Missing Limbs

Leana had been deadlifting at GymFit for quite some time now; she had grown accustomed to the audience her activities gathered. The stares, they paled in comparison to the, “You gon’ hurt you, babe.” Or, “You sure you wanna carry such a weight?” Stupidly, she had thought through perseverance that those uninvited observations would dissolve, vanish. As if the guys from the world would one day stop asking for her phone number in the street.

It never ceased.

She knew her boyfriend thought her naïve because of this but, deep down, she knew one day she’d get wrinkles and she’d put on some weight and the guys, they would just stop talking. In all honesty, this was the future she hoped for as she added fifty kilos to each side of the bar. Leana didn’t need eyes on her butt to discern the stares as she bent.

With a passive-aggressive casualness, she gripped the damn thing, tensed her muscles and pulled.

It wasn’t a big deal. Deadlifting had never been since she caught the habit. This explained why, on her last rep, Leanna decided to clean and jerk, try her biceps, first by getting the weight all up to her shoulders then hoisting it up above her head.

She thought she would assume the position for one second, two at best. The sharp pain which gnawed her elbow seemed bearable at first before its invisible cat tongue lapped upon the white of her bone. Leanna only heard herself gasp as the noise of the gym disappeared. She felt the wind blowing from the bar rotating towards her knee.

Bystanders couldn’t understand how her right arm had just vanished. The plate smashed through her leg as if the limb were made of glass. Lying on her belly, Leana was both unable to comprehend or witness the L shape her knee had morphed into. Blurry silhouettes running towards her. Feet. She felt snot run into her mouth as she screamed and cried and babbled.

T’was when she tried to clean the goo that hung off her nose that she realized her right arm did not acknowledge the order.

The limb was cleanly cut in the middle of her biceps. She watched its muscle strings, the bone and the marrow within it, before she howled even louder.

***

“The fuck that supposed to mean?” asked Wei Xiao.

Silence was the defining feature of the entrepreneur’s office above the GymFit. It was L-shaped, and visitors who entered were greeted by the sky view, giving them a swooning sensation above the roof of the whole industrial zone. Not much, but the subtle effect embedded the distinct feeling of domination Wei Xiao required from his underlings. By the right of the door lay a small altar with one lit candle, incenses, a bowl full of fruits, the faint smell of decay. On the left stood a Wing Chun wooden dummy —Xiao thought it made him look threatening.

August Thevenin didn’t need his boss to appear threatening; his bred-in natural angst did the trick. Thevenin had been an accountant for enough years that everyone trusted his silence, a trait of character that despite his anxiety had always helped him deal with shady affairs.

“It means we’re pretty much fucked.”

It was rare to see Thevenin swear. This made Xiao uneasy and the boss stood up from behind his desk, approached the glass wall.

“How could it be our fault? I mean, where the fuck is the fucking arm in the first place?”

Rescue services had searched for the missing limb, then the cleanup crew. When they too came back empty-handed, the manager asked all of his employees, his fucking family. Took two weeks for both him and his wife to scout every inch of the damn place. Building was huge.

“Huge as my cock,” Xiao grumbled under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. How can we be sure she isn’t just trying to fuck us over?” the owner asked while approaching his subordinate.

“I mean… She had both her arms when she entered and…hrm.”

“Couldn’t this fall under the Act of God category? I mean, the insurance sure covers acts of God, right?”

“They certainly do, but, hrm, this whole affair...”

“Fuck the whole affair. I have a gym to run. I’ve got scared customers and scared customers do stupid shit. Like leave. Like write fifteen-page essays on why they don’t need to go to the gym ever again. Y’see?”

“I do. Still, I shall remind you that this wasn’t the first instance of…”

“The fuck you talking about?”

“London Sienkiewicz?”

“The fat girl?”

Thevenin opened the file he’d gripped so tightly since the beginning of the interview. The smell of printed paper drowned the sock scent of the gym for but an instant.

“Said she’d lost a finger while…exercising her butt,” the accountant answered.

