The past few minutes had been the worst in my life. I’ve never been in a real fight before, so the beating I took was devastatingly horrific for me. I was a bookworm…an academic…a pencil-pusher. When I broke my arm in the 6th grade after my ill-fated attempt to skateboard, it ended any hopes for athleticism. I delved into my studies and the wonders of mathematical computations.
As I lay on the sweat & blood-stained mat in the middle of the mirrored yoga room that currently served as my dungeon of pain, I suddenly wished that I had gotten back on that horse in 6th grade and learned to skate anyway. Maybe I would’ve gotten good at it. Maybe I would have become coordinated and strong, leading to other physical endeavors. Maybe, just maybe, my scrawny, pubescent frame would have filled out with taut muscles and wide shoulders instead of the pudgy, hunched-over silhouette of a reader that I developed.
Maybe, had I grown some balls at the age of 10, I wouldn’t be staring at myself in the mirror right now, with my face covered in blood and being pulled up off the ground with a handful of hair by a monstrous beast with swollen, enormous muscles covering every inch of his massive body. The comparison was laughable. I could lay half the length of my body on just one of his unfathomably wide shoulders. His delts were the size of my head. He always had stubble on his chiseled jaw. I don’t know if that was on purpose or just the natural result of having probably twice as much testosterone as the average mortal…which I assumed was the case judging by how many women he banged on a regular basis. I looked in the mirror and the image of who I was being manhandled by who I wanted to be, struck me harder than any blow I’d received. I cried. It was a spontaneous burst of emotion that I could neither control nor fully understand. But I wept like a small child at the blurry vision before me.
Rocco laughed as he pulled me up. I didn’t care. He surely thought that I was crying from the beating…oh but if he only knew how deep my misery was grounded.
“You’re a little bitch, you know that?” Rocco grumbled.
“Yeah.” It was the only reply I could think of.
My feet were unsteady but he shook me until I could stand on my own. I was only partially aware that he had wrapped his arms around my waist, but when he squeezed, I saw stars. The explosion of pain was beyond unbearable. His massive, vein-crossed arms were almost as thick as my waist, and both of them were squeezing my waist with a force that I could not imagine came from a human being. I screamed and hollered and made all sorts of strange sounds. I wished for the cold relief of unconsciousness to wash over me, but it never came. Rocco kept squeezing and I kept screaming. The brute seemed to enjoy my cries of anguish, for when I quieted down he would readjust his grip and squeeze harder. At some point my throat became raw and as hard as I tried no sound would come out.
Satisfied, the brute released me and I collapsed into a heap at his feet.
“You should have followed my training…should have taken it seriously.” Rocco smirked. “This is your fault Mike, you can only blame yourself.”
I rolled to one side and curled into a fetal position. I no longer cared where I was, who was talking or what was happening. I could barely take in short breaths as spikes of pain shot through me with each labored inhalation.
Heavy footsteps all around me indicated that Rocco was circling me, surely thinking of more sadistic things to do to me. I shuddered.
“Please…” I barely managed to squeal, “…please no…no more…”
Rocco pretended to look at a wristwatch, “Nah, there’s time for plenty more fun.”
“I give up. You win.” I whispered as a wave of nausea hit me from the throbbing pain. “I give up.”
“Of course you do, twirp.” Rocco snorted, “It’s what you do best.”
Tears flowed from my eyes, which prevented me from seeing what the giant muscleman had next in store. He straddled me again, but this time pulled my head towards him as he wrapped his legs completely around my torso, locking his ankles.
“No. P-please God no…!” I cried out just as Rocco squeezed.
I gurgled some nasty sounds as my torso exploded with pain. I could not react, I could not think, I could only keep breathing and screaming. Rocco’s legs were solid trunks of thick muscle and with each squeeze of his lethal scissors, I came closer and closer to passing out. He alternated between long powerful squeezes and short bursts of powerful crushes, each one flooding my tortured torso with mind-numbing pain. Of course, had I not already been partly numb from so much previous punishment, the pain may have been more severe, but still I frantically pounded at his legs as I screamed with what little air I could push through my raspy throat.
Rocco seemed to like this game a lot. He squeezed. I cried & pounded. He stopped. I breathed. He squeezed. I cried and pounded. He stopped. It went on and on and on…although my response grew fainter and fainter with each occurrence. It was too much. The air grew ice cold and I soon felt nothing but a faint pressure somewhere far away, which my mind could not process. At some point I passed out and ceased responding to Rocco’s frantic attempts to get me to scream again. I was a lifeless slab of meat between his enormous legs.
If I’d been conscious, I would’ve seen Rocco release me, laugh for a bit, and head towards the juice bar where he whipped up a protein shake for himself. He sat at the bar and sipped it, even taking time to text and checking his Facebook while I lay unconscious three rooms away.
