Purely Ornamental

Jay Cutler turned down photographer Gus Stanville’s offers to do a photoshoot for months. “Sorry,” he said politely on Gus’ sixth call, pleading for the former Olympian to do just one 2-hour session with him. “I only do professional shoots. You lack the credentials.”

A month later, Gus doubled his offer. Then he doubled it again. When he offered 100 grand, Jay wondered what the guy was thinking.

“What is he, independently wealthy?” Jay wondered as he searched Google results for Gus’ internet presence. He had one small website featuring a few shadowy artistic photos of athletes Jay couldn’t identify, but that was it. There wasn’t even any contact information. Who was this Gus guy, and why was Jay’s image so valuable to him?

At 200 grand, Jay realized he couldn’t turn down the money. “Fine,” he agreed. “Two hours, but I need a contract and half the money up front.”

Gus thanked him profusely, sent him the GPS coordinates for his studio, and told Jay when to show up. Luckily it was still in Nevada, only a couple of hours from Jay’s house, but it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

“This place is… interesting,” Jay said as he walked into the building. It was unmarked and the only construct for miles in otherwise empty desert. There weren’t even any windows. The lobby just inside the door was empty except one door and a speakerbox with a button. Jay, hoisting his duffel bag over his shoulder, punched the button.

“Yes?” said a deep voice Jay didn’t recognize.

“Jay Cutler, here for a photoshoot with Gus,” Jay responded. Where was everybody? he wondered. He checked his watch, set it for two hours exactly. “Soon as time is up, I’m OUT of here,” he said to himself.

Gus greeted him at the door and ushered him into a dark hallway. He was a tired-looking man with red eyes and a sloppy combover. Gus hit a switch on the wall and the lights above buzzed to life. Jay saw dozens of doors lining the hallway. “Our studio is over here,” Gus said as he brought Jay to a door halfway down. He pulled out a keyring with at least sixty keys, rifling through to find the one that would unlock it.

“What the hell is this place?” Jay asked at Gus gestured for him to walk through the door.

“A private place,” Gus said, “for artists who like to work… uninterrupted.”

The “studio” they entered was a large white room. The fluorescent lights were so bright they made Jay nauseous. In the center of the room was a glass cube raised up on a platform with a small set of stairs leading up to it.

“This is my assistant Brent,” Gus said, introducing Jay to a short pudgy man with a ponytail who sat at a control panel. “He’ll be helping us with our project today.”

Brent’s eyes went wide at the side of the massive blonde bodybuilder. “I… can’t believe it’s you!” he said in a hoarse voice. He coughed phlegm into the elbow of his sleeve before extending his hand to shake Jay’s. Rather than risk catching whatever Brent had, Jay just fistbumped him.

“Did you see how big his fist was?” Brent whispered to Gus as Jay walked further into the room, inspecting the cube.

“What’s this thing up here?” Jay said, approaching the cube. He walked up its steps and opened the glass door in the side. “Is this for the photoshoot?”

Gus smiled. “It’s a sci-fi motif,” Gus explained as he futzed with what Jay assumed was a light meter. “We’ll have shots of you inside it, outside it… Just you flexing of course. Nothing you can’t handle, big fella!”

Brent snorted and then looked down at the large control panel he sat at. Jay eyed the two suspiciously, then checked his watch. “Okay. Clock is ticking.”

“Do you have anything to wear?” Gus asked. He produced a suitcase out of which he pulled a rainbow of multicolored posing trunks. “We can try different colors. I’d like to see how you look in bright green, magenta, oooh… classic white!”

“I’ve got navy blue, thank you,” Jay said. “Anywhere I can change?”

Gus gestured to a screen behind Jay. Jay stood behind it and changed quickly as he watched Gus and Brent whisper to each other. Guys probably have cameras back here, he said as he pulled his compression shorts down and yanked his posing trunks up, careful to cover his junk lest pics of his dick ended up flying around the internet.

“Okay, now, let’s get you in the cube first,” Gus said, adjusting the huge camera around his neck. Jay stepped inside the cube and jumped when the door slammed shut with a burst of suction a closed fridge.

Jay looked around, suddenly feeling his pulse quicken. “Hey, there’s air in here, right?” he asked, suddenly feeling very vulnerable, despite his massive size, in just a pair of posing trunks, his huge muscles out on display.

“You’ll be fine!” Gus said. “Let’s see some flexing?”

Jay tried to calm himself and hit a front double biceps pose, mustering up a cocky grin to finish it off.

He watched Brent punch some lit-up buttons on his panel and a loud whir came from beneath him.

