Synopsis: After an unfortunate encounter with a bully on the beach, nerdy student Ford finds an old fitness program left on his front doorstep. By following its strangely compelling instructions Ford discovers you can never take body building too far. The dark, dark journey of a nice young man becoming a hulking brute and taking the young women around him along for the ride.
SATURDAY: Growing Pains.
Lysiane awoke to the smells of a fry-up breakfast wafting through the house. Coming downstairs she found Beaford in the kitchen stacking rashes of bacon onto a serving tray. It was lined with paper towels that were already sodden with grease. Alongside the towering stack of fried pork was a dozen boiled eggs and enough sausage to feed a family of three. There was a lot of food for just the two of them...
"Good morning Lysiane." Beaford chirped, turning at the sound of her soft footsteps on the linoleum floor. He had a pan in his hand, was chewing on a piece of brown toast and wearing a chef's apron over a tight pair of running shorts.
That was all he was wearing.
Lysiane was wearing a soft pink cami top and a small, matching pair of comfortable cotton shorts tied loosely at the front. The sleepwear pulled too much across her large chest and left too much of her thick thighs exposed for her comfort.
...but California summer nights were much warmer than her hometowns and compared to Beaford she was practically overdressed.
His skin looked wet, shiny with perspiration and--pale as he was from so much time spent indoors--he had something of a fresh glow about him this morning.
"Beaford? What is all this?" She asked cautiously, waving first at the mountain of food and then at him in his state of
déshabiller.
"Oh, ummm... breakfast." He rubbed the back of his neck looking sheepish. The gesture pulled the front of the apron tight across the lean muscles of his otherwise bare chest.
Muscles?
"Sorry, I know it's a lot but I was up late... working out." Beaford laughed awkwardly as though embarrassed to actually use the term before continuing, "I think I woke up with a bottomless pit where my stomach used to be. Can I make you anything?"
Make her anything... Lysiane blinked rapidly at the inference that Beaford planned to eat all the prepared food by himself before spotting the instructional pamphlet open on the kitchen table before an open brown glass pill bottle.
"Beaford, your clothes... where are..." she tried to protest before her eyes were drawn back to the booklet like they were magnets. Hungry to admire the bare masculine forms pressed within its pages like so many beautiful dried flowers.
Muscles...
"Oh yeah, they were a sweaty mess so I dropped them in the laundry hamper. I'll take a shower after I eat." He said, sitting down at the table and biting into a crispy slice of bacon with a loud crunch. "
Mmmph,
so good... take care of them for me, will you?"
Take care of what? Beaford's
laundry?
Lysiane's head swam as she tried to focus on the growing young man systematically working his way through his enormous meal. She was nobody's washer-woman! She was a modern, independant... the smells in the kitchen were delicious and making her feel like her skull was being slowly stuffed with cotton wool.
The smells of sizzling meat and dripping fat and... Beaford? There was a thought-blunting animal musk underlying everything else.
Was that him?
"
Oui, Beaford.
" She said meekly looking down at the table. From beneath demurely lowered lashes she watched him eat, feeling an unexpected flutter of excitement.
She didn't note the brief lapse back into her mother tongue, she was busy watching Beaford eat.
Beaford was eating like a
Man.
________________
Lysiane listened to the shower running as she crouched outside the bathroom door with Beaford's dirty laundry in hand and Dr Zeus Mesmer's Dynamic Body Program open on the hallway floor in front of her.
This was
wrong,
so terribly wrong but she couldn't put a finger on precisely why that was. Why was she here, huddling outside the bathroom like some sort of sick
voyeur?
Her eyes were drawn to the images of the naked, posing men again and she was falling.
Falling into the hypnotic lines of their flexing muscles, their strong, jutting chins, the rugged smell of their manly sweat...
"Lysiane?"
Her eyes shot upwards and found she had Beaford's soiled clothes bunched up under her face. The smell and taste of his musky sweat saturated her olfactory. Her thick thighs were pressed hard together trying to smother the rising heat between them as Beaford stood over her with only a bath-towel around his waist and an expression of puzzled amusement on his face.
Lysiane was mortified. How was he done showering so soon? Her eyes roamed over his bare chest and trim abdomen, his firm flesh glistening clean and so warm she could feel his heat radiating off him. She licked her parted lips, unconscious of the action.
"Beaford... your body." She squeaked, feeling so small kneeling on the floor with him seeming to tower over her.
Lysiane knew Beaford was not tall for a boy, just as she knew Beaford was a thin and reedy youth.
But the Beaford standing before her had all the lean physicality of a star soccer player.
"You noticed. Talk about gains, right?" He smiled as he looked down at his toned belly and defined chest before looking a bit embarrassed again. "Did you need anything? I was going to take my supplement and work-out some more."
Lysiane looked down at the seductive pages open on the carpet before her again and felt a new wave of warmth suffuse her as she looked from the pictures than back up at Beaford.
A quickly growing Beaford, a fast changing Beaford... what was the next part?
Step Two: Implementation.
"May I join you?" She asked with a small, nervous smile. "I can hold the book for you, if you like."
________________
Ford was back in that strange empty, emotionless "Zone".
It felt amazing.
His legs pumped like pistons through squats, lunges and presses. His arms and shoulders rolled like foothills through curls, lifts and holds. His back was as straight and unyielding as a steel column as he flowed like water from one form to the next, always in that fascinating fugue state that left his mind empty and free to roam as his body took command.
