Skankarella
by Alexander S. Bauer
Copyright 2011 Alexander S. Bauer
Smashwords Edition
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Prologue
The Beginning
Madison's father had a bit of a wild side, one that involved alcohol and the kind of dingy bars that anyone under six feet and two hundred pounds would know to avoid. Most of the time he was able to reign it in enough to be able to raise her. It wasn't strange to see him stumble in a few hours past midnight after a long night of drinking, but he was always faithfully up at the crack of dawn the next day to see her off to school.
Madison loved her father. He had his faults, but he was good to her. Whether it was a watchful eye, or a shoulder to cry on, he was always there, often with a can of beer in one hand, but there nonetheless.
That all changed when he met Shirley. At first it seemed like a terrible match, Shirley playing the part of the conservative minister's daughter, and Brent being the wild child that he was. Madison certainly wasn't happy about the arrangement. Still, Shirley was able to inspire something in Brent that no one else ever had, stability. Leather jackets turned to sports coats and beers turned to cups of coffee. Between Shirley's religious influence and Brent's mischievous tendencies, a balance was struck that Madison begrudgingly accepted.
Things might have been a bit easier were it not for Shirley's two daughters, Rebekah and Grace. While their mother might have retained some connection to secularism (if only because of Brent), Grace and Rebekah were downright dogmatic in their parroting of their mother's deeply held beliefs. Madison thought that most of it was merely them taking out their frustrations on the new girl that split their mother's attention, rather than any actual adherence to faith. Either way, Madisinner, as they had started calling her, was their favorite target of God-inspired ridicule. Only Brent was able to keep them in check as Shirley tended to turn a blind eye.
Unfortunately, Brent's wild lifestyle caught up with him and one morning he used the last of the beats that his heart had for him. It was Madison who had suffered the awful fate of finding him settled coldly into his favorite recliner, never to move again. The scene only added to Grace and Rebekah's contention that Madison was a devil-child and pushed Shirley down a path that Brent had long kept her from traveling.
Overnight, it seemed, their old farmhouse, an inviting building slathered in sloppy green and white paint, was converted into a citadel of the Lord, and the three girls were immediately pulled from public school. The bible became law and anything else, aside from what the State of Kansas mandated, was of no importance. From then on, their exams were God’s exams, proctored and graded by Shirley of course, an ever willing assistant to her savior. With her fundamentalism, Shirley's hatred of Madison, which had been masked by her affections for Brent, had finally been allowed to flourish and grow. And flourish it did.
Chapter 1
Bible Study
"Madison!"
The girl to which the name belonged could hear her stepmother's shrill voice winding up the attic stairs to her small closet of a bedroom. Madison ignored her and continued to press her pencil softly into the dog-eared pages of a faded sketchbook. She'd been awake for an hour already, just drawing, but she knew the fact that everyone else in the house expected her to be lazy would buy her precious minutes until she started to get into any real trouble.
"Madison!" the voice cried again, raising an octave. The girl's blood pressure began to rise with the increasing agitation of the owner of the voice, but she forced a measure of calm into herself. Just a few more strokes.
"MADISON!" This time the voice was accompanied by a loud stomping on the bottom step of the rickety stairway. Madison's grip tightened, the pencil lead snapped, and an ugly scratch marred her drawing. She cursed, folded up the sketchbook, and stashed it back in its hiding place, precariously taped to the underside of one of her desk drawers.
She pulled a pair of ratty jeans on over her slender pale legs and tried to pat her short purple hair down into something that resembled neatness. Realizing she was on borrowed time, Madison gave up quickly, grabbed her bible, and hurried down the steps.
When she reached the living room, Shirley was waiting for her with a look of utter contempt on her face. The kind she usually reserved for heathens, homosexuals and the rest of "the unsaved." Madison sneered inwardly back at her stepmother. Shirley's crazy scowl and long disheveled brown-turning-gray hair always made Madison think of an old woman who lived alone with an army of nasty cats.
Shirley's actual nasty cats, her twin daughters Grace Mary, and Rebekah Mary sneered at Madison as well, more out of sadistic delight at seeing their mother exact her ire than out of actual hatred.
"What were you doing up there?" Grace asked, running a hand through her thin blonde hair.
"Masturbating?" Rebekah continued, picking up where her sister left off.
"Yeah, with your hairbrush," Madison answered, rolling her eyes. They were knocked back into a submissive gaze as Shirley's hand came down hard on Madison's cheek. Grace and Rebekah giggled, their perfect smiles and smooth skin marred by the malice in their eyes.
"I don't know why you're always late," Shirley hissed. "You need this more than the rest of us, you little whore."
"Slut," Rebekah called out.
"Skank," Grace added, then her eyes went wide. She whispered something to Rebekah and the two of them grinned.
"God knows what was wrong with the festering little whore you were spawned from, you little bastard child," Shirley continued. "It's astounding that your fucking father was the saner of the two parents and was saddled with your sinful little ass."
Madison clutched her bible tightly, trying to dig her nails into the soft cover, to tear it apart with the iron anger she felt within her. They could insult her as much as they wanted, and on most days she wouldn't even give them a second thought, but assaults on her father's character wouldn’t stand. Every time a pair of lips gave them life, the insults took away more of memories that were fading all too fast, replacing the pleasantness with the propaganda. Images of what used to be were all Madison had to tether herself to sanity.
"Go back to your little hole," Shirley said, pointing back up the stairs. "You're beyond saving today...as you are most days. You've probably already booked yourself a one way ticket to hell, but I'd be a sinner myself if I didn't try to redirect your soul somehow. But even God has his limits in patience, and thus so do I. Leave."