“Ignore the sound,” Gus said, “just hold that pose!”

Jay did as he was told, but the whole cube started to rumble. He looked up at the flat metallic panel that formed the cube’s ceiling, then down at the metallic panel below him. Fuck, he thought, wasn’t the ceiling higher up before?

“Hold the pose!” Gus repeated, and again Jay obeyed, but when he looked up, he was sure the ceiling was lowering.

“Hey, what’s this--”

Jay never got the chance to finish the question. The ceiling and floor of the cube suddenly smashed together so quickly he never had a chance to move. Jay felt his face pressed up against the cold metal, felt the floor beneath his feet, but his mind tried to comprehend the strange sensations all over his body. He was sure he had been crushed but he felt no pain--in fact, he actually felt… good!

That is, until he tried to speak. No sound came from his throat. He tried to move--his awareness of his body felt off, like his limbs weren’t where they were supposed to be--but nothing would respond. He heard the whirring of the machine again and watched as the metal “ceiling” squishing his face pulled away. It slowly raised back to its original position but Jay could only stare up at it. His panic spiked when he realized he wasn’t even breathing, nor did he feel the need to. Warm pleasant tingles spread through every inch of him (confusing his self awareness further--it felt like all of his body was in the same spot, piled on top of itself). He heard footsteps, then the glass door to the cube opening, then saw Gus looking down at him with a grin.

“Perfect, Jay! I’ll wire that money to your account,” he said as he reached out and grabbed Jay--what part of him he grabbed, Jay couldn’t figure out--and lifted him from the ground.

*

Gus carried the tan flesh colored disc from the machine and held it against his body.

“It’s warm,” Gus said with a sigh. “It feels amazing.”

“Can I feel it?” Brent begged, greedy hands grabbing for it.

Gus jerked the disc away. “This is my property now,” he said. “You can look but you have to pay to touch.”

Gus held up the disc and examined it. On one side he saw Jay’s shocked face with the open palms of his hands on either side of it. The breadth of Jay’s pecs and his big glutes, now flattened into a circle, formed the rest of him, but all other detail had been squashed out. Gus sought out the little slip of navy blue where Jay’s dick must have been (all that wasn’t squashed between his pecs and quads, that is) and gave it a gentle rubbing. He hoped it gave the helpless bodybuilder pleasure.

“Oh wow!” Brent said. “Look at his feet!” He reached forward and tickled the botom of the disc. Gus turned it around and examined the other side: Jay’s feet, the underside of his pecs and glutes, the depth of his hamstrings and quads, now all entirely without dimension.

Gus set the disc on the floor and rolled it like a wheel. It went about twenty feet before circling and wobbling like a penny. Poor Jay was face down during the whole thing.

“Is he asleep?” Brent asked.

“Oh no,” Gus said. “He’s very much awake.” Gus picked up the disc and spun it on his finger like he were balancing a basketball. “Imagine, spending your whole life trying to build a body with impressive, eyecatching dimensions, bulges this way and that, satisfying lumps of cultivated muscle tissue that flexed and bounced at your command…” He grasped each side of the disc and held it aloft. “...and ending up just a flat circle!”

Gus flipped the circle over and stared into Jay’s eyes. “Oh, I know you can see me, big man. In case you’re wondering your new dimensions… You’re 3 ½ feet in diameter, 1 inch thick, and you weigh approximately 8 pounds! Looks like you’ll need to do some work in the offseason to regain that lost size, eh?”

“What are you going to do with him?” Brent asked. The little guy actually wiped drool from his mouth as he reached for the warm flesh-colored disc of squished-down bodybuilder.

*

Molatov, the owner of the underground bar 360, gestured for Gus to join him at his table. He was flanked by two powerfully built bodyguards in suits. The bar was empty except for the bartender, a thin but handsome blonde man polishing wine glasses.

“Sheef,” Molatov said to the bartender, “mix my friend here whatever he wishes.”

Gus had a seat and sat his circular suitcase on the floor next to him. “Grey goose, straight up,” Gus asked.

Molatov shook a finger at Gus. “I insist,” he said, “that all beverages in my bar be served on the rocks.”

Gus turned his head at the request. Molatov pointed at the circular table. He lifted his own glass from it and yanked the black linen tablecloth off it. Underneath, the perfectly round surface showed a built man’s angular face, mouth opened in surprise, with his open hands on either side. Beneath his chin, the top inch of shaft and his cock head poked out. The man was bald with a beautiful but angular face and deep blue eyes. From what Gus could see, the man looked to have a splendidly muscular figure. (The layman probably wouldn’t see it, Gus thought, but he was used to seeing two-dimensional men, compressed from top to bottom.)

