The Shrinking Bodybuilder (4th Part)

[JP71]

[COLOR=gray][COLOR=gray]The Shrinking Bodybuilder[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=gray][COLOR=gray]ByJP71[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=gray][COLOR=gray]A re-imagining of “The Shrinking Man” by[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=gray][COLOR=gray]Richard Matheson[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[COLOR=yellow]Part 1:[/COLOR]
[COLOR=yellow]Part 2:[/COLOR]
[COLOR=yellow]Part3:[/COLOR]
[COLOR=yellow]See the Cover Art:CLICK HERE[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]5.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He was smaller than before. Last time he’d visited his water bottle he was just about able to remove the wooden stopper with one hand. Now, to his dismay, he had to grasp it with both hands and pull with all of his strength. The splinter put up a good fight, for it was wet and slippery. Still though, Will just about managed to get it loose, but needed to get his breath back whilst the bead of very stale, but still replenishing water, welled up before him. He was terribly cold, especially here, standing on a wet part of the shelf which to him now spanned more than fifty feet across. Fifty feet – fifty inches – fifty centimetres... it no longer mattered. He drank for a long time, sucking on the water blister, his tiny throat near-gagging. Soon he would be small enough to swim inside that tiny drip, so small that the water tension alone would imprison him. He would drown. That would be it. He gulped an entire liquid bead in one go and thought about washing himself with another. But he would most likely freeze to death if he did that.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Damn... I left the sword back in the bottle,” he wailed, realising he would have nothing with which to hack out another chunk of solidified shake. Having awakened from another bad dream, Will had felt more thirsty than drunk. This alone set his tiny feet padding across the shelf, totally bypassing the giant container of shake mix in favour of the water bottle. The journey lasted four minutes, for he’d counted every second in his head. He shivered in the cold, damp attic, looking upwards to the skylight and trying to gauge the time of day. He reckoned it to be late afternoon. Then he remembered:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“The piece of loin-cloth I tore off to better escape from the spider before I killed her. It will be so much bigger now. I could really use it.” He looked around near-frantically for the cloth, suddenly galvanised into action. He returned the stopper to the water bottle, and having wiped his lips dry with the back of his hand, loped off to the extreme left side of the shelf. On the way he stopped briefly at the shard of mirror which was still filthy, although the spider’s viscera splashed on it the evening before, was now a dull and opaque film across the glass. He wanted to look at himself, to check-pose and take in the sight of his persistent decrement. His muscles were a lot smaller, now. He cried when he made a double biceps pose, only to find that through the dried filth soiling much of the mirror’s surface, the once utterly magnificent body of William Grant – one of the hugest bodybuilders to ever walk the earth – was reduced down to a mass consistent with that of a light-heavyweight amateur. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“It’s just the damn process,” he sniffed, wiping tears onto the back of his hand, “...re-apportioning my mass and catching up with my loss of height and girth. His reflection not only showed a bodybuilder of reduced mass and overall thickness – although he still had very impressive muscles – but a man who had wilted and aged well before his time. His face had too many lines in it, now, making it seem like he’d aged ten years in just a few months. He now looked like a man in his early forties, although the reality was such that he would be long gone before he ever reached the big 4-0. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He checked his teeth, saddened at how rotten they were getting, for he had no way of cleaning them, except to rub them as best he could with water. They still felt strong in his mouth, but more than a few times, too many to properly recount, he’d rubbed his gums hard enough to make them bleed. “My physique is back to what it was when I was twenty, before I began to get really big... so very big.” He sighed heavy-heartedly, cranking out further poses, but for the first time since becoming a prisoner of the attic hell, his heart just wasn’t in it. The word “big” meant little to him now, except when used to perceive the ever-worsening obstacles around him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The smell of the decaying spider carcass – lying belly up with its seven legs looking bent and shrivelled like a withered claw frozen with rigor mortis – attacked Will’s senses as he got ever nearer to where it had finally succumbed. The stench caught him at the back of his throat, his eyes stinging and watering further. Crying would most certainly make him shrink more rapidly, if the crackpot Cyrus Redfern’s findings were anything to go by. Will thought about going to the carcass and pushing it off the shelf. What if the smell got so bad that no matter how far to the right Will placed himself on his shelf-territory, the stench still got to him?