Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 02:08:55 -0700
From: RC in Sacramento <sacwriter@hotmail.com>
Subject: Munchkin Chptr 11

This is a work of fiction. It depicts the often sexual relationship between
two young girls. If this offends you or if you're not old enough to be
reading this stuff, then get out NOW. If, however, you're where you want to
be, then enjoy.

			 MUNCHKIN
			 Chapter 11
			by Sacwriter


	Joe had gone to bed, but he was still far from going to sleep. Instead he
had the reading light on and one of Phil Cameron's karate manuals open. He
hadn't even tried to put it down, he was well and truly hooked and he knew
it. The pictures, the articles, the clinical way the book talked about
violence, it all got to him on a visceral level. He decided that it was a
good thing there wasn't any school tomorrow, because he was pretty sure that
he wasn't going to get much sleep tonight.
	There was no big secret as to why the books fascinated him so, either. In
the past couple of hours he had already read of at least a dozen moves that
could have helped him out in some of the fights he had been in. Fights
which, needless to say, he had lost. Now if he had only had these books back
then!
	Little vignettes of bloody vengeance flitted through Joe's mind, visions of
him kicking and punching his tormentors around just like Jackie Chan. Hell,
like Becka and Gia! Silencing the vicious taunts, wiping the jeering smiles
off those faces forever. Walking down the hallways at school, feeling like
he was somebody who mattered, somebody big. Somebody no one would ever call
a 'Munchkin'.
Damn it, but he hated that name. Gary Harper had hung it on him that first
day of school, had heckled him with it ever since. It was his favorite slur
for Joe, right up there with wimp and faggot. He had even found it written
on his locker a couple of times. Suddenly the thought of being able to shove
the word back down Harper's throat, and make him choke on it... !
	Joe's mouth was suddenly dry, and to his surprise he found that he was
shaking, a tremor that made his hands clench into fists so tight they hurt.
He swallowed hard, then slowly forced his body to relax. Oh hell, he was
sweating. Just thinking about Harper was bringing back that time in the
bathroom. But then that was only two days ago, he realized. For a second he
could have sworn that he was smelling the dirty tiles under the sinks again,
felt the cold air on his bare buttocks from where they had pulled down his
pants. Heard Harper's voice...
	Joe shook his head and took a deep breath, let it out with a whoosh. It
looked like he still had a lot of issues with Harper. It wasn't going to be
as easy as he had thought, to get over this. But someday he would, he
reassured himself. He had friends now, good friends. People that he knew he
could trust to help him. He was going to be alright.
	Yeah, he was. Of course he was.
	Joe closed the book he had been reading, then looked up at the clock radio.
11:35. Phil Cameron had told them he would be back by midnight, which meant
that he could be home at any minute. He thought about the girls downstairs,
what he imagined they had been up to since he had left them alone. He
remembered the looks they had been giving each other, the electric
atmosphere he had sensed that had sent him scurrying away with a grin.
Making out, at the least, maybe even-no, maybe he didn't want to go there.
But what would happen if they were still at it when their father came home?
	Did Phil know about the girls being gay, about them being lovers? It seemed
unlikely, after all Becka was legally Gia's sister, so wasn't this maybe
illegal or something? Like incest?
	It was a tricky question, one Joe wasn't sure he wanted to explore right
now. But the thought occurred to him that maybe someone should go downstairs
and kind of remind the girls how late it was, although not in those words,
of course. He had left his fathers' harmonica on the coffee table in the
family room, he could use that as an excuse to avoid embarrassment.
	Joe got up and slipped out the door, making his way to the stairs,
beginning to feel an undeniable sense of excitement. As soon as he realized
it, he reigned that feeling in firmly. Dammit, he was going down there as an
act of friendship. He was not doing it to try and peek at the girls naked.
	But, you know, if he did happen to see...
			* * *
	"We shouldn't of done this," Gia giggled, as she snuggled into the curve of
Becka's shoulder. She had found that particular spot early on in their
relationship, and she loved the way she fit into it so perfectly. Almost as
if it had been made for her. The thought always made something glow warm
inside her chest.