“She retracted her claim.”

With a small gesture, Xiao indicated that this story was over. He’d made sure of it with a few bills, a few handshakes. Funny how a posse of only three can make a shy woman silent, eh.

“We both know why she quit. That’s not the point. This is the second incident involving missing limbs. Something’s very wrong here.”

Xiao grabbed Thevenin by the collar.

“There’s nothing wrong with this fucking place. Fatso coulda eaten her fucking finger, explains why we never found it. This arm thing…is disarming. Really.”

Xiao chuckled, still holding his blinking accountant.

“It could be the weights. Hrm, could be the place, but something’s making these body parts go whoosh.”

***

It took a lot of effort, a lot of social network advertising which meant a lot of money to bring back the public’s confidence. Although most consumers didn’t kill their subscriptions right away, an empty gym didn’t look too engaging to new customers. Xiao had to first invite a pop star using a fake anniversary of the grand opening as an excuse. Then he offered a TikTok influencer big money to come and give lessons. After enough time, enough calm, everything went back to normal.

If one had asked regulars whether anything had changed since the incident, they’d have gotten, in hushed breath in between reps, that Leanna’s downfall hadn’t changed the GymFit. Whatever it was, had started earlier.

Something roamed the gym, clinging to the machines with the wetness of rabid octopi. Newcomers didn’t feel it because they thought the wetness was linked to the sweat, but it hadn’t been there at the time of the opening. Something had smelled the sweat and the blood and it lay beneath the thin veil of dimension.

When the gym lay liminal, devoid of flesh as an intestine waiting to be turned to black pudding, was when it hit you hardest. Something lived there. Or better yet, through there.

***

Crowd was dense on Saturday afternoon. Mainly because of the leaflets Xiao had flooded through the streets. Partly because of the presence of Helen Kincaid. Contacting her through social networks had been a pain for the owner. After bills, a few arrangements he got the blonde influencer to accept and teach two classes in his humble establishment. Xiao saw the gym centre as anything but humble —still, one had to use such terms when dealing with recognizable faces.

Xaio’s plan was for Helen’s athletic figure to erase the vanishing arm story. His way of pushing it under the rug, missing limbs and all. No, they hadn’t found the arm and yes, he had settled out of court. But, if social networks had taught the business owner one thing, it was that the sea of noise it carried had to be ridden as tightly as a young ephebe on a Saturday night. You just had to switch enough frames, until the flood of light erased the past.

Helen was the flood. Although not to his liking, Xiao certainly noticed the male population she attracted. He couldn’t not think of it as pathetic, males coming in with dangling bellies and barely noticeable hard-ons, daydreaming they had a chance with her. Pathetic or not, this huge influx of newcomers was all that really mattered.

The first lesson had just ended, and the women leaving seemed exhausted. For once, the male attendance was noticeable in the fitness class. Between the two sets, the influencer had begged Xiao to bring in a small stage for a lifting show. Seeing how much she was doing for his business, the owner could only oblige.

Three days prior, he had contracted an enterprise to unhinge every window in the hope of neutering the pungent smell that permeated the gym. It had worked, sort of. But, now, as the mob pressed in around the small podium, eagerly cheering for the influencer and her two assistants to come in, Xiao smelled the stink returning —like an alien pollen that flew and stung and clung to every wall, every machine.

A mesmerizing menagerie of shining smartphones hovered above the attendance’s heads as everyone wanted to shoot the blonde woman’s new prowess, proving they were there, that they lived. Xiao was sure, if they’d been let to their own ways, many attendees would have preferred gathering behind the girls.

On either side of Helen, Kathy and what’s-her-name, the two assistants, stood still. Xiao’d seen it done at least ten times through rehearsal. The assistants were there to help if anything went south. Say, if Helen’s right arm went whoosh and the damned plate crashed through the star’s spine —for instance.

