The Workout Closet
1
Bobby Dunwood was lying on his back. The room was spinning. “I’m feeling pretty rebellious lately,” Bobby Dunwood said through closed teeth. The slurred words struggled, but they managed to escape and reach their destination. “It’s just like…I don’t know…I wanna do something bad.”
His eyes were closed, and a bout of laughter nearly finished his sober mind off in one swift stroke; if the laughter commenced it would have carried him away, his leg fettered to his dismal judgment. What had inspired him to say that? Was it the straight Vodka or the clear liquid his friend John Ryan had practically shoved down his throat (the UAB, he thought, stifling laughter, and that would be the feared Unidentified Alcoholic Beverage for us pure and chaste friends and neighbors tuning in)? Maybe neither; the thought of throwing all caution to the moaning wind picking up outside and doing something bad had been gnawing through the pit of his stomach for a number of weeks. The drinks he had consumed created an elevator to put these thoughts in action.
And oh yeah, there had been drinks, too many for his one hundred twenty pound sixteen year old body to handle. He opened his eyes, and he saw them, lined up, surrounding him and his two friends. The empty bottle of Vodka winked and Bobby felt the beginnings of a smile taking over his relaxed face. Nice doing business with you, it said. Back at ya.
The three of them (three? you mean thirty of us???) had dashed straight to John’s father’s alcohol cabinet located on the other side of the basement when the closing front door reverberated throughout the desolate suburban house, announcing that the parents were gone and the house was left free to the teenagers’ biding. It started with the bottle of Vodka that scratched at Bobby’s chest on the way down, making it feel like he was consuming belligerent flames, and finished with a few rounds of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. He could stand before the lemonade; he wasn’t aware of it as he lay face up on the Ryan basement floor, but it acted as a catalyst to push him straight through the land of tipsy.
Blinking came at random intervals for Bobby, and was almost nonexistent as the large fluorescent lighting overhead began to make his eyes water. He was getting ready to lift his body up when his shared rebellion seemed to settle in on his companion’s brains. Steve Corrine—the biggest and most obnoxious of the trio—spoke, a raspy voice clouded with lassitude.
“Then do something bad, man,” he said and Bobby’s mind jumped (his body refused); Steve was closer than Bobby had originally surmised and he could feel his hot breath puncturing his right ear. “Let’s fucking do something.”
John Ryan remained silent; there was not a drink in the world that could shroud his father’s belt.
Bobby was not silent, though, and giggled, a spasmodic burst of air from his lungs that could have passed for a dying man’s cough. “What are we gonna do? I just wanna do something bad, you know?”
“Break the bottles,” Steve said. “Break the damn bottles on this damn suburb street. Just throw ‘em.”
Bobby could think of no argument. Fresh waves of dizziness threatened to cause mischief and send him toppling as he lifted himself to his feet, but he kept his balance. His arms flew out from his sides—the way they would when he was attempting to saunter across a thin balance beam—because the floor was rocking back and forth; it was a sinking ship, a collapsing building, anything but the sturdy basement floor of 9104 Lemur Drive. He was vaguely aware of Steve collecting the empty glass bottles, cradling the ones he already snagged in the crease of his arm like a crying newborn. Taking the bottles out to the street was not one of Bobby’s worries. Hell, even getting up there would work itself out—wasn’t that why the world spun, to carry him places? It was all good, man.
“No,” John was saying, but Bobby could only see his mouth moving in slow motion. Bobby laughed. “My dad’ll kill us if he finds out. He’s already gonna know some” (ha-ha-ha, some, yeah right) “of his drinks are missing and he’s gonna explode when he sees broken glass all over the street. He’ll know it’s us. I don’t think it’s a good id—”
The bottles were back on the floor before John could finish his argument, and Steve was on top of him, blatantly informing him that he was nothing more than the euphonized form for a vagina. Bobby watched, giggling like a school girl who recently discovered the most novel piece of gossip written on a stall wall. Steve’s protruding biceps flexed as he punched John, and Bobby could only watch and think and laugh when a hazy image of two live pythons bouncing up and down crawled into his head.
Steve stood up when he had enough, leaving John laying on the carpet, laughing and repeating no, no, no, no. Steve grabbed a bottle rolling around at his feet, snapped his fingers, looked at Bobby, and pointed at the stairs leading up to the rest of the house. Steve reached the stairs and started to go up two at a time. When he was half way up he paused, placed his hand on his forehead as if struck by a severe brain freeze, and turned back around.
“In here,” he said, flicking his thumb towards the closed door under the stairs. The work out room. Bobby shuffled in behind Steve and watched as he closed the door and the basement’s fluorescent lights ceased to exist.
The work out room’s light flickered into action automatically after three long seconds in the dark. The room was small—only about a quarter of the size of the rest of the basement on the other side of the door that was filled with a gargantuan ping pong table, an out of order air hockey table and various other gadgets and gizmos to make the size of the room covert as possible—but was filled to bursting with complicated looking contraptions that Bobby found hard to believe were used to strengthen the body. There was a treadmill sleeping off the right, but other than that everything looked foreign; a strange, atypical xenophobic feeling plagued him and the dizziness returned in one, merciless kick in the ass.