	"You mean we shouldn't of done it, or we shouldn't have done it out here?"
Becka murmured the question. Her words were muffled by the lock of black
hair she was nuzzling. She had to focus on the other girl's words, the
languor she felt was making it hard to concentrate. Not that she was
complaining.
	"Out here, silly. We should have waited until we got upstairs."
	"I couldn't wait, you smell too good. Besides, this was more fun."
	"Why, because we might get caught? We could've given Daddy or one of the
boys a heart attack."
	"No, you're the one who likes doing that. I mean 'cause this was where we
first... umm, I mean, where I, you know, over by the fireplace..."
	"Did me?" Gia was grinning again, an impish shine in her eye. "Popped my
cherry? Deflowered my virgin innocence? Rolled me over in the clover and did
me a-"
	"Shut up, you nut!" Becka laughed, her face turning pink. Gia was the only
person on earth who could still make her blush. And she knew it, too,
dammit.
	"Make me!"
	"I would, but Dad's going to be home soon. We gotta get dressed."
	"Okay, in a minute. I'm feeling too good to hurry. Hey, what are we going
to do tomorrow, anyway? I mean about Joe. Do you want to take him down to
the dojo?"
	"We could. Or we could just work out in the yard. We'll teach him how to
throw a punch without breaking his hand. And then we could start teaching
him the really dirty things, too."
	"I wish we had more time. I mean, some of that stuff is dangerous, he
should really have a couple of weeks practice to learn some control first."
	"Yeah, but we don't have a couple of weeks. Harper and those guys are going
to be looking for him as soon as school starts again, and we won't be able
to protect him there. He's going to need as big an edge against those
assholes as he can get."
	"Hey, we all want to help Joe. He's a nice guy, and he doesn't deserve all
of this crap that's been done to him. But little girl, we should be helping
him for the right reasons."
	"What do you mean?"
	"You know what I mean. We should be helping Joe because he's our friend,
not out of some misplaced sense of guilt. What's happening to him is not
your fault."
	"Some of it is. I was one of the people who used to beat up on him."
	"But you don't know that! You don't remember anything like that ever
happening. The only thing you have to go on is the way he screamed at you
when you first chased away Gary Harper in the hallway."
	"Yeah, well, you know I probably did. I picked on a lot of kids like him. I
could've slapped him around sometime and just forgotten about it."
	"Well even if you did, it's not that big of a deal. I mean it's not like
you made a regular thing of it, did you?"
	Becka snorted. "No. That I think I'd remember. Okay, you're right. No more
stupid guilt trips. From now on I'll just-shit!"
	Suddenly Becka was trying to scramble upright on the couch, her hands
covering her breasts, and her eyes locked on something over Gia's shoulder.
Without having to look, Gia knew that they had an audience. Like a snake she
twisted and squirmed so that she was lying face down on the couch and
covering herself. And even as she reached down to grab at the clothing
strewn on the floor, she glanced up to see which one of her family had
walked in on them.
	But no one had come home early. It was Joe standing frozen in the hallway,
his eyes wide and his face as pale and drained as a corpse. The tableau held
for a long, eternal second, before the boy suddenly spun around and raced
away. The last thing they knew of him was the sound of his footsteps
pounding up the stairway.
	"Oh, shit," Gia murmured, echoing Becka's sentiment.

	Joe didn't remember the mad race up two flights of stairs, or sprinting
down the hallway and through the door to his room. The first thing he did
clearly remember was slamming the door as hard as he could and locking it
behind him. After that he found himself pacing furiously, his teeth clenched
and his fists opening and closing, over and over again. His heart was
pounding like a trip hammer, but he couldn't hear it over the harsh rasping
of his breath. It wasn't until he started to sway dizzily that he realized
he was hyperventilating.
