This is a story. It never happened and never will. The General Disclaimer is incorporated herein by reference.

BR&T date: Thursday, 13 March 1997

"This place is a real mess!" Austin declared, ducking under a fallen roof beam to get to the middle of Cindy's storm-wracked bedroom. The nightstand and dresser had blown over, every drawer had slid open or been blown open, and half the contents were scattered around the room. What little clothing that remained in the drawers sulked in sodden piles in the corners. He picked up a girl's white buckle shoe from the floor. He guessed she probably wore it to church. He glanced around, but didn't immediately find the mate. Turning to Cindy, he lifted it up, and poured water out of it.

Close to tears again, Cindy looked away from him, but nowhere she looked in her bedroom brought her any comfort.

Her closet door lay on the floor, cracked off its hinges by another fallen beam. Everything within the closet was as drenched as anything else in the room. Several dresses had blown off their hangers, ending up clinging desperately to a bedpost to avoid being blown out of the room entirely. One more hugged the undeserving elm tree, the softness of the dress unwillingly captive in the clutch of its rough bark. How many more of her dresses had been snatched away by the wind, to be scattered outside, landing face up in the grass, held down by the icy rain and ravished by the hail, was anyone's guess, but Cindy thought some were missing. Perhaps they had escaped, huddling in terror in the deepest corners of her closet, as Cindy sometimes did when she was afraid.

Austin peeled a dress off the bedpost, a pretty pink one with white frills, held it out, and laid it dripping atop the dresser. He added a pastel green dress with pale yellow trim. "We'll have to take all of your clothes back to our place to dry them, and most of them need washed again anyway." He extracted a pile of Cindy's panties and slips from a dresser drawer and threw them onto the dresses. They promptly rolled off and landed on the dirty floor. "We can't carry them all loose," he realised. "We'll need to load them into something." He looked around, and spotted what he wanted. "Cindy, give us your raincoat to load the clothes into. It's the only thing strong enough, and the water won't bother it."

Cindy unsnapped the latches on the front of her red raincoat. She was glad to have had it last night, since it had at least kept her dry above the waist, and kept the rude chilly breezes off her chest. She opened it and slid it awkwardly down her arms. Dallas tugged impatiently, pulling her arms behind her back, as he finished removing it. Cindy squealed in surprise, having never had a boy yank any of her clothes off her before, but she let him take it. Tucking it under his arm, he ducked the beam blocking the bedroom door, and stepped into the mess. She knew there was no point asking them to try to salvage any of the sodden papers, her life in smeared and soggy disarray. Cindy stood and watched silently for quite a while as the boys gathered all the soaked clothing that remained, piling it up on the raincoat in the middle of the floor. When they finished, they lifted the raincoat by the edges, pushed it out the hole in the wall where the window used to be, and dropped it outside.

"Let's get going," Austin urged, "We still have chores to do this morning, after we take care of this." Cindy left the house through the front door and circled around to the stump of the broken elm, but Austin and Dallas crawled out the window, and beat Cindy just for the fun of it. The boys picked up the raincoat between them and set off at a brisk pace despite the load.

In bare feet, Cindy had more trouble finding a comfortable path than the boys in their boots. She hurried to follow them, for the moment unmindful that she wore only her nightie, outside in broad daylight. "Where are we going?" she asked, confused that they weren't heading to the gravel road that led from her farm to theirs.

"Our house is set back pretty far from the road," Austin explained. "The shortest way to get there from here on foot is along the fence row. You'll see."

"I want to follow the road," she protested.

Austin looked at her sternly. "In your bare feet on gravel?" he scoffed. "This is a lot shorter than the road," he repeated, "and as long as you're staying in our house, you'll do what we say, or we'll get mad."

"Alright," she pouted.

They passed the tool shed (then a playhouse, soon to be her bedroom) on their way to the corner of Cindy's farm. At the corner, Dallas quickly climbed over the barbed wire. Austin passed him the bundle, water still running out of the raincoat sleeves when he squeezed it. "I'll lift you over," he told Cindy, his voice somehow not quite an offer of help.

Cindy was afraid of the barbs, and didn't want to climb it as Dallas had, so she let Austin pick her up by her armpits and swing her up and over the fence. On the downward side, her nightie furled up around her waist. The instant her feet hit the grass, she pushed it back down. Turning, she saw Dallas looking at her and grinning madly. She knew he had seen, and she knew exactly what he had seen.