Madison tried to hide her smile as she trudged back up the stairs. It was a rare occurrence. She had pissed Shirley off just enough so that the woman was unwilling to put up with her, and yet had stayed below the levels that would result in some sort of sadistic punishment. Of course, that could always come later, but Madison was too thrilled about avoiding bible study to even think about the future.
"Let them wallow in their lies Jaq," she muttered as her unofficial pet cat stepped off the roof and onto the sill of the open window. "You might have to snare some food for me later," she added, settling into the window seat and petting the surprisingly soft fur of the mangy looking gray cat. "I feel another day without lunch and dinner coming on."
Jaq seemed to nod in acknowledgement and laid down on the windowsill, prompting a laugh from Madison. She glanced warily at the door before pulling her sketchbook out once more, along with the object of her inspiration. The sketchbook went on her knees as an old issue of The Uncanny X-Men dominated the space on her desk.
The comic was stretched wide to a panel that showed the voluptuous Jean Grey in as great a state of undress as the illustrators could show without having to resort to censor bars. Madison's teeth abused her lower lip as she concentrated, attempting to match the perfect round contours of the character's ample bust.
An hour later, Madison was shaken from her artistic reverie by footsteps creaking towards her door. Her heart raced, usually her finely tuned ears were able to pick up an intruder the minute they started up the stairs, but she'd gotten lost in the delectable curves of her paper model.
She hastily opened a desk drawer and shoved everything inside, hoping that whoever had come to visit wouldn't also wish to search her room. It was a rare occurrence, but it always seemed to happen at the worst possible moments. Hoping to throw her visitor off, she opened her bible to a random page and tried to look busy as she heard a hand on the doorknob. A soft, but resolute click made her sigh with relief. The footsteps started back down the stairs, their only goal having been to lock Madison away.
It was not an uncommon occurrence, happening at least a few times a week and lasting anywhere from a few hours to a few days. At least it put one more barrier and several more seconds between her and anyone that might want to storm into her room. With her desire to retain possession of the sketchbook and the comic book, those were valuable seconds. Madison sighed, trying to focus on the brighter aspects of her isolation and turned back to the delectable form of Ms. Jean Grey.
Chapter 2
Dinnertime
"Dinnertime skank!"
"Skankarella!"
The identical voices called up the stairs, piercing the air like a pair of shrill whistles. Their sing-song tone and dripping happiness told Madison that something was up, something that could not possibly bode well for her.
Madison sighed as she slid her notebook back into its usual spot and stepped in front of her mirror. The ritual was two-fold, half an attempt to improve her appearance, half an effort to stall as much as she could before heading downstairs. She ran her hands through her short purple hair, not quite long enough to lay down, not quite short enough to stand on end. It had been a small rebellion, but it had been worth it. Anything that she could do to remind herself that she was living her own life, not the life Shirley Roper would have selected for her, paid dividends in helping the days pass a little quicker.
Her hands ran behind her, pinching the voluminous folds of her t-shirt into something more form-fitting. The subtle curves, the taut stomach, the surprisingly ample bust; all were points of jealousy for Grace and Rebekah. The twins were attractive in their own right. Long haired, leggy blondes, large and small in all the right places, but they didn't quite compare to Madison.
She had never been able to figure out why, but Rebekah and Grace tended to be absorbed into the crowd, tended to disappear among the many other attractive girls that looked just like them. Blondes were all too common, girls with purple hair were not. Madison stood out. On the rare instances she was allowed in public, people turned to look at Madison. Boys noticed Madison. Too bad for them the feelings were entirely one sided.
Madison made a futile attempt to instill some organization into her hair, sighing when the strands continued to follow their own rules. She rearranged her oversized t-shirt and loose fitting jeans again, trying to make them hide her body more than they already did. At times she felt invisible in the clothes, reduced to a pixyish head and pale skinny limbs amid the folds of fabric.
"God damnit you little whore, get down here!" Shirley this time. Madison sighed and made her way towards the door, only to find that it was still locked.
"Great," she said to herself, sitting back on the bed. As she leaned back, her shirt came up to reveal a less than half inch wide sliver of pale skin. Madison thought about fixing it, but realized there was no way she’d be able to avoid catching hell since she wasn’t at dinner. "Might as well deserve it a little," she mumbled.
Sure enough, the sound of several angry stomps filled the air. Madison would have worried, but she preferred things when Shirley was being an overt and obvious bitch. At least then she knew what she was up against. When her stepmother started sneaking around, that's when things became difficult. A few seconds later Madison heard Shirley's hands fumble with the lock before succeeding and throwing the door open. It bounced softly off of a pillow that had placed up against the wall in the event of such an occurrence. The lack of noise and damage done by her entrance seemed to piss Shirley off even more.
Several strands of her wavy brown hair fell in front of her face, giving her a shrouded and demonic look. "Why aren't you downstairs?" she hissed.
Madison fought the urge to roll her eyes, an easy feat because Shirley's temper often left her petrified. "T-the door was locked, I couldn't get out," Madison offered weakly.
In a quick motion that made Madison jump, Shirley stood up straight and began fixing her hair. When she was angry, there was no telling what she would do, and any sudden movement was a cause for alarm. Too slow a reaction and Madison could find herself the unwilling recipient of an open palm.
"Why are you so jumpy?" Shirley asked in a voice too calm to seem humanly possible given her appearance a few short seconds previous. "Come down to dinner," she said, turning and exiting the room.
