You figure you must have passed out at some point, or at least become completely delirious during the jog, because when you become conscious of your surroundings again, you’re not being held precariously against your sister’s toned leg by a steadily sweat-soaking piece of tape from her desk, you’re laying atop Carly’s horizontal quad as she props it up on her bed, perpendicular to her other leg.  You struggle for a moment against the damp, soggy bonds of the tape, and find it won’t come loose, as your hands are still bound into the twisted ruffles of gummy Scotch.

                Spitting, you lick your lips a little to dampen them, but quickly retract your tongue into your mouth in a searing double-take, your lips quivering, as you realize a sizeable layer of Carly’s sweat has actually dried to nearly every square inch of your face.  Your hair, at this point, is a dried-sweat-encrusted, smelly mess, your sister’s musk heavily pervading it.

                It’s times like these that you think you’d endure a thousand hours of branding torture for a single two-minute shower.

                “Earth to little brother, Earth to little brother…” coos Carly sweetly, batting gently at your cheeks with a pinky fingertip.  “The USS Carly has come in for a landing,” she giggles.

                You mentally groan.  Carly’s misplaced sense of humor never ceases to irritate you, although you have a feeling you would find her much funnier at this moment if she hadn’t just forced you to spend the past forty minutes fearing that you might tumble to a bloody death on the pavement while simultaneously getting whipped in the back and drinking half a gallon’s worth of her wicked sweat.

                Carly’s fingers wrestle with the damp tape, which is barely holding on by the remaining glue that hadn’t been washed away by her streaming, salty solvent during the jog.  Finally peeling it off her warm, sticky leg, she dangles it over the bed a few inches.  You are far too exhausted to move, and so you simply remain stuck to the tape like flypaper, your arms crossed and pinned to your sides, your legs hanging, as Carly holds the twisted tape between her long forefinger and thumb, watching you spin before her deep blue eyes like a baby’s toy mobile.

                “How do you feel, little guy?” she asks at length, after the tape has finally ceased aimlessly spinning around in its swirling pattern, her hand still keeping you above the surface of the bed so that you can’t actually get your footing to try and end the merry-go-round from hell.  “Because I feel pretty freaking good.”

                “Oh, G…” you mumble randomly at nothing in particular.  Your head is spinning so wildly and you’ve become so moistly drunk on your sister’s sweat, you frankly just want her to wad you up into the woolen tube sock and put you in the drawer so you can sleep this off.

                You cough at this thought, spitting out another mouthful of dried mineral from inside your cheek.  What did you just think to yourself?

                That you want to sleep this off.  That’s right.  That’s what it was.  Nothing else.

                Your next semi-conscious thought comes in the form of spine-tingling shock as a chill rushes through your body.  It begins slowly at first, causing goose bumps to prickle along your arms and legs, and the hairs all over your body to stand on end as if electrified by some invisible force.  Then, it rushes through your body fully.  Your skin ices over, nearly going numb, connecting quickly into your blood.  You feel like your system has just been flushed with liquid nitrogen, and as it all finally comes together in your synapses, you writhe like a worm, flopping against whatever it was that just induced this feeling in you.

                You open your mouth and roar with shock, the feeling of cold continuously rushing across your body.  As your skin slowly comes back into feeling, the chills continuing to ripple through your head and down to your toes, you notice that whatever it was that just touched you wasn’t your sister’s finger.

                It’s wax. Your entire back is becoming coated in it, thick and clay-like, and it’s only continuing to ridge its way up your sides, onto your stomach and crotch, as you continue to be dragged through it by the twisted tape piece.  Your head is bonked against the plastic rimmed lip of what is evidently a jar before Carly spoons you back through the waxy center again, stirring you thoroughly until most of your body is coated in the freezing goop.

                Your skin begins to feel sore, as the wax is much more solid than liquid, and drags violently at your skin as you coast weightily over the surface.  As your body has settled into a steady pattern of insane shivering, you are finally lifted out of the container, a mass of wax probably equal to or even greater than your own body weight clinging to you in such tight layers that it seems like you should be warmed, and yet you’re not.  It feels more like you just shoveled thirty gallons of fresh-fallen sleet down your gullet.

                As you rise higher and higher into the air away from the container, your unsteady eyes manage to make out the colorful blue, red, and orange hues of the bright jar label.  The large white bubble letters.  Your vision finally comes into clear enough focus through the tortuously unending chills, and you groan aloud to yourself as you read it.

                “ICY HOT”

                You would expect nothing less from Carly.

                Your quick midair reprieve comes to an end as you are pancaking with a gooey slap against Carly’s still-propped quad, the muscle-relaxing remedy instantly adhering you onto your sister’s warm leg.  Bouncing the tape lightly, then, Carly begins to drag you along her leg slowly.  Your body reacts confusedly as the hot, thick flesh of your gargantuan sister’s impressively massive runner’s quad smushes through the layers of chemical wax, your stomach soon running along the smooth, sweaty surface, leaving your arms and legs to remain partially frozen in a cocoon of freezing wax.

                Freezing for the time being, anyway.

                As you reach Carly’s shin, the motion reverses, and she slides you back down along your tape yo-yo up her leg and along the curved edge of her tanned leg.  She tilts you at a lower angle, and soon your cheek is being ground against the ridiculously wide fleshy curvature, gumming IcyHot collecting against your nose and battling for high dominance amongst your senses with the flaking dried sweat of your sister’s leg as it chips lightly off against your chin and lips.

