from me, that is.

The silence seemed to grow, to swell, to become even more silent.

In retrospect, this was probably because Dave had finished rustling his bag of Monster Munch in the background, but the longer the silence lasted, the greater the pressure of coming up with an explanation became.

Eventually it reached the point where it was unbearable. Overwhelmed, my brain froze and my body wilted.

And so, when there was a sudden enthusiastic glugging noise and I realised that the hissing sound had simply been caused by Dave opening another can of lager, I felt like a man whose reserve parachute had opened just in time to prevent his family from having to get in touch with his tailor to order him some burial clothes that were much, much wider and much, much flatter than when he was measured at his last fitting.

The realisation buoyed my confidence. I was able to relax, to take a moment to inspect my audience, and then to start feeling gratified when I noticed that the stranger was staring appreciatively at my body.

Not all female attention is bad, especially when the female in question is an attractively perky brunette and she’s obviously admiring the results of your gym regimen.

As I had emphasised to my wife a few days ago, I wasn’t training like a bodybuilder - but I was a regular visitor to our local gym and I was probably in the best shape of my life. It was what had made the disparity in strength between me and Katy even more shocking: I had never been stronger. But still, this girl didn’t know about that; as far as she was concerned, I was an impressive specimen of manhood.

Her eyes lingered on my biceps, still slightly pumped from my recent exertions.

Some female attention makes men want to show off, even if it’s ill-advised to do so.

I started to feel almost bullish. The dying embers of my machismo, so recently doused by Katy, were reignited.

“Welcome to the Chippendales show,” I said, throwing a quick double-bicep flex and attempting a disarming smile at Katy and the visitor.

I had chosen the wrong cultural reference.

“To Chip ‘n’ Dale’s show? Like, the cartoon chipmunks?” asked Katy, her confused frown only growing bigger, and even more confused.

“No, no, the Chippendales. You know? The Chippendales? I was just joking that I looked like a Chippendale.”

“Oh, like you’re a useless old wreck that belongs in an antique shop?” Rosie chipped in, unhelpfully.

I could sense from my wife’s sarcastic tone that she wasn’t happy. Not only was she wondering where her bra had gone, she had also definitely resented both the visitor ogling my muscles and the clumsily flirtatious way in which I had attempted to engage the girls in conversation.

I tried to sidestep my wife’s insult and recall something more contemporary.

“Aha. No, not that kind of Chippendale. The Chippendales are a male striptease dance troupe - you know, just like the guys in that film…”

“You’re saying you’re like a male stripper in a film?”

“Yeah! What’s it called, what’s it called? Tip of my tongue…”

“The Full Monty?”

“No, not that one, the one with Channing Tatum.”

“You’re comparing yourself to Channing Tatum?”

“Yeah, I’m like him in that film, you know the one…”

“You must mean the one where he plays an idiot. 21 Jump Street?”

“No.”

“22 Jump Street?”

“No! Why would you say that? That’s the exact same character!”

“He also plays an idiot in The Lost City, so… The Lost City?”

After her series of contributions, my wife was looking happier than she had done all afternoon.

“No, the one where he’s a male stripper! Magic Mike! That’s it, Magic Mike!”

I paused triumphantly.

“I’m so confused. What’s this got to do with Chip ‘n’ Dale?” asked Katy.

“And who’s Monty?” asked the stranger.

“And why have you taken your shirt off?” Katy continued.

I deflated.

“No reason. Just a bet.”

“A bet?” said Katy, “What kind of bet?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing, just a bet,” I replied, trying to avoid going into details.

“I bet him that he would beat you and, if he didn’t, well, let’s just say strip poker rules applied,” said Rosie.

My wife’s eyes were darting around the room, trying to find where I had stashed her bra.

Little did she know that it was hidden down my trousers, where its underwiring was currently pressing uncomfortably against my testicles, so the joke was definitely on her.

“A bet? You had a bet… if Katy beat him… If Katy beat him at what?” chimed in the visitor, obviously intrigued.

“In an armwrestle,” said Katy. “But I didn’t know we were placing bets on the result.”

“An armwrestle? Huh… Sooo… You’re telling me that you beat him in an armwrestle? But… but he’s a man...”

“So he has always led me to believe,” said Rosie, her voice dripping with enough acid to melt through several decks of the Nostromo.

