THE GYM

Humming to himself, Barry headed down the steps towards the gym’s entrance. Today was his first day at the new gym - and he was looking forward to it.

Because it had taken him six months to get the court to let him join.

Even after all the headaches, the muscular, handsome lawyer still got a kick out of the whole thing. It had first started as a joke - the tall, broad-shouldered lawyer had been looking for a new gym when his old one closed. He’d gone through the Yellow Pages, copying down addresses to check out, when he’d come across the add for ‘Miss Fit’s Health Club’ - an overly-cute title for a women’s only gym.

That’s what had gotten Bartholomew Robert McNeil thinking. After all, women had challenged all-male gyms, and won. So, he decided that he was going to fight the system for ‘Men’s Rights’ - and he had won, too. The court had decreed that the gym had no choice but to allow Barry a membership, if he so choose. And, just to piss of the dykes and bitches who used an all-female gym, he’d done just that.

Now, feeling cocky and smug, he stepped through the doors to the gym where he was now a member and took a look around.

Empty.

The entire building appeared to be empty, from what Barry could see. Not just the gym area, seen through the set of double glass doors at the end of the lobby, but the entire building itself. There was no sign of employees, patrons, custodial staff - not a single living person except himself.

Barry grinned slightly to himself. The Fema-Nazis who ran and used the place had obviously decided to make his victory a ‘moot’ one. If he had the right to ‘intrude’, then they were going to deny him the chance to ogle them.

However, the joke was on them - Barry really didn’t care. After all, most of the patrons of a women’s only gym were lesbians and feminists, and he really didn’t find hairy, mannish women attractive. The point of this little exercise hadn’t been to ogle their unlovely flesh - he just wanted to teach the damned bitches a lesson. If the end result was that he got to use the gym by himself, so much the better.

Heading into the change room, Barry tossed his gym bag onto a bench and slowly stripped down, eyeing the faintly feminine decor of the room. He had to admit that, if nothing else, this gym smelled better then the ones he was used to.

Pulling off his somber black suit in favor of a pair of red shorts and a white T-shirt, the muscular, russet-haired man slid his bare feet into a well-worn and faded pair of Nikes and headed out to the main are of the gym, where several thousand dollars worth of machine gleamed under the fluorescent lights, idle and almost antiseptically clean. For the first time since the broad-shouldered man had gone to a gym, there was no delay whatsoever to use any machine - he actually had a pick of what he wanted to use, in what order.

He began to wander through the various machines, surprised to find very few that he was familiar with. It wasn’t just the brand-names were different - it was the fact that each machine had been designed specifically for women, and so had differences that ranged from subtle to confusing. There was even one or two that completely mystified him.

He walked over to one of the completely unknown machines, a strange device in chrome, pink and white. He tilted his head and read the lettering running up the side of the machine in ‘futuristic’ italic letters.

“The Body Bender,” He read aloud, a hint of amusement in his deep, rumbling voice. He leaned closer to make out the smaller lettering beneath. “The Complete Full-Body Workout Machine to Re-Shape the Figure from Head to Toe.”

Shaking his head and snorting, Barry straightened and eyed the odd-looking machine. Moving around, he could see that it had a computerized LCD display and controls that were labeled as to a complete workout session. Shrugging his massive shoulders, Barry awkwardly slithered into the embrace of the complicated machine, having to shoe-horn his massive frame into a design that didn’t consider such a figure being placed in it. Finally, he managed to get fairly comfortable in the white-and-pink vinyl padding of the chair that lay at the center of the machine.

Reaching out with a thick, blunt finger, Barry hit the big green button marked ‘Init.’ Immediately, there was a rising hum and various parts of the machine moved slightly in preparation. Startled, Barry almost leapt from the machine as the seat he was sitting in suddenly came alive, shifting beneath his massive form...

...and around it. The padding moved until it formed a headrest at the top that gripped his head and held it lightly in position. More padding lifted, shifted and moved, and Barry - who, bemused, let the machine do it’s work - soon found himself strapped into the machine, basically held in it’s embrace.

Then the machine let out a muted beep - and went to work.

Just as Barry felt an odd prick in the base of his skull, a recorded voice began to issue from speakers somewhere. He recognized the voice as belonging to the bitch who owned the gym - Terri? Tommi? No - Teddi.