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Forgetting about the discarded cloth, he went to the dead creature, hoping that it, too, had depleted in mass, at least enough for him to move it. As he got closer, however, he realised that this feat was impossible. The day before, when that final battle between man and beast ended in triumph for Will, the spider, in relation to an average man’s height, had been the size of a cow. Now, though, despite it had shrunken in death, it was the size of a small truck. Still, Will had to at least try to overcome this newest of problems. As a child he’d always been fascinated by insects and arachnids, but scientific pursuits turned out to be something of a mediocre interest at best, and he eventually lost interest when it seemed that a life in fitness was the way to go. Bodybuilding was something he truly excelled at when he discovered he had a natural flair for it, not to mention the best genetics of any man. It had given him everything a man could have ever wanted from life, most importantly a partner that matched him in every aesthetic way, as well as pound for pound and inch for inch.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Now I’m less than an inch... way less.” He supposed he should count himself lucky that he’d only seen one dangerous creature since the sparrow incident. When he’d first become trapped in the attic, the weather had still been warm enough to support all kinds of flying, scuttling predators. But they, in turn, had been preyed upon. Will only had to crane his neck in order to gaze up at that abhorrent web, a museum of death from which the silken-wrapped husks of so many potential threats to him depended. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I suppose I should thank you in a way, missus,” he said, addressing the dead spider, almost with respect for its passing. She had made her web in the perfect place, over the hole in the extractor fan, where so many flying things had ventured though, only to find themselves ensnared, with a pair of venomous fangs ready to seal their fates. Had the spider not made the attic her home, Will would have been wide open to untold aerial attacks.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Well you’re not getting a funeral. I was never the religious type,” he muttered, kicking the carcass with the mildest force. His foot glanced off the overturned abdomen and came back slick with slime. Will retched, bringing up nothing but water. There was no way he could move the spider’s body, for it was just too big, and he was far too little at this stage. He thought about dismembering the corpse and tossing the pieces one by one over the side to be lost in that vast ocean of space below. He got up on his tiptoes in order to grab hold of one of the spider’s legs, thinking it would break off easily. But the spider wasn’t that brittle yet. Then it came to him: the hat-pin spear he’d used to kill the spider... where had he dropped it? [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Near the mirror,” he cried out, almost delighted. But why hadn’t he noticed it just a moment ago, when he last checked out his reflection? The thunderous jolt during the storm must have moved it no less than it shifted the position of the vitamin bottle. Then he found it: almost invisible where it had become lodged in a crack in the wooden shelf about twice as long as the pin itself. He hadn’t noticed the crack before, probably because he’d been larger and easily overlooked it. Now that he had gotten smaller still, things previously unnoticed were now more visible. A help or a hindrance? In this case definitely a help. The crack had saved the hat-pin from rolling over the edge of the shelf when the branch hit the house (he could still only speculate that a branch had been to blame).[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]He hunkered down over the crack, easily slipping his hands into the depression, and took hold of the hat-pin at its pointed end, simply because it was easier to get a hold of than the green plastic ornate sphere that formed its head. As to where the hat-pin and the little travelling sewing kit had originated from, and how they ended up in the attic of Will’s house – of which he’d been declared the sole beneficiary in the will of his late Uncle Charlie – was anyone’s guess. Charlie had always been the loner of the family, preferring his company and solitude over a gathering, although he still showed his face at weddings and funerals, sometimes the odd Thanksgiving dinner, when he’d arrive on the doorstep unannounced. He’d never married, and hadn’t been known to have a single girlfriend throughout his fifty-one years on Earth. There were the usual Chinese whispers of him being gay, that he liked to dress up in female attire, but it was purely gossip. But wasn’t it a tad bit odd that he should leave his house to the (allegedly) only gay member of the Grant Clan?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]It might explain ladies things up here: the hat-pin... the sewing kit... a piece of mirror, probably from a compact, left as relics on the only shelf in the attic, lost memories to a time long since gone, a secret time, in which things had happened that only Charlie had known about... but never revealed to another living soul.