My Twin Moves On (Chapter 6)

[florida20]

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

CHAPTER 6

Life continued after my unsuccessful attempt to piece together the mystery at Powers Hall. The drive home that day saw my insane pump finally die off and be replaced with the worst body pain I’d ever experienced. It was pretty disheartening to feel my tight clothes loosen up. When I got home, however, I was excited to see I’d gained two pounds over the break. While that wasn’t too unusual considerring Thanksgiving has a habit of adding a few pounds to the average American waistline, the fact that I looked more defined than ever let me know just how effective those workouts had been. Even Monday’s workout was exceptional, if not nearly as sexually euphoric as the ones on my brother’s campus.

Terry was impressed as well and seemed to give my muscle dorm theory a little more credit. “So you find something out?” he asked intently after we finished Mondays workout.

I shook my head and told him he was right; I was just being paranoid. I didn’t tell him my brother was twenty five pounds and one inch bigger than me now. I figured it was best to keep the truth to myself for the time being. Although Terry had shown nothing but incredulity since I first brought the matter up, he was visibly disappointed that I had nothing to report. His words tried to keep up the solid front, though.

“What did I tell ya, man?” he asked, patting me on the back. “There’s no secret to success other than lifting, sleeping, and eating. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s working. You’re looking pretty good.”

I grinned a bit. I was now 178 lbs, still lean for 6’2 but better than August.

“Now if I could only get you to eat more, you’d be packing the weight on even faster,” Terry said.

I shrugged. “I feel like I’m eating all the time as it is. Besides, I don’t want to get…well…”

Terry grinned. “What? Fat like me?” I sighed and nodded. Terry was a cut muscle monster when I first started working out with him. Bulking for the time being, he was easily gaining as much weight per week as my brother. The difference was that half of Terry’s weight gain was in fat and my brother’s was all muscle.

Terry shrugged back, unhurt. “Hey man, welcome to the lifestyle of a bodybuilder. By the time I cut down next spring, I’ll have another fifteen pounds of muscle on my frame.”

Although too vain to truly bulk, Terry said that I’d make steady gains anyway just because I was a beginner. Regardless, I started the last three weeks of the semester eager to see what long term affects those two nights in the muscle dorm had given me. Unfortunately, by Wednesday, any residual euphoric effects were gone. My ability to train every day disappeared too; by Thursday I had to cut back to every other day to avoid overtraining.

I didn’t receive any butt dials during those final weeks of the fall semester but I DID find out why Rhys’s Facebook page was never updated. “Dude, no one uses Facebook anymore,” he said after I casually asked about it. “It’s all about Instagram and Twitter now.”

I rolled my eyes. Five minutes on Instagram and I saw my brother’s transformation in full chronological resolution. He had dozens of pictures spanning all the way back to the beginning of the semester. The first few showed off the brother I knew from the summer: Skinny arms, narrow shoulders, model face. However, from drunken shots at a bar to days at the pool to pickup games of football I watched as, picture-by-picture, my brother’s shoulders grew wider, arms grew harder, and body grew larger. At week two, a vein was visibly crawling down his arm. Week four, his shirts were all too tight. Week five, I could see his traps pulling at his collar. Week seven, he was obviously taller. By the last picture, he was the ripped stud I’d met over Thanksgiving.

A little math proved my brother was gaining about 2.5 pounds per week. Would he continue to grow at the same rate? Kevin was adding well over 3. My breath shuddered at the thought of him getting any bigger. There wasn’t much more room on his frame. I chuckled. No problem. He apparently can just make his frame bigger. If there was one thing I had on Kevin, it was an extra six..shit…four inches of height. That margin was obviously shrinking. Kevin’s genetics called for a naturally short yet wide, muscular frame. It was rare indeed for those proportions to reach the six foot mark…and yet it was almost as if he were growing wider faster than he was growing taller. Whew…what a lucky ass.

I wasn’t daunted; I was still hitting the gym as hard as I could and eating so much I was starting to feel guilty of gluttony. In the three final weeks of the semester, I gained five pounds…although I admit I lost some of that definition I’d gained those magical two days in my brother’s dorm.