	Joe stopped at the foot of the bed, forcing himself to take control of his
rampaging, tumultuous emotions. It wasn't easy, his body felt like one of
Johnny's guitar strings, stretched so tight it would snap the first time it
was plucked. It took several long minutes before his frame stopped shaking.
	She didn't remember! Four years ago she had totally ruined his life, turned
him into a target for every psycho at Roosevelt High, and she didn't even
remember doing it.
	God damn, but he had been so stupid. He had believed she really felt guilty
over what she had done to him, that her actions on his behalf were some sort
of act of remorse for her sins. But she didn't feel guilty, she wasn't sorry
for anything she had done. She just... she just pitied him.
	So why did that feel so much like betrayal?
	It hurt. It hurt so bad that he wanted to smash things, to heave every
stick of furniture in the room out the window and hear them crash to the
ground below. He wanted to shout and scream and bellow out his rage, and let
the whole damn Cameron family know the outrage that had been done to him by
their adopted daughter.
	But he didn't do any of that. He couldn't, could he, he thought bitterly.
He was 'the Munchkin', the school wimp. The frail little nothing too weak to
defend himself from the sadists, and too insignificant to be noticed by
anybody else. Why the hell would he have ever thought otherwise.
	Damn them! With a sudden sweep of his arms Joe brushed the martial arts
books off the bed, the manuals his false friends had given him flying across
the room to smash against the dresser next to the back wall. He felt a
kneejerk flash of guilt for having treated books that way, but he angrily
swept that aside too, as he threw himself down on the bed and buried his
face in the pillow.
	He lay there for a long time, clutching that pillow to him in the way a
drowning man does a piece of floating debris. His mad thoughts raced around
in his head over and over, like toy cars on an electric track, zipping along
on wild kinetic energy but not really going anywhere. His feelings of
contentment were gone, along with his dreams of safety and friendship. He
knew what he had to do in the morning, he didn't have any choice and he
didn't particularly care for one, either.
	He had been wrong about so much lately, but he had been right about one
thing. He did not get much sleep that night.
			* * *
	Instead of sleeping in late the girls had gotten up early the next morning,
and were sitting in the kitchen having breakfast. This time the morning meal
was cold cereal and fresh fruit, bananas and strawberries. Neither of them
seemed to have much of an appetite, though, as they picked desultorily at
the meal. There was no conversation, not even of the silent kind which they
often used.
	Becka was just about to give the whole meal up as a bad idea, when she
sensed someone in the family room. She looked over the serving bar and saw a
stony faced Joe staring back at her. Becka took a deep breath, and then
pasted a smile on her face before she called out to him.
	"Hey, Joe. You almost missed breakfast. We got Corn Flakes, Captain Crunch,
and Wheaties. What'll you have?"
	"I'm not hungry. I want to go home."
	The words came out cold and hard. Becka and Gia shared a surprised look,
taken aback by the tone, as much as by the words themselves. It was Gia who
finally replied, trying to pick her words in a hesitant voice.
	"Um, Joe, look. About last night. I know you're kind of upset --"
	"I don't want to eat breakfast, and I don't want to talk about last night.
I just want to go home."
	Gia blinked, really confused now. The boy's attitude had just gone from
cold to rude. "Joe..." she started to say.
	"I wanna go home!"
	"FINE!" Becka's word cracked out like the sound of a face being slapped.
She had come to her feet and was matching Joe's look glare for glare.
"Twenty minutes. Outside. If you're not there, you can take the damned bus."
	Joe had once again gone pale, just like the night before, but now his
slender frame was also shaking with his own fury. He held the full weight of
Beck's glower for another few seconds, then spun around and stomped out of
the room. Behind him he left Becka still glaring after him, and Gia
wondering what the hell had just happened.
	"Becka..?"
	"Don't say it, Gia. I just don't care anymore. I don't care if I did slap
him around and don't remember it, or that he has some stupid puppy dog crush
on me. Everybody knows about us, and you even sat down and told him to his
face that we're gay. If he got his feelings hurt from catching us on the
couch last night, well then the hell with him."