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“And to think, ages ago I was going to throw out everything on this shelf,” Will said aloud, putting all of his weight and strength into prising the hat-pin loose. Yesterday it had been a spear in his grasp, one he wielded with force enough to win an ongoing battle that had slowly worn him down in the months since (he believed) the spider had set up residence. Now it was a pole for vaulting with, bigger and longer than it had been before, and quite a bit heavier to lift. Getting it out of the crack totally drained Will, but he was again triumphant. Although hunger struck like a hundred red-hot knives inside him, Will refused to set off back to the shake container until Miss Manylegs was off the shelf. He held the pin with both his hands, barbell-fashion, trying to remember curling a similar weight back in his gym days. “Feels heavy, almost like fifty kilos,” he guessed, pleased when he was able to curl up for twenty reps without feeling fatigued. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The muscles of his arms thanked him for the allowance of this rare treat. It was simply muscle memory, reminding him of what it was like to crank out such movements. Blood surged into his biceps, pumping them up with every curl, veins standing out more visibly under his skin than he’d seen them do in a long time. This was sheer bodybuilding effort, its mechanics of movement feeling so much more pleasing to him than the motions he would put his body through just to survive another day in the attic. For once he felt a little more pumped, rather than once again raped of a little height and a little mass. He felt endorphins being released into his brain and so he swam in them for a time. The feeling coaxed another memory out of him, one carved from a day when both he and Randy stood in this very attic, still very much partnered and in love, although circumstances had put a strain on the relationship. Although the threads of their lives were so deeply interwoven, however, as Will continued to suffer from this most inexplicable of diseases, those threads began to loosen, threatening to come apart at any time. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]5’8”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“What are you doing up here, sweetheart?” Randy had just arrived home from his workout. It was just after 4:40pm on a wet and miserable Friday afternoon. He found his husband sitting on his old weight bench, in the classic thinker’s pose, his fingers idly sliding the lens cover back and forth on his cell phone. He was lost in the sound of that ceaseless metallic clicking noise and hadn’t heard Randy come in. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Huh?” Will turned to acknowledge the hugely-muscled Randy Scott whose torso was completely bare and massively pumped from his workout. He looked like he had yet to take a shower, which was enough to inform Will that the showers at their gym were once again on the blink. Gravity sucked on a dozen or more runnels of sweat, drawing them down his moist, polished skin. Randy wore only a pair of spandex shorts with black and blue stripes, his manhood clearly emphasised due to the fact that lately he was coming back “boned” from the gym. Could he be having an affair? Half a dozen things stirred Will’s thoughts into a miniature maelstrom, but he held back from having it out with Randy in order to find out if this could be true. There would be time again for that in the months that were to follow. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Oh... er... Myra Daniels called around earlier, asked if we had anything for her yard sale. I came up here to see what I could find,” said Will with tepid enthusiasm. He looked at Randy’s body, deciding that he’d never seen him looking so pumped, so huge and incredibly defined. His pecs looked bigger, today, fuller... even his gorgeously hard nipples centred within luscious brown oval areolas seemed to have spread out slightly in all directions. Randy noticed him looking at them and did a little pec-dance for his entertainment. The chest muscles heaved upwards and downwards in a slow rhythm, as if to emphasise their burgeoning depth and weight.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I got Joel Smith to spot me today. A lot of people are wondering why you haven’t been at the gym these past couple of weeks. I said that your mom is sick and you went to be with her. I didn’t know what else to say.” Randy unscrewed the cap from the bottle of mineral water he’d taken from the fridge before searching the house for Will. It was ice cold and he’d forgotten about the tooth he’d had pulled on the Monday of that week. With the nerves still exposed he winced from the icy burn and quickly recapped the bottle. Only for this he would have drunk the whole thing in one go. Neither of them at this point knew that Randy had just prolonged his husband’s life by several months, but of course... neither of them could have possibly known, at this time, what the future had in store for Will: trapped in a place where nightmares lurked in every shadow and dangers scuttled about on many legs. