In Corpore Sano - Part 4

[tekuno]

Next part of Caveman may or may not be posted tonight. We'll see.

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In Corpore Sano
Part 4

This story has been completed. Content warnings and general description are included with the prologue, general commentary is in the comments following the epilogue.

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Epilogue

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For the better part of a month, life went on with practically no interference from Paul or his friends. I had a couple of unpleasant encounters with Paul at the gym, but they were brief.

It did strike me that Paul was bigger than he used to be, and it was exactly as creepy to realize that as you might imagine from my dreams. But it wasn't as though Paul had suddenly gone from his former skinny self to a bodybuilder; he was making tremendous gains very quickly, if my own experiences were anything to go by, but nothing which couldn't be explained by reasonably good genetics, careful nutrition, plenty of sleep, and possible steroid use.

Meanwhile, I continued my own regimen. The protein powder, all by itself, had worked wonders compared with exercise alone. I was starting to look really big, at least compared with our average customers. I felt more confident around other people. And, needless to say, I would have been much more effective in my role as bouncer, had there been any significant rowdy drunks at the bar. (There weren't. The success of the restaurant half of the business more or less took the location too far upscale for the typical brawler. The customers who got ejected were almost uniformly old pudgy white guys who tried to grope the waitresses. Not that it didn't help to be able to lift them off the ground when necessary, but most of them were drunk enough that the challenge was keeping them on their feet as I walked them to the door. I could have done that BEFORE I started working out.) I was seriously considering some more advanced supplements, although I was still wavering. It seemed like hardly a week would pass without a new claim that some existing supplement was actually worthless, or even harmful. Or maybe it was the same one over and over again; I admit that I wasn't paying very close attention.

With my improving fortunes, I began to feel lonely. In high school, I hadn't attracted a lot of interest, and I had become so used to not attracting any attention, positive or negative, that I had come to view it as normal. Now that I was putting on some mass, I was apparently desirable. People flirted with me, looked at me on the street, apparently wanted to be around me. Even Paul's creepy attention was still attention. It was all -- or nearly all -- welcome, and for the first time in over a decade I felt like getting out and meeting people.

That was something of a problem. I met plenty of people -- through my job. But I already had a policy of not dating anyone I met there. And, frankly, after working in a bar for an 8-hour shift, going to a bar to meet people didn't really appeal to me. I racked my brains to come up with methods for meeting people -- preferably gay men interested in dating, but I was also basically friendless outside of my coworkers, so anyone willing to be a friend would do.

Of course, there were always dating sites on the Internet. I tried them, off and on. I had heard good things about The World's Worst Dating Service, but when I checked, they only listed three gay men in town, and all three were customers I recognized, so they were out. Then there was eHormone, which provided a trickle of bad experiences and several profiles for wonderful-sounding guys -- who each lived at least 400 miles away. I also tried 0000Cupid, but for some reason it never came up with a single match and just sent me a steady stream of women claiming that I couldn't possibly be gay and demanding a chance to "convert" me. (Eventually, I shut down the account.)

One of the profiles on eHormone was particularly enticing. Handsome guy, well-built, seemed pretty nice. But I recognized his face from work. On the other hand, I was pretty sure I hadn't seen him for at least two months. I went back and forth on whether it would be okay to contact him, especially after a particularly bad lunch date one day. (I won't go into details, but there are things which people should be required to mention on their profiles instead of springing them on you as a surprise in person.)

Unfortunately for me, when my shift at the bar started, there he was. With a sinking feeling, I realized that he was even better-looking in person than in his profile pic -- a short-haired sandy blond, with a craggy face, and a body which, even through his clothing, looked heavy and solid. He was talking with the bartender of the previous shift when I walked in.

"Ah, here he is. Scott, come over here. I'll cover the bar for you while you talk."

"Good evening, Mister Gwinnett. Name's William Beaufort. Detective in the Nemor Sands Police Department." He showed me a badge. Uh-oh. "Just trying to identify someone. Have a good memory for faces, Mister Gwinnett?"

"Kind of. I mean, I remember seeing you here a few months ago."

Detective Beaufort smiled. "VERY good. Only here once. Not my kind of place at all. Still, if you can remember that, you're just who I'm looking for. A couple of photos here, and a sketch portrait. Tell me if you recognize this person." He held the pictures out for me.