“He’s gonna find us,” Bobby heard his own voice saying. It sounded like someone else though and the real Bobby Dunwood’s ears just happened to catch it from across a crowded party room.
“Nah,” Steve said, looking around frantically. Bobby’s heart was roaring, and a fresh bray of giggles temporarily took over his senses; he pictured an out of breath John bursting in, scaring the drunkenness away the way an old man would chase rowdy children off of his immaculate lawn. “Look! Over there. That closet.”
And before Bobby could protest, Steve’s free hand was wrapped around his thin arm and he was being dragged in the seemingly insignificant closet on the other side of the work out room, shoved behind a barbell as if it were a mere afterthought.
2
The closet was musty, but as Steve closed the door Bobby’s sense of smell seemed to pick up a faint flowery odor, one which reminded him of the perfume his mother liked to wear when painting the town red. Thoughts of his mother constricted his chest, making it feel like Bobby was drowning; she was miles away, having clean fun and laughing real, sober laughs, and Bobby was…trapped in a closet. With Steve Corrine, a goon he hardly even knew or liked.
The interior was bigger than Bobby expected; there was enough room for a sighing Steve to stretch his body to what looked like its bursting point and lay down. Bobby held his knees against his chest, silently rocking back and forth, providing a cargo boat for the vertigo and sudden nausea.
Steve pulled his cell phone from his jean pocket and slid it open. Bobby blinked several times, allowing his eyes to sift through the incapacitating darkness and examine the room. There was nothing but clothes surrounding the pair; everything from long, dark robes to chambray work shirts that looked as if they haven’t touched Mr. Ryan’s chest since the early 80s.
“There’s more clothes in here than there is in my damn house,” Bobby said, somewhat surprised that his mouth had decided to share his thoughts with Steve. “Could probably cloth a small nation.” He could see Steve smile thinly and nod, his usual stone face illuminated by the fading blue cell light. He watched as his fingers pressed the cell’s side button the keep the light on.
“He’s so damn rich,” Steve said, looking around. Bobby chuckled. He could slowly feel sobriety leaking back into him.
They sat in silence for a while, and for the first time in Bobby’s life he really thought he was experiencing authentic silence. He was never even an expert on quietness—his own house was no library and his parents were certainly not librarians—but he always considered silence to be the time when the stray cats proclaimed themselves as kings of his street at three in the morning and he lay in bed, watching the street light grow dim. He could only laugh to himself at how wrong he had been. Steve even seemed to be appreciating the lack of noise and quit breathing so harshly.
“He’ll find us eventually, right?” Steve said, shattering the silence, forcing Bobby to cringe. “I say we take a video of it. We’ll scare the crap out of him. It’ll be the next big You Tube thing, ya know? He’ll shit himself, man.”
Bobby smiled and said: “Yeah, I can picture it.”
Steve’s schematics of the plan were this: listen carefully and wait until they heard the workout room door open; let John look around the diminutive room for a few moments; jump out and scream bloody murder when they felt he was drawing close enough to the nearly camouflaged closet. Bobby kept a laugh at bay at the image of John’s face contorted into a frown, and then watching, shielding his own ears as the scream sailed from his mouth, shaking the house that belonged to a giant.
They waited, and the minutes ticked by, slow, fat ones that seemed to be an omnipresent reminder that he was seated in a closet with Steve Corrine, keeping giggles at bay like two drunken retards because they were getting ready to scare the brains out of their friend.
Fifteen minutes passed.
Twenty five.
After thirty-three minutes in the closet Steve began to grow restless. Bobby found the room quite serene and wished he could pull one of the robes from the hanger above him, and whether it was loaded with moth-balls or not, rest his head and drift off into an unperturbed slumber. The room was soon reiterating the cracking of Steve’s knuckles, and Bobby could only listen in amazement at how many times the damn things cracked.
“Where the fuck is he?” Steve whispered. Bobby jumped and his knee collided with the wall to his left.
Bobby shrugged, a lackadaisical gesture that was useless in the darkness.
“Should I call him?”
“Why not? Whisper though.”
Steve removed his cell from his pocket once more and slid it open. The blue light painted his face and Bobby watched as he stared at it for a long moment. In disbelief? Shock? “Shit. No service.” Did you really expect there to be service, buddy? You can barely get service outside of the T-Mobile office; why should you get it down in the corners of Hell?
“Try yours.”
Bobby groped at his pockets, and a fleeting blink brought on the image of his cell phone, lonely, seated at the kitchen table next to the empty plate of pizza they had eaten earlier that evening. He felt his shoulders shrug again, feeling that would suffice as an explanation.
Steve rolled his eyes, and he could tell he was preparing and finalizing the touches on an insult designed for Bobby. But there was a sudden vibration, and the whole closet seemed to be tossed into a sudden, bludgeoning storm. Bobby almost screamed, but Steve’s widening eyes told him that it was his just his cell phone ringing. So much for the corners of Hell.
