VOICES 

15

Ron was slumped against the door. He had his hands on his knees and was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. What in God's name is going on, he thought. He raised one hand and rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger. He looked like he was trying to squeeze the crazy out of his head. He took a few deep breaths and waited for the nasty voice to return - but there was nothing. He relaxed a bit, lifted his upper body and put his hands on his hips. He looked up to the ceiling, his eyes moved quickly from left to right, as if following a frightened bat. But his focus was not outside, it was inside. He searched every corner of his mind for the nightmarish voice that had terrorized him now for days, lurking in the shadows of his thoughts, waiting for a moment of vulnerability to strike. 

Where are you, you bastard? It reverberated in the hallways of his mind. But there was only darkness, so black and all-encompassing that it was dizzying. Whoever or whatever it was, they seemed to have vanished.

Focus, man, focus, he thought, grabbing his gym bag and sitting down on the bench in front of a locker that ran around the room in a U-shape. He opened the zipper of the bag and took out a small hard case containing a syringe, pre-injection swabs, and a vial of an inconspicuous liquid - the juice.

(Oh yeah.)

He lifted his shorts, exposed his right thigh and cleaned the top with the alcohol swab. Then he removed the cap of the syringe with his teeth and inserted the needle into the juice, filled it up, removed it from the vail, and squeezed the plunger to push out air bubbles. He slowly inserted the needle into the vastus lateralis and shot up. The syringe emptied and at the same time Ronny's lungs deflated with a pleasurable exhale.

He began to pack up neatly and changed into his sneakers. As he tied his shoes, a tingle went up his spine, a tiny pleasure wave jumping from vertebra to vertebra. 

Ronny's pupils dilated to the size of dessert plates and his jaw tensed a bit - what a feeling! He got up and took a long, deep breath through his nose, like one of those big engined cars that suck air through a turbocharger to get more power.

(Ooooooh Yeeeeah.) 

The voice was back.

(I am the tower of power, too sweet to be sour.)

But Ron could no longer separate it from himself. 

(I am too hot to handle, too cold to hold.)

He was becoming the voice.

(She is never coming back!)

16

Ron was all alone in the free weights area. No one dared come near him because for the last 20 minutes he was working out like a madman, a wild animal signaling "come near me and I will bite your head off". He was doing insane pyramid sets, going from light weights and high reps to heavy weights and even higher reps. You didn't know what to make of it, but everybody knew there was something wrong with the big R.

He picked up two forty-kilogram dumbbells, neatly arranged on a rack that ran the length of the wall, and locked eyes with himself in the mirror that also ran from side to side. 

There are so many mirrors in a gym that it adds to the self-indulgent and superficial image that bodybuilding has. But the mirror is merely a tool to measure progress. Because a bodybuilder sees himself as a living sculpture, and where a sculptor works with clay and removes things to reveal his vision, a bodybuilder adds muscle to work on the perfect form. Michelangelo had his David, and Ron had his mirror image.

(I am a beast. I look amazing.)

Ron took a step back so that his entire body was visible in the reflection and began to let the dumbbells fly. He did a set of good mornings, keeping his legs straight and letting his torso fall forward, only bending at the hips, like an overdone japanese bow. With outstretched arms, the weights touched the ground lightly, and with incredible dexterity, Ronny came back to the starting position. Ten repetitions, twenty, thirty, forty; short pause, low growl, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, and clank, he dropped the weights and leaned against the rack to catch his breath. He looked down, his chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face, the salt burning in his eyes.

(If only I had let her go.)

When the dizziness was bearable and the pain subsided, his mind was clear for a moment. He looked up and into the mirror, and saw that everyone in the gym was staring at him, in awe, in amusement, in fear.

(They all talk behind my back. They all think I did it.)

Drunk with these thoughts, Ronny walked over to a barbell that was already overloaded with 290kg and added yet more weight. Sally and Sam exchanged nervous faces.

