Under New Management

[mental transformation--big guys believe they're little guys]

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0/10! No stars! DO NOT RECOMMEND!

Global Gym is a NIGHTMARE. Not worth the money! Full of roided up freaks who think their big muscles make them better than everyone! The only thing that stinks worse than their ROID SWEAT is their attitudes!

Jamie sighed at the review, licked his lips, and began tapping his response.

“You’re referring to the OLD Global Gym. We’ve totally rebranded! We’ll offer you a free month if you come in to see how different things are nowadays. We have the most well-behaved ‘big guys’ in town!”

He smiled as he posted the reply, then checked the clock: for two hours he’d been combing through Global Gym’s bad reviews, urging people to come back to see how much the place had changed. Jamie thought back to a year before, when most of their clientele were oversized prima donnas flexing and strutting and looking down on anyone who couldn’t press 100-pound dumbbells.

Jamie was just a lowly front-desk attendant back then. Guys so wide they had to turn to fit through the door would bark at him to bring more towels to the shower, or to permanently ban someone who had crossed in front of the camera during a videoed flexing session. Two days before he planned on not showing up to work, Gabriel arrived, and everything had been different since then.

Jamie slammed the laptop shut, then hopped out of his chair. He left the Assistant Manager’s office so hastily he almost crashed into a man who looked like a wall of pure, veiny muscle. It was Bannon, a 315 pound man with 24 inch arms, pecs you could balance a planter atop, and not an ounce of fat on him.

“Oh, pardon me, big guy!” Jamie said, slapping Bannon on his arm. LIke all the freaks, Bannon’s muscles felt like warm stone.

Bannon jerked back, hanging his eyes. “Oh, uh, I’m so sorry,” he said casually, shuffling his feet as he backed away. “I’m really sorry, sir. I was just… kind of in my own head… I apologize…” He held up both hands as he turned, never meeting Jamie’s eye contact. Bannon lumbered away, a tiny duffel back slung over his bulging shoulder.

That’s how all the big guys acted now.

Out on the gym floor, he watched big Titan ask a skinny man, no bigger than one of Titan’s massive legs, for a spot. Over on the pec deck, a guy so swollen he couldn’t seem to put his bulky arms down apologized to an elderly woman for sweating on the machine. “I-I’ll wipe it down, honest!” he said, rushing as fast as his bulky body would move for a nearby bottle of sanitizer and paper towels. By the dumbbells racks, 340 pound Greg Newton set down the set of 120s he’d been curling, looked around, then rolled up his sleeves for a quick flex. He blushed when he thought a heavyset mom nearby had spotted him, then walked away with his head hung in shame.

“I’ll never be big,” Greg whimpered to himself as he passed Jamie, a fog of testosterone-laden sweat stinking in a trail behind him. Jamie chuckled. These were all usual sights at Global Gym ever since Gabriel took over as manager. Overnight, every beefy dude in the gym became incredibly bashful and submissive–but DAMN if they didn’t BLOW UP! As their confidence plummeted, their bodies ballooned out. It was all amazing to see.

For the regular gym clientele, Global became a nice place ot work out, with some of the most polite and eager-to-help muscleheads around! (That is, until anyone called them “big” or “huge” or “strong”--which usually triggered a spurt of self-deprecation before they scurried out of sight.)

Gabriel stepped out of his office at that moment, acknowledging Jamie with a wide smile. Jamie shivered at Gabriel’s ability to show up every time Jamie even thought his name. Behind the tanned, mustachioed manager was one of the gym’s newest members, a 25 year old model named Luke. Jamie had signed him up the day before.

“Jamie! Come talk to Luke,” Gabriel said, gesturing to the dark-haired, muscular young man who towered several inches over him (not to mention carrying at least 50 muscular pounds more than Gabriel’s reedy body).

“Oh, h-h-hi,” Luke said, his eyes locked on his own feet as he weakly shook Jamie’s hand. This was not the cocky stud who had asked for an “influencer’s discount” the day before!

“Hey big guy!” Jamie said. “Nice to see you’ve met the big boss man here,” Jamie said, gesturing to Gabriel. “I wasn’t sure how you were gonna fit in here when you first showed up.”

Luke gulped as he looked around. “I dunno if I do fit in here, man… there’s SO many… like, swole guys here!” His shoulders were rounded, his posture slumped. The day before, he’d strutted around with his huge pecs thrust forward, leading the way.

“Trust me, everyone belongs here at Global,” Jamie said as Luke rushed off. “Nice work with that one.”