Madison followed with noiseless steps, nervously wondering why everyone was so intent on seeing her at the dinner table. Usually if she didn't come downstairs, they were all perfectly willing to eat without her. Depending on her level of hunger, Madison chose this course of action as often as she could. Jaq was smart enough to occasionally snatch her leftovers from the fridge in the middle of the night. The cat never looked as proud as he did when he was padding onto the roof with a large zip-lock bag of food dangling from his mouth.
Madison settled quietly into her seat as her step-sisters eyed her with malicious grins. It didn't seem possible that she could be ostracized at such a small round table, but with the two girls seemingly pinned to either side of their mother, that's exactly what happened. For the first time, Madison noticed that she was missing her plate.
"I'm not eating tonight?" Madison asked more as a confirmation than a question.
"Oh you're eating dear," Shirley answered smiling sweetly and pointing over Madison's shoulder. Tucked into the corner, a few feet off the welcome mat was Madison's tiny plate, filled with a meager helping of chicken and stuffing. "And know that if you don't eat tonight, you're not eating tomorrow. Now get in your place while the rest of us say our prayers."
Madison stared at Shirley in disbelief. It shouldn't have been such a shock considering some of the other things Shirley had done. And better for Shirley, eating off the floor wouldn't leave a mark, not a physical one anyways. After a short pause, Madison walked glumly over to the corner. She resisted turning to face the table and crossing her arms, a confrontational stance that no doubt would have raised the ire of Shirley even further.
"I don't see how you're going to eat while standing," her step-mother called. Hiding a sigh, Madison dropped to the floor, half sitting, half kneeling.
"Much better," came the reply and Madison could hear the three of them whispering prayers together. "You may start," Shirley said after a few moments. Madison could feel the three sets of eyes on her as she began to pick at her food. They hadn't done her the favor of giving her any silverware so she was forced to eat with her hands. As she slid the first small piece of chicken into her mouth, tears began to fall. She kept her back to the table, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
Madison looked up at the front door, a scant few feet away and for a moment contemplated throwing herself through it. She had nowhere to go, however, and even in the spring-turning-summer, Kansas weather could be moody. Madison resigned herself to cleaning her plate, annoyed with the fact that in spite of things, it felt good to get some food in her stomach. Having been locked in her room since morning, it had been over a day since she’d had any food.
Madison cleared her plate as fast as she could stopping short of licking it clean. Her stomach wanted her to, but her pride wouldn’t have it. She needed to hold onto some dignity. "Can I go now?" she asked, swallowing hard and trying to press some measure of confidence into her voice.
"Are you done with dinner?" Shirley badgered. "Show me your plate."
Without turning around, Madison held up the empty dish.
"Good, now rinse it off and leave until you're called back down to clear the table."
Madison sighed and turned towards the sink. It was one of the few times she wished her hair was longer so that it would obscure her ugly tear streaked face. She kept her eyes on the floor as she walked across the room, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. Still, she knew the three of them were grinning at her misery.
"Skankarella," Grace whispered as she passed.
"Fag," Rebekah added.
Madison turned on the sink, wishing that the rushing water would do more to obscure the muted conversation behind her. The old farmhouse did have one modern appliance, a dishwasher that Madison had never been allowed to use. She was always forced to clean her lone plate by hand so that her mother’s and stepsisters’ things remained uncontaminated. The one good thing about being forced to do it on her own was that she could settle for “clean enough,” instead of suffering towards Shirley’s unrealistic definition of clean. Madison rushed through the task, setting her things in the cupboard and rushing towards her room, ignoring more insults lobbed her way by her step-sisters.
About a dozen of the fourteen steps to the attic creaked when anything larger than a small dog walked upon them. Madison took pleasure in stepping heavily on each one, hoping that every time she walked across them, the warning they made when a member of her step-family traversed them grew a little louder.
She pushed her way through the thick wooden door into the dark abyss that was her tiny attic home. The peaked roof made the room seem even smaller than it actually was. There was just enough space for a small twin bed pushed against the back window, a large dresser pushed awkwardly against the slanted ceiling on the right, and her small metal desk slid haphazardly against the wall to the left. Both were pushed up tight against her bed making each easily accessible from beneath the warmth of the covers, a setup she very much enjoyed.
Madison shed her oversized t-shirt for the more form fitting black tank top she wore beneath. Both the mirror and the girl wondered how she could be so slim and still have curves and breasts. Shirley would have a fit if she saw her attire, and her sisters would call her a whore, but in the heat it was much more comfortable than the oppressive tent of a t-shirt. Plus it was unlikely someone would ascend the stairs anyways. When Madison was in her room she knew that laziness on part of her step-family would temper the harassment. Easier to yell up the stairs than to climb them.
She pulled out the sketchbook again, flipping through the pages to the drawing of Jean Grey. Madison allowed her eyes to be caught for a moment in the unrealistic shapely form of the Marvel superheroine before snapping back to reality and pulling a set of colored pencils from her desk.
"I like her hair, but I think I like mine better," Madison remarked to the still sleeping Jaq who was curled into a ball on her bed. His short gray fur was almost indistinguishable from the dingy looking blankets that were much cleaner than they looked. It was a good thing too, since he'd been able to hide in plain sight on many an occasion from the sudden arrival of a feline hating step-relative.
Jaq seemed more interested in the blankets than the scantily clad woman that the colored pencils were slowly bringing to life. Madison, on the other hand, hunched over the drawing, bringing her eyes as close to the paper as she could. She began shading her creation, focusing first on the more alluring parts of Jean Grey's anatomy before filling in the surroundings. Slowly she began adding more and more color, mixing and matching until the hues were nearly indistinguishable from those of the comic book, aside from the color of Jean's discarded uniform.
"I never did like that ugly bright green and yellow," Madison mumbled, opting for more muted colors.