The only thing missing was a pump up song, Ron thought and opened Spotify. There were three titles he used at the end of workouts to really push the envelope. But it wasn't 2Pac with Hit Em Up, or Jedi Mind Tricks with Design by Malice, or DMX’s Get Up and Try Again. They were guilty pleasures, and so embarrassing that every time Ronny put one of them on, he lowered the volume on his earbuds for fear they would bleed through. Elton John's Nikita, the Vengaboys' Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! and Alicia Keys' Girl on Fire. But today he gave a rat's ass if anyone could hear, turned the volume up to eleven, and Alicia came on:

She’s just a girl and she’s on fire.

Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like highway.

She is living in a world and it’s on fire.

Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away.

Ron was getting ready for a set of deadlifts, grabbed the bar, squeezed his fingers tightly around the metal, and placed his feet shoulderwide. Alicia continued:

She’s got both feet on the ground and she is burning it down.

His whole body relaxed and then every muscle tensed up for the upcoming struggle, you could see the muscle fibers vibrating like piano strings.

(I killed her. I killed her. I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.)

She’s got her head in the clouds,

(YOU FUCKING KILLED HER!)

"Get the fuck outta my head!" he shouted.

This girl is on fire! 

The hook line started and with it Big R. started his tour the force. The goal: To inflict as much pain as possible so that the brain is forced to solely focus on the body, on pure survival, and to cut off the damn voice in his head.

He sat back and the glutes and thighs began their work in unison with the forearms. The weight began to slowly lift off the floor. The bar was raised so close to the shins that it tore off skin. And once the butt and thighs had done their part, the lower back came on duty. The pull on the spine was so intense that it grew warm, ready to snap like a string of pearls. And then he stood upright.

This girl is on fire!

Slowly, the bar slid back down, taking off another layer of skin, smearing blood all the way down to the socks. Ron let go of the bar and boom, it hit the floor so hard it made the mirrors vibrate.

"Ain't nuthin' but a peanut," Ron squeezed through clenched teeth and immediately went for another rep: forearms, ass, thighs, back, and boom, not giving the voice a chance for a comeback. He lifted and lifted and lifted, and it worked. His mind was blank. 

His vision blurred, "Uhhhhhhhhhhhh!" he growled with a fire-engine red face and dropped the weight for the sixth time. The vibrating mirrors distorted the reflected double. It took him a moment to realize that it was his own face, shattered by pain, that looked back at him. He could feel the voice struggling back to the surface.

"Ain't nuthin' to it, but to do it," he said smiling and lifted the weight again. The exertion was unworldly. When he moved the weight about halfway, his legs started to tremble, then his arms, and then the entire body.

"Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights!" Ron pushed himself, tapped his last energy reserves and, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" stood upright. For a moment there was nothing, no pain, no voice, no Ron. Outer body experience. 

Then there was a faint plop followed by a crackle. Then another one and another. The cadence increased, as did the volume. It grew to something like Chinese firecrackers.

Time began to slow when Ron opened his hands and the barbell began its descent to earth. In the mirror, his double stayed in place while the background grew bigger, Vertigo style. Pop, pop, crackle; the static in the air increased and with a deafening crash, the weights hit the ground. A blinding light and shockwave exploded and traveled through the gym. Everyone covered their eyes. Sam's toupee was blown off. The mirror shattered and Ron's double was split in half. He felt cold and empty, his legs gave way and he fell to the side, smelled the rubber floor and felt it pressing soft against his cheek. With the pindrop vision he had left, he saw a tiny bolt of lightning fracture the air in front of him. It left a hole no bigger than his hand, glowing a rainbow of colors around its edges.

Is this it? Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? He wondered, but quickly withdrew the thought when he saw what was slithering through the crack. Four snails? Naked rats? The vision was too blurry, but whatever they were, they were not of this world. One of the creatures screamed, the others moved their limbless bodies towards the leader and puff - They were gone.