I had sporadic calls with my brother. They weren’t so cryptic now that his secret was out. I also tried (with only partial success) to be a little more cordial. It’s not like there was anything he could do for me. That said, I couldn’t help but ask about how life was going in the muscle dorm. As long as I didn’t start trying to question the cause, he was more than willing to discuss it. A couple of days before finals week ended, we were talking about winter break plans when I asked him.

“Dude, I benched four hundred pounds for reps yesterday,” he said, excitedly. There was no doubt his voice was deeper than mine now. “And Kevin weighs 240 now. Can you believe it? Fifty five pounds in four months!”

“What are you weighing these days?” I asked.

He paused, feeling where I was taking this conversation. “210,” he said finally.

Can you believe it? I thought sarcastically. Forty pounds in four months! “You any taller?” I asked bluntly.

Another pause. “I think so,” he said briskly. “But not by much. We can still get away with it.”

You can still get away with it, I thought with a gallon of grit. I had nothing to get away with. “For how long, Rhys?” I asked simply.

“I don’t care anymore, Rhys,” he returned just as simply. “Whatever happens, happens.” My head physically pulled away from the phone as if bitten by it. Neither of us spoke while the air cleared, but my brother finally broke the silence. “Look Ryan. Believe me, I wish you could experience this too. I just don’t know how that can happen and I can’t act like I feel guilty about this…I wish you could be happy for me.”

I thought for a moment and for the first time stepped out of my own jealousy. Truth was…”I am happy for you, bro,” I said finally. “I really am. I just wish I was there with ya.”

“I know. Me too,” he said truthfully. Then he lowered his voice as if telling a secret. “I’ve been searching, you know. For something that’s causing this.”

My interest peaked. “Really? And?”

His voice became dejected. “I haven’t found shit,” he said bluntly. “It’s getting kind of strange, bro. People around campus are starting to talk. At first it was just a few of us working out, but now pretty much everyone who lives in this dorm is in the gym every day. All the geeks are starting to look like little Schwarzeneggers. Someone apparently shacked up here for a night or two and realized their workouts were insane the next day. People are still putting two and two together but rumors are starting to fly around. Dudes are trying to hook up with girls downstairs just so they can see what the buzz is all about. Thank god the chicks down there are wise to it. Most are only dating guys on this floor anyway. We’re the only ones that can keep up with their sex drive. You know as well as I that there can be some…side effects. Ryan, this girl at a club last night came up to Kevin and me and asked me straight up what was going on at Powers Hall. We lied and said we didn’t even live there. She said the only people who looked like us came from there. We can only deflect so many times. Eventually it’s going to come to a head and the wrong people are going to start asking questions.”

“Well at least you know you didn’t actually do anything. What’s the worst that can happen?” I was answered by silence, as if Rhys had a dozen scenarios in his head that could detail exactly how bad it could be. “Well,” I continued sarcastically. “You could always stop working out.”

Rhys laughed at the comment we both knew was hilarious. “Fat chance,” he said, voice filled with a little more mirth. “Hey, I’ll see ya in a couple days. I’ll keep looking,” he said. “I promise.”

“Thanks bro,” I said in reply.

Two days later, I saw exactly what those extra ten pounds looked like. Apparently it was enough weight to take my brother from fit to jacked in three weeks. The good thing was that 6’3 210 was still somewhat normal sized. It wasn’t until he took his shirt off that you saw the freak he’d become. Kevin’s earlier warning was right though; Rhys was definitely starting to fill out. Fortunately, the winter coolness allowed for some pretty thick garments to hide under…but the new Rhys wasn’t all that keen to hide behind anything. As we hung out with friends from high school, the conversation always meandered to Rhys newfound body. He was constantly taking off his jacket and flashing a few gun shots. His softball sized biceps made mine look like wet noodles. The two of us had always been popular solely because of our face, now my brother brought an even more impressive body to the table and it shot him to celebrity status. The twelve pound I’d gained weren’t even noticed.