"Dishes!" The word was barked up the stairs and bounced off the walls before finding its way into Madison's room and hitting her with the impact of a slap in the face. She jumped, but her hand held steady this time, not marring the drawing that despite Madison's low tech approach, rivaled the comic's in color and intensity.
Madison folded the comic book back into the sketchpad and wandered downstairs once more. Descending into hell, she thought as she left the sanctuary of her room. Thankfully neither her step-sisters nor her step-mother were anywhere near the dining room or kitchen as she silently cleared the table. As she began loading the dishwasher, she could see the girls seated in front of the living room couch while their mother read from a bible whose pristine cover belied the outdated notions found within.
Time seemed to freeze as there was a knock at the door. Shirley didn't deal kindly with visitors and any interruption of her bible mongering was sure to be met with an elevated level of nasty. Madison glanced into the foyer, but the three girls were too wrapped up in the decrepit little book to even notice. Madison stared at her feet as she crept slowly at the entryway, fearing she'd step on a particularly creaky part of the floor and give herself and the visitor away.
Madison slowly opened the half painted and somewhat weary looking mess that played the part of front door to meet the evening visitor. Rather than greet them, she deftly stepped outside and shut it behind her.
"Sorry," she said, turning red in the face. "Shirley doesn't like to be bothered when she's reading from the bible."
"Luckily I didn't come to see Shirley," the youth said with a grin and a barely perceptible lisp. Even from her unimpressive five feet and six inches of height, Madison looked down at her portly teenaged visitor. He was built like a disproportionate snowman, a small circle of a face perched atop a decidedly larger circle of a body, and the skin tone wasn't far off from a snowy white either.
"Remember me?" he asked, grinning widely. He held out his hands, gesturing towards himself, as though that would jog her memory.
"Um no...sorry?"
"Fagan! We used to play together as kids...well...as younger kids," he said, quickly correcting himself. "Back round five or six...your dad was a good friend of my dad...no?"
Madison stood there, still as a statue. Her brain felt like it was moving in mud, but slowly images began to roll back. She smiled and surprised Fagan with a hug. People that didn't despise the very fact that she existed were too few and far between.
"I do remember...kinda," she added, returning his smile.
"Been looking around for you, to reconnect, you know?"
Madison nodded blankly, her mind already returning to thoughts of Shirley and the girls inside. "Look, I should go," she said, opening the door and stepping back inside.
"But can I-" It was too late. The door thudded shut before he could protest. Undaunted, he walked down the path to his car, content to try again another day.
Inside, Madison peered into the living room again, but thankfully Shirley, Grace, and Rebekah had their eyes closed and hadn't noticed any disturbance. Madison didn't know what they were praying for, but took delight in the fact that hers had been answered. After regaining her composure, she quietly finished the dishes and wafted back up the stairs.
Chapter 3
Julia Lena
The third baseman got his glove up, but only succeeded in slowing the large yellow softball before it collided violently with his nose and cheekbone. As he was holding a towel to his face in an attempt to stop the bleeding, the batter of said ball patted him on the back.
"I told you not to play in so close." The voice was decidedly feminine, but carried a hint of macho confidence. It was perfectly suited to its owner, a tall wiry brunette. "I may be a girl, but I'm in the men's league for a reason." As the call came for play to resume, she trotted back to second base. A few minutes later left-center fielder caught the third out and Julia's team's rally came up a half dozen runs short.
A tall broad shouldered man sauntered over to her as she was gathering her things in the dugout. It was obvious that he'd rather be playing than watching, and he likely would be were it not for a subtle limp. "Tough break, huh?" he said dejectedly, running a hand through his short blond hair. "You'll get them next time," he added glumly.
Julia laughed, in spite of the man's morose expression. "Dad, it's a rec-league softball game. I think I'll be okay."
"It was still a league game Lee," he added, using his favorite abbreviation of Lena, her middle name.
"Yeah, we'll get 'em next time," she said with a wink, tossing her glove and bat into the back of his SUV before climbing into the passenger seat. "You know you don't have to give me a ride," she said for what seemed like the millionth time. "I'm eighteen, I've been in college for a year, I can do a few things on my own."
"Yeah, but you know I like to watch you play," he said pulling out of the gravel parking lot.
"Mom doesn't like it when you, 'encourage exploits ill befitting my gender,'" Julia said doing her best impression of her mother's haughty tone.
Her father laughed at the all too accurate mimicry. "Well your mother has some...definite ideas about what a woman should be," he said smirking.
"And you think a woman should be...the son you always wanted," Julia added, giving him a sidelong glance. "Relax dad, I'm just teasing you," she said after his expression hardened and he didn't respond.
"Your mother and I love you very much the way you are," he said awkwardly.
"Dad, I don't need the propaganda, I believe it," she replied, and then whispered too quietly for him to hear, "I think."
The rest of the fifteen minute drive home saw her father badgering her about her first year at school. Julia had reluctantly gone away to be an engineer. She'd always been good in math and science and enjoyed technology classes in high school, so it seemed like a logical course to take, but she never felt as though she fit in as an engineer. It wasn't so much that she was one of a few girls in each of her classes, or at the University itself, she just knew there were things she was not only better at, but more passionate in pursuing.
"How was the game?" Lauren Prince's tone dripped with condescending contempt.
"Fine mom," Julia said, rolling her eyes. "We lost."
"Shame," her mother said airily. "You know, I don't know why you do...such things. Shouldn't a girl your age be sipping cosmopolitans bought with a fake ID?"
"Do you want me to?" Julia asked, putting her cleats in the closet off the front door before wandering towards her room.
