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……
https://archita.blog/2023/12/11/story-time-a-haunting-in-the-gym-part-1/
The shadows on the ceiling had begun to shift, following her across the gym in a thinly spread smoke.
She hadn’t noticed yet, she never noticed things until they were staring her right in the face. She hadn’t noticed the clues about her boyfriend’s affair, she had been her close friend, no actually, as good as best friend, she had trusted her, she had been happy at first that her bestie got along with her boyfriend. She encouraged them to hang out, she let on more than she intended to.
Soon, they made plans without her, with her knowledge at first and then without. She had heard the whispers, but then found it for herself one fine evening when she found them locked in a stolen kiss at the cafe she had her first date with him. She had interrupted them ,and instead of being sorry, they’d been relieved. She had spat at him and left, never looking back..
‘I should have tried harder, maybe he needed a sign that I would fight for him..’ the same thought creeped up.
‘No, you were brave, you should have slapped him too while you were at it,‘ said the more defiant voice.
The shadows stayed out, listening to her innermost thoughts…
‘I was a coward then, and a coward now’ she thought, forcing the thoughts away.. but the deafening silence in the gym kept taking her back to that fateful night she’d let him go.
The elliptical had set her heart racing and she had to take few deep breaths to balance herself, lost in thoughts, she hadn’t realized her heart had been beating so fast till her watch alerted her.
The lights in the gym were motion sensing and followed her from the cardio section to the weights section. That side of the gym was bathed in darkness and looked very different from the time she’d come in for recce. It obviously had looked livelier because of the people who were around but she didn’t remember this section having so many machines placed in parallel rows, she had never seen a gym with as many machines..
The weights section was neatly arranged, almost too perfect but that’s just the way she liked it in order, systematically arranged. The breakup had broken something in her, she had become obsessed with cleanliness afterwards, she couldn’t scrub her mind off his memories, so she ended up scrubbing everything clean…
That was another reason she had ended up selecting this gym, everything looked so neatly arranged, but now she felt uncomfortable with it somehow..
There were so many machines that she got very overwhelmed, and not a trainer in sight. What if she did a wrong workout and got injured, it would take her months to recover. How she wished there was a trainer or someone to teach her, her boyfriend had always been to teach these things to her before…
‘Not again, Nina.’ Her thoughts her blinded her to the thick smoke building in the gym.
The clanks of the weights ricocheted across the empty gym, and the treadmill seemed to have come alive with a whirr.
She was sweaty, and heady, she also felt surprisingly heady and stuffy without a trainer she didn’t want to touch the machines…
…….Ah, what the hell, let me come back tomorrow, I have anyway burnt the casserole I ate for lunch.….
The walk back to the exit was the longest, the gym had now become stuffier than ever, you could feel the air in your hands, Nina was uncomfortable and the whirring of the machines made her break out in nervous sweat. ‘I just need some fresh air’… ‘maybe working out in the mornings would be better, she would still be tired and sleep well at night,’ she told herself.
The door was finally visible, she was just inches away from it…
But she found she was unable to open the door.. and she panicked, she saw them now, the shadows that were now looking like people
The shadows seem to be taking the shape of a person now, the person she thought she knew, she realized she was out of breaths….the gym seemed to be full of smoke..
Her hands were clammy, she slipped, lost consciousness, she was dragged around the gym, her head banged against the weights, she would be eaten up and digested by the morning, her memory would live on in the newly resurrected elliptical, ready to charm another fresh meat that shows up…
Of course their poison may not be the elliptical, they may go straight to the resistance machines, in which case their memory will live on in the first machine they tried in that gym…
**The End**
Fingers in symphony 