Rhys additional poundage didn’t raise my parents’ eyebrows much, but my brother and I still made sure to avoid standing too close to each other. It may have been a needless paranoia but Rhys wasn’t ready for parental concern. I’ll admit part of me wanted to make our new differences as obvious as possible, just to vindictively put my brother in a corner. Truth was, my brother never lorded anything over me and if anyone was souring our relationship, it was me. If I took this experience away from him, he’d never forgive me. I did ask him how long he expected to keep up this charade.

“I’m heading to the Bahamas for Spring Break and the Powers Hall is only available to freshmen. When mom and dad see me this summer, what can they do at that point?” Rhys voice dripped with inevitability. He knew he wouldn’t be able to explain the beast he would become by May to our parents. But what was done would be done by then, right?

I could only shrug. If I had just one more weekend to investigate that dorm...Maybe there was something in the paint? The thought of licking the walls made me laugh a little. I knew it wasn’t beneath me though.

Winter break came and went, and not a moment too soon for my brother. We went to the gym together while he was in town and although he completely dominated any of my lifts, he acted as if he were sleepwalking through them. “It’s not like I’m lifting any less than I was on campus. It just doesn’t feel as good. My body feels…normal. I barely feel pumped.”

“Welcome to the real world, bro,” I said without sympathy. I managed to score a small victory during the break when I gained three pounds to his zero. His 210 versus my 185 notwithstanding, I was the winner on a neutral playing field. Too bad the playing field was in no way neutral in the long run.

Come January, my brother and I parted ways for the third time: he to a real world of make-believe and me to the real world of…reality. It took months but I was finally getting used to being the twin needing to catch up. Bodybuilding is a hard lifestyle but I did the best I could to live it. My brother’s Instagram account proved to be a very real motivational tool.

As January pushed into February and on into March, I watched my brother swell from a jacked and lean to a true bodybuilder and giant among men. It sounds vain to say, technically being his identical twin, but Rhys was probably the best looking specimen of humanity I’d ever seen. Even when he took pictures with his muscle buddies he was starting to stand out. Kevin was growing too. His boyish face never faded as his body became one of a professional bodybuilder.

In the ten weeks between winter break and spring break, I gained another ten pounds and was now at 190. I was finally able to call myself somewhat muscular. My six pack had practically disappeared but you couldn’t tell what my abs looked like with a shirt on.

“Four fifty, bro,” Rhys said about his bench press in late February. “For eight reps! That’s the fucking shit. Dude, I crushed a pencil between my pecs just by flexing ‘em. I want to find a shelled pecan and see if I can crush it. Could you see me doing that for a girl on the beach? ‘Here, let me help you with that.’ Crrrunch! Ah, that would be fucking epic.”

Good luck finding a girl eating shelled pecans on the beach, I wanted to say. “Yean, epic,” I said instead.

“I’ll say,” he said. “Anyway, spring break is in two weeks so I want to get as huge as I can before we head out to Nassau. Are you sure you don’t want to come? We’d love to have you there.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said honestly. I did want to hang out with my brother but wasn’t all that excited to share a beach with him for a whole week…especially if I had to sit through him trying to break things between his tits.

“Yeah, well I’m 230 now. I’m hoping to get up to 235 by spring break. Being this tall sure has a way of swallowing up muscle. Besides, standing next to Kevin makes me look like a fucking wimp. He’s planning to enter an NPC competition this summer.”

“Is that a fact,” I said. I don’t know why I was surprised but my jaw dropped at hearing 230.

My brother was starting to get the hint. “K, well, I’ll talk to ya later buddy. Let me know what you decide about spring break.”

“No problem,” I said.