"I'm just saying," her mother started indignantly, "that a little more femininity wouldn't hurt you."
"That's what you think," Julia muttered to no one in particular as she wandered up the stairs of their small two story house and into her room.
The scant amount of wall space was adorned with movie and book posters from various eras with little rhyme or reason. Harold and Maude looked down upon Harry Potter, who nearly mingled with Van Helsing, who looked ready to wage war against Sleeping Beauty. The Garden State poster had somehow dislodged its thumbtack and was hanging from a deteriorating corner before Julia rushed over and fixed it. Unfortunately, in doing so, she brushed against a stack of notebooks on her printer and sent them tumbling to the floor.
Cursing, she opted to leave them where they had less potential energy and arranged them into a neat stack beneath the small end table that held the printer. After ensuring there were no more stacks of clutter ready to avalanche, she settled into her chair, propping her feet up on the one bare corner of the desk and popped her laptop open in front of her.
As a cool breeze wafted in the open window, Julia thanked her laptop for the warmth it afforded her mostly bare legs. She'd begun to change and only gotten about halfway there when an idea had struck her. The few seconds it took the laptop to power up were agony as she struggled to keep the thought bouncing around in her head.
After several more seconds, she was finally able to open a digital notebook that she kept and jot down a few storyline ideas for the graphic novel she'd been attempting to shape for what seemed like months. She had several panels filled with dialogue, and a few stick figures to convey the general sense of each scene but had gotten stuck. While her mind was beautifully adept at filling page after page with flowing prose, the visually artistic gears often failed to turn. She liked the story that she had, but felt as though she couldn't quite put things together without an adequate picture.
The keystrokes slowed and then stopped entirely and Julia's inactivity allowed the breeze on her legs to again catch her attention. Shuddering, she realized that compression shorts and a sports bra were hardly proper attire. She grabbed a clean set of clothes and wandered out of her room, unfortunately passing her mother in the hallway. Fending off a few comments about her body and how she should show it off a bit more, Julia sought refuge in the bathroom.
The image in the mirror that stared back at her was tall and athletic, stopping a few inches short of six feet. Her body reflected her tomboyish nature with slightly broader shoulders, and a wiry muscular frame that was much more at home at a variety of athletic venues than it was at any of the ones her mother had in mind.
Still, she wasn't far past a mediocre athlete and she knew it. Better than most her peers, but not quite good enough to do anything with it. And lately she'd found her mind wandering towards less active, and more literary pursuits. She stripped quietly and took one last look at herself. "A-cups for a C student," she sighed. "Wish those were backwards," she finished before stepping into the shower.
It was true, Julia had always been brilliant, but her grades were not matching the output she knew she was capable of. It wasn't as though the material was difficult for her; she had practically sleepwalked through her classes on her way to a 2.7 GPA. No small feat as an engineering major, but she couldn't quite bring herself to put forth the effort required to produce a more attractive number.
She had an apathy problem and she knew it. If she couldn't find a desire, then she wouldn't excel like she knew she could. Engineering seemed boring, inhibitive somehow, as though it was holding her back. Sitting before a blank page, Julia had felt far more intelligent and driven than she'd ever been. But the world was never kind to artists, and her parents evidently less so, and Julia had chosen the safer path.
Julia began to doze off under the welcome massage of the warm water, but halfway into her standing nap her mind began to wander back to her story. It walked down fictional paths that had previously been unexplored and ideas began to pour. Excited, Julia stopped the water and barely paused to pick up a towel before racing back to her bedroom. The lock clicked into place as she ensured her parents wouldn't get an unwanted eyeful while she eschewed clothes for time at her laptop.
Over an hour later, she'd finally spilled all that she felt she had to give into the device and leaned back to relax. In her rush into her room another pile of papers and books had tumbled to the floor, but Julia ignored them and decided that the time had come to finally dress. She pulled a faded University of Kansas t-shirt and another pair of athletic shorts on over an uninteresting set of bra and panties, an outfit that would no doubt drive her mother insane.
Unlocking her door and stepping out into the hallway, she decided to test this theory. Unfortunately, she ran into her father first. He gestured to the T-shirt, "how do you think they'll do this year Lee?"
"Ugh, I wish you'd stop calling her that," her mother complained from the kitchen, stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce.
"Why, it's her name," he protested.
"Her name is Julia Lena, not Lee," her mother corrected. Stop clinging to your desire for a bo-"
"Hey, I like Lee," Julia said, cutting her mother off before she had a chance to finish the sentence. "And I like Julia and I like Lena. They all fit me in one way or another. It smells good," she said, trying to transition the subject to dinner.
With her father silenced, her mother started in on her own implications as to why her daughter was a disappointment. "Do you have to wear boys’ clothes? Let me take you to the mall, we can find something that fits your figure better," her mother said.
"Fucking hell," Julia muttered. "You'll see me in a dress in a week mom. That should make you happy."
"Why, what's in a week?" her mother asked after dropping the spoon into the sizable pan of spaghetti sauce. She kept glancing up at her daughter as she tried to use a pair of tongs to fish it out.
"The newest issue of Uncanny X-Men comes out over at Smith's, right?" her father asked without glancing up from the baseball game he'd turned on. "Who are you going as?"
"Destiny...Irene Adler?" Julia offered when she saw that both of her parents were clueless. "Blue and gold catsuit, blue dress...well I suppose it's more of a cape actually."
"Never heard of her," her father mused. "What does she do?"
"Tells the future," Julia explained, adding under her breath, "among other things."
"Nice, you know I should repopulate my old Spiderman collection," her father mused to no one in particular.