In one smooth motion, Helen deadlifted the bar that bore an impressive one hundred fifteen kilos. She then put it down. Xiao realized by watching her frown she was about to attempt a clean and jerk. Her way of peeing on every dude in attendance. The owner knew none of them could accomplish such a feat. Her very own way of earning respect. Still, it made him uneasy and he got on stage trying to stop her.

She yelled once before she bent and grabbed the bar. Her thumbs waved like seaweed as her left hand gripped it more firmly.

It took just one swoop. Every muscle in her arms contracting and glistening under the spotlights. A sheer puissance that radiated from her belly button as she lifted the weight high above her head.

“RAAAAAAAAAAh!” she yelled. A primal roar that stuck your intestine like knives in a bar fight.

The applause crashed, orca on an estranged beach. It was furious. Hungry. Xiao himself stopped dead in his tracks, clapping with a stupid grin. T’was probably what saved him. See, the business owner had paused maybe one meter away from the lined-up trio, and thus got an up-close view of what happened next.

Half of Kathy’s body vanished. Her upper body hovered in the air for close to two seconds while her entrails rained down, spilling onto the floor in gore. Helen’s right leg disappeared at mid-femur, her left one at the kneecap. What’s-her-name, the second assistant —Carol was her name —didn’t even seem to notice her own right foot going swoosh.

The trio’s blood splashed so hard it ricocheted onto the audience. Gravity finally caught up with Helen, and she slammed to the floor, her wail first drowned out by the applause then by the scream of the fleeing public. None could hear Kathy’s dead torso splatting down onto her own intestines. Everyone tried to flee, disturbed ant colony. Xiao, still clapping, had yet to process what he had witnessed.

Helen howled and rolled over her friend’s dead body, blood gushing from both legs. She sat and shrieked. Vomit splashed the blood, looking like milk.

Wei Xiao clapped more slowly, unconsciously copying the rhythm of Carol hopping on her remaining leg. The pain bit her as the other assistant suddenly grabbed her ankle, their stereo cries reminding Xiao of his own teenage daughter, an angst he couldn’t comprehend.

In the empty gymnasium, one man was still standing. His arms outstretched in front of him, forming a square with his fingers as would a photograph. The oblique line of his digits seemed to follow the lines drawn neatly through the three women’s flesh. Clean cut.

If Xiao hadn’t been so overwhelmed by his looming bankruptcy, he might have realized that dude was onto something.

***

The TikTok vid is not that long but you won’t find it on the app anymore. It’s been downloaded and reshared on obscure websites run by Nazis and BDSM fetishists. It’s one minute and thirty seconds long. A young Black man is dancing. He’s wearing earbuds and holds a broomstick, and overhead floats the caption, “My colleagues are wondering,” in black font over a white background. “Why we still cleaning this dump since it’s closed,” appears as a sparkly editor font under the young man’s chin.

His name has been lost to time. All we can assert is that he’s cleaning a gym centre. All around, the machines seem dusty, left to rot and rust. There’s a distinct quality to his whole environment; the room, not the lens, seems grainy and blue as if the man were recording from deep within the Marian Trench. One would not be surprised if an angler fish were to cross his path.

Suddenly, a scream. The view now shifts to what must be the phone’s front camera. All is dark and gloomy but, through the blue hue of the background, a figure comes running towards the cinematographer.

It’s a Black woman, slightly overweight, probably in her fifties. Her right hand is missing and she is covering her wound with a veil. The veil is turning red so quickly we know she’s dying. As she runs towards the camera, her eyes widen.

She is jerked backwards by a force we cannot see but feel. Binary code is trying to impose the reality of what’s happening to us. We think there exists a shape that goes beyond the walls, beyond the screen and through the machines, but it has to be a bug.

As the woman careens, big fleshy toothless smiles blossom on her knees, her elbows, her shoulders. Before the invisible force that’s carrying her makes a sudden stop and pushes the blood out her every pore. A flower of tongues and entrails and blood hanging in the void. She explodes as if under pressure, as she would passing through a windshield. Her scattering limbs disjoint and spread, smacking the ground and the ceiling. Blood splatter, stomach acids, torn flesh and feces. Jackson Pollock. Everything turns silent. It takes less than two seconds.