                “Oh, YEAH!” laughs Carly, slapping the side of her own leg playfully as she turns your body around for another lap along her leg.  “Wooh!  Yes!  So c-c-cold…” she giggles, stuttering purposefully as she watches your hapless ride along her long limb.  “Went way too far on that round.  Oh, God, I’m going to be feeling my legs until next week…”

                You let out a little screech of pained, frigid shock, while your sister simultaneously sighs pleasurably at the relief your little wax-coated body is bringing her overheated quadricep.

                The moment of exchanged sound effects is split by the cheerful, bouncy rhythm of Katy Perry’s “California Gurlz” trilling out from Carly’s cell phone, which rests peacefully in the folds of her bed sheet.

                “Give me two seconds, little bro,” winks Carly, continuing to drag you along her leg and ignoring your pathetic whimpering as she scoops her cell phone up with the hand not pinching your tape line.  Humming the catchy tune as she snaps open her phone and reads the ID line, she raises her eyebrows.  “Looks like it’s mom,” she says, tapping the receive key with a shrug and placing her phone against her ear.

                She always seems to enjoy teasing you like this.  Your mother is on the phone, no more than two feet away from you right now.  If only you could summon up the correct volume level, you could let your parents know what’s happened the last five years.  That you didn’t run away and die.  That your sister isn’t really a human being.  She’s secretly one of the cruelest, most sadistic creatures to ever walk the earth, and she’s been systematically torturing your body and mind for what has felt like twenty lifetimes.

                But, unfortunately enough for your psyche, you are less than three inches tall, and your loudest volume would only register as a muffled squeak in the phone; it might as well be static pops.

                In moments this unbearable for your desire for freedom to handle, you can thank your sister for giving you something to occupy your attention, as you spit out a bitter, greased wad of Icy Hot that finds its way onto your teeth.

                “Hey mom,” says Carly sleepily into the phone, continuing to massage her leg with your body, swooping you down her thigh with particular roughness that rubs your skin red raw.  “Nothing much.  No, you didn’t wake me up, I just went for a run.  What?  Yeah, I gotta shower, class starts in like twenty minutes.  I’ll be fine!  It’s like a two minute walk from here, seriously, I… what?”

                You try to imagine your parents’ voices.  What they might be saying whenever one of them calls your sister.  They probably speak with cheerful voices.  Ask how Carly’s doing, what she’s up to, if she needs anything.

                A tiny, icy tear rolls down your cheek to imagine any one of these things being given to you just one more time.  Your teeth chatter together along a particularly hard swipe down Carly’s toughened hamstring.

                “YES, I have a jacket.  Mom, I know it’s December, but it’s like 60 degrees here, you know that, I don’t need a… what?  Yeah.  Yep.  YES, mom.  What?  Yeah, I’m still coming out there, why wouldn’t I?  I have two finals left, and they’re not that bad, I already got through calculus, that was kind of a bust… yes I studied, oh my God.”

                You can’t help but smile to yourself despite the stinging nostalgia.  Your mother is evidently unchanged from her constantly worrying nature.

                “Yeah, yeah, I have enough gas.  It’s only like three hours, isn’t it?  Yeah, I’ll leave in the morning, it’ll take that long if I go on the highway and… no, I’m not going to speed like crazy, I’m not dad… huh?  Right.  Christmas traffic.  Sure.  Okay.  Yeah, I’ll leave SUPER early, okay?  When did you say?  I’m gonna leave Saturday, probably before the sun’s up.  I should get there before Aunt Karen does.  Pick up what?  A cranberry Jell-o mold?  Mom, nobody likes that stuff.  What?  Fine, fine…” mumbles your sister, clearly becoming bored with the continued conversation.

                It’s at this point that the second half of the wax’s namesake begins to kick in.  Your chills go away.  Your body settles into a more normal temperature before passing into sweltering territory.  Hands quivering, you grit your teeth, awaiting searing pain to rip through your skin and turn you into a bloody red pulp, but luckily enough, the stuff just gets heated enough to settle you down, and it’s frankly very welcome as Carly’s warm personal leg massage trudges onward uncomfortably.  You can’t be sure, but you’re almost certain your ankles are nearly twisted from how winding this little job has become.

                “Right, mom.  Yeah.  I’ll be there.  You got it.  Tell dad hi for me, ‘kay?  Gotta go, still have to shower for class.  Bye!” she says sweetly before snapping the phone closed and tossing it onto her pillow at the head of the bed.

                At last, she seems to be satisfied with her leg waxing.  You can almost feel the stiff hardened muscle behind the layers and layers of skin loosening, becoming softer themselves.  Admittedly, it makes the experience a little more pleasant for your sore face and body, but it’s a moot point now as you are gently peeled with a sticky pop from your sister’s leg.

                “Rest up, little bro.  Road trip in four days,” she says with a grin, pulling her leg off the bed and stomping hard on the floor.  Taking several steps toward the other side of the room, she yanks your sock drawer open and lowers you back toward it.  “You can go ahead and get yourself out of there, right, Mr. Muscles?” she giggles, sliding the drawer partially closed again.  “Got class.  Be back later!” she whispers, disappearing from view, as you are left to struggle with the damp bonds of the remaining Scotch glue that still surround your body with the strength of steel cables.

                Your heart skips a few beats despite the fact that the tape isn’t going anywhere (as Carly knows perfectly well).  You’re leaving the campus for the first time in months.  Home.

                You’re going home.