Rocco sat and thought a bit. He didn’t know why the twirp – as he liked to call him – angered him so much. There was something about the pompous little nerd that made him want to punch him in the face every time he saw him. True he was on a new cycle and it always put him on the edge (roid rage was exaggerated but not completely unsubstantiated)…but no one else hit such a raw nerve with him.
One of the other trainers laughed that the “bookie” (as they sometimes called Mike behind his back) had a crush on Rocco. That only made the big man angrier, and even at the very thought of it he crushed the Styrofoam cup in his hand so that what was left of his shake exploded all over the black granite countertop.
Rocco grimaced and got busy cleaning the mess up. As he wiped the counter down he thought of the past three months…of his anger when the GM forced him to take Mike on as a client…of how the bookworm constantly corrected his grammar and pointed out statistics about whatever they were doing. At first he shook it off, but lately he’d been on the verge of bloodlust. Everything Mike did angered him to the point that on two occasions another trainer had to physically stop him from going after the twirp. The last training session was supposed to be it. Rocco had amped-up the intensity of the session, in the hopes that Mike would either quit or ask for another trainer. But the twirp kept up with him and did as he was told. Sometimes Rocco would catch Mike staring at him, and it made his skin crawl. Janice from the reception desk told Rocco that Mike idolized him. That only angered the big man even more and firmed his resolve to follow through with the beat down.
When the counted was sparkling clean, Rocco reached under and pulled out his black nylon gym bag. He zipped open an inner compartment and felt the wad of bills in there. Twenty thousand dollars. More money than he’d ever had at one time in his life. A brief twang of guilt stabbed at him, but he quickly dismissed it. He didn’t know the identity of the stranger who left an email address on a notecard wedged into the driver side window to his car with two words; “BIG MONEY.” He sent an email and got a reply within 24hrs.
Rocco glanced over at the newly-installed DVR on the ledge next to the computer hard drive. A green blinking LED confirmed that the hidden cameras in the Yoga room were recording every minute of the fight. The muscleman smiled. The one-sided fight he corrected himself, and again the pang of guilt tried to chip at his psyche. He shrugged it off. He didn’t care who it was and what his beef with Mike was to have set up this elaborate plan. Whoever he or she was; paid for the cameras, the installation, the bribes for the staff to look the other way, and of course the twenty grand in Rocco’s bag. That was too much money to turn away. If he didn’t take it, another one of the trainers would…and who knows, he thought, the twirp might even be dead by now if Big Jon had taken up the offer.
At some point he was refreshed enough to come back and dish out more punishment, and soon I was propped up on some towels as cold water splashed on my face. I came to life slowly, first feeling the ice-cold liquid across my eyes & nose, then the dull chorus of pain pulsating across my entire body, and then the memories flooded my awareness.
I tried to push away and escape, but a knee was pinning my chest down.
“For a minute there I thought you were a goner.” Rocco laughed. “I’m ready for the next round. You?”
Before I could reply, Rocco slammed a massive paw onto my face. His hand nearly covering it whole, and when he squeezed my skull felt like it was about to implode. I grabbed his arm with both of my hands to tear it away, but I doubt that even at full strength I could do it. Rocco stood and pulled me up by my face, his palm muffling the screams that I let loose.
With my face trapped in his paw, Rocco shove me against a wall and pushed me up…up…up so that my feet dangled about three feet off the floor. My muffled screams dying in his baseball mitt sized hand.
I began kicking at him, and as if fortune finally decided to throw me a bone, I suddenly connected really well with HIS.
I slid to the ground as Rocco recoiled in pain, holding his crotch.
Adrenaline rushed through me, as I quickly realized that THIS was probably my one chance at leaving the room alive. Ignoring my aches and pains and a dull nausea, I ran up to where Rocco knelt and relived my kickball days from elementary school by landing a hard kick to the side of his head. He shuddered. Not losing any time, I jumped and landed a double-kick squarely in his stunned face, WWE-style, sending the big man sprawling to the ground on his back (even as I landed awkwardly on my side).
Now I finally allowed myself a smile. Rocco was still prone on the floor as I positioned myself and landed a rather nasty liver shot to his side with my foot. Rocco hollered out loud. It was the first time this evening that I had heard him cry out in actual pain. He reminded me of one of those Galapagos turtles…huge and impenetrable beneath their enormous shells, but if you just flip them over and they are pathetically vulnerable. I grab my wrist and throw myself – Macho-man Randy Savage style – connecting my elbow with his neck. I’m strong enough now that this blow would’ve landed any one of my friends in the hospital, but Rocco merely gagged a bit and reached for his throat.
With his arms out of the way, I saw my opportunity for a (hopefully) game-changing elbow drop to the gut, so I took three steps back and ran into a leap that ended with my left elbow firmly embedded in Rocco’s abs.