"I swear, sometimes I think I'm living with two men," her mother said, stirring the sauce once more with a new spoon.
Julia gritted her teeth and wandered back into her room, foregoing her laptop for a small bound notebook she reserved for shorter and more intimate thoughts. She curled up into a small recliner that sat beneath the window and began to write.
Chapter 4
Fagan Returns
Madison often found herself wondering how a house accumulated such an amount of dust in so short a period of time. Not that she terribly minded the cleaning, it was just that it forced her to be in closer proximity to her stepsisters and stepmother than she liked.
At least on this particular day, the two demons were engrossed in a painting lesson doled out by their equally artistically inept mother. The focus was a stained glass window depicting a somewhat hyperbolic and gory version of the crucifixion. At least that's what Madison thought they were attempting to recreate. She wasn't really sure what in the hell Grace was trying to draw, and though Rebekah's canvass contained an appropriate amount of red, it didn't look much better.
Shirley was doing an admirable job of making them even worse by attempting to micromanage every stroke. Madison delighted in seeing them at such odds with each other, but was all too aware that ire could too easily be turned onto her. She knew her drawing style didn't really lend itself to biblical scenes, but Madison was positive she could produce a much better likeness than either of the twins.
"God damnit, this looks like shit," Grace complained, only to be met with a hard slap from her mother. Even Madison had winced at the loud impact.
"Thou shalt not take thy Lord's name in vain," Shirley recited.
"I learned it from her," Grace whined, throwing her head in Madison's direction. Surprisingly, Shirley didn't take it as an invitation to verbally abuse Madison instead of her own spawn. Unfortunately where Grace failed in diverting their mother's attention, Rebekah succeeded. She grabbed her palette and tossed it into the relatively full trash can.
Shirley's head snapped around like a hawk spotting prey. Her beady eyes focused on the bag that was about three quarters full. "Why isn't that out at the curb yet? Honor thy father and thy mother," she spat, as though it were some kind of explanation.
"Sighing, Madison tied the bag off and headed out the door. She'd only made it a few steps down their long driveway before she saw something terrifying. Not for what it was, but for the consequences that could come from its appearance.
Fagan parked his ten year old Volkswagen at the end of the driveway and got out smiling. "You seemed busy the other night, so I figured I'd try again," he said amicably.
"You should leave," Madison said, walking to the end of the driveway and placing the bag in the trashcan.
"Good to see you again too. Nice catching up," Fagan joked, following her like a rotund lapdog.
Madison paused halfway between the house and the road. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be mean but my stepmother is kind of a...bitch," she confessed, whispering the last word as though the woman would somehow telepathically know she was being scorned.
Both Fagan and Madison jumped as the front door was flung open. Madison cringed, she knew that her stepmother couldn't possibly have heard her, but her heart raced in logic-defying fear. "What the goddamn hell is taking so long?!" she yelled.
"Hypocrite much?" Madison mumbled, refusing to look either person in the eye.
Fagan started past her, holding out his hand and smiling jovially. "Fagan Hermes Teresa," he said cheerfully. "Pleased to meet you ma'am." Madison buried her face in her hands and groaned, aware of the inevitable confrontation that was seconds away.
Shirley refused to take his hand, staring at it like it carried every communicable disease that had ever existed, both biblical and secular. Slowly her gaze ran up Fagan's arm to his still grinning face, though the cheer in his eyes had been replaced by awkwardness.
"What the hell are you, some kind of queer?"
Fagan's smile shrunk into a knowing and patronizing smirk. "Yes, a fag named Fag...poetic, isn't it?"
"God hates fags," Shirley replied almost automatically. Madison was surprised, though she supposed she shouldn't have been. The sentiment was plastered over many an item in the house, and a few choice articles of clothing. Still, she'd never seen Shirley express the bigoted ideal directly to someone's face.
Fagan to his credit was relatively undaunted, and Madison was immediately jealous. To have the freedom to be oneself, especially in the face of someone like Shirley was nothing short of amazing. It was a lifestyle that Madison had always hoped she could live one day.
"Get off my driveway sinner," Shirley hissed. Fagan smiled, gave the two girls a curt bow and stepped back into his car. Shirley watched him drive off, nearly seething with rage.
"Who was that piece of shit?" she asked nastily.
"A friend my dad used to have me play with. He was friends with his father I guess," Madison said. Honesty was probably not the best course of action, but Madison couldn't think of an adequate lie.
"That figures," Shirley snapped, and Madison had to bite back a sharp response in defense of her father's name. "Get in the house," Shirley hissed. "You'll be lucky if I ever let you leave again."
Chapter 5
First Glimpse of Lee
Shirley either forgot her threat, or was too much of a hypocrite to follow through because a few days later, Madison was tasked with following Grace and Rebekah into town to go grocery shopping. She suspected the only reason she was allowed to go was because the two girls were too stupid and too selfish to complete anything but the most basic tasks and Shirley wanted them to come back with actual sustaining food, not candy and glamour magazines.
The three rode in silence in the family's beat up old station wagon. It was always an awkward journey into town and usually made worse by the fact that Madison's seat didn't have a seatbelt. The twins often delighted in stomping on the brakes so that Madison rattled around the back like a marble in a washing machine.
Town was basically a half mile strip that featured a Wal-Mart Super Center, a Kinney Drugstore, and a myriad of privately owned shops that offered anything from DVDs to clothes to gardening tools. The twins pulled into the plaza that held the majority of the stores across the four lane street from the Wal-Mart.
As soon as she was let out of the back of the car, Madison was accosted and held roughly by Grace. "Alright, where's the money?"
"What?" Madison feigned ignorance.