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I doubt I’ll be showing my face there ever again,” said Will in utter resignation. The anti-depressants prescribed to him upon his third visit to Dr. Rothman didn’t help to elevate his spirits by any significant measure. Randy would be lying to himself if he said that Will wasn’t becoming difficult to live with. His moods were unpredictable... laughing one minute, shivering in fear of the future another, or even crying fitfully, sometimes until he fell asleep due to the weariness of being depressed for so long. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“You don’t know that for certain, darling,” Randy remarked, and placed the bottle on the only shelf in the attic upon which a shrinking bodybuilder would later have no choice but to put down roots. Randy then sat down on the old bench beside Will and put a massively beefy arm around him in order to pull him close. Will felt stiff to him, unyielding, and that could be hurtful. But Randy’s sweaty musk quickly overpowered Will and he allowed their lips to meet for a moment. “I got a call from Rothman. He got the results of the re-run of the tests on my blood and urine.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“And?” Randy hoped for good news. A nervous knot quickly formed in his guts and he flexed his super-strong abs inwardly in order to counter the effects. It worked, but only partially.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Three different labs ran the tests again. They all drew the same conclusions. I’m in perfect health. There’s nothing wrong with me. Can you believe that?” Will returned to fidgeting with the phone’s lens cover again.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Maybe you’re getting better, sweetheart. This thing could have burnt itself out by now.” Randy tried to sound optimistic, but the truth was that an unknown biological process was happening in Will’s body and so far no one seemed to be any the wiser as to what it was and why it was doing what it was doing. Randy hugged Will closer, his roaming fingers finding the deep cleft between his (smaller) pecs. Will wore only a white low-cut wife-beater and sweatpants at this time. Much of his upper body was exposed and Randy couldn’t help but grow hard from their contact. Will also grew aroused, only less zealously than his monstrously huge husband. Will had more to tell him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Rothman finally got in touch with Cyrus Redfern. He was on a fishing trip, would you believe, in a goddam radio blind-spot. He only started playing with my blood this morning, but Rothman forwarded him the lab results. I just spoke with Redfern on the phone. He’s arranged a private screening at his lab at 10am tomorrow morning.”[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“But that’s a good thing, surely. He’s coming into work on a Saturday. You must have really won him over, honey,” Randy said, smiling now, enough for the both of them. But if Will tried to act optimistic at this time, then he failed miserably to show it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I didn’t win him over, Randy. Not me personally. It’s the ten inches I’ve shrunk in just a couple of months that has his interest piqued.” Will hung his head, as if in shame, as if it was his fault that this was happening to him.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“So you’re going to brood up here like a hermit? The reason you’re so down is because you haven’t had a decent workout in so lo–– ” But before Randy could finish:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I’m down because I’m fucking shrinking... getting smaller... smaller every fucking day, Randy. Stop pretending that everything is okay, and that lifting weights will make all this go away, ‘cos it fucking won’t... okay? I’m screwed... being slowly devoured by the goddam unknown!!!!” [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Will threw his phone as far as attic space would allow, not intending to hit the small, black spider on the wall opposite, but it was still almost a perfect shot. The device smashed into several chunky pieces, one of which, the battery pack, connected with one of the spider’s legs, mashing it into the wood. The creature, only a few weeks hatched, managed to get away minus one of its limbs, disappearing into some small, dark recess. Neither Will nor Randy had seen the spider go.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]Suddenly pale, visibly upset, Randy Scott stared deeply into Will’s eyes for a moment as freshly-stirred motes of dust swam like airborne planktons in the silent and musty atmosphere. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“That was uncalled for,” said Randy, turning away to wipe off a ticklish tear from his cheek. He got up from the bench’s seat, walked a few paces forwards, placed his hands on his hips and just stared about the room, trying to focus on something to take his mind of his hurt. He noticed that there was a hole in the attic’s only extractor fan, as if something, a long time ago, had been hurled with force enough to punch right through its casing. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“We should get that fan fixed. House could lose a lot of heat through it in winter time,” he said, not knowing why he said it, but there was nothing like idle chat to diffuse an emotionally turbulent moment. Will, his considerable chest heaving from rage he struggled to quickly vent, followed Randy’s line of sight up to the fan.