Gymbro, UNFINISHED

    Ronnie was killing it, he’d been curling in the squat rack for a good hour but admittedly, he was losing steam. Ever since he read an article in a Men’s Health magazine about the benefits of using dumbbells, he had almost entirely ditched the barbells at the gym. Reading was not really Ronnie’s forte, he was a gamer, so most of the words didn’t make any sense to him, but he understood the gist of the article. 

 

A guide on utilizing your stabilizer muscles.

 

    His old routine was almost exclusively curling the Smith machine’s barbell. Since ditching the mechanically assisted machine and adopting free weights, Ronnie had to learn to employ proper form. He went from curling forty-five pound to a measly twenty-five pounds, but it was an honest twenty-five pounds, and he could feel the gains flexing in his biceps.

 

    “Eight,” Ronnie said, breathlessly curling the cast iron weights until they were tucked under his chin. He paused and exhaled deeply. In those moments of pumping iron, very seldom did he think about the act aside from keeping count. His mind wandered. Ronnie realized when he thought about each rep he did, it exhausted him quickly, so instead he’d play out scenarios in his head. Usually what it would be like to have a nice body. Girls would dig that. Nice.

 

    Girls were why he had begun lifting. After his nineteenth birthday, his old man got him a job over at the bowling alley in town flipping burgers in the kitchen. Working at Alley Kat Lane was where he had met Sarah, and he was smitten the first time he saw her. She worked the counter, and though he had opportunities to talk to her, he was far too shy. Whenever he would see her at work, he would attempt to look occupied to avoid saying something stupid. There’s no way she would be into a shrimp like him, and so he made the decision to start going to the gym. Once he’d gotten swoll, Ron wouldn’t have to do anything, she’d definitely throw herself at him. Maybe even tonight after work when she saw how huge he was getting.

 

    Enough time had passed, ten reps was the goal, and only after that could he rack the weights and leave satisfied. Ronnie sucked down a deep breath and dropped his tired arms back to his sides. Across the gym mounted on the wall, old reruns of SuperMarket Sweep played over a snowy TV. Mindlessly, his eyes watched the images of David Ruprehct schmoozing with contestants. Music pumping from the ceiling speakers made it too loud to hear anything he was saying though.        

 

    Ronnie’s lips pushed together and he started to exhale. Veins running across both biceps bulged as the muscles contracted. Both arms reached ninety-degrees, bent at the hollow. It would be easy to quit now, but he didn’t. Nice.

 

    “Nine,” Ronnie said exhaling the rest of his breath. He looked at himself in the mirror and gazed at what he saw in the reflection. Everyone in his family said that he looked more like his mom than he did his dad, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Did that mean he looked like a housewife? Most of the guys back in high-school thought his mom was hot, so that was good he thought, maybe. Once again, the clenched dumbbells were tucked under his chin. In the reflection, he could see that he was drenched in sweat. Perhaps he looked like a sweaty housewife, and that was why he hadn’t been able to get any babes yet? Sarah wasn’t a lesbian, or at least he didn’t think she was. Ronnie drew a deep breath and lowered the weights back to his side for the last rep.

 

    Usually, the music playing at the gym was just over played top 40’s piped in from KL-HOT99FM from the city, but as luck would have it, Vanilla Fudge came on over the speaker. Ronnie smiled to himself feeling a rush of energy listening to the whining guitar play into an accelerating drumline that branched into bellowing organs.

 

“Here comes Ronnie,” Ron said, as his muscles began to contract.

 

♪ You really don’t need me!

 

    The veins on his biceps stood up like rope wrapped around the mast of a ship. At this moment, he felt powerful. Ronnie paused his arms midway to admire the vascularity, and as he gave one last effort to complete the rep, his biceps popped and slipped up his upper arms. All of his strength was sapped and the weights slipped from his grasps. They landed with a thud against the black matting. A moment passed and the pain had not yet come.

 

  ♪ You just keep me — hangin’ on! 

 

    And then it came. A sudden rush of burning, stinging pain just above both elbows where the muscles had torn washed over Ronnie. He screamed standing in place looking at his arms. Where the bicep had connected to his elbow, the skin sagged. Below his shoulder a great knot of muscle bulged. Never before had Ron felt such tremendous pain, it was dizzying and tears began to well up. 

 

    “Shit,” Ronnie squealed, tears began liberally streaming down his cheeks. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw a rosy faced young man that apparently resembled his mother, dripping in tears and snot. All he wanted was to get ripped so that Sarah would throw herself at him, but there’s no way she’d want him now! “Good job, idiot” Ron whimpered at his disfigured reflection before turning away.