I screamed louder than Rocco. It was as if I’d just slammed by elbow onto the pavement outside. Rocco wasn’t injured as much as he was pissed, whereas I dislocated my arm. I lingered a little too long due to the pain, for when I went to get off of Rocco, the brute landed a double-fisted hammer blow squarely on my head. I collapsed atop of him as stars exploded in my field of vision while the world seemed to slow down as it spun around me. The wound on my forehead opened up again as I felt the warm rush of blood trickling over me again.
Rocco had recovered from my feeble attack and now stood over me, breathing angrily so that spittle flew from the corners of his mouth.
“Not bad twirp.” He spat, “If you’d hit the weights harder, you could’ve done something for real.” He rubbed at a small red mark on his abdomen. “Let’s finish this.”
I was still disoriented when I felt myself be lifted like a rag doll and just thrown. I spun two or three times in the air before landing hard on a section of unpadded floor. My mind was still reeling when I felt myself go airborne again, sideways this time, landing on the padded floor and skidding to a stop. I saw Rocco’s reflection as he stomped toward me. I thought of shuffling away but my body would not respond. I simply lay there as he reached down, grabbed me by my good arm and one leg, and threw me across the room. I spun around in the air quickly and this time landed harshly against a mirror which cracked just as I bounced off and landed with a serious thud on the floor. My head bounced off the padding and my whole body rattled with the impact. My bad arm exploded with fire. I’m pretty sure I threw up but I couldn’t even wipe my mouth before I was being lifted again. This time I flew up, hit the ceiling with my face, and landed so hard on my back that I thought I’d broken in half.
I lost most of my awareness after that, but I know that I was thrown around the room some more, bouncing off of walls and the ceiling with wanton abandon. I was in so much pain that I could no longer feel anything. In fact I was only marginally aware of my being used as a human pinball. When Rocco was done with tossing me around I simply lay crumpled into a heap on the floor, bleeding from my mouth and my nose and from assorted wounds and lacerations.
Rocco stood over me, arms folded across his massive chest as he glared down at me.
“Three months ago, this would’a killed you. You would’a snapped in two.”
He slowly walked around to the other side of where I lay.
“But look at you…still conscious, still breathing, and still looking up at me.” He smirked, “I’m proud of ya. You done good kid.”
He bent down and grabbed me by the underarms, and lifted me up. I was still in shock or something because I said nothing, could do nothing but stare back at him.
The brute gave me a lopsided smile and said,
“I’m glad that you survived Mike. You proved yourself. And I’m telling you to your face, because you’ll never see me again. I have one more thing that I gotta do to you, and I’m out of here. For good.”
I tried to say something but I was airborne one more time, as Rocco simply threw me straight up, then caught me on the way down…in a devastating Oblivion hug.
He had wrapped his arms around me – pinning my arms to my sides, and gave me an innocent smile before squeezing. I was already half-numb and semi-unconscious when the vice began to crush my ribcage into mush. All of the punishment from before had hurt, but the intensity of the pain now was off the chart. My breathing was constricted and I instantly collapsed into the hug. Rocco squeezed me so hard that I felt my eyes literally bulge out of their sockets. I could only gag on my own spit.
He eased on the hug and I took long, pained breaths of air. When the color of my face turned normal Rocco squeezed again. The air had been instantly squeezed right out of my lungs, otherwise I would have screamed harder than I had all night. The pressure on my chest was so strong that when my ribcage began collapsing I was nearly numb from the pain. But still, as I felt the snaps and crackles of my chest being smashed into a pulp, the explosion of fire in my chest was unbearable. To add to the punishment, Rocco began swinging me from left to right. The violent shaking combined with the painful squeeze was too much to bear. I tasted copper in my mouth just as my vision began to blur and my breath grew ice cold. Soon I blacked out and Rocco was left shaking an unconscious and limp figure that would not respond no matter how hard he squeezed or shook.
Rocco opened his arms and I crumpled to the floor. He began posing over me, hitting bodybuilding poses as he planted one foot on my chest. To make certain that I was out for the count, he kicked me a few times but since I did not respond, he continued posing. Once he was done with his routine, he reached down and lifted me off the floor. Throwing me onto one shoulder, he walked out of the room and down the hall into the dark main gym, to the van waiting outside that would shuttle me to the nearest hospital. The official story was that I fell down a flight of stairs. My story was discounted as a delusion from head trauma received from the horrible fall. Rocco had a tight alibi thanks to his girlfriend. I had spent almost a month in the hospital.
An anonymous letter waiting for me in my apartment – on my bed nonetheless – warned me to keep my silence or else risk being silenced permanently. The letter stated something about revenge being sweeter when served with blood. For the life of me, I can’t imagine who I’d wronged that bad. I was fired from the gym since I made all those “crazy” accusations. Now I crunch numbers for a restaurant.
At the end of the letter I had been warned that this was not the end. It’s been years, but the emotional and physical scars remain.
Two days ago the restaurant hired a busboy that is built like a young Jay Cutler and glares at me whenever I’m in the office.