	"Becka, it's not that simple. Gary Harper is still after him, he can't go
home all alone, it's not safe."
	"Damn it, I said I don't care. You are mine, and I love you, and I'm not
going to hide it. And I sure as hell am not going to apologize to him about
it."
	With that the conversation was effectively ended, as the blonde girl
started gathering up the breakfast dishes and taking them to the sink. Her
movements were smooth and unhurried, but there was a set to her shoulders
and a tension about her that said she was still pissed as hell. Gia sighed,
and then picked up the Tupperware container the fruit had come in, looking
around for the lid. If the truth be told, she had been getting pretty tired
of the pretense herself.
			* * *
	The drive to Joe's house was made in total silence, with not a word being
spoken between the three teens. Becka was driving, and her eyes remained
focused on the road ahead. In the back seat Joe's gaze was just as firmly
fixed on the passing traffic, his arms crossed and his face a stony mask. In
the shotgun seat Gia thought about playing peacemaker between the two, but
gave it up as hopeless without even trying. The miles stretched on, and it
came as a relief to all three when they finally pulled onto the street where
Joe and his Aunt Mattie lived.
	Becka had been slowing down as they approached the house, but as they came
within sight of it she suddenly pulled to a full stop in the middle of the
street. They sat there for a while and stared, the three of them shocked
into silence. Finally Becka swore under her breath and put the car back into
gear, and then pulled into the driveway.
	They had used at least two different cans of spray paint, one red and the
other black. The words that now scrawled over the house and garage were the
usual lewd foulness you could find in a back alley, along with a few crudely
drawn pictures. The single exception was on the garage door, the six foot
letters that removed any doubt about who was behind the vandalism.
'MUNCHKIN', spelled out using both colors, as if in some twisted attempt at
real art.
	The vandals hadn't been satisfied with just the graffiti, either. Joe's
carefully planted garden had been ripped up and now lay tossed all over the
lawn and porch like debris after a storm, along with several of the smaller
shrubs. A gap in the border around the bed showed that one of the dark gray
river rocks was also missing, but the cracked hole in the front window would
probably clear up that mystery. It looked like somebody had also peed on the
front door.
	Without a word they piled out of the car and stood there, bearing silent
witness to the devastation. Gia edged closer to Joe, who stood as if frozen
in stone, totally unmoving except for the trembling of his lower lip. She
wanted to reach out and touch him, to offer some sort of human contact as a
show of support, but she feared that after this morning he would refuse it.
	After awhile Becka left, quickly moving around the garage and towards the
backyard. They both heard the fence open and close, but continued their
silent watch until  it opened again a few minutes later. Becka reappeared
but passed them by, slowly down only to long enough to say quietly, "The
back's okay. Looks like they left it alone."
	Gia watched as her sister climbed the stairs to the front porch and checked
the door, rattling the knob to make sure it was locked. She saw her cup her
hands around her eyes as she peered in the window. When she finished she
turned around and came back, shaking her head.
	"Doesn't look like they got inside, either. The rock they used is lying on
the coffee table, but other than that everything looks okay." She stopped
and looked closely at the graffiti on the wall next to her, then reached
over and touched it. She contemplated her unmarked fingertips, and then
leaned forward and brought her nose within a couple inches of the wall and
sniffed loudly. When she straightened up she was nodding, satisfied.
	"Paint's been dry for at least a day. And those plants haven't wilted all
that much. I'm guessing it happened sometime Saturday night."
	"I guess you didn't scare them off, after all," Gia's voice was quiet and
subdued.
	Becka shrugged. "No. I guess Harper's just too stupid and vicious to learn.
And he'll probably be back, too." She looked at Joe then, her voiced
softening. "Joe, you can't stay here. Not alone. You have to come back home
with us, at least until your Aunt comes back."