“It’s for the tables, you see,” Molatov said. “The cold drinks… stimulate them.” He rubbed his hand over the surface of the table, then set his own drink, a bourbon with one huge ice cube in the center, down on the image of the man’s dick. He laughed, coughed a few times, then continued to laugh before taking a sip of the drink.

Gus gazed around at the other tables in the room. Under each tablecloth, he mused, was another flattened disc of a man.

“Who was this?” Gus asked as he ran his hand over the image of the table’s broad pec-shelf. If this man had been flattened with the same process, he could feel everything, the stimulation constantly building with no hope of release.

“Who cares?” Molatov shrugged. “It’s furniture.” He slapped his hand down on the table, right on the image of the man’s exasperated and slightly frightened face. “I’m looking to do some renovations, however. I’d like to redo my floor, you see,” he said as he looked down. “I want to research some more… exotic tiling.”

Molatov pulled at his thin moustache and licked his lips, examining the suitcase at Gus’ side.

“Well, what I have may be a little out of your price range,” Gus said as he perused the room. “These men may be nothing but objects to you now, but what I’ve got…” He pulled his suitcase closer to him. “These men are some of the most coveted bodies of all time. Of course, now they fit into carry-on luggage, so their status in the world has dropped a bit…”

Both Molatov and Gus laughed and sipped their drinks. Gus set his drink on the table’s ass cheek and ran his fingers over the spot where the table’s ass crack used to be before it was smashed flat.

“Let’s see what you’ve got!” Molatov said as he rubbed his hands together. Gus hoisted the suitcase up on the table and flipped up the latches.

“First,” Gus said, sliding a dark brown disc from the case, “we have Phil Heath, former Mr. Olympia.” He let Molatov see the front of Phil’s disc, gesturing lightly over Phil’s look of shocked horror. “My favorite part of this piece is the underside,” he said, flipping it over to show Phil’s feet, the circumference of his legs and the base of his bright purple posing trunks. “You can see his big cock was sliding out of his posing trunks just at the moment of compaction.” He gestured to the brown protruding from the flashy trunks. “Imagine, flashing the world for all of eternity.”

Molatov smiled and nodded. “What else?” he asked.”

Gus slid Phil back in and then rifled through the suitcase as if he were leafing through vinyl albums. “Next, we have Flex Lewis. Look at all of his crushed mass!” While each of the other disc had some blank space near its edges, Flex’s hulking musclebody, when mashed down, had filled out every inch of the disc. “Look how much bigger he looks than the others. It’s amazing how, from the right angle and in the right dimension, height is no longer anywhere near as relevant as mass.”

Molatov ran his fingers over every inch of pale, veiny muscle along the two sides of Flex’s disc.

“Interesting,” Molatov said. “My interest is piqued but I haven’t seen anything here that’s truly mindblowing enough for my collection.”

“Examine my final piece,” Gus said as he removed the Jay disc. “One of the most coveted bodybuilding physiques of all time.”

Molatov nodded. “I met this man once,” he said as he perused the disc. “He was so cocky and dismissive. Albeit, he was massive, bigger even than my bodyguards!” He leaned in to speak directly to Jay’s beautiful two-dimensional face. “Not so big now, though, are you?”

“Just like yours,” Gus said as he slid Jay back into the case, “they can all feel, they’re all hypersensitive and they will never age a day. But I’ve got some other offers. There is a gentleman named Brad Castleberry who wanted the discified bodybuilders to use as weighted plates for his own private gym.”

“Novel idea,” Molatov said with a shrug. “Imagine, fully mobile bodybuilders getting bigger and stronger, all the while using these helpless, useless men to get them there!”

“Also,” Gus added, “there is a man named Ronnie Coleman who wants the Jay Cutler disc specifically for his home. I guess he wants to use him as the lid to his toilet.” Gus shrugged. “Not the most elegant of ideas but he’s offering me a lot of money.”

Molatov smiled as he looked forward. “I want these men to be part of my floor. I want them to be always staring up at people walking all over them the way no one ever did to them in life! I want their beautiful musclebound bodies to be always underfoot. I want them to shriek and shudder as we sweep dirt and garbage from off their faces. I want them to constantly realize that they are always the lowest men in the room!” Molatov had risen from his seat during his speech. Gus could see he was fully erect, tenting his suit pants.

“Well then,” Gus said, setting the suitcase down. “Looks like we will have to negotiate.”