“He was an easy convert,” Gabriel said, licking his lips. “Guys like him fail to resist properly, so secure in their big bodies that their minds are left totally unguarded. He’ll be a model member, trust me.”

They high-fived and headed back to their respective offices.

*

28 pills, Steve counted as he set out his morning supplements. Most of them were because his trainer, Dwayne, told him they were good for his health: something for his kidneys, something for his liver, something to keep his blood from clotting. He had to take digestive enzymes or else he would fart all day; ginger helped boost blood flow to his digestive system, allowing him to absorb more nutrients; desiccated liver tablets were nutrient rich, meant to help him build muscles.

And those were just the legal supplements. He injected some sterile water into a vial he kept in the crisper drawer of his fridge, then gently rolled the tiny glass container in his hand. He injected its contents into his belly afterward, wincing at the cold sting as it rushed in. Those were growth hormones, although he was starting to think they were fake, or he was immune.

Breakfast was three bagels, two bananas, twelve eggs and a cut of lean steak. He’d taken to just throwing it all into his blender and drinking the thick puree afterward. Afterwards, he drank some strong black coffee, headed to the bathroom for the inevitable evacuation afterward, then it was back to the gym.

“Today I’m gonna quit,” he said, looking at himself in the rearview mirror before he walked in. “That’s it, this whole weightlifting thing isn’t working… I’m done… I’m out…” Dwayne told him to try some more revealing gym clothes so he could see his muscles while he lifted, but as he gazed down at his skinny, pale arms, he shivered and rifled through his gym bag for a sweatshirt. When two musclebound behemoths climbed out of a truck two spots away in the Global Gym parking lot, he sank lower in his car, then searched for his sweatshirt with renewed intensity.

“Dammit, what do those guys have that I don’t have?” he remarked as he watched them from behind. Their backs were so wide and rippling, their asses so large and powerful… Steve trained two hours every single day, ate everything his trainer told him to, and took enough PEDs to kill a donkey and yet he never gained a pound.

“I bet all those drugs come out in the toilet,” he said as he glanced at his reflection in the front door, his whip-thin physique drowning in his bulky clothes (and they were only size large!). “I bet I take the most expensive morning pees ever.”

As he crossed the gym’s threshold, he considered just keeping his head down, cranking up his music, and hitting the squat rack with everything he had. Then he took a deep breath, turned and crashed into a man whose bulging body felt like a brick wall as he ricocheted off it. The stink of the herculean brute’s pec sweat was in his nostrils–the taste of it in his mouth!--as he picked himself off the ground. The big guy barely noticed he’d run into him!

“Oh, g-g-gosh, I’m so sorry,” stammered the absurdly gigantic musclehead. He reached down and plucked Steve off the ground with one beefy hand, lifting him like he was made of straw.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, unable to look the gigantic man in the face (although staring into his heaving musclepecs wasn’t much better). Steve winced, rubbing his fist in his eyes to repress the tears, then hurried to the front desk.

“I want to cancel my membership,” Steve whined. Jamie, the assistant manager, was on the phone. He held up one finger.

“I’m gonna put you on hold for just a moment,” he said to the caller. Then, to Steve, “Hey, big guy. What’s the problem? You don’t want to cancel now, do you? You’ve just started making big gains!”

“Big gains?” Steve said. He held up his arms. “I’m a skinny nerd! I put all my time and effort into this gym and look at me! I can’t gain an ounce!”

Jamie pushed a button. “Gabriel, we have a member issue… it’s Steve.”

By the time Gabriel got to the front desk, Steve was embarrassed and just wanted to go home.
“I’m sorry I made a scene,” he said with a sigh. “I just… I’m just going through it, y’know. Just having a day. I won’t cancel. I’ll just… Take a rest day, come back stronger tomorrow.”

“No, no,” Gabriel said. “Just come to my office. You’re such a great member here, Steve. If you’re having a bad day, I’m having a bad day.”

Gabriel led Steve to the back of the gym, through the “Employees Only” door, to a comfortable leather-backed chair facing Gabriel’s desk (and a peaceful view of the lake behind the building). Gabriel offered Steve a chilled protein shake and a can of pre-workout from his mini-fridge.

“I’m good,” Steve said. “Honestly, I hate that I got you involved at all..”

“You’re unhappy with your progress,” Gabriel said, running his pinky finger along his mustache, his eyes traveling up and down Steve’s body.

“Well, yes, but–”

“You don’t think you can make any gains despite all your efforts, eh?” Gabriel asked. He sighed and shook his head. “Stand up. Walk to the mirror.”