"You okay, man?" Sam turned Ron over, he looked comical with his toupee all sideways.

"That was just my warm-up set," Ronny grinned and closed his eyes and the world went dark and silent.

17

When he came to, it was still dark. Where am I? The thought echoed through the black and was followed by another. What happened? And yet another. Why can't I move? And then the thoughts toppled over each other. 

(Am I dead? Is this hell? Will I be here forever? Is someone here with me? Or something? Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa! Relax. Breathe.)

He heard himself take a few deep breaths, but missed the sensation of being embedded in flesh. 

(How can I hear myself breathe if I have no body? What the hell is going on here?) He felt his non-existent eyes oscillate, searching for some point of reference, but the darkness only became more disorienting, no up, no down, no left and right. Panic mixed with vertigo. 

(Wait, what's that!) 

In the corner of his eye he saw a white horizontal line. Suddenly, the panic was overpowered by feelings he had never expected to find down here: love, protection, care - he felt home.

"Mommy?" said a feeble voice next to him - or was it inside him? "Mommy." It was the voice of a small child. It sounded so familiar, but Ron could not place it. "Moooomyyyyy!" The child was getting upset.

The white line in the corner grew into a rectangle and the silhouette of a woman appeared in it.

"What's wrong, honey? Had a bad dream?" The silhouette reached for something, then the light came on and Ron's mother entered the room. 

She sat down next to him on the bed and stroked his hair, "You're all sweaty Ronny, what's wrong?" She was so young, so beautiful, and must have been in her late twenties. She was wearing a yellow tank top and white undies. Her smile brought instant relief and warmth, and when she kissed his forehead, her long blonde hair tickled his cheeks. She smelled of the body lotion she used after a long day at the lake, she smelled of aloe and sunflowers. Ronny looked down at himself and saw green Long Necks fighting red T-Rexes all over his blue onesie. Mum lay next to him, and pressed her body close to his. She took Ron's hand in hers and intertwined their fingers. 

"What's wrong, honey?" Mom said as she massaged the back of his hand with her fingers.

"Why do people die?"

She stopped stroking his hand and turned to study his face carefully. There was a long moment of silence. What do you tell a nine year old?

"That's the way the world works," she continued, and realized how lame that sounded and picked shyly at the tiny mounds of his pajamas. He is old enough, you can give him more than that. "I think if we lived forever, had unlimited time, we would not feel the pressure to do anything with our lives. You see, there are so many things in this world that we can make, but time is not one of them. Once it's spent, you can never get back. Knowing that is the sweet pain that pushes us to do more with our lives, it reminds us to tell the people we love that we love them, it helps us say no to the things we don't like. I am not a poet honey, I can't describe that well, but I'm the end it means we have no time to waste."

Ronny started to tremble. "I don't want you to die, Mommy."

"Aren't you the sweetest," she wrapped her arms around him and held him close, her eyes filling with love, "you're way too young, hell, I'm way too young to be thinking about these things. We have so much time together. Let's not worry about that today, okay?"

"Okay," he sniffed into her breasts. 

They lay there and it seemed like an eternity. 

(Oh, how good she smelled.) 

Ron's breathing calmed and he slowly felt the pull towards dreamland. Mom gracefully slipped out of bed and he was okay with that, she had done her part. She replaced her body with a stuffed animal and cat-burglarized her way to the door.

"Mommy?" He said drowsy.

"Yes, honeybear?"

"I love you."

"I love you too. Now sleep tight."

She left the door halfway open, letting the hallway light throw itself on the bedroom floor like a golden carpet. Ron snuggled up against the pillow and inhaled the sweet scent Mom left behind, and relaxed even more. The warm summer air played with the curtains and blew gently over him. From his parents' room down the hall came the dim sound of a car chase: police sirens, screeching tires, and knocked over garbage cans. Mom was right, death can wait. He sank deeper, his eyelids almost touched, making what was left to see soapy. And with the next breath he left the station; next stop, dreamland.

