Craig Checks In

[shrinking]

Craig Morton noticed the guy behind the desk light up when he checked in. He was old with stringy hair, a dark grey front tooth and a hunch to his back. He looked old enough to be the manager but it turned out he was just the valet.

The younger man behind the desk checked Craig in. His nametag said Clark. “So it seems you’ll be here for the weekend. You here for business or pleasure?”

“Business,” Craig said as he watched the creepy old guy start to gather up his bags. “I’m a bodybuilder. Doing a guest pose.”

Clark raised an eyebrow. “Guest… pose?” He eyed Craig’s large body up and down. Even in his coat, it was obvious Craig had wide shoulders, a thick beefy chest and arms that sat away from his torso on big inflated lats. Every movement of his arms showed off their width and density as they bunched and flexed, and his tight sweatpants showed off every line and curve of Craig’s thick legs and glutes that stood out like a wide shelf behind him.

Craig resisted the urge to sigh. “Yeah, it’s a… bodybuilding thing.” He had been on a plane for hours and needed to get in a quick pump before bed. Small talk wasn’t his thing.

“There’s an NPC competition this weekend,” said the old man, suddenly popping up behind Craig’s luggage. “Pro-qualifier. Big deal. And at competitions they have pros come in to pose to entertain the crowd. Breaks up the monotony of the competition. Also puts butts in the seats.”

He extended a hand for a shake, looking at Craig with wide, starry eyes. “I’m Bennet,” he said. As Craig went in to shake, he noticed how long and yellowed Bennet’s fingernails were. His many callouses scratched Craig’s hand.

“Yeah, right,” Craig said. “Anyway, I’m tired, so…”

Bennet laughed and clapped his hands together. “Oh, of course you’re tired! I’m sorry. I’m just a little excited. I don’t meet too many pro bodybuilders and I’m a fan. A big big fan!”

Bennet wheeled the luggage cart toward the elevator as Clark handed over Craig’s room key. “Continental breakfast at 8 am, pool opens at 9. Fitness facilities are 24 hours.” He looked at Craig’s bulky body again, then pointed down the hallway. “I’m guessing you’ll be using those. They’re down that way. Your keycard opens the door.”

Craig hurried away from the desk toward his room. He didn’t want that weirdo alone with his stuff for too long.

Craig’s room actually wasn’t bad for a small town hotel. His luggage was set up on his bed and, thankfully, none of it had been gone through. This was just something bodybuilders had to deal with: fans who claim to “love the sport” but just want to jerk off to pictures of nearly naked guys. Daily, he was pelted by dozens of messages on social media offering big money in exchange for his worn boxers. Once a guy offered him $5000 to wear a jockstrap for a whole week and then send it to him. Fucking perverts.

As he grabbed his luggage he felt something slimy along the handle. “The fuck?” he said, kneeling down to examine it. Some green goo was smeared across it. Was it hair gel? Craig rubbed it between his fingers. It seemed to evaporate on its own, or absorbed into his skin or something. Jesus. The front desk was getting a complaint. But of course, when Craig called down, the line was busy. He peeked out front on his way to the fitness center and that weirdo Bennet was hovering over the desk. He could take care of it later.

Most hotel gyms were just a few dumbbells (nothing heavier than 35 pounds) and a cable machine, but this one actually had a squat rack, dumbbells up to 80 and some hammer strength equipment. There was another guy working out there as well, some doughy middle-aged guy struggling with 30 pounds on the pec deck. And just Craig’s luck, the guy wanted to chat.

“Lane Brown,” he said as Craig came in. “I gotta say, I’m always happy to see a guy looking like you in the gym. You guys are the best to get advice from!” Lane wiped his bald head with the towel around his neck. “Anyway, how’d you get so big? You take protein? You do keto?”

Craig made a show of putting on his headphones to signal that he wasn’t likely to hear any further conversation. “Just hard work and consistency.”

Lane snorted. “Yeah right! I work hard and I’m consistent but I’m not a goddamn titan like you. What is it, steroids? You do steroids? I’m not judging, I just want to know. I’d kill to be that size!”

