Our car had swiftly become a Dutch oven on wheels, broiling us all in the recycled, swirling ass-exhaust. We might've been better off if we instead replaced Mia's butt with the car's own smoke-belching tailpipe. My parents and I couldn't help but cough and hack as the minutes wore endlessly on, doubling over and holding our stomachs from mounting nausea. Fresh tears turned our eyes red and stained our cheeks, with nearly the efficacy of pepper spray, though I have to guess pepper spray doesn't smell quite so much like a putrefied gas station bathroom.

            At a certain point the chemical assault actually affected my dad's driving, nearly causing him to crash into other vehicles, after which Mia forced him to slow down to be safer, and that only lengthened the already execrable trip. Mia herself, meanwhile, seemed perfectly content, even comfortable in this environment, as she continued spreading her legs further out and propping her shoes up on the divider between the front seats. She closed her eyes, yawned, and cracked her knuckles in preparation for the sporting carnage to come.

            This part of the ritual, too, had become a pre-gaming must for Mia, I realized. Like the fanatics who have to wear the same shirt to every game or recite specific terms to guarantee a winning season, my sister can't play her best until she's brought us, her own family, to our knees in an impromptu sauna treated with her ripest, briniest odors and then concentrated in a heated mélange to an unbearable degree.

            Just when I was beginning to think I'd have to roll down the window in order to puke, and simply accept whatever punishment Mia later decided for me as a result of that disobedience, we pulled up to the school. My sister hopped out, waved goodbye to us, and jogged toward the gym wing. Once my parents and I had crawled to safety from the car, though, we needed to take a break before heading in, sitting awkwardly on a bench together and jealously breathing in as much natural air as we could before we were again deprived. Judging by how most of Mia's games had gone this season, though, that time was rapidly approaching.

            Knowing there would be hell to pay if we missed a single moment of my sister's game, my parents and I marched inside the gym along with the rest of the crowd, feeling a bit like prisoners on the way to the execution chamber. The smartest place to hide would've been the very back row of the bleachers, to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the eye of the storm, but after we had sat back there for a few previous matches, Mia accused us of not wanting to see her. Which, frankly, is absurd, considering my sister's incredible scale that allows anyone to see her clearly even from far away, but after we were unsubtly threatened by a particularly dense night of bean-flavored fart-clouds spilling through the house, we ensured to sit in the front row thereafter. The whistle blew and the first point was served.

            Mia's team handily took the first five points, most of them exclusively thanks to her savage athletic prowess. My gigantic sister is a technical master at the sport, never missing a shot, covering the whole court in an instant, and able to adapt to any position, though her time is best spent spiking the ball, not even having to jump to send it over the net with the speed of a bullet. I have to believe the only reason Mia's side doesn't win matches even faster than they already do is because her mere-mortal teammates are capable of human error, the kind that my sister would quickly eliminate if she was facing the entire varsity league at once on her own instead.

            Watching Mia work on the court is a startling experience. Everyone around her is there to play volleyball, but my sister is there to win a war. She moves gracefully yet violently, her colossal body swooping through the air with the precision of a ballerina and the blunt force of a warrior princess. With every move she makes, her musculature clenches like molded steel, reshaping her skin-tastic uniform. Her arms and legs are weapons, most visibly flexing, but her ample ass is in a constant state of twerky tremors with every impact. She strikes without mercy then moves immediately on, her enormous rubber-soled footwear pounding the ground so hard that the linoleum trembles, buckling ever-so-slightly under the force of her strides. The higher she climbs in stature, becoming a literal valkyrie with every successive day, the less imagination is required to make that comparison.

            It was probably only my family that noticed Mia dropping the very first bomb. She squatted for stability, digging in deep, then launched herself toward the score. As those chiseled legs powered her upward, she let it rip. Beginning as a soft blat at first, which could've been mistaken as the sound of the volleyball striking a palm, the volume rose as the sound transformed into an ugly, bubbly clamor. Unlike the steady, muted streams of foul air we were treated to in the car, my sister was done concealing her proud creations. Having stolen the point, it was Mia's turn to serve. The instant she smacked the ball, sending it soaring to the far corner, she grunted with effort, and at the same time blasted another boisterous fart. This round was even louder, and if there was still a single person left in the gym unaware that someone was egregiously passing gas, they certainly noticed the third emission, distinct and explosive, like my sister had been holding it in for hours. The sound took place in reverse, instantly ear-piercing as a popped exercise ball, then pattering off with a repeated series of anal belches.

            Things were tolerable at first. The expansive dimensions of Mia's school gym meant there was much more space for fresh air to linger, but I knew my sister, and knew we would only have so long to enjoy normal breathing. I made the most of it, taking deep inhalations and holding my empty water bottle close so I could use it like an oxygen tank, but I couldn't keep my knees from shaking. My sister's teammates were the first to feel her wrath. They kept right on playing to the best of their ability, but I saw their faces change, first suspiciously sniffing the air and next contorting their expressions from revulsion. Three or four of her eye-watering farts were probably sustainable due to the players' focus on the game, but after Mia had suffused a dozen-plus onto the court, it started to affect their performance too. Her teammates, already hopelessly outclassed by Mia, started missing more points, too weakened by the swelling cloud of beefy, intestinal vapor so thickly formed it was a wonder the air hadn't turned a sickly green. They hacked and wheezed, wiping their eyes and pinching their noses, and two of them had to retreat to the benches. A courageous few dared look Mia in the eye, but the silent expression she shot back was the same my father received for almost opening the car windows, and they all fell quickly in line.