The effect of Mia's latest wind-break couldn't be overstated. Calling it just a fart, really, would be doing this force of nature a disservice. Even as I prepared myself for the worst, tensed and still and resigned, nothing I could've done would be enough to withstand the onslaught. From the deafening, blubbery fireworks-display of clamoring sounds, to the noticeable jet-like shot of broiling air fired out from the center of her tush and blown straight into my face, and at last the indescribably meaty, sour, brackish wall of billowing fart flavor, my parents and I were overpowered in every conceivable way.

All three of us, durable as we'd become in Mia's restructured household servitude of massages and gas-clouds, sunk to our knees, again like my sister's hapless schoolmates and volleyball team in the heat of it. We all hunched, heads bowed, hacking and gasping. Still, through the pounding in my ears, I realized that once again the pungent fart was elongated like an operatic note, only this time with its muster barely diminished in loudness, windiness, or sheer walloping pollution.

            "All right, all right, even I have to admit that one was a little bit stinky," Mia giggled after a minute of our profound suffering. She jokingly waved a hand in front of her wrinkled nose, though seemed otherwise mostly unbothered by this toxic detonation and subsequent spreading of her gastrointestinal essence to every corner of our home. "So, it's a good thing my precious little family is sooooo caring and understanding about all my hard work and the lengths I go to so I can maintain this kind of shape. What's family for, after all, if we can't be a tiny bit embarrassing in front of each other sometimes? Now, now, stop coughing and being such big babies, and get up. These legs and buns aren't gonna heal themselves, you know! I mean, I guess they will sort-of, but it's so much faster and better when I have my wonderful little family to help out. After all, I do my part by protecting you all as the bigger and taller and stronger one in the house, plus earning all my athletic awards and crushing the season so we can go to nationals. All you guys have to do is rub my poor legs and back, and be okay with it when things get a tiny bit smelly now and again. So get back to it, or I'll have to show you what I can really do!"

            Spurred on by that threat, my parents and I fought through the debilitating veil of gas to kneel at attention again, though it was a struggle. Even as we gave in and continued massaging my sister as best we could, it was clear that Mia wasn't through punishing us, because this current fart, only the second of the day yet undoubtedly the strongest and most potent any of us had been accursed to inhale, was still going. It ripped through the air, redoubling the smog from the previous blast made from the kitchen. Our bodies wavered uncontrollably, like an adrenaline rush or shell-shock, no matter how hard we tried to quell the secondhand fart-induced jitters.

            I couldn't say for sure, since my judgment was now impaired by the feminine, taco-themed stench worse than a high blood-alcohol level, but it almost seemed as though the walls and floors were reverberating at the same frequency as Mia's never-ending gas-pass. Her farts themselves were rattling the house like an earthquake, right down to its foundations, and us as well, straight under our skin, clouding our lungs and vibrating us to the bone. The whole building stood in her thrall, with us three cowering at the epicenter, praying for one clean breath and an end to the siren-squeal of her backdraft; however, we were not so lucky, and the event carried right on, making us ever-more her lessers with each passing second of the olfactory torture. If someone were to light a match at this moment, the whole place would surely go up in flames inside five minutes.

            Over time, Mia tired of this, too, and indicated she was done by rolling over, knocking us each aside with a single leg. Her previous fart, which was stretched out to upwards of ten minutes, had died down to a frothy whisper now, but for all its potency, she might as well have been pulling the ripcord on a fresh blast every three consecutive seconds. There was nothing now to differentiate the actual farts and the interim between. Tears poured from our bloodshot eyes; our throats ached like we'd shot-gunned pepper spray. With her whole undersized family sprawling on the floor once again, twitching and enduring the unendurable odor, my sister took the opportunity to ascend to her full stature.

            She assumed a triumphant pose in a wide stance, while the three of us looked up at her in forcible reverence, bitterly swallowing every unleashed waft of her burning farts. I truly had become a connoisseur of my growing sister's anal exhalations, and could detect every individual note in the fusty mixture: soft near-moldy cheeses, fried taco meat, tortilla starch, greasy eggs and sausage, plus so much more, all reborn by the unholy cooking and digestive expulsion through her filthy, overheated sphincter. Like a fine wine, the passing minutes only made the flavors more complex and accented in the warm enclosed space, causing the punch of the shitty scent to ripen and swell. I was so disoriented, I felt as though I was having an out-of-body experience, and didn't know whether my body wanted first to faint or upchuck. Unable to decide, I was left in a drunken limbo.

            "Thanks sooooo much, Mom and Dad and Hal!" Mia said through the haze. "I knew that wouldn't be so bad, if you just calmed down and did your jobs. Yeah, it's a little stinky around here sometimes, but you guys are so used to it, I bet you can't even notice it anymore, can you?"

            My sister ends up being right about a lot of things, but she most certainly was not correct on that point. I heard her stomach rumble again, and even from this distance, it was just as loud as when my ear was pressed up to her ass cheek.

            "Whoops, I guess nature calls!" Mia laughed, patting her abdomen.

            She might as well have proclaimed the coming apocalypse. The three of us sunk our heads deeper, too full of fear and self-loathing to look our apparent owner in her pretty eyes.

            "Aww, don't look so sad, you guys! You all get so fussy sometimes, just like the silly tiny people at my school. Look, just to make you happy, I'll even turn on the fan, okay! You're welcome," Mia promised, and having said that, entered the nearby bathroom and flipped up the toilet cover. As she partially undressed and took a seat, hunched upon the laughably undersized porcelain stand, it strangely didn't occur to me until now that my ninety-six-inch-tall queenly sister hadn't even bothered to close the door behind herself. Not that a measly hunk of wood could've done the slightest thing to hold back the assured barrage of intoxicating, briny stench and thunderclap sound effects soon to come.

            I huddled beside my helpless parents, then closed my eyes and uselessly pinched my nostrils, to await the next remorseless plague.