	The small young man wouldn't look at her. Instead he just stared fixedly at
the hated word written on the garage door, hearing it over and over in his
head. Munchkin. Munchkin. Munchkin. Hearing it in the jeering voice of Gary
Harper. Joe shuddered, his fists clenching, the tremor in his lip having
spread to his hands. He shook his head, a small, jerky movement of denial.
He still wouldn't look at her.
	Gia tried to touch him then, to lay a comforting hand on his arm, but Becka
stopped her with a look. The blonde girl then moved in front of Joe and bent
down, putting her face in front of his so that he had no choice but to see
her.
	"Joe, now listen. It's not safe here. If you stay here, by yourself, he's
going to come back. And when he does, he'll finish what he started in the
bathroom at school."
	The tremor was even more pronounced now, and tears were running unchecked
down the boy's cheeks. Finally he bowed his head and nodded, in defeat.

	They used Joe's keys to get inside the garage for the gardening tools, and
set to saving as much of the garden as possible. They replanted what they
could, and tied them to stakes they made from scrap wood found in the
garage. When they were done they took a sheet of plywood and nailed it over
the broken window, until Joe's Aunt could arrange to have a glazier come out
to replace the glass. Gia splashed some liquid soap on the front door and
then sprayed it with the garden hose to clean off the urine there. The last
thing Joe did before locking up was to pick up the broken glass in the
living room, and then carefully replaced the smooth river rock in the border
around the flower bed.
	They piled into the car and headed back to the Cameron home, another trip
whose silence no one tried to break. In fact, Joe hadn't uttered a single
word since he had stormed out of the kitchen that morning.
			* * *
	When the Mustang pulled into its parking space on the Cameron property, Joe
didn't even wait for it to come to a complete stop. He sprang from the still
moving vehicle and ran for the front door, leaving his suitcase behind. He
knew the girls would want to talk to him, but he just couldn't face them
now, he just had to get away and be alone for a few precious minutes. He
heard Gia calling but he didn't even slow down, or bother to close the front
door as he raced inside and up the stairs to the third floor.
	In the guest bedroom he ripped at his shirt, pulling it off over his head
along with a few buttons, then throwing it on the bed. He dashed for the
bathroom, locked the door behind him, and then turned the shower on full
blast. He cranked the handle all the way over to the right, and then plunged
his head and shoulders underneath the frigid stream. When the icy cold
waters hit him he could only sob out his misery, as he tried to wash away
his shame as if it were simple dirt and grime.
	Those words, those damned, damned ugly words! All over his house, marking
him, branding him, flaunting his humiliation for the whole world to see. His
neighbors, his Aunt. Anybody who drove down the street.
	Becka and Gia.
	Joe stayed under the cold spray until he was shivering, before he finally
turned it off and groped for a towel. He wiped the water from his clammy
skin and short cropped hair, standing in front of the sink but not letting
himself look at his reflection in the mirror. He took a deep breath, and
then several more, before wrapping the towel around his shoulders and going
out into the bedroom. As he had feared, the room wasn't empty.

	Becka was sitting on his bed, one foot on the floor, the other curled up
under her. The eyes she turned towards him were solemn and noncommittal, her
whole bearing one of patient waiting. Gia was on her feet standing by the
door, holding a clean shirt that she had to have gotten from his suitcase,
which was lying open on the bed next to Becka. She must have seen the
condition of the one he had torn off earlier. She handed it to him and he
accepted it with a nod, trying not to look either of them in the eye. He
turned his back when he put the shirt on, taking his time with the buttons,
trying to put off as long as possible the conversation he knew was coming.
	"Joe? Joe, we have to talk. About what happened at your house, but also
about what happened last night."
	He sighed, resigned. At least it was Gia doing the talking, and not Becka.
	"Look, I know it must have been kind of a shock to you, seeing Becka and me
like that. I mean, I know I told you about us, and you knew, but I don't
think you really accepted it. And I think that's what the problem here is,
that you hadn't accepted that Becka and I are gay."
	Joe blinked, his head coming up. What?
