gym scene teaser

One more. One more curl and hit the showers, the boy thought. A deep breath through the nose. His rubber arm tensed for one last lift. With an explosive grunt all the air fired out of his lungs and he pulled with every last ounce of strength he had. There was a half moment where time seemed to slow and he watched as beads of saliva flew like bullets towards the panel mirror that surrounded the walls of the gym. But the dumbbell never made it past his elbow, just trembled in his hand like a seizure.

The boy stared at it dumbly, and for a moment he thought about setting it down and calling it a day. He looked at his blood red face in the mirror and caught sight of some juicehead wretching in the corner with almost 200 pounds over his head. Call it pride or competition, but that was all the boy needed for a second wind. He'd read once about a man who was able to throw a 600 pound boulder over his head when that was all that stood between life and death. The body is capable of amazing things when it has the right motivation. He decided his arm just needed some convincing.

He readjusted his legs and straightened his back. One more shotgun breath and every last fibre in his arm clocked in overtime as the weight convulsed upward. With one final awkward twitch of his back (He'd feel that tomorrow) the weight crested past his elbow and slapped against his shoulder. The boy released his grip instantly and let it fall to the foam mat, dancing out of its way as it tumbled against the ground. Nearby he found a bench to sit on and caught his breath.

"Wowwwwww" someone droned behind. He turned his head in the direction of his startled ear and relaxed. A familiar face can do that for you sometimes.

"What, what is it this time Jack?" It came out more irritable than he intended.

"You call that a lift? My grandma can curl better and her back is humped like a camel!" He chuckled, and sweat shook off of his brown hair like rainwater off of leaves on a windy day.
"Ahhh, shaddup alright," the boy dismissed, turning back to face himself in the mirror, "it was the last one anyway. I'm lucky it even made it all the way up."

"Well you keep on tagging along with me and luck'll have nothing to do with it. Hell, stick around long enough and you might even start to look like Ronnie Coleman over there," Jack said, thumbing in the direction of the roidmonkey who was now squatting the weight of a small sedan.

The boy smiled at Jack through the mirror. "Nah, I doubt it. I'm too scared of needles," he said, and they both got a laugh out of that.

"Fair enough. Lemme fill up on some water and finish this next set and we'll get outta here. You work tonight?"

"Nope. I did, but I managed to switch it for a Monday. Why, you wanna grab some drinks?"

"You read my mind. Text Burns and see what he's up to tonight. If your arms aren't too fried that is." Jack said before drifting in the direction of the fountain.

Asshole, he thought. But he did have a point, he could stand to come to the gym more often. Jack was the one who dragged him along in the first place, although most people could have guessed that given the physical contrast between them. He was short, not scrawny, and with a little more extra padding than he would have liked. The perfect body for an accident victim, but not much else. Meanwhile Jack was built like a Hollister model: tall, tan, and muscular. It's too bad it wasn't contagious.

He'd fished into his shorts pocket and had just started plinking around on his cell phone's keyboard when he heard a scream somewhere behind his head. He felt his heart stop dead for a moment. He must be exaggerating, he thought, just another hardcore lifter biting off more than they could chew. But when the next one, even louder this time, rang behind him he swung around so fast on the bench he almost fell off.

For a second he wasn't sure where the noise had come from. Everyone had stopped dead; weights hung suspended from dead limbs and the familiar pounding of feet on whirring treadmills stopped. Where there had once been grunts and the clanging of alien machines there was nothing but tense silence.

All heads were turned in the direction of the corner, where Ronnie Coleman stood over the body of a young girl with a dumbbell curled in a gorilla sized fist. He wondered why the girl was lying on the floor; crunches maybe? Had she hurt herself somehow?Before he could finish that mundane train of thought, Ronnie had dropped to the floor and was swinging the dumbbell down on the girl's face. She had started screaming something that sounded vaguely like the word "stop", but this was drowned out with sickening gargles and a sound reminiscent of mud sucking on your boots after a rain.

And even then the man didn't stop swinging, in fact he swung harder. His upper lip folded back against his teeth into a feral snarl while blood spattered onto his workout shirt. Nobody turned or shouted. Nobody screamed or ran to help. Just stood there watching like statues, and the boy knew something was very wrong. Knew he had to get out now, but he couldn't get himself to move. Before this he'd been aching to have a cool shower, but now his body felt cold as ice.

And he would always wonder about what happened next. Would always wonder why, out of all the gawking onlookers, that it was his eyes that Ronnie stared into next.