“It’s John,” Steve said, smiling. “About fucking time.” His thumb pressed the green answer button and he placed the phone next to his ear.
“Steve?” John’s deep voice soared from the phone and bounced off of the cramped room’s walls. It filled Bobby with glee when he realized it was composed of one element and one element only: fear. “Where the hell are you guys? This isn’t funny, c’mon.”
Steve giggled and said: “I don’t know where we are.”
“SERIOUSLY!”
“Did you check the basement?”
“No shit I checked the basement! Stop being an ass hole; it’s not that big and you know it!” John spoke as if he recently finished running a taut race, one in which the opponent cheated and sent his blood boiling. “Where are you guys? I ran outside like an idiot, checked the whole damn house—”
Steve sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Should we just tell him?” Bobby whispered. He fully understood and comprehended that a joke could only be taken so far; if the victim didn’t bite after thirty-six minutes than he thought enough was enough.
John was yelling, intangible drivel about beating the pulp out of both of them when he found them.
“You won’t find us with that attitude,” Steve said through an elongated sigh. “Did you check the workout room?”
“Yes. I told you I checked the whole damn basement—”
“Well you didn’t check good enough. We’re in that closet in the work out room. The small one in the back corner.”
A pause. “What?”
Steve closed his eyes and repeated the hiding place slowly, enunciating each word as if John were a small child being chastised.
“Closet? What closet?”
“Tell him it’s behind a set of barbells in the back of the workout room,” Bobby whispered quickly, loud enough for John to hear.
“Dude, I’m in the damn workout room and there’s no closet! I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about! Stop playing games, guys, c’mon! It’s not funny at all.”
Bobby’s heart skipped a beat. He locked gazes with Steve, who seemed unruffled. His hand swatted an invisible bug, because it was John turning the joke around on them, it was John trying to scare the brains out of them and beat them to pulp when he was finished. The wave of the hand told Bobby that it was already a dismissed issue in the mind of Steve Corrine, and when Bobby thought about it, that’s all Steve’s life was; a bunch of hand waves and dismissed issues.
“If you were in the workout room you would hear us,” Steve said, once again bringing up the tone that suggested that this was the most obvious thing in the world and John should be sorry for missing it.
“I don’t hear anything because there’s no fucking closet! STOP PLAYING GAMES, GUYS!”
“This is ridiculous...” Bobby said and stood up, hosing his foot from a deep sleep. It vibrated, almost like the cell phone had shaken the room minutes before. He grabbed the knob and shook, expecting it to fly open and to see John standing by the treadmill with his phone pressed against his ear, grinning ear to ear, ha-ha, you almost got me but I really got you, didn’t I?
It was locked.
“Steve—” But Steve wasn’t listening; he threw the phone away, and watched as it disappeared beneath a small pile of clothes in the corner of the closet. Bobby could hear the static, roaring and causing his interior temperature to descend another twenty degrees.
Bobby’s chest constricted once more, and this time he could actually taste the recycled air circulating the room drowning him. He was aware of one fact as Steve stood up and the pair banged on the door, screaming bloody murder for help, anyone, please help. The fact: There was no crack under the door; there was no vent. They would suffocate on their own hot breath if they didn’t escape.
3
Death rarely returns the RSVP card He receives from every human at the time of conception, but Bobby Dunwood grasped his with open arms. The room had ceased spinning some time ago (was it after an hour or a day?). He held his fingers over his nose, attempting to block out the stench of the vomit and the rotting Steve Corrine.
Steve had died some time ago—but no, Bobby corrected, there is no time in this place; the Devil does not recognize a clock. Bobby had managed to roll Steve’s oversized body in the best ball he could, cover it with a thick robe and place it in the corner. Bobby had been unable to create a blockade against his own spewing vomit when Steve’s cold hand had squeezed out from under the robe and fell across his bare leg.
His lungs were involved in their final battle, and it was a battle that only had one outcome: they would collapse in the end against the air pressure, because the pressure had reached its zenith quite some time ago. He was lying face up, watching the black ceiling, faintly thinking of the black creatures that could be hanging from it, watching him, observing carefully, waiting for his body to call quits and join Steve.
“Come and fucking get me,” he said, and then he screamed it. The scream may have just been in his mind though; he somewhat remembered his voice running out of steam a while back, almost just after they had found out that they were trapped in the closet and going to die.
The door opened and there was a blinding white light. He screamed but sound refused to leave him. There was only a half-dead Bobby Dunwood, pale and sickly, thin and weak, face contorted in a horrible, fixated grin.
There were people talking, and he wanted to tell them to shut up because he was so serene in this place, this library, this final resting plateau. His ears managed to pick up three words, and they were three words that sounded familiar, a ubiquitous reminder of the life before the closet.
The words: “Look at this.”
It was answered by a motley voice of various tones. It was distorted, made of screeching static and sonorous whining. “What is it?” the voice said.
“A human,” the first voice answered. “We’ve got ourselves a human being, boys! Two of them! There’s another in the corner!”
Laughter, a sharp cackle contradicting the voices that resonated what sounded like deepness.
There were sharp claws and teeth and a word that sounded like dinner.