	It was Becka's turn to talk now. "Joe this, this crush thing you have on
me. You gotta know it's just not going to happen. I know it's hard for
straight guys to understand. You think it's just a phase we're going
through, that we're just experimenting or something. You think all we need
to do is to find the right guy, and we'll forget about this, about the way
we feel. But it's not like that, Joe. It's the way we are, the way we're put
to-"
	"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"
	Joe's sudden outburst shocked the two girls. He had spun around and was now
facing them, his face twisted with anger. It was as if a traumatized mouse
they had been trying to coax had suddenly bared its teeth, and they had
turned out to be six inch fangs.
	"You think that's what this is all about? You think I give a damn who the
hell you sleep with?
	"You ruined my life, and you don't even remember it! Freshman year, Becka,
the first goddamned day of school. You didn't want to wait in the rain with
the rest of us, so you beat me down and kicked me into the mud just to steal
my place in line. You did it in front of Gary Harper, and Ray Nestor, and
everybody else in that hellhole. Does that bring back any memories?"
	Becka was looking at him out of a mask as still as stone. Her face had gone
pale, her voice soft but steady, almost dead.
	"Yeah, I remember now. I sucker punched you, then I pulled your shirt over
your head, and threw you into a mud puddle. And you didn't get up. You just
sat there, and you cried..."
	"It was one week after my parents' funeral. One week! They buried them in
the ground, and then they packed me up and sent me out here. Everything, and
everybody, was gone. And then you tore the last of it apart and painted a
target on me."
	The last words were spoken bitterly, and they finally seemed to have an
effect on Becka. She swallowed, and for the first time she broke eye
contact. She licked her lips and took a trembling breath before she met his
gaze again. He knew his angry words were hurting her, and felt a fierce
gladness at the fact.
	"Joe, I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't know..."
	"Yeah, that's right. You don't know. You don't know what it's like to be
afraid every single day of your life, or to throw up because your stomach
hurts so bad from clenching it. Or to walk down the hallways and know inside
that you're nothing.
	"You don't know what it's like to be beaten and treated like garbage, just
'cause you're too weak to fight back. And you sure as hell don't know what
it's like to have three perverts drag you into a bathroom and try to butt
rape you. You don't know--"
	Joe had been too busy with his litany to notice the danger signs. He didn't
see the red that started flushing Becka's face, or notice the way her eyes
were beginning to harden. And he didn't see the way they flashed when he
started talking about all the things she didn't know.
	But he did hear the animal snarl of rage, just before he felt two hands
grab him by the shirt and shove him violently back. He also felt the duel
impact of his back ramming against the wall, and Becka's hard muscled body
slamming into his.
	He gasped in pain, and then felt real fear when Becka stuck her face right
up into his.
	"I am so sick of hearing you whine about how bad your life has been. Poor,
poor Joe, you got beaten up at school a week after your parents' funeral.
The day I buried my Mom, I got raped. My step father beat the crap out of me
just to get in the mood. He tore off my black dress, threw me down, and
stuck it in me 'til I was bleeding all over the floor. I was eleven years
old, and he laughed all the time he was doing it. And that was just the
first time.
	"So don't you tell me how much your life sucks, and say it's all because of
me. 'Cause I'm not interested, and I sure as hell ain't impressed."
	Becka suddenly released her grip as she gave him one last shove, which
caused Joe to stumble and slip to the ground. He huddled there in a little
ball, his hands held over his head protectively, as Becka pulled the door
open and pushed out into the hallway. Behind her she seemed to leave a
charged atmosphere of rage, like the foaming wake of a dark ship.
	When she was gone Joe raised his eyes, and looked to Gia. But if he thought
he would find any sympathy there, he was mistaken. The younger girl was
glaring at him in resentment, if not with the fury of her sister then with
something equally venomous. With one last glare she turned away and hurried
out of the room.

	Joe had thought he knew what the word 'wretched' meant. He had read it in
books before, and he could probably explain it well enough if asked. But
now, today, he truly understood the meaning of the word.

(continued)