A few minutes later, I found myself looking at a recently added forth team picture of the “Fitz Mafia.” This one was similar to the first two: two rows of people with the wheelchair bound Fitz in the center. Kevin held his usual spot just behind the elderly man, shirtless as always. His form was incredible. I scrolled between it and the earlier pictures, amazed at Kevin’s unnatural transformation. He had to be over six feet and 270 pounds of shredded, vascular muscle. Whatever competition he planned to enter that summer he’d win hands down. Shit, by summer he could win the Olympia. My brother wasn’t far behind. He was turning into a giant himself. He stood in the back row, as usual, but was now tall enough…and wide enough…to stand head and shoulders above the heads in front. He’d been spending time at the pool: his skin was a golden bronze. His neck was every bit as wide as his head and spread out into two bulging lats which landed into the striated explosion that were his shoulders. The two people in front of him obscured the rest of his torso, but there was no doubt they were hiding a behemoth behind them. A few of the others in the group were showing off impressive gains as well. The rest looked pretty close to their size in the other three pictures. Maybe Dr. Benjamin Fitz really didn’t have anything to do with this…else wouldn’t everyone in the picture be the size of my brother and his dorm friends?

Still, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling I was missing something. On a whim I pulled up the partial abstract for the paper Fitz had co-authored about the muscle degeneration therapy. I hadn’t thought about it since I first discovered it last fall. Reading it again reminded me why I was so sure the old man knew something.

“A Study of the Effects of Gene ACTN3 Infusion on Laboratory Mice.”
A study by Dr. Benjamin Fitz and a Richard Powers, PhD
5 September 2005

This study is a follow-up to the “mighty mice” experiment conducted at John Hopkins University in 1997. In order to be a suitable treatment for degenerative diseases such as muscular dystrophy, human myostatin suppression therapy must be accompanied by an associated cell wall booster which protects skeletal muscle membrane during extreme hypertrophy. The negative effects associated with such a breakdown can be shown in the now famous Hayden Smith case. What follows is a comprehensive examination of the gene ACTN3 and its associated affects on laboratory specimens. Where most myostatin suppressed mice experience severe structural degeneration accompanied by the increase in muscle volume, the ACTN3 mice showed none of these adverse affects. In fact, cardiovascular health and pulmonary activity was seen to improve…

I must have read that shitty partial paragraph a dozen times before leaning back in my chair, frustrated and tired. It was too much to be a coincidence. Dr Fitz and his asshole co-author Dr Powers must up to something.

A thunderclap went off in my head. Dr Powers…Powers Hall…another coincidence? My gut started to tingle. Maybe Dr. Fitz was a goofy old man but was this Dr Richard Powers?

By now I was an expert internet stalker. A Google search revealed too many “Richard Powers” to count. Even adding the honorific “PhD” or “Doctor” didn’t narrow the group down to a manageable level. I had to get more creative. Keywords like my brother’s university, the state, even the title of the paper did nothing. Finally, I looked at the university website on the off chance there was an article about the dedication of the new dorm.

I finally struck gold. Turns out there was a whole profile dedicated to each building on campus. There in clear letters was the profile for the Richard G. Powers Honors Dormitory. The first name was a match. There had to be a connection. Two clicks later, I was staring at a short blurb about the dedication from July of last year. The words pretty much confirmed what the students had told me: Dr. Richard Powers, alumnus, booster, and business man, performs the ceremonial ribbon cutting with Dr Channing Ross, Dean of Student Life. The photograph was grainy but there was something familiar about the broad-shouldered graying man with the oversized scissors.

I refined my search and finally ended up with a picture of the mysterious scientist from the university’s booster association. He was a youngish middle aged man with hard eyes and a distinguished face. I couldn’t place him but couldn’t stop feeling I’d seen him somewhere before. I spent another hour searching but by all accounts this alumnus, booster, and business man didn’t exist beyond a few pictures. But I knew that damn face. I searched every recess of my conscious mind but, like that word at the tip of your tongue, recognition seemed to squirm further from my grasp with each attempt to grab it.

I went to bed that night excited but anxious. I felt so close to a breakthrough but had nothing to prove that I was any closer than I was four months earlier.

Sleep took its sweet time gracing me with its presence and, even then, my dreams were just as restless. I saw myself walking down a sandy Bahamian beach during spring break, looking better than I had ever in my life. Everyone stared at me as my lean but taut body glistened in the afternoon sun. Suddenly, everyone’s eyes shifted and I could feel their attention on me melt away. A shadow drifted over my form and I turned to see my brother, nearly seven feet tall and hundreds of pounds heavier, sauntering down the beach. I suddenly wasn’t even there…literally. My brother didn’t even see me because I was too small. I had to scurry out of the way to keep from getting bulldozed over. He walked by without a second thought and carried the public’s eyes in his wake.

