The Morning Plight

Short Fantasy Stories on WordsAllMine

Synopsis: Short Fantasy Stories on WordsAllMine. A fiction tale of a girl envisioning herself in a mysteriously strange place.

Spring had arrived. But the air was still cool with the remnants of the winter. Walking half a kilometer from my place with my friend, I reached our destination. A gym with a billboard on the top flashing, ‘Royal Blue’ through the nightly darkness of early morning.

It was our first day and to be both nervous and enthralled was completely natural. But not only the room was impregnated with foul smell of sweat, its view, when I witnessed, sent me shivers.

I saw a boy swinging like a pendulum from the curtain rod on the wall adjacent to the door. What the hell! Another boy was running along the boundary of the wide circular hall while the treadmill lay idle. Suddenly, my eyes chanced to fall upon a black Labrador. A Labrador in the gym?

I yelped and looked for my friend, who was not there by now. I wondered where she had gone and looked around. Perhaps she popped in to ask around.

Good grace! I hadn’t made the payment yet. I mused and strode towards the door but it was jammed. Pulling it towards my side, I saw from the half glass of the door another boy approaching from the opposite side.

“Could you help me open it up? The door is stuck.” I said in coaxing voice. But instead of pulling it inside, he fished a giant black lock out of his pocket and locked the door.

He himself jumped in from the adjacent window and ran towards the treadmill as if he couldn’t hear or see me at all. I trotted towards the same window and peeped down. But it seemed to be atleast twelve feet high. Jumping from there meant breaking good amount of bones ‘specially for a non-gym goer’. I quipped.

Like others, that strange chap too started a bizarre kind of workout of running in the direction of the machine over the rolling plane. It was quite hilarious to watch him fall so many times like this.

A woman with masculine upper body and scrawny legs was incessantly working out with seemingly heavy dumbbells. It made me wonder why doesn’t she work on her thin legs rather than her over worked shoulders.

“New?” Suddenly came the voice of an old man passing by my side. It felt as if he had appeared from nowhere. I observed that he had neither teeth nor hair. He looked like a cartoon character in garish blue shorts showing off his thin wrinkled legs.

“Hum.Yes”. I replied and watched him going over a nearby table. To my surprise, he climbed up and started doing squats atop the table.

The place started to look spooky and incomprehensible. ‘Are they crazy?’ I mumbled.

The next moment, my hands felt heavy. But I wasn’t holding anything when I came here. I looked down to find each of my hands holding a brick.

My sudden awakening at the discovery let the bricks fall on the floor. I heard a splashing sound and my gaze shifted towards the floor. The blue carpet beneath my feet wasn’t there anymore but a shallow pond deep enough to immerse my feet in the water whose wetness I couldn’t feel.

The fallen bricks started to dissolve in the water turning it red. I instantly jumped out of the pool and ran towards the other side of the hall.

There in the corner was a leg press machine and a boy was lying under its platform connected to a rod for hanging the weights. In the lying down position, you lift your legs upright and push and pull the platform against the weights. But what caught my eyes was two guys were standing on that platform instead of the weights. And I couldn’t control laughing at the jerks these boys would receive everytime the platform went up and down.

Hearing my laughter, the woman with scrawny legs came near me, glowered at me and suddenly slapped on my face…I guessed I broke some rule of the mysterious cult. With anger filled face, she handed her dumbbells over to me. It made my entire body crouch under their weight that I fell on my knees.

“Never ever laugh at hardworking people”. She snapped and started laughing at me even loudly. I gave her a timid look while she snatched her dumbbells and went back to her workout.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. And before I could make a move, my friend jogged me from behind. She pointed towards a 12 year old pudgy lad standing beside her, who she introduced as the ‘owner’ of the gym. I was,by now tired of the surprises that I kept a stiff upper lip.

“Where were you gone?” I asked her with mild frustration, completely ignoring the stranger.

“I was checking out the spa. It’s wonderful. You too should have a look.” She prodded.

“No. Not now.” I replied.

“Duster! Would you take her?” She asked the little boy who, now lying on the rubber bench was pulling a dumbbell all the way from ground towards his chest from above his head using both the hands. As the weight would get down, I could see his arms stretching unusually quite like a chewing gum.

He left the dumbbell aside and immediately stamped off the bench.

“Madame”. He bowed to my friend like a footman and asked me to follow.

I was extremely puzzled and indecisive about what to do. But there was no option other than obeying the protocol.

“He took me through a narrow corridor which was not illuminated properly. I guess there were 2 or 3 small rooms of the size of bathrooms. He opened the second one for me and switched on the light. It was bright only enough to see the peripheries.

“That is for steam to enter.” He pointed at a small duct in the bottom corner of the cubbyhole chamber and continued,

“We have an anti-dandruff treatment as well for hair, in case you opt for.”

“I will see.” I snapped.

“Your friend asked me to let you have a 5 minute trial”.

I dreaded another blow but during my whole time in this bizarre place, this was the first thing that sounded relaxing. So, I decided to give it a shot and said, “Wait outside the door until I come out in 5 minutes”.

I went inside and closed the door. As soon as I sat on the small wooden stool, he knotted the door from outside and stood there.

My eyes fell upon the duct which started to emanate flurry of steam in the small closed room. But I also a saw long black snail along with the stream. I pulled my feet up on the stool and started to scream…” Duster! Open! Open!”

But he had disappeared by now.

The snail grew to two, then three, then four and so on while the smoke kept getting voluminous that started to smother my breath.

In a couple of minutes, I meekly saw through the thick white mass that the snails had made a pool all around me that reached half the length of the stool. Some of them also started crawling over the walls.

Suddenly, their pace increased that they started crawling higher, reaching the roof. My legs were folded to accommodate on the small stool and my eyes were fixed on the roof overhead with fright.

Just as the worst part of the plight, one of the snails on the ceiling, fell down… right on my head.

I shouted at the top of my voice, tossing my head left and right.

My eyes creaked open only to find my friend shaking me up.

“At last you woke up.” She sighed.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around. I was in my room and the clock beamed 5.

“We are getting late for Royal Blue.” She said.

“Let’s drop that plan. What about shopping?” I quipped.