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Benny English made that three years ago... with a 2 kilo plate. He was aiming for my head,” said Will, suddenly unearthing a memory he’d thought he’d forgotten... involving the son of a neighbour, both of whom had moved to another town.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“Tell me about it,” said Randy, deciding it would be good for Will’s mind to think about something else, even if it did, from the onset, sound like a story with a less than happy ending.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“He was a fat kid. Into his videogames and too many donuts, but little else. His father damn-near pleaded with me to help Benny to lose weight. I offered to train him up here, on this old bench, some days after school. I even adjusted my own training schedule to help the kid. At first Benny seemed interested, saying that he was fed up being called “Tit Boy” in school. I brought him up here, showed him the weights. He came with a tin of protein shake and a bottle of multi-coloured vitamin pills, said his dad picked them up online. Both containers were covered in Chinese symbols and nothing else, so I couldn’t read the labels, but I was kind of amused by their enthusiasm. Stuff is still over there on the shelf, matter of fact. The protein’s still sealed, but I think Benny gobbled a few of the pills thinking they might be candy. Brave kid. I wouldn’t touch something like that unless I knew what it was made from.” Will went to the shelf and picked up the container of shake-mix, blowing some dust from it to reveal the only intelligible thing on the label as a rather over-muscled cartoon caterpillar bursting out of a real strawberry which just happened to be floating in a puddle of pink-coloured milk. Will summarily returned it to the shelf.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“You should throw those out,” Randy remarked. But somehow Will Grant would never get around to it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“I didn’t mean to lash out like that. I’m really sorry,” said Will, and went to Randy when he outstretched his hugely pumped arms, slightly flaring his lats and looking radiant despite it was gloomy in the attic, this day. Will had been looking up at Randy for weeks, now, every few days finding he had to lean his head back further, and stretch upwards on his toes a little more than the week before, just to meet him with a kiss. They kissed for a long, long time, growing hard in each other’s company.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“So let me guess, the kid decided he didn’t like lifting weights after all,” said Randy as they continued to nuzzle each other affectionately. Will had shrugged off his depression for a time, showing a little of his former self, which was something Randy could only welcome and encourage.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“After ten reps just curling with four kilos, he got a cramp in his arm and freaked out. He began stomping around the attic, kicking and screaming. He blamed me for his pain, of course, and even threatened me with a lawsuit. Imagine, a goddam punk kid, making such a pompous threat. Then he went for me with the plate, the first thing he could get his chubby fingers on. Bastard might have killed me, had I not effectively ducked. Truth be told, his father apologised the very next day and went home with his tail between his legs. I never saw either of them again. Their house was on the market a month later. I never wondered about that further.” [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Will grew quiet again, somewhat pensive, his mood threatening to plummet into torment yet again. It was up to Randy to try to keep his spirits up, even at a precarious level. It was better than standing idly by and watching Will Grant slowly disintegrate.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]“So then, about this yard sale. Want some help separating the wheat from the husk?” Randy and Will kissed for another long moment. They rummaged around the attic for a short while, finally giving up, deciding to hell with Myra Daniels. Soon thoughts of the yard sale were forgotten, and the couple retired to the floor directly below, to their bedroom, for a steamy evening of muscle worship, foreplay, and everything else that came after.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The dust settled in the attic and all was still, except for one tiny thing. The severed leg of an arachnid hunter, where the cell phone’s battery had mashed it flat against the exposed wood of the attic wall, twitched spastically for a time, as if it had a life all of its own with instincts that urged its utter survival. Soon it stopped moving altogether, whilst somewhere close by, the creature it once belonged to lurked quietly... waiting.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]To be continued....[/COLOR]

[shrink_meister]

I'm really enjoying the extensive physical and psychological detail you're providing - particularly in the changing dynamics of Will and Randy's relationship and their perceptions of each other's relative sizes.

I'm hoping you'll provide more such 'snapshots' as Will gradually drops from average height to short and then very short.

Thanks!