She finally realised what she was wearing. She walked carefully from then on, feeling terribly embarrassed, keeping her hands at her sides to hold her nightie in place. She thought of asking the boys for some of her clothes to change into, but didn't, not only because all of her clothes were soaking wet except her nightie, but even worse, she thought of having to change, meaning take off her nightie first, right in front of the boys. She kept pace with them, glad they mostly kept their attention forward, as she walked all the way over to their farm in just her thin lavender nightie. 'I never never ever want to do this again,' she pleaded to the Fates. A bird chirped merrily off in the meadow, or perhaps it was supernatural laughter, but Cindy paid no attention either way. They followed a trail that led along the edge of a wooded tract. Despite the mud in places, it was easier going than the pasture on their right.

Several minutes later, they reached the end of the field, and faced the corner where two more barbed-wire fences crossed. A farmstead with house, barn, silos, and several other buildings waited on the other side, only a short walk away. Dallas climbed quickly and leapt to the opposite side, turning back just as Austin reached out to Cindy to lift her over the fence as before.

"No!!" Cindy declared, without explanation, backing away from him. She didn't want a repeat of the last time, with Dallas looking up her nightie!

"Have it your way," Austin said, lowering his arms. "This time." He climbed the fence like an ordinary ladder and hopped down on the other side, while carrying the bulky raincoat.

Unaided, Cindy began scaling the fence. Even between barbs, the wire dug into her bare feet, hurting her. Holding the corner fencepost, she climbed three wires, then tried to jump over the fourth. Her foot caught on it, and sent her tumbling sideways. She slid down the narrow soaked incline by the fence, to the dirt roadway that ran along the edge of the farm, and landed flat in some tractor tracks, in the deepest muddiest rut she could have found for miles. She wallowed up to her elbows in mud. As she got on her hands and knees, her nightie fell away from her and got stuck in the muck beneath her. She struggled backward to escape, not realizing what that did to her nightie. Austin and Dallas, standing back and sniggering, certainly realised what she was doing, and they circled around to get the best view they could before it was gone.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Dallas whispered to his older brother, without taking his eyes off Cindy.

"No," Austin whispered back, his arm on his brother's shoulder, his gaze equally fixed, "a lot worse!" They watched Cindy floundering in the mud, the clean part of her nightie riding up her back. "I'll have to show you the magazine I found when I was clearing the mess out of the driveway this morning."

"Oh? What's it called?" Dallas asked, still whispering, and still staring.

"BRAT Magazine," Austin answered, leaning his head close, without turning. "That's B, R, And T. But the 'and' is one of those squiggly things."

"What's it stan-" Dallas began, then had to shut up. The show was over.

Just then, Cindy finally got to her feet, covered in mud all over her front, sobbing. When she tried to wipe her eyes, she got mud on her face.

"We can't go straight to the house with you like that, and have you slop things up," Austin stated. "Come along." The boys picked up the raincoat stuffed with her clothes, and headed for the open yard between the barn and the house. Cindy had no choice but to follow. They led her to a cement circle. At the center stood a red hydrant with a garden hose attached. He opened it up. "Stand still," he ordered her. He aimed the hose at her and waited. Several seconds passed before a frigid blast of water emerged and hit her full in the face.

Cindy screamed, held her arms out trying to block the spray, and backed away.

"Stand still!" Dallas shouted, grabbing one of her arms to enforce the demand. "He's just cleaning you off! Where do you think you'd go with all that mud on you?"

Unable to escape either the grip or the logic, Cindy surrendered, and let Austin hose her down with water colder than any that fell from the sky the night before. The water also affected her thin lavender nightie in a way that delighted the boys. It clung to her, revealing her form, and faded to near-transparency, almost revealing everything else about her. With her eyes shut tight against the splashes, Cindy didn't notice. Besides, she had never worn it when it was soaked, before. She stopped screaming and just cried.

To be sure, the boys noticed the nightgown immediately. Dallas forced her to turn around so Austin could spray her down in back, despite there being no mud there. He held her until her nightie stuck tightly to her round little ass cheeks, with most of the color coming through. The boys sprayed the mud off their boots, then enjoyed the trip to the house, as they followed the shivering crying girl along the cement walkway leading to the back door.

"So what were you thinking?" Dallas whispered, pleadingly, but Austin only smiled.