Craig shrugged. “Just been doing it since I was 15. You gotta start early to look like this at my age.” He turned on his music. Lane continued to chatter but Craig just pointed to the headphones. It was comical how long Lane continued to try to communicate when it was clear there was no hope of being heard.

Craig was too absorbed in his own workout to notice when Lane finally left. He felt good, surprisingly alert for so late at night, but he wasn’t moving the weight he wanted to. He was just looking for a nice arm pump before bed. For his first set of hammer curls he did 20 reps, but for the second set he struggled to get 17. He set up two benches parallel to each other to do bench dips and stacked three 45 pound plates on his lap. 20 reps was easy at first, but for the second set, it felt like he had stacked on an extra two plates.

Third set, he struggled to close the gap between the benches. Must have slid apart, he thought, sliding them together. But as the benches moved, suddenly his shorts slid down.

He yanked them up, spinning around to make sure nobody nearby had seen him (especially that creepy Bennet). He pulled the drawstrings as tight as they would go but it wasn’t enough. What the fuck? Then he took a step and his foot came right out of his sneaker. It was still tied.

“How the fuck?” Craig looked around in a panic to realize that everything started to look bigger. The 45 pound plate in front of him looked a whole foot wider. The benches came up to mid-thigh. How the fuck was this possible?

He heard the ping of the card reader in the door and leapt looked around for somewhere to hide. He needed help, sure, but the last thing he wanted was for some weirdo to see him like this! He ditched his shoes and his shorts and, holding his expanding tank top tightly around him, headed for the water fountain. He ducked behind it and huddled as close to the wall as he could.

“Anybody in here?” It was Bennet! He was the last person Craig would go to for help. As he leaned against the wall, he could feel his body continuing to shrink. The fountain was getting bigger, the tank top starting to swallow him up, the wall seeming to move upward as he slowly slid down it.

Craig peered around the water fountain to see Bennet inspecting his discarded clothes. That weirdo had a butterfly catching net slung over his shoulder! “Ho ho ho,” Bennet said, plucking his boxers from the shorts and holding them against his face for a long sniff. “Where you at, little man?” He peeked around the room, stepping lightly. “You didn’t shrink away to nothing, now, did you?”

Holy shit, Craig thought, that freak did this! Bennet’s back was turned and Craig saw a straight line between his hiding spot and the door, so he took it. He had to ditch his tank top, but he sprinted as fast as his massive quads would allow, his cock flopping the whole way. By the time he got to the door, the handle was above his head. He leapt to grab it and pulled it open. Of course Bennet was right behind him, but Craig slammed the door shut.

Even though he was small, his muscular body still had tons of (proportionate) strength to it. He leaned against the door, straining as hard as he could to keep it shut. Bennet stopped fighting, then pressed his face against the glass and looked down at Craig with yellowing eyes. “Every second you get littler and littler! If I just wait a few seconds, I’ll get this door open easily!”

Bennet was right. Craig needed another option. To his left, he saw the elevators leading into the hotel. To his right was the lobby. He watched a woman get off the elevator, staring at her phone as she wheeled her suitcase past him. When Craig let the door go he broke into a full sprint, knowing that Bennet was behind him. His thick legs pumped and Craig hit the top speed he could manage at his dwindling size. He made it to the elevator just as the doors closed and slipped through the closing doors. He had to leap to hit a floor button--he slapped the lowest one he could reach, floor 3. That was his floor!

As the elevator whirred to life, he realized he was going to need a plan. He looked down at his body, then up at the railings against the walls of the elevator that seemed to get further and further away. He was probably about a foot tall now, he thought with a sick feeling in his gut, and still shrinking. How tiny was he going to be when it stopped? Would it ever stop?