Steve grumbled, “If you’re going to make me say affirmations or something…”

“No, no, just walk to the mirror. Take a look. Trust me.”

Steve sighed as Gabriel joined him by the mirror–two skinny middle-aged guys in a gym. Just beyond the door, god-like giants stopped around getting bigger with every breath.

“Take off your sweatshirt,” Gabriel said.

“But–”

“Trust me,” Gabriel said. “It will be better if you could see your body. TRULY see it.”

Steve reached over his head and grabbed his hoodie, pulling the whole heavy garment forward. He tossed it to the floor, then looked into the mirror.

For a moment, he had no idea what he was staring at.

An apelike man, wider than the mirror itself, stared back with a dumbstruck look on his thick, blocky face. Steve raised a hand and the massive man in the mirror did the same. Steve felt panic rising in his chest; he watched as the rippling man, every inch of him round and bulging, gawked at himself like he was seeing his own gigantic body for the first time. Big, muscley mitts prodded his gigantic, melon-sized pecs, traced the thick veins wriggling along his biceps, then slapped at wide, sweeping muscles of his legs.

“What the… fuck…”

That wasn’t even Steve’s voice coming out of his mouth! It was deep and gravelly, the voice of a giant… the guy in the mirror! He was huge and heavy, his joints throbbing, his body so bulky he felt like he couldn’t move without knocking something over.

He forgot Gabriel was even in the room–Steve had become so massive, he couldn’t even see Gabriel behind him in the mirror. When the gym manager touched his bowling-ball sized arm, Steve jerked away.

“What did you… do to me…” Steve said as he backed away, every footstep so heavy they shook the nearby file cabinets.

“Just lifted the veil,” Gabriel said with a grin. “You believed you were small so you did everything you could to be big… not having any idea that all that effort was, in the eyes of anyone else, massive overkill. Now you’re the biggest man in the gym!”

Of all the roided-up freaks Steve had ever seen at Global Gym, the guy in the mirror was undeniably the largest. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that it was him, despite the fact that the could no longer see the floor beyond his protruding pecs, and that his quads squashed together, pushing his bulge forward, making it look like he had way more going on in his jock than he actually did.

“Things didn’t QUITE happen the way you thought they did earlier,” Gabriel said. Steve suddenly flashed back to the collision with the other bodybuilder: two massive men ran into each other, their rock-hard bodies letting out a loud thunk as their pecs collided. Each of them was knocked back on their ample glutes, both of their bodies so pumped up and inflexible that it was a struggle for either of them to get back on their feet again. “Of course, my little mental twist keeps you from seeing you as you really are. You’d NEVER get this big if you actually knew how big you were! And you wouldn’t be anywhere near so polite, either.”

Steve’s abs were hard and cobbled, his traps so big they almost reached his ears. He flexed his arm and saw his bicep peak so high he could touch it with the same hand. “I’m… fucking huge…” Steve said. He clenched his fists, bounced his pecs, and let out a low growl. “Fuck, I can’t WAIT to get out there!” His eyes lit up as he imagined grabbing the 100 pound dumbbells… fuck it, the 150 pound dumbbells! He couldn’t wait to take all this mass for a test drive!

“Of course, we can’t just leave you like this,” Gabriel said, snapping his fingers. “Forget everything about what you just learned, just know that you can’t ever quit coming to the gym. Not ever. You’ll keep getting bigger and bigger, and you’ll never ever know. Just like all those giants out there… none of you have any idea just how big you actually are. It keeps you friendly, and polite, and tame, and is making our gym WILDLY successful.”

Steve blinked. He felt humiliated to be in only a tank top in Gabriel’s office. His tank top was a size medium, but it still looked roomy.

“So you see?” Gabriel said with a soft voice. “You’ve made VAST improvements since you started here.”

Steve flexed his noodle-thin arms. “I guess… I guess I kind of have…”

“It says in your file,” Gabriel said, flipping open a folder, “that you had 9 inch arms when you first started lifting here… and we just measured your arms at 11 inches! That’s progress you can’t shake a stick at!”

Steve smiled. If he kept this progress up, eventually he’d have 14 inch arms!

“Thanks, Gabriel,” Steve said. “I can’t believe I was actually thinking about canceling my membership!”

“Glad I could help,” Gabriel said. Steve left the office, totally unaware that he was 340 pounds of muscle. Just like every other massive man at Global Gym, he resumed his daily routine of shyly tiptoeing around, working hard while doing his best not to be noticed by the big scary guys all around. He pulled on his sweatshirt, totally unaware that it was a 5XL (and still, his wide delts stretched it to its limit).