“Mr. Martin - you stupid, stupid man.” Her recorded voice said with contempt - and he felt a stir of anger.

The next words turned it into a stir of fear.

“We bet on the fact that you’d be stupid enough to use a machine that you knew nothing about at some point during your workout - and here you are, caught in the web of our revenge. You didn't think I’d just quietly let you get away with this, did you?”

Barry tried to extract himself from the whirring machine - and discovered, with horror, that not only couldn’t he move his body - he couldn’t even feel it. There was no sensation at all in his body.

“Don’t bother trying to struggle.” Teddi’s voice said, smugly. “You’ve already been injected with a combination paralytic agent and anesthetic. We briefly considered leaving the anesthetic out completely - but nobody deserves to feel the agony that what comes next would cause.”

Now Barry was truly scared - what the hell was going on?

“Even though you can’t feel it,” the voice continued, “right now your body is being cut into by a thousand precision-controlled lasers. These lasers are cutting away skin and fat and muscle, tissue of all sorts - even bone. However, they won’t even singe your nerves, organs, veins and arteries. No - you’ll still be alive when they finish cutting you down to almost nothing.

Barry was horrified by what he was hearing. It didn’t seem possible - they couldn’t really do that to him...

...could they?

The sickly-sweet odor of burning flesh almost sent him over the edge in full-blown panic.

“Oh - don’t worry.” The voice continued. “We’re not going to leave you as a set of disembodied organs.”

A minute or two passed, then the odor faded a bit. Barry realized that his hearing had changed, becoming less distinct, and that he was no longer blinking at all.

Because he no longer had ears, or eyelids. His eyes and eardrums were now completely unattached from their anchors.

The voice continued.

“By now, you are nothing more than your exposed brain connected to your organs. Everything else is gone, and the little that is left is being held in place by special bursts of air, carefully regulated with the right humidity and content to avoid any damage. To an onlooker, you’d be a gruesome sight, disembodied organs apparently floating in mid-air.”

The machine’s humming took on a different tone.

“Now a skeleton is being created in place around your organs. It’s made of a synthetic poly-carbon polymer that is both lighter and stronger than naturally occurring bone - and is filled with living bone-marrow that matches your blood-type.”

Barry was now listening to those words as a sort of life-line to keep him from mindless insanity. He was hovering right at the edge of complete break-down, and only the effort of deciphering the word - as horrible as the message was - was the only thing keeping him barely sane.

“Now - a layer of synthetically created muscle tissue is being added, as well as other tissues. Certain organs and nerve endings are also being moved and relocated to fit the profile of your new figure.”

There was a couple of minutes, during which all Barry could here was the odd sounds of the machine at work.

“Now, the final work is being done. Artificial skin is being applied, new glands are being emplaced, and artificial hair and nails are being created. Which means that it’s time to do the other part of our little vengeance.”

Before Barry could even wonder what that meant, a screen of some sort dropped into position in front of his immobile eyes. Strange colors and patterns began to swirl on the surface...

Too late, he realized that they were, quite literally, hypnotic. More than that, an unfelt needle was dumping large amounts of a hypnotic agent into his bloodstream. Before he even realized what was going on, he was in a deep trance, his mind disconnected from reality as new information was fed directly into the unguarded depths of his subconscious mind.

* * * * * * * *

“nnnn.....”

The groan was low and deep, made by somebody lost in the depths of a nightmare that refused to break.

“Nnnooo...”

Definition and coherency began to form as the figure stirred, nearing wakefulness.

“No!”

The scream was ripped from his throat as he struggled to sit bolt upright, heart pounding in his chest and eyes open wide at the memory. But even as the denial was torn from his throat, he knew that it wasn’t a denial he was capable of making.

Or rather - that she was capable of making. Because the scream came out in a rich, undeniably feminine voice, and even as she truly began to register her surroundings, new sensations assaulted her mind, proving that this was no nightmare - but that the horror was real.

With a tremendous burst of energy provided by adrenaline, she forced herself upright against the heavy, padded restrain across her chest, feeling new sensations flood her as she tried to come to grips with the realization of what had been done to her. She looked down...

 

CONTINUED WITH MEMBERSHIP!