"We know mom gives you extra money to do the real shopping. We want it," Rebekah said, rooting around in Madison's pockets.
"We need food..." Madison protested.
"We'll get food...for us. Besides anything we do will be your fault anyways Skankarella. Aha!" She finally found what she was looking for, tucked into Madison's sock. "Alright, we've got sixty more dollars," she said to Grace, who had finally released Madison by way of a hard shove into the side of the car.
Madison rubbed her arms where Grace had gripped her tightly and set off towards the Wal-Mart. She patted her left breast where she'd hidden the fourth twenty that Shirley had given her. It wasn't much, but it would at least buy bread, milk, eggs, and a few other things, hopefully enough to escape the older woman's wrath. The probable outcome was split evenly between Shirley berating her anyway just because she could, or actually turning on her own daughters for being morons.
She crossed the street by the crosswalk beneath town's only red light in a hurry, beginning to regret the jeans that clung to her body like a wet towel in the summer heat. While the twins were allowed to show more skin from time to time, Shirley kept Madison as chaste looking as she could, partially to make the girl undesirable to any potential suitors, and partially in remembrance of some of the more unsavory parts of her father's past.
Looking around for the twins, Madison tied her baggy T-shirt off baring a bit of her pale midriff. If she was caught, there would surely be consequences, but it helped her feel a little cooler. Even more helpful to the cause was the blanket of air conditioned atmosphere that encompassed her as she strode into the Wal-Mart. Though she'd rapidly grown more comfortable, Madison left her shirt alone. It wouldn't hurt to get a little attention for something besides her oddly colored hair.
She grabbed a shopping cart and quickly wandered off towards the grocery section of the store. She'd have to work harder to stretch the money, everything was getting more expensive. After the eggs and milk and bread, she'd only have a few dollars left over for other things like chicken or soup.
After wandering around immersed in her own head for several minutes Madison finally decided upon pancake mix and mashed potatoes with the money left over. Not the greatest choices, but they would last for quite a while. She hoped that Grace and Rebekah would try to at least put some of the money they’d taken to good use, but that was probably asking too much.
"I like to get eggs every week so we have extras just in case." Madison was snapped out of her own thoughts by the boisterously condescending voice from an aisle over.
"What is this mom, Housewife 101?" Madison snorted and then turned her cart around the corner towards the voice. The older woman, the mother, sounded obnoxious, but the girl sounded kind of cute.
Madison wandered down the aisle, fighting off the shivers that the freezers on either side brought. She wanted to pull her shirt down, to cover herself, but she also wanted to be noticed. To an outside observer, the cheeses seemed to hold an inordinate amount of Madison's attention as she tried to pretend she had a reason for being in the aisle while keeping the tall brunette she’d just discovered in her sights.
She found her eyes driving downward to the backside that only a life of sports could create. The long gym shorts covered a bit too much for Madison's liking as she willed her eyes to see right through them to the toned thighs beneath. The conversation between mother and daughter faded away as Madison tried to covertly study the rest of the girl.
She was taller, something Madison had always found attractive, and subtlely masculine, another plus for the girl. Her broad shoulders and wiry arms looked like they'd be a perfect haven of security for Madison in another life and her ordinary brown ponytail was somehow alluring and irresistibly sexy. It could have been because Madison wanted to grab it and pull the girl closer as their lips-
"Holy shit, sorry!" Madison jumped back so hard she nearly tumbled to the floor over her own feet. She found herself looking into the very eyes of the girl she'd been ogling. The brunette, who was just as attractive from the front as she had been from the back, couldn't possibly have known what she was thinking, but Madison felt like a kid who'd been caught reaching into a forbidden cookie jar. If Shirley knew...
The girl untangled her cart from Madison's. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"Julia, watch your language...and apologize!"
"I just did mom, weren't you listening?" She turned back to Madison. "I'm really sorry, I was frustrated."
"So am I," the older woman mumbled a bit too loudly.
"You know what mom? You can do this on your own. You’ll find me in sporting goods." She pushed the cart towards her mother and walked off without saying another word.
Madison hadn't noticed, but Julia left their first encounter quite red in the face. She'd made such an ass of herself in front of the cute purple pixie. First smashing into her like it was some kind of suburban demolition derby, and then flying off the handle with her mother. Oh Jesus, her mother. What would the girl think of that relationship?
She walked aimlessly up and down rows of balls and balls and gloves, running her eyes over everything, but not really seeing any of it. She was too caught up in what she felt was an awful first impression. 'Shit, I should have gotten her name. Maybe there's still a chance,' she decided as she wandered back towards the frozen foods.
Unfortunately, Grace and Rebekah had found Madison just after Julia had left. "Smooth Skankarella," Grace smirked ignoring the fact that Julia's mom hadn't yet left the aisle.
"How the fuck are you going to pay for all this?" Rebekah asked.
"There was more money," Madison answered meekly, again struggling to find an adequate lie. She prepared herself for the worst, but Rebekah merely shrugged it off. "We're out of pretty much everything at home anyways," she said nonchalantly as the three headed to the front of the store in search of a checkout line.
Grace and Rebekah had a few items of their own and stepped ahead of Madison. It was mostly cereal, not the best food option, but it would at least keep them fed for a week or two. While her sisters were occupied, Madison looked around, trying to find Julia again. She thought she was going to leave disappointed until she finally spotted the unmistakable athletic stride and unforgettable bottom of the girl she'd recently been eye-fondling. Unfortunately Julia was headed in the opposite direction, back towards the grocery section of the store. Looking for her mother no doubt, Julia thought with a sigh and let her eyes wander back to the register.