When the doors opened, Craig clung to the wall until he was sure a foot wasn’t going to come down and stomp him flat. Luckily, the coast was clear. He darted into the hallway, slowed down by the rug, which seemed to be like dense grass to him now. The hallway looked massive; the ceiling was miles away. If he could get to his room, though, he could maybe get his cell phone, call someone from home, call the police, call anybody who could get him out of this.

Shit, he thought, which room number was mine? 308? 306? At this size, nothing looked familiar. He stared up at skyscraper-high doors and realized that his only way in was going to be by shimmying through the crack underneath.

“Where you at, little man?”

It was Bennet! Craig’s body clenched as he heard the voice--which sounded like it was being projected by speakers--echoing down the hallway. Fuck it, he thought as he saw the man enter the hallway with his butterfly catching net in his hand. It hurt Craig’s neck to look up high enough to see Bennet’s weathered face. 308 it is, he thought, dropping to the ground and squeezing himself under the door.

Halfway through, he felt his big glutes get in the way. As absurd as the idea was at this size, his body was too big to get under the door this way. He kicked his muscular legs, every second panicked that Bennet would see his lower half flailing and pluck him right out. His big pecs beneath him, massive back behind him, all kept him wedged tightly under the door. Damn, was this going to be the end of him? If anybody opened the door, he’d be splattered across the ground.

The pressure keeping him in place seemed to relieve as he felt the opening getting bigger--or rather, his own body continuing to shrink. As horrifying as that notion was, he was grateful for it for this one situation.

Inside the room, he huddled against the door, listening as he felt the tremors of Bennet’s footfalls in the hallway. Holy shit, they seemed like mini-earthquakes and all he was doing was walking! But the thudding continued past. Craig exhaled, suddenly exhausted as he realized he was safe.

What the fuck am I going to do now? he thought as he took a few steps into the room. The lights were still on. He could hear the TV echoing into the air above him. Had he left his TV on?

The good news, he thought as he ventured forward, was that the shrinking seemed to have stopped: the carpet came up past his ankles; he counted to 5, and it came to exactly the same spot. The hallway just inside the door seemed a football field’s length to Craig. When he got to the end he looked up. There was someone else here. He was in the wrong room.

The ground boomed and rumbled again and Craig realized someone else was walking--but in the room. He heard a loud roar, like a jet engine--no, it was more like a flash flood--and saw the incredibly tall door to the bathroom swing open. Massive gusts of air--just displacement from the door opening--blasted past Craig as he looked up to see an impossibly tall human being.

It was Lane, in boxer shorts and a t-shirt holding a magazine. He was staring straight at Craig.

“What do we have here?” he said as he walked toward Craig. The little bodybuilder turned to run for cover, but a rolled up magazine smashed the ground next to him with such force that it knocked him from his feet. Lane whacked him directly with the magazine, but with only enough force to make himself known. It still knocked Craig’s breath from his lungs.

“Now now, last time I saw you… You were quite a bit bigger, weren’t you?” Lane said. Craig felt sick as he saw the man’s enormous hand--bigger than his whole body now!--came for him. He was too stunned to react. He struggled as much as he could as the fingers wrapped around him and lifted him off the ground. He left his stomach behind as he rose into the air inside the fist with sickening speed.

The fingers uncurled and Craig stared up at Lane’s face. It was as big as a movie screen.

“Help me!” Craig squeaked. His voice sounded like it had been sped up, just a high-pitched squeak. “Somebody did this to me! It was that freak valet guy! He’s trying to capture me?”

Craig wobbled unsteadily in Lane’s hand as he felt the giant man moving around. Huge Lane sat down in a chair. The force of this simple movement knocked Craig off his feet. He clung desperately to the curled fingers.

“Now, I have to admit,” Lane said, sticking his tongue out at Craig. “Your posturing is quite different now! I mean in the gym you were all, muscles and bulginess, all tanned flexing and, ‘hard word and consistency.’ Deep voice, perfect body… Now, you’re squirming. You’re literally squirming in my hand!”

Craig couldn’t believe this. “You have to call someone! Call 911!”

“And tell them what?” Lane said. “That a pipsqueak bodybuilder crawled under my door? Who’s going to believe that?”