The face in the photos didn't particularly ring any bells; it was emaciated and had a straggly, unkempt beard, and the eyes were closed. But the portrait was vaguely familiar.

"Huh. I don't know about the photos, but I have a feeling I've seen the face from the portrait before, and I think it was in this restaurant. I can't remember when, though. Am I allowed to hear who I'm identifying?"

The detective grunted. "About a year ago, found a body just outside of town. Looked like a bum. Probably WAS a bum. Died from vagrancy, basically -- starvation and exposure and disease. Nothing on him to identify, no belongings at all, except a bag next to him. Might not even have been his. Empty. If it was his, we thought: bum dies, other bum takes his stuff, runs away before we show up. Did all the usual for that kind of case, which isn't much. Then, a few days ago, we got a call from the Feds. Guy might have been someone wanted for smuggling a decade back. Disappeared, possibly drug-running.

"Whole different ballgame. Bag could have held just about anything. Took another look at the evidence, which was still in storage because we're too understaffed to clean out the vaults. Side pocket of the bag, there were a few slips of paper, we thought blank. Sent 'em off to the lab, just in case. Turns out there's writing on one of 'em, and it's the address of this restaurant.

"So, checking to see if anyone here can remember the guy. Of course, he wouldn't have been here starving and with three weeks of beard. Got our artist to draw him cleaned up, and that's the portrait. Ring any bells?"

"Huh." Part of me was trying to remember when and where I had seen that face, the rest was trying to come up with a way to ask the detective out, inappropriate though that would have been. After a few moments, I gave up on both. "Sorry, Detective, but I can't remember anything more right now."

"Don't force it. It'll come back." The detective took out a business card. "Call me if you remember anything." He gave me another look, leaned over the bar, and said in a low voice: "if you're the Scott Gwinnett on eHormone, call me anyway." He scribbled "home" and a number on the back of the card, and dropped it on the bar. Then he blushed a little and half-jogged out of the restaurant.

I spent the rest of my shift blissed out. Good-looking, not a customer, and apparently interested in me, personally. And not Paul. During the occasional lull, I daydreamed about what he looked like out of his clothing.

When I finally got home that night, it was far too late to contact the detective. I was disappointed, but he probably wouldn't mind if I called a day or two later. I did my usual before-bed routine and settled down to sleep.

Suddenly I sat bolt upright. The portrait was the man in my dream, the one Paul had been lecturing, who I remembered thinking was dead. In daylight, I would probably have decided that the similarity was a coincidence, caused by the inaccuracies of sketch portraits, or that I must have had the dream based on seeing both Paul and the man in the restaurant at some point. In the middle of the night, though, the coincidence was shocking, terrifying. After lying awake for half an hour, I decided to get myself a glass of water.

On the way to the kitchen, I looked out the window. In the street, standing under the streetlamp on the other side of the road, was a figure in a trenchcoat and a hat. It was almost entirely in shadow, but it was obviously watching my house. I took a closer look, and then headed down to the front door. When I opened it, the street was empty -- the figure was nowhere in sight.

Part 5

[garrix]

You bring a level of sophistication to your stories that few people on this site include. I appreciate that more. I'm not even into most of the fiction on here, but I do like your stories.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by garrix

You bring a level of sophistication to your stories that few people on this site include. I appreciate that more. I'm not even into most of the fiction on here, but I do like your stories.

Thank you. Right now I'm just wishing I could write faster. I have this story, and Caveman, and the other one that's about half-done, and I'm starting to plot out the "happy ending" version of A Word Out of Place. (As stated elsewhere, it will be very much an alternate universe sort of thing. Less magic, less -- or at least different -- two-dimensional evil characters, no sad history of murder and torture waiting in the background. If you ever saw El Hazard and The Wanderers, or the different versions of Tenchi Muyo, then you know how the drill goes.)

Unfortunately, the next part of both this story and Caveman, after the part of Caveman which I'm working on right now (when not being distracted by the Internet, anyway) and hope to post before going to bed, will be delayed a couple of days. I am going to be backing up my user account on my laptop, wiping the HD, and installing the next version of the OS from scratch. (I need the next version for various reasons, and I want a fresh installation for various other reasons. So I'll be more or less offline for a day or two while I settle things back in place.)