The dream flashed and I was walking through the second floor hallway of the honor’s dorm. The guys were all shirtless and the girls wore little more than bras and panties. I was the shortest guy there and easily the skinniest. Guys who would have thanked the stars to hang out with the likes of me six months ago now looked at me as if thinking about throwing me out. Bookworms from the neck up were all jocks from the neck down. The women were all at least 5’10” and wore super model faces and fitness model bodies. I didn’t see Kevin or my brother but the other faces were all familiar and sitting atop forms much harder and heavier than back in November. I strolled through this alternate universe, feeling smaller and smaller in a world where everyone was a giant, even the fucking—

--My eyes shot open and I sat up in bed as if hit with a bolt of electricity. The sharp edges of those dreams immediately began to smudge, but one image remained razor sharp. It was of Dr. Powers, broad shouldered, distinguished, and looking every bit important alumnus, scientist, and businessman. I knew the face but the man I’d seen it on had been none of those things.

Three months earlier, I left my brother’s campus a failure. I’d searched every nook and cranny of that two story dormitory and left no stone unturned. I didn’t let even a locked door stand in my way. Yet my search had been halted in a way I didn’t even recognize at the time. After exhausting every other possibility, at a time I was so sure success was just beyond a locked door, I was foiled by a man with a face that didn’t belong on the uniform of a serviceman.

Dr. Powers was the fucking janitor and he was changing my brother.

[GTlifter]

As always amazing, I'm glad he's made the discovery hopefully Mr. Powers will help him reach his potential greater than even the Muscle Nerds in the dorm.

Edit: Let me clarify as I have said I am also a twin thank god I have a sister as a twin so we have never needed to compete. However if I did have a twin brother I know that competition would be somewhat present. If we truly had the same genetics and he had never taken up lifting like I had I would be double his size. So I find myself conflicted that your hard work should be the envy of your twin brother but I also can tell from the tone of the story as it is shifting that his twin and Kevin are pushing themselves to the max just the same as him and loving the differences that are coming from it.

I know he has the passion I love how you displaying that and his hunger is boiling over, I want him to grow because he would never stop growing.

[hexdog3f8h]

ARGH! I love this story, but I am afraid for the main character being completely disassociated from his twin because of their disparity and jealousy caused by it. I am one to root for the underdog. I hope he manages to get through to the "scientist/janitor" and be able to benefit from it. I'd hate to see the main character start into a spiral of self destruction and self loathing.

But, it's your story. It will be loved because of the way it has captured me into it.

Here's to rooting for the underdog. And clearly the alpha dog has become the underdog here.

[nnnrg]

I thought it might be the janitor. Who better to secretly administer The Stuff?

[hexdog3f8h]

Originally Posted by nnnrg

I thought it might be the janitor. Who better to secretly administer The Stuff?

I agree. Although it should have been obvious, it wasn't. Very sneaky, like hiding in the open. Well done!

[mario2007]

LOVE IT! Keep writing, you have a gift!

[rododoro3]

I was rooting for the Butler. Because, you know, the butler is always the whodunnit, even if there's no butler
And now you've left me hanging for the next chapter.
I want to read your story.
Please, please, please, write more!

[debate1]

Great story, hope it keeps it up!

[curinga]

Really awesome! Can't wait for more!

[Otaru_grower]

I don't usually get this emotionally involved in a story here, but I literally can't stop thinking about this one. I feel the character's vulnerability. It literally hurts me that his twin doesn't want him to come along for the ride. Why didn't he try to get his twin to come on campus with him?

Twins have such a unique, special connection...to try to destroy or sever that bond just seems so incredibly painful to read. And yet I love every single part of this! You really have captured me...this is one of the most suspenseful stories on this site I've come across! Thank you so much for writing it!