“You have to call the hospital!” Craig pleaded.

“Oh? And what are they going to do? Pump you full of steroids to blow you back up to full size? A needle would be like a shotgun wound to you now! What are you, five inches tall?”

The hand Craig sat on raised up and down a few feet each way, another movement that made him want to puke.

“You feel like you weigh just a few ounces. What did you weigh before? Back when you were big?”

Craig stared at Lane in an exhausted daze. “Two… Two sixty…” he stammered.

“Well that’s quite a bit of weight loss! What’s your secret?”

A sudden realization swept over Craig. “You have to… you have to call someone… you can’t just leave me like this…”

“Oh, I’m not going to leave you like this,” Lane said. He was up again, and Craig was struggling not to vomit as he felt the giant hand beneath him lurching up suddenly, then bobbing with every step. “See, I’ve wanted a personal trainer for a long time. A long, long time! But you guys are always so expensive, and to be honest, dismissive when a guy like me wants help.” Lane turned his hand and Craig tumbled out of it onto the porcelain countertop next to the bathroom sink.

“It’s antithetical, don’t you think?” Lane said as he rummaged around beneath the sink with something Craig couldn’t see. “Your job is to get people into shape but you only seem to want to help in shape people. But you, little man, need something from me. Is that right?”

Craig’s mouth hung open but he had no answer.

“You want me to help you, right?”

Craig nodded weakly.

“So then, you’re going to help me. Help me get this,” he said grabbing a handful of his paunchy stomach and giving it a jiggle, “into shape. Think you can do that?”

Craig shook his head. “No, no… If you help me, you’ll be like my hero! Get me some help and I’ll… I’ll train you for a year. Free. I’ll get you into competition shape. Guaranteed. Lose weight, build muscle, all that. Look at me! Obviously I can do it!” Craig tried to ignore the fact that he was standing between a giant fist and the deep chasm of a bathroom sink. He raised up his arms and did his best rear double biceps flex.

Lane sighed (it felt like a hurricane-force wind to Craig). “This whole situation is going to take forever to get fixed. I mean, they’ll probably dissect you trying to figure out how this all happened! No, I’m going to keep you with me until I get to a place where I think I can train on my own without your help. So if you’re a good personal trainer, that shouldn’t be that long!”

“No,” Craig said, sinking to his knees.

“Oh, yes!” Lane said. Lane produced a shaving kit that looked as big as a minivan to Craig. He unzipped the top. “I’ll keep you in here. This is thick leather, so I know you won’t be getting out anytime soon.”

Craig shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. “You can’t do this…” he moaned.

“It’s easy!” Lane said. “Just cooperate and this will be over in no time.”

A thunderous banging came from somewhere beyond the cavernous bathroom. Lane’s head craned toward the sound. “Well, I don’t want to have a man as pretty as you ending up a splatter on my bathroom floor now, do I?”

Lane grabbed a blue robe off the hook in the wall and slung it around his shoulders. He scooped up Craig and dropped him unceremoniously in the robe’s pocket. Craig winced as the large fibers of the robe scratched at his naked body. The pocket swung as Lane walked and suddenly Craig realized he was opening the door. He could scream for help!

“Excuse me,” said a voice. Craig knew it immediately: Bennet! “Sorry to bother you so late,” wheezed the valet.

“Not a bother at all,” Lane said. His hand came down and patted the pocket, mashing Craig against his leg. “What’s the problem? What’s with that butterfly net?”

“You see,” Bennet said, “a guest’s emotional therapy cat seemed to get out. He’s just a little guy, so we’re wondering if he got in one of the other guest’s rooms. Would you mind if I took a look inside?”

“Come right in!” Lane said. He cupped his hand under the pocket, holding Craig tightly.

Craig struggled against the massive fingers’ grip. Stop grabbing me! he thought. That freak is going to figure out I’m here! He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but if it came down to being an enslaved personal trainer or living in whatever Bennet had planned, he knew which one he preferred.