The Muscle

  The change had started months back when he had used some steroids. It had only been a one-time thing, in preparation for his upcoming wrestling match. But his muscles hadn’t stopped growing. Even when he hadn’t exercised for a week,they kept growing. He went to the doctor, but they couldn’t help him, they claimed his body had to adapt to the change by itself. Otherwise, it wouldn’t take.

  But now, he could barely move without opening a cut on his body. If he opened his mouth too wide, his lips would split. The growths covered his body like tumors, and they caused a deep ache, his whole body feeling strained. If he clenched his first, his whole arm would ripple from the ballooned muscles underneath them.

  His last wrestling match, he almost killed his opponent by accident. He had only punched them once. That was almost a month ago; now if he tried to throw a punch, he’d rip open the skin covering his arm, all the way up to his shoulder. He’d been forced to have a hospital take care of him.

  They had tried, once, to cut the muscle growths off of him. That had ended when every scalpel they had was broken, and the laser cutter almost chopped a doctor in half when the laser reflected off the muscles.

  He could feel them shifting under his skin, every centimeter they grew, he could feel it. He always felt like he was bloated, like that one time during Thanksgiving when he ate an entire turkey.

  His bones had changed too. The only reason he knew this, was because the doctors said that if they hadn’t, they would’ve snapped under the weight of his mass. They had tried x-raying him, but his muscles were so dense and so changed, they couldn’t get a solid reading.

  His teeth had fallen out, at one point, but they grew back only a few days later. He heard some of the nurses saying his teeth were like blocks of cement, all perfectly uniform cuboids.

  He had looked in the mirror once, a few weeks ago. After that, he banned all mirrors from being in his room. He was grotesque. His nose had expanded, but also become straighter, like it was roughhewn from a block of basalt. His eyes could barely be seen and looked like a pig’s. His brow ridge nearly eclipsed his nose, and his cheekbones looked like plateaus sticking out of his face. His ears had stayed the same size but were comically small when framing his oversized features.

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  As he lay there in his extra-large, reinforced hospital bed, he heard a series of pops, and his fingers and toes felt relief. He tried to maneuver himself in such a way so that he could look at himself without splitting any skin and saw his nails on the floor. He raised his hands in front his face in horror, as the split caused by his fingernails popping off slowly spread up his fingers.

  Then, in barely a split second, the split turned into a tear. It races down his hands, gaping open and letting blood gush out. His arms ripped open, his blood fountaining across the room. He tried to let out a scream, but in doing so he split his mouth open, causing his skin to peel back from his muscles under his flesh. At the same time, the splits from his toes raced up his legs, revealing veins, tendons, and throbbing muscles. He opened his mouth wider to scream, tearing his face open even more.

  From the corners of his eyes, he saw nurses frantically racing around him, with antiseptic bottles and wet wipes, but nothing would staunch the openings now.

  For an instant, he looked like a bloody patchwork, covered in rips and cuts. Then, his flesh sloughed off his body, falling left and right onto the ground. Blood covered his surroundings, painting the faces of nurses, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the lights. There was so much blood that a red mist floated around the room, and the hospital room was bathed in an eerie red glow.

  As he lay there, his skin laying around him like a poorly made quilt, he felt both agony and relief. It was finally over. He looked over his body, preparing to die, but saw something surprising.

His body was covered in red muscle, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. There was no skin to hold it back, and so it had expanded slightly but settled into a relaxed state. Instead of the strange, bulbous lumps that had been under his skin, now he had gleaming, solid muscle. The muscle that was, somehow, not bleeding.

  He was startled. He did not die, but at what cost? Now he will have to live on, as a monster.