She was taken aback when she turned due to the stares she was getting from both Grace and Rebekah.
"That was the same girl, wasn't it?" Rebekah badgered.
"You little whore," Grace added, drawing the stares of a few shoppers within earshot.
"You fucking dyke," Rebekah continued.
"No-" Madison started, but it was too late. The look in her eyes, and the red on her face had already betrayed her.
"Holy shit," Rebekah gasped. "I was just treating you like crap for the hell of it, but we're right...aren't we?"
Madison tried to hold a calm look on her face, but she began to cry. She knew what it meant, what would happen once Shirley found out. She'd tried to hide it, both from herself and from everyone around her, but the urges and desires could not be suppressed. They would find their way out of her one way or another, Madison had just hoped that when they did she'd be far removed from the Roper house.
It was too late. Homosexuality was a cardinal sin, and Shirley's punishment would be severe and enduring. Madison began numbly loading her things onto the conveyor while Grace and Rebekah snickered to one another.
"I can't wait to tell mom," Rebekah said with a laugh.
Madison's tears started fall with less grace and greater volume and people continued to stare. She tried to wipe them away, tried to regain some composure, but each time she did, two images crystallized in her mind. The first was of the life that Shirley would force her to live. It was as though the woman would be able to steal a part of herself. The second, however was far worse. It was of Julia's face...an image Madison wasn't likely to see again.
Chapter 6
The Little Dyke
It was a depressing car ride home for both Madison and Julia. The former merely stared out the back window, watching the road pass behind her. Grace and Rebekah laughed about something in the front seat, but she paid them little attention. She was trying to mount a defense for the onslaught that was sure to come from Shirley, but her mind remained blank. She had nothing to say, her sisters' accusations were the truth, and the truth was indefensible.
Madison struggled to pinpoint a time when she knew she was different, that her tastes were unlike most girls. Her eyes and her artistic sensibilities had certainly always been drawn to the feminine form but she wasn't sure exactly when that interest had taken on a distinctly more romantic tinge. As she grew older the drawings progressed from things that she merely liked to look at and recreate, to things she wanted to touch. She hadn't really considered romance as so much of that sort of thing had been censored from her by Shirley. Madison hadn't seen so much as a Disney movie in her youth around which to base any notions of love. From what she'd heard, the maidens were always weak, submissive characters, and the princes dashing attractive men. She had no interest in either. All Madison really wanted was someone with which she could actually share parts of herself without fear of rejection.
Meeting Julia might have actually been the turning point. Madison had always had vague impressions of what she wanted in a relationship, but with no real sense of that sort of thing and very few people to interact with, that part of her had gone unexplored. Julia was really the first time she'd had a person on which to focus those feelings, something tangible that she could recreate in her head. It was intoxicating. It was also impossible, she thought with a sigh as she continued to look out the window.
***
Meanwhile Julia fidgeted nervously in her mother's small sedan. "Mom...do you remember that girl we ran into at Wal-Mart?"
"What girl, why does it matter?"
"The girl I literally ran into?"
"I suppose," her mother answered with a sigh. "Oh the weird one with the purple hair."
"I thought it was cute," Julia said in Madison's defense.
"Hmm, you would," her mother replied.
Julia started a harsh retort, but then realized that she was coming dangerously close to revealing a part of herself she’d rather keep secret. She decided she wanted the conversation to end, and the easiest way to do that was through silence. She buried a number of replies and opted to watch the houses whisk by as they pulled into the driveway of their relatively ordinary two story house in their relatively ordinary development.
***
Madison shuddered as the open area of the strip slowly turned to the claustrophobic wooded tunnels that were the roads leadings towards their old farmhouse. After several minutes the station wagon found a miniscule gap in the trees and pulled into their gravel driveway. The fact that the sun had disappeared behind a few layers of clouds didn't help Madison's increasingly dismal mood.
She sullenly unloaded the groceries by herself as Rebekah and Grace bounded joyfully into the house. As Madison began to stock the fridge and pantry, she hoped that the events of a half hour previous had slipped her sisters' infantile minds. Unfortunately she wasn't so lucky.
"She was making eyes at someone at Wal-Mart," Rebekah told her mother.
"What?! That fat queer? He could do much better than you," she spat, looking her stepdaughter up and down.
Madison wanted to shrink away and hide, but standing in the entryway between the kitchen and living room there was nowhere to go. She was so distracted, her mind didn't even register the insult. She looked elsewhere as her stepmother's eyes bored into her, trying to keep her mind off the situation at hand. 'God the walls were an ugly color. Not quite yellow, not quite white. That picture is crooked...who cares, I'm not in it anyways. I wonder when I'll have to dust again.'
"Well, who was it?" Shirley badgered, looking from one daughter to another.
"Oh just some girl," Rebekah said flippantly, grinning at Madison before looking around the room and pretending to be engaged elsewhere.
"What?" Shirley asked. No one answered her so she ratcheted up the volume. "WHAT?!"
"Some tall gangly looking chick," Rebekah muttered.
"She was cute," Madison found herself whispering. Her hands flew to her mouth, hoping that no one had noticed her slip.
Either way it didn't really matter, Shirley had already been set off. She rose out of her depressingly brown recliner, using her two inch advantage to tower over Madison. Without warning, Shirley lunged. Madison cowered in fear, thinking she was going to be hit, but her stepmother merely grabbed a hold of her arm. "You..." she started, but no other words seemed to want to come. She glowered at Madison for several long moments, her lips quivering, a dozen different profanities on the tip of her tongue. Madison tried to look away, but she couldn't help herself. There was something to the impending catastrophe in Shirley's eyes that morbidly drew Madison in.