There is the shot of the ceiling. The young man now a shadow towering over us, fleeing.

The video ends.

***

“Imagine we find her skull.”

“Wh —what?”

The posse of teenagers had been dining at their favorite all-you-can-eat sushi buffet when Sam started talking about how he wanted to try urbex, which led to him once again begging them to go to the haunted GymFit. The conversation then turned over the missing limbs, everybody sharing whether or not they had seen any of the videos. In that order, Lou, Ashley and Sam admitted to watching the videos. Angie, Tatiana and Franck hadn’t, which was odd since Angie and Ashley were dating.

The team had abdicated to Sam’s whining, mainly because they had no plans for after dinner and because the GymFit was close by. Plus, it was raining so hard that loitering in the skate park was out of question.

At the gym entrance, they had commenced to debate when Lou went ahead and smashed a window. They gasped and Angie looked at Ashley with a frown which meant, “I wanna go home.” They got in, mainly because Lou had opened himself up onto the glass and they didn’t want his sacrifice to be in vain. Within something unseen stirred.

Once inside, flashlights from every phone producing shadows that crept and danced and drowned on every wall, the group collectively agreed the experience was worth it. One had to wonder how all the furniture had remained in place, but they were a merry bunch raised on liminal spaces and backroom fan fictions, and here they felt seen and living, waltzing into the deserted business, frozen in time.

“People say dude who owned this dump tried to sell all this, but no one wanted to get in. Not even for its weight worth,” Lou stated. “And chill the fuck out, everyone’s been searching for those limbs and no one ever found any.”

Ashley looked at Lou for a moment: “More importantly, with this much time having gone by, even if we erroneously stumbled on one of those, it’d be just skeletal remains.”

“Why’d she be like that, all the time?”

“THEY be the fuck they want,” Angie asserted. Since the group had some issues adapting, she pushed hard on the pronouns.

“The fuck they do,” was Lou’s answer.

“You don’t think this awesome, tho,” Sam cut. “Like, breathe this in. Feel it. It’s like we’re archaeologists or something.”

“It’s weird, no one’s tagged the place yet.”

Ashley’s remark made the whole group uneasy. By that time, they had ventured deep within the gym centre. Like three rooms in, a fuck ton of meters to escape if anything turned to shit. They had passed the stage where Helen and Kathy died, passed the bicycles and treadmills lined up along the dusty windows, before arriving at the bench presses. Surrounded by the arcane equipment, Tatiana unconsciously moved closer to Franck.

“Reminds me of work,” she said.

“How so?” Ashley asked.

“Like, when you’re the one closing a public building. There’s a quiet darkness that roams places when the public ain’t here no more.”

“Oh.”

“Like walking in an aquarium,” Tatiana went on, then after a pause: “Like when all of human life is gone, there’s this otherworldly water that pours in through every wall, like the walls don’t even matter. And it’s there and it slows everything. Y’see what I mean, right?” She fixed her gaze on Franck, until he nodded.

“Feels more to me like we’re in a graveyard in some shitty eighties movie,” Sam cut. “Anyone notice how our every step just makes the dust puff under our feet?”

“Like mold in your fucking kitchen sink,” Lou joked.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You shut the fuck up.”

“Wait, wait a bit, you ever seen the TikTok vid?” Ashley asked.

“The deadlifting stuff? Everyone seen this one,” Sam asserted.

“There are two deadlifting vids, dumbass.”

“Please refrain from using that word,” Angie shushed.

“Two deadlifting EVENTS,” Lou corrected as if her best friend didn’t even exist. “The amount of vids immeasurable,” she said with dreamy eyes.

“Am talking about the TikTok one,” Ashley asserted. In the dark, their beard caught some blue and green hue from the mercury lamppost outside. Angie thought they looked even sexier that way.

“With the cleaning people?” Angie asked.