It was hard to tell if he was out for a few seconds or hours, then, in the limbo between waking and sleeping, time no longer has its normal properties. But however long it was, his awakening was sudden and smacked of danger. He was still in his childhood bedroom. Everything looked like a moment (a lifetime?) ago, but at the same time felt different and wrong. It took him a bit to understand what was going on, but when he did, it hit him like a ton of bricks. He was caught in a dream he had had countless times as a child, where he was being chased down the hallway by a dark entity under the bed, and it always ended the same way: death by being swallowed by it. But this time, he told himself, it would be different, this time he would make it.

He sat up and shoved himself to the end of the bed, and put his feet on the floor. He knew that it was lurking under the bed, that it was watching him, and that it could get him just as easily. But it was a sneaky one. It liked the smell of fear on him. 

(Let him run a little, let him sweat, soak in fear, juicy like pulled pork.) 

He scurried for the door and made it, no problem.

(Safe!) 

He knew how stupid it was to stop and look back, but he had to make sure it was there. And there it was, a black cloud under the bed, slowly oozing out dark smoke, eyeing him from a distance. 

(Okay, it's there, what are you waiting for?)

Green light for Ronny to move. The hallway became a tartan track and he became Usain Bolt.

(Come on, it's only a few meters to safety, you can do it, you're a big boy.) 

The first steps were explosive, and he had already covered half the distance. The dark nebula could not keep up but crept forward unimpressed.

(Eat my dust!) 

As Ron's feet touched the floor for the third and fourth time, they slowed. With each moment, it was harder to move forward, it was like walking through yell-o. The fog closed in quietly, devouring all the light in its path, leaving only the dark behind. 

(Almost there, come on, come on, come on! You shitty feet!) 

He pushed on, using all his strength, but those damn legs wouldn't cooperate. The stench of the fog reached his nostrils: moldy and wet, the fungal decay of rotten wood. Ron, looking like someone who had to push away a meter of snow with every step, waddled to the door with a pained face, and when he finally made it, he grabbed the door handle with his last ounce of strength.

(Made it!)

He pushed the handle down, and opened the door to see his parents' startled faces. He looked over his shoulder once more

(See ya, sucka!) 

and tripped over his own feet. He fell as slowly as he had been running. His arms outstretched, he tried to scream, but nothing would come out of his mouth. The cold haze engulfed him up to his waist now. Ronny saw the cheap linoleum floor approaching, and before he hit it, the darkness swallowed him whole. 

18

"Oh shit!"

It came from the other side of the gym. The three bros were at the pull-up tower when one of them collapsed, violently convulsing. The second was kneeling at his side, both hands on his friend's neck. Their white shirts were spray-painted red. The third bro, standing next to them, clean white shirt and just as pale, repeated like a broken record: "Shit, shit, shit."

Then there was a bone-chilling crack and he fell silent. His eyes widened in shock. He touched the back of his head and brought his fingers back, dipped in deep red. He felt warm liquid running down his neck and went for a last "Sssshhhiiit", before face planting next to his friends. 

The kneeling bro sank back in resignation, forgetting all about his friend's neck. Blood spurted out in great arcs onto his shock-ridden face. He saw his other friend’s head was missing a large chunk. It wasn't a clean cut like a samurai sword would leave, it looked more like his head had exploded, the brain hanging in shreds over the broken skull.

Sally ran over and helped the boy to his feet and led him away from the heinous scene. Sam grabbed his towel from the bench, asked Kendra for hers, and walked over too. He knelt down and took a long, hard look. He shook his head, unable to make rhyme or reason out of what he saw, and for a man with his history, that should mean something. All he could say was that the neck and head injuries looked the same; as if a grizzly bear had taken a hard swing at the boys and ripped off a good chunk of them. He covered their dead bodies with the towels, said a little prayer for the fallen soldiers, and sent a "God have mercy" for the rest of them to any entity that might be listening.