“Such a big, strong man…” the visitor continued, reaching out to give my arm a quick squeeze.

My wife snorted.

“There’s no way you could beat a big, strong man like him. I know you had that amazing growth spurt when we were at uni, but you can’t beat a man; you’re still just a girl. I mean, look at him: that’s not a dad bod. He’s fit… He must go to the gym a lot... He’s got some nice muscles… He’s way taller than you… He’d probably beat most guys his own size in an armwrestle; he’d totally beat you. Like, easily. You couldn’t beat him unless you got lucky or cheated or something.”

“I must have got lucky,” grinned Katy.

“Yeees…” said my wife, slowly, her voice freighted with suspicion.

“Yep, just one of those things. But I’m man enough to take it on the chin. Nice to meet you, by the way,” I said quickly, trying to change the topic of conversation. “We haven’t been introduced…”

“Oh, hi! I’m Annie. I’m Katy’s-”

“Friend! She’s my friend from uni,” cut in Katy, quickly, turning a noticeable shade of pink. “We were going to be meeting up later, but she just came by to see if she could drop some of her stuff off here first.”

Her friend.

The two girls were staring avidly at each other, deep in an unspoken conversation.

Her friend. I must have misread Annie’s signals; she can’t have been flirting with me...

“Um, yeah, I’ve got a few bags and I thought, y’know, it could be a late night and I might need somewhere to crash later, and then I thought of Katy, and I was like, I’m sure Katy wouldn’t mind if I spend the night with her, um, at hers, um…” Annie finally said.

The thought occurred to me that maybe Annie had been flirting. Just not with me. Maybe she had been flirting with Katy. Maybe Katy had explained what had been happening to Annie when she had arrived. Maybe, by talking about my muscles and my manliness, Annie had not been flattering me, but rather the person whom she knew had managed to beat me in a test of strength.

I know you had that amazing growth spurt when we were at uni… Annie knew very well what Katy was hiding under her hoodie! She was probably intimately acquainted with every one of Katy’s rock-hard muscles; while I thought Annie had been flirting with me, she had probably been imagining every bulge and ripple of Katy’s muscles as her friend had crushed me, the big, strong man.   
 
I had been wrong earlier: this was actually the ultimate humiliation.

My only consolation at that moment was that the topic of conversation had changed course sufficiently that I thought I could see the first glimmering of light at the end of the escape tunnel.

I crawled desperately towards it.

“Well, sounds like you guys have stuff you need to do, so don’t let us get in your way - unless, do you need any help getting your bags out of the car? Let me just put my shirt back on before I go outside…”

My wife’s hands landed on my shoulders and I flinched. Rosie gently but firmly pushed me back towards the table and into my chair.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked.

“Forgetting something? No, no, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, but you are. It was going to be best of three. That is, if Katy’s not scared that her luck’s run out?”

Katy hesitated.

“I don’t know…” she said. “We should probably get going if we want to be there in time.”

“Don’t let us make you late,” I offered, trying to sound selfless.

“We should get going, right?”

“Are you kidding? I want to see this! Who cares if we get there a little late?”

I decided Annie definitely wasn’t going to be on my Christmas card list.

“Okay, sure, yeah, I’m up for another round! Ready, Mr B?”

“Oh, he’s raring to go,” replied my wife on my behalf, kneading my shoulders in a massage that could only have been less relaxing if I had made the mistake of booking it at a parlour called Scissorhands Shiatsu.

I was already feeling slightly sick and my stomach gave another lurch when I caught a glimpse of Annie furtively giving Katy’s arm a loving squeeze as she walked past her. As Annie’s hand pressed into the clothing, the sleeve of Katy’s hoodie didn’t crumple or collapse as it should; no material gave way; no folds were formed...

Something was lurking beneath the surface.

Something big.

There was another hissing sound caused by some escaping gas. I would have liked to blame Dave again, but the truth was that I was just very, very nervous.

Where were the Rescue Rangers when you needed them?
 

[brave_archer]

Another great chapter! Your manipulation of words and moods is second-to-none. The way you've slowly compounded the many emasculations our protagonist is enduring is masterful and the build up to the ultimate reveal of Katy's body is agonizing, in the best way possible.