**It’s is gym time, princess** sang her alarm, in her voice, she had recorded her voice as alarm one bright sunny morning in June when she was a morning person. It was dead in the winters now, middle of December, she was no longer a morning person. Waking up later every morning, just in time to brush and change for work. Her work always came first, actually it had to.
There was no other way.
Winter months were hard for her, her one room apartment had no ventilation and no sunlight coming in, she had taken it only because of its proximity to her workplace. The lack of sunlight was making her lazier, paler and unhappier, and only recently when she took out her winter clothes, she found none of them fit. She had to find the time to workout, she didn’t have enough money to change her wardrobe.
Like always, she did a recce of around 5 gyms, most near her office, so she returns to her coop only for bedtime. Of the five, two had been full of beefed up men who kept lechering at her, the space was too stuffy and they were both in the basement, both were rejected promptly, the third was roomy but she would have to cross the busy street in an unsafe way every time, 3351 that was the number of people who died in road accidents every month she had found on a whimsical google search, so this was rejected too, a tad disappointedly.
The fourth one was just perfect, close to her office, on the same side of the road so she wouldn’t have to cross. But it was a bit too perfect, the front desk was almost ceiling high and everything was glass, the people were built like Adonis and Cleopatra and dressed in their best. She felt out of place in her jumper and Converse whites, she didn’t earn enough money to buy all the fancy gymwear.
The fifth and the last one was her only hope and she would have to make do, whatever the conditions.
The gym was on top of a supermarket, a tiny lift had the name on it , it looked like it needed an immediate facelift. A bit cautious, she got on it and it took her to the gym in a loud whirring sound as if to lodge its protest.
The gym looked to be in a much better shape than the lift.
The receptionist was warm and the people working out looked like her, happy to lose weight and unhappy to show skin.
Pleased and placated, she signed up and paid for the entire year.
Her office timings were 11 am-8 pm, the walk from there to the gym was hardly 15 minutes, so she would work out 8:30 pm-10 pm every night.
She wrapped up her work hurriedly the next evening, she had been looking forward to her first workout session, she may have entered a few wrong entries in her eagerness too.
She walked hungrily and reached the supermarket in 10 minutes, warm up done so she can dive straight to the real workout, she thought to herself.
The lift was out of work, there was a board hanging over it.
She climbed the three floors with some difficulty but no less enthusiasm, and she was greeted with an empty gym.
The lights were on, and the printer in the front office was on too.
The girl must have gone for a break
She didn’t think much of it and signed her name on the entry register.
The gym looked even better tonight, with none to stare at her either judgingly or dismissively. She can do whatever she wants. She will raid the elliptical first, then the weight machines.
But the elliptical was hard, even when it was on Level 1, seemed like she was riding for two. Maybe it was broken, she thought reassuringly. And it was a good change, her heart beating faster than ever, the initial moments before she broke into some hard earned sweat, a testament to her hard work, she was enjoying it.
She always wondered about people who made gym there second home, people like her ex, he had loved his gym so much that he had cheated on her with a girl from his gym. It had made her take some drastic measures….
Shaking those thoughts away, she upped her speed and soon started sensing an unsettling feeling. But it was her shadow that creeped her out, the shadow showed there were two of her on that machine. Every time she looked down to the floor, the shadows greeted her, but when she looked up at her reflection in the mirrored walls, it was just her, just her in that endless gym.
She had always wanted to be alone at a gym, wanted it to be an exclusive experience, so that she could pretend it was her personal gym, but why was she scared now?
Was it just her imagination or the shadow seemed to be moving faster than her? The goosebumps on her skin indicated she needed to hurry.
She decided to try one of those resistance machines now, had there been more people she probably would have called it a day, but since no one was around, she could do whatever with the machines. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something crawling to her left, but as she turned she saw it was just the weights stacked against the bench press machine.
Blaming it on her nerves, she paid no mind to the shadows behind her elliptical, nor to the shadows on the ceiling that couldn’t have been hers. Honestly, she had not even looked up, not yet……
To be continued…..
Fingers in symphony 