 

    Under the soft glow of the street lamps in the parking lot outside, Ronnie noticed a car that had pulled in. It was the only vehicle in the quiet parking lot, and he couldn’t make out anything other than the illuminated silhouette and a pair of marker lights where he supposed the mirrors were. The marker lights glowed dimly in the darkness, and all though it was obscured, had he not seen the vehicle slide into where it had parked, Ron could have mistaken those lights as a couple smoking cigarettes or something. For a good while he looked out through the plate glass windows at the car, and though the windows from the exterior were reflective for privacy inside the gym, he felt as if someone was looking back at him, watching. Another minute went by. What if those marker lights or smoldering cigarette tips were something more sinister. Maybe eyes belonging to a slithering night beast waiting for Ronnie to step outside. Perhaps the street lamps illuminated the slick flesh or oily fur of a creature, and not the sheen of automotive paint. And another minute passed. As Ronnie’s eyes adjusted to looking out into the swallowing night, the fangs of the beast became visible. Long fangs, at least twelve inches, whole rows of them crammed between two beady, glowing eyes. The ghoulish teeth appeared to be so crowded that they interlocked like fingers clasping two fists together with hot breath steaming from the mouth of the beast. Ronnie knew the creature could see him, he knew it could taste him, or at least that it wanted to taste him.

 

    When the jaws of a crocodile lock, and it begins rolling, it will stop when it is done. You can not negotiate with primal instinct. But a crocodile performing a death roll is not very relatable to most people in Kentucky. You can read about it or catch it on the television, sure, but it’s not the same as the pit-bull that had ripped into a landscapers belly in the next town over last week. A neighbor put the call in to 9-1-1, but by the time officers arrived, the dog had hollowed out his guts and was laying in the sun, panting like nothing had happened. Its tail was wagging when one of the officers summarily shot it dead with his service pistol. Only minutes before it had been thrashing the stringy viscera. This was to be Ronnie's fate.

 

    The glowing ember eyes blinked shut only leaving the twisting rows of teeth gleaming with saliva. Its silhouette had blended into the obscurity of the night around it, and so there was nothing framing the wicked mouth. Ronnie lost the scale of the monster and only focused on the fangs that were becoming nearer. A low growl had become audible from deep inside the belly of the beast. It was constant and vibrated the plate glass windows. Unrelenting. It seemed so unnatural for it not to pause for breath, maybe it didn’t breathe?

 

    Those agonizing knots of torn bicep had been all but forgotten. Ronnie had become numb, and the thought of being ripped to pieces and swallowed like prey dominated him as if it were inevitable and he was to be a passenger to the fate that crept now nearer the doors. Under the exterior lights of the gym, and now no longer shrouded by the darkness of the parking lot, Ronnie saw exactly what it was that hunted him. 

    A Honda Civic.

 

    “Jesus,” Ronnie said, taking a deep, trembling breath as he looked at the Honda. Finally, the Civic rolled to a stop in a handicap space right outside of the front door. “Jesus Christ,” he swore, looking at the chrome grill that was clearly aftermarket. Between the pain of his arms and the terror, his stomach was churning and his expression turned sour. “Who drives like that.” Ronnie had creases running through his forehead as he clenched his eyes shut and took several more breaths to calm his nerves. 

     The purring motor of the car shut off and the overhead pilot light flicked on. As Ronnie opened his eyes to look into the windshield of the Honda, an alarm he kept in his backpack snapped him out of focus. Ron crouched down and gingerly searched for the alarm with near limp arms and silenced it. Town buses at night ran fast and few and far between, so he had to stick by a tight schedule that he was currently running behind on. He made an effort to go on his knees and shimmy the shoulder straps on but the backpack was simply too heavy for his gimpy arms. Every time that he’d gone to the gym, he’d strictly trained his biceps, and so he had thin, bird like legs. Options were running out, so his popsicle sticks would have to kick and push the pack out of the gym and down the parking lot and to the bus stop. 

 

    When he reached the plate glass door he paused to look at the Honda. It was empty. All of the other stores in the plaza were closed on Sunday, and no one had come into the gym. There was no staff at the gym on Sundays either, it was self-serve with a keypad to get in. Ronnie leaned into the door with his shoulder and swung it open into the night.

 

    Quadriceps are arguably the largest and most powerful muscle in the body, however, on Ronnie, they were arguably the weakest muscle in the body. Kicking the backpack the short distance from where he had stashed it while lifting, to just outside the gym, had fatigued his legs that alternated moving it along. Despite the buses in town running infamously early, it was nowhere in sight, so Ronnie paused to let his legs rest. Even if it suddenly appeared, he’d have ample time. 

 

    “Ron, is that you,” a voice called from dark. The voice was nasally and sounded like it could have been nervous. Ronnie’s blood ran cold. “Hey, Ronnie, that’s you right?” The voice called from the dark again.

 

    Lights from the gym radiated only so far, and everything between it and the bus stop was impenetrably black.