“Don’t know what you talking about,” said both Sam and Lou at the exact same time, before looking at one another angrily.

Suddenly, Ashley seemed really eager.

“Okay, so there’s this vid of this dude dancing, and I think he shall be right about here, where we at right now. It’s got this caption about ‘I’m still wondering why we cleaning this bitch if it’s closed’ or something. But then the camera switches towards this alley.”

With their index finger, Ashley pointed to the back wall, farthest from the street. “I recognized it because of the emergency exit on the right, and this weird looking machine right here.”

“It’s for your abs, Ash.”

Ignoring the dig, Ashley continued. “So, there’s this woman and she’s coming towards the fucking camera and she doesn’t scream at first but her hand is tied in a fucking shawl, and it’s pumping blood.”

The group stared, captivated, at the back wall as if a wailing woman could somehow pierce the veil between dimensions. Tatiana thought of an angler fish. Just a dot, at first, coming from far beyond the walls, its teeth beginning to shine as it neared. There were crystals coming from its eye sockets, blocking its esophagus, piercing through its skin.

“And then, she’s, like, dragged backwards. But her fucking feet don’t touch the ground. It’s some Chinese horror movie shit,” Ashley went on, although no one had talked back. They begin to run down the passageway between the machines, still facing their friends, mimicking. “Bwaaah, and it’s like… It’s like she hits this fucking wall that’s not there but that is there. Think of a fucking seal in the jaws of a fucking shark. It’s up in the air, just howling and twisting and BAM.” They slapped their fist in their right palm. “They just hit the fucking water, y’see. Right there.”

No one moved. In the aquatic calm of the building no one even dared gulp. So close to the back wall, with the exit signal behind their heads, Ashley looked like the faraway swimmer in a low-budget sharksploitation flick.

“It’s cool, Ash,” Angie said angrily. “Now we can all g—”

Franck’s strangled cry cut Angie off. He was standing next to Tatiana who sensing his unease adverted her eyes to her own arm. It ended in a lump, blood hit the floor. Her hand nowhere to be found.

Ashley’s eyes widened, two jellyfish in the stubborn darkness. Franck began to yank his shirt off himself, to try and stop the bleeding. Tatiana’s right leg disappeared. Her howl shattered the silence.

Sam jumped onto the nearest machine as if the ground was the problem. In front of him lay Lou, the lower part of her body gone, her entrails not spilling out of the opening as if held up by some unseen barrier. She held her arm up towards Sam in a pleading fashion. Her mouth widened, her teeth popped out and rained onto the floor in pearly clatter. Sam reached for Lou. Whatever had forced the teeth out of Lou’s mouth touched Sam’s right hand, the one he had been extending to try grab his half friend. The back of his own hand disappeared. Sam stared at the bone, found it weird how the mark of his nails existed on the bony remains of his fingers. He fainted.

Angie ran towards Ash, eyes brightened by panic. To their left, Sam’s head hit the floor with a humid crack.

Whatever it was cut through Angie’s boobs, tracing a horizontal line, slightly off to the right side. Angie’s eyes turned white altogether before their head disappeared. The force spread to Ashley, cutting their head right at the mouth and leaving their bottom jaw to fling, tongue twisting aimlessly before they slumped to the ground. Ashley's brain rolled out of their skull and towards their lover’s bleeding neck.

Franck felt the air rush over his head. He looked up but could only see the ceiling. Yet, he felt it. Tatiana grabbed his legs. She still lay on the floor, her left leg gushing blood, her face almost white from the hemorrhage.

Something cut through her waist.

Her eyes turned white. Drool bubbled in her open mouth.

Franck fled, unconsciously jumping over whatever had passed through his girlfriend. A threat he could not see, yet didn’t affect the environment. Only the humans. His scream echoed weirdly as if it ricocheted not off the walls but some ice sheet.

He slipped three times in the blood before he crashed onto the emergency exit.

Padlocked shut. They had come